the rangers network in ny (msg, or yes! or whatever) has been showing the devils-rangers 1994 conference finals. even though im a diehard devils fan, ive watched every minute. and game 7 still almost makes me cry.

i hope they get things resolved at least for next season. id love to watch scott stevens one more time.

My understanding from afar is that injuries had a lot to do with his problems last year, but much of his offensive problems the year before, in his last year with the Ducks, was traced to the team's defensive play. His frustration with that (and the wide open approach of the Avs) was a primary reason he was so willing to jump ship two summers ago. Although he had some stretches where he wasn't at tip top health, for the most part, he was healthy in 2002-03.

Personally, of course, I think his awful year last year was just karma kicking him in the ass for leaving the Ducks. :)

CR

The Monday Night Miracle was one of the reasons the Flames didn't have anything left when they had to face Montreal in the final.

Cross your fingers for Thursday...

Kucera is still kicking around in the minors, isn't he?

Now that we know the NHLPA is offering a 10% rollback and a luxury tax of $0.75 on amounts over $44 million, here's a great spreadsheet that enables you to look at the results and toggle the amounts...

http://www.derzaphonline.com/msgbds/luxurytaxn.xls

He's not in the AHL, so if he is still playing, he must be playing in a lesser league like the CHL or UHL.

If you really want to see some cheapish NHL stuff, head to shop.nhl.com. Pretty much all of the replica jerseys are $40 or less, some as low as $20, depending on the team. I'd be all over getting a couple of jerseys but I just don't have any cash right now and any that I do have is going towards my new computer.

SI

The replica jerseys are dirt cheap, but if you want to customize it, it goes back up to $95. Still a great buy on replicas, though.

http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/for...1&postcount=17

SI

They just came out with a nice Red Wings DVD pack.

It has four classic games, in their entirety. They include:

1. March 26, 1997 Wings vs. Avs. Wings won 6-5 in OT. Probably the best regular season game of all time. It included the McCarty "payback" on Lemieux, the Roy/Vernon fight, and a bunch of others. This game had it all. Amazing hits. Good fights. And amazing hockey. Lots of offensive action.

2. 1997 Stanley Cup Finals Game 4. Wings first cup in 42 years. McCarty scores an amazing goal that ends up being the game winner thanks to a late goal by Lindros.

3. 2002 Western Conference Finals, Game 7. This was hyped as one of the biggest games of the modern era. Wings vs. Avs. Hasek vs. Roy. Game 7. Winner goes to the Cup, loser goes home. It ended up being a bigger blow-out than the recent USC/Oklahoma game. Wings shelled Roy. They scored 5 goals in the first period and had three goals before the 10 minute mark.

4. Game 4, 2002 Stanely Cup Finals. After losing the first game to Carolina, Detroit heads to Carolina with the series tied at 1-1. The games goes into triple overtime and Larionov scores the winner. Wings go on to win the series 4-1.

A solid pick-up for the hockey-starved Wings fan.

Russ Conway of the Lawrence-Eagle Tribune, the man who would not give in to the NHL and Allan Eagleson, has come out with an interesting initiative as a basis for compromise between the league and the NHLPA. I heard him on the radio yesterday. 36 people - general managers, coaches, hockey players, former hockey players, broadcasters, executives, lawyers - worked five months on coming up with what they perceive as a workable solution.

http://www.eagletribune.com/features/nhl-proposal.htm

I miss hockey. :(

Peter Caramos(spelling) basically said recently that he thinks there is a possibility that the nhl may never exist again... Trying to find a link

Always go to The Sporting News's Canada site. They have the best hockey coverage that I see:

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp...71&hubName=nhl

SI

Speaking of things on TSN.ca:

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp...58&hubName=nhl

Modano: Players' resolve has a limit

TSN.ca Staff



1/12/2005

According to a report in the National Post, Dallas Stars centre Mike Modano feels the resolve of the players may not last through a lost season.


''It's going to be tough to come back in October and say that we're going to stay tough and stand firm. You're going to have guys who are saying, 'What are we doing?' '' Modano told the National Post. ''You're going to have guys chomping at the bit to get a deal done.''


Modano, who stands to lose $9 million is salary this season, went on to tell the Post that if the lockout isn't resolved by the scheduled start of next season, players will be desperate to start earning NHL-level salaries again.


''I think it has come to the point now where the owners are willing to sacrifice a year or two to fix the game for 10 or 15 years down the road,'' Modano told the Post. ''There are guys who are missing out on the prime earnings of their careers. You feel for the guys who did the same for you in 1994.''

Great site, but no relation to The Sporting News. TSN is "The Sports Network", i.e. the Canadian ESPN.

Ah, well, that explains it. :D

SI

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=1967807


Looks like the thread title is correct :)

however its comical eric lindros is commenting on it.. does lindros even realize he isn't playing?

so are the rangers still in last?

A friend of mine who works in the sports media just e-mailed me. Apparently Fox Sportsnet in Detroit is reporting that the PA and the NHL are very close to an eight-year deal, using the four-year rollback/four-year cap idea that was floated recently.

His comment: "I find it hard to believe that nobody in Canada has broken this story first...that's why I'm VERY skeptical."

Still interesting, though.

It would be nice if true. Maybe later on today it will be. One can always hope.

SI

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/hearsay.jsp

Look at the end of the addy. I'll take the news with a boulder of salt.

The meeting today at O'Hare lasted five hours and resulted in the proclamation that it was cordial and that there will be another meeting. One local reporter who was there stated that Linden didn't look particularly pleased.

The rumours are running wild now but I'll believe it when I see it.

buddy of mine who works at the columbus jackets front office tells me nhl owners are for sure shutting it down

It's finally sunk in that I miss hockey so much. It wasn't so bad while the NFL was still around, but this is unbearable. :(

Yeah, only thing to watch is basketball right now, and something like the AHL. I'm fine with watching it sometimes... but I still need an NHL game a week. :(

This'll really hit when there's no NHL playoffs in the spring. I think I look forward to that more than any other postseason in sports.

This seriously sucks... I hate the way they're stringing us along. I wish they would cancel the season already so I don't have to keep checking for updates every day. Even after Bettman's press conference, there's still enough of a room there for something to get done this weekend or next week - he never actually firmly established a drop dead date.

:(

At this point, they should just cancel the season. A 28-game season is stupid. As much as I'd like to see hockey, it isn't worth a "season" that is barely a third as long as a normal season. The NBA was even cutting it close a few years ago with a 50 game season, IMO. It should be legit or not at all.

bye bye nhl.. hello scrubs

Wow. The players' offer was pretty good (24% rollback, $52 million cap). Seems the owners are pretty intent on breaking the union.

I'm completely baffled by the players' offer of a cap. If they were going to do that, why wait until it was too late to salvage the season? They could have offered it early on, then negotiated their way to an acceptable dollar amount for the cap. But at this point in the negotiations, they should have just stuck with their original plan and forced the owners to keep fighting up until training camp.

It makes no sense to capitulate on a major point - at least conceptually, but with a lot of work to do on the specifics, I'm sure - one day before the season is canceled. Unless they come to an agreement extremely quickly and decide to just have some sort of round-robin playoff including all of the teams, I just don't understand coming to an agreement now and sitting on it until October. That would seem to suggest that the season didn't need to be lost in the first place.

Could be a face saving move.

How is it face-saving? By essentially agreeing to the owners' primary issue, but only just in time to see the season go down the drain? That's more "egg on the face," not "face-saving," to me. At this point, they should just let the season go and come to an agreement quietly over the summer, and resume with a full season in October.

Unless they've come up with some great way to play some hockey between now and June, this move makes the players look like the lockout was their fault, since they are now caving on this issue at the last minute, especially when they could have caved in November and had some semblance of a season.

They are trying to make themselves look good by giving in on the hot button issues.. but i guarentee you a lesser known but big issue to the owners they still didn't cave in to

I understand that, but I'm questioning the timing of it. If they were going to cave on a salary cap, why not do so last summer and work out the details then, even if it meant canceling 25% of the season, rather than taking an all or nothing stance and then giving in at the last (and too late) second? If they had done it like the NFLPA - acting as "partners" with the NFL - then they would have looked much better. As it stands, they look like they lost a pissing contest with the owners, and it makes them look weak and like they were the cause of the unnecessary loss of the season.

I don't know if most fans will look that deep into it. They might say, "Well at least the players tried to get a deal done." and shift the blame to the owners, since it appears that nothing will stop the season from being cancelled at this point. People aren't as smart as you, K! :D

Because Ksyrup, they never had any intentions of actually caving in :)

They knew full well the owners wouldn't accept that..

Accept what? A cap? The owners have to accept a cap, that's what they want. Now, it's just a matter of what amount the cap gets set at. And on the flip side, the players can't go back from offering a cap, so a cap is going to happen.

They may well know that the owners wouldn't accept a $52M cap, but once they offered a cap at all, it's all over - once they admit that they would do a deal with a cap, the owners won. You never saw the MLBPA offering a cap and then pulling it back if the cap "on their terms" wasn't accepted. They didn't want one, and they never even considered making a proposal that included one. But the NHLPA has, and that's pretty much the beginning of the end.

Because negotiations always happen at that last minute in these things. It's what drove me nuts about the MLB strike in 1994- in the end, they changed nothing. But it took them months to agree to nothing. At least this time, there's a glimmer of hope that something might be solved. If they do fix some of the problems, then I suppose it was grudgingly worth it, but unfortunately this is the kind of crap it takes to get things done.

SI

So, a 82 game season with 16 teams making the playoffs is legit? Sure I'd like to see them play more games then that, but I don't have a problem with a 28 game season and then a playoff tournament to determine the Stanley Cup Champion.

That's the thing - this was never really a negotiation, this was two sides not willing to budge on basic, philosophical issues. When you do that, you have to dig your heels in and stick with it. If not, then you should just play the negotiation game and get it resolved sooner rather than later. The NHLPA essentially just admitted that this could have been over in October if they had worked within the parameters of a salary cap.

Whether or not the playoff system is legit in and of itself is another matter; but relatively speaking, yes, if we're going to allow 16 teams into the playoffs, I'd rather all of the teams play closer to 80 games than 30 games to determine who makes the playoffs.

Without the pressure of having to play this year it's likely this wouldn't get resolved until Jan of next year. By then it's likely teams would have folded. Drawing a line in the sand and playing this year is the only thing saving the game right now. Without that pressure neither side would have conceded anything.

28 games might be a phoney season but it's the most important 28 games ever for hockey.

That would be great, except we don't have a deal yet, just the basics for outlining a deal. I'll admit I don't know what the specifics for starting up the season look like, but taking the league at its word, if Bettman is serious that tomorrow is essentially a drop-dead date, then they've basically run out of time to determine the specifics of a labor deal and get the season going in time to even play a 28-game schedule.

I think they are basically 12 million apart on the cap. I'd guess they'd figure it out. There's no reason they'd keep pushing this date back like they have and keep having announcements about upcoming announcements.

I hate hockey so I was rooting for cancellation but it looks like you'll get a short regular season and playoffs now. The only way to get concession was to push it to the absolute limit.

I'm sure DirecTV is frothing at the mouth to charge me for 2 months of hockey.

That price is set by the NHL, who also gets most of it.

So, we will never accept a salary cap actually means we will screw everyone over for 5 months and then accept one? Over the past month the league has made the most concessions, so this is a good step.