If you have a half-hour or so, spend it with this segment from Ottawa radio Team 1200’s “Three Guys in the Morning” earlier today (audio). You’ll hear a terrific conversation in which the hosts, John “J.R.” Rodenburg, Steve Warne and Jim Jerome, talk with Pierre McGuire and Hall of Famer Larry Robinson. Robinson and McGuire discusses a couple of coaching greats, Pat Burns and Scotty Bowman, some coaching philosophy and a host of other hockey topics.
If you never saw Robinson play, you missed one of the great defensemen of all time. In his prime, as part of the Canadiens’ “Big Three” on defense in the 1970s (along with fellow Hall of Famers Serge Savard and Guy Lapointe) Robinson was the most complete blueliner of his era, a strong skater with excellent skills and an imposing physical force who was also the most feared fighter in the N.H.L.
Robinson also became a pretty fair coach, guiding the Devils to the 2000 Stanley Cup and he remains part of the Devils organization today, as does Pat Burns. He also played for Burns when Burns began his N.H.L. career coaching the Canadiens in the late 1980s.
As Robinson tells it, Burns could get the best out of his players not because he’s a grumpy old man, but because of how badly he wanted to win. Robinson says, “Pat would be the first to tell you he doesn’t
have a short fuse, he has no fuse.”
The discussion on Burns, another former Devils Cup champion coach and three-time Jack Adams Award winner as N.H.L. coach of the year, is timely given Burns’s illness (he has terminal cancer) and the announcement of the building of the Pat Burns Arena in Stanstead, Quebec, around 100 miles southeast of Montreal just across the Vermont Border.
Burns, 58, who has a summer home in the area, has twice beaten cancer before. But he said at the ceremony he didn’t expect to live long enough to see the arena’s completion next year. “I probably won’t see the final project,” Burns said (quoted in The Sherbrooke Record). “But I hope I’ll be looking down someday to see a young Mario Lemieux or Wayne Gretzky playing in this rink.”
TSN had some video of the ceremony late last week.
There’s a movement to get Pat Burns into the Hockey Hall of Fame, including a Facebook group, although the election to the Hall is done by committee and a member of the selection committee must nominate someone for them to be considered. The current members of the selection committee can be found here and when you examine the members, one could certainly put Burns up for nomination.
If he were inducted, it would mean each of the three Devils Stanley Cup-winning coaches, Jacques Lemaire, Robinson and Burns, would be in the Hall of Fame.
Sticking with the Devils, neither Martin Brodeur nor his teammates played well last night, losing to the Flyers, 5-1. Having played an excellent road game Saturday in Montreal, winning 4-2, the Devils reverted to their shaky play away from Newark and have now gotten only eight points of the 34 available in the last 17 road games.
The loss drops the Devils out of the top spot in the Atlantic Division and into the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference, as the Penguins take over first in the Atlantic.
For the Flyers (who apparently match up well against New Jersey, having beaten them five times this season) the win broke their free-fall of five straight defeats. Chuck Gormley in the Camden Courier-Post attributes the Flyers’ poor play to a divided dressing room, writing on Sunday, “Anyone who believes their post-Olympic collapse has everything to with goaltending hasn’t been paying attention…. Ask the veterans on this team and they’ll tell you the young core of players lack the focus and preparation to win consistently. Ask the young players for an explanation and they respond with smirks of indifference. The locker room divide between the Flyers’ veterans and young core appears to be very real.”
The Flyers’ win is bad news for the Rangers, of course, who have to hope at least two teams ahead of them self-destruct in the next two weeks. They remain four points out of the final playoff spot, with Atlanta one point ahead of them in ninth. They play the Islanders, Lightning and Panthers this week and realistically need all six points to keep their playoff hopes from fading away.
Skating Around: The N.H.L. likes the Alex Ovechkin-Sidney Crosby rivalry so much, they could make it the centerpiece of next January’s Winter Classic. Dave Molinari of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported yesterday the New Year’s Day game will be played between the Penguins and Capitals at Heinz Field, where the Steelers play. The N.H.L. had previously said that N.F.L. stadiums were bad choices for the Winter Classic because of scheduling issues, so how this one gets resolved remains to be seen.
On the pre-game “Inside Hockey” segment of Saturday’s Hockey Night in Canada telecast, Elliotte Friedman and Alyonka Larionov had a good report on the poor showing by Russia’s Olympic team in Vancouver, which included some outspoken remarks by former N.H.L.er Sergei Zubov.
Over the weekend, word came that two players would be done for the year. It certainly wasn’t a surprise that Katie Strang of Newsday confirmed what Islanders Independent blogger Chris Botta reported last Tuesday: Rick DiPietro, is out for the year. He played just eight games this season after playing five last season and since his $67.5 million contract only runs until 2021, he’s got lots of time to get healthy.
And also not surprisingly, Steve Gorton of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel confirms that David Booth is out for the year, following his second concussion of the season, this one last week on a legal hit delivered by Montreal’s Jaroslav Spacek.
Sitting the West’s ninth spot, Calgary is four points behind Colorado and CBC.ca is helping fans get ready for the blame game with a live chat on the Flames today. But Calgary went into Washington on Sunday, having lost two straight on the road in Boston and Long Island, and dumped the Capitals, 5-3, chasing goalie Jose Theodore with three in the first period. The Flames return home to face the tough Coyotes on Wednesday.
Back to the Caps loss, since Theodore’s replacement, Simeon Varlamov surrendered the fourth Calgary goal, Varlamov got credit for the loss, a technicality which continues Theodore’s streak of not having lost in in 20 consecutive starts. Chris Stevenson of the Ottawa Sun had examined Theodore’s recent form and noted he’d given up three or more goals in 10 of those games — and it’s now 11 — including four twice and five once. Stevenson concluded Theodore had “been bailed out by the Caps’ offence. I wouldn’t say their goaltending problems are solved heading into the playoffs.”
Another item from Stevenson: “Will the Nashville Predators and coach Barry Trotz ever get the love they deserve? Since the lockout, the Preds have the fifth-most wins in the NHL, 224, going into Friday night’s games. The only other teams with more are Detroit (250), San Jose (242), New Jersey (235) and Buffalo (225). I guess only post-season success will change the perception. The Preds have never advanced past the first round.”
Stevenson also wrote: “Tampa’s Steve Downie was a player who crossed the line mostly because he didn’t know where it was. It’s been marked out for him by Lightning coaches Rick Tocchet and Adam Oates, who have managed Downie’s volatility. The result? Downie has become the first player since Theo Fleury in 2001-02 to have 20 goals and 200 penalty minutes. Tocchet said he thinks Downie could wear a letter before his career is out.”
And finally, once their many injured players returned, the Red Wings became the team the hockey world was used to seeing and they are now in sixth spot, just one point behind Nashville in the West and all but assured of a 19th consecutive playoff appearance. In The Detroit Free Press, Helene St. James wonders how the Wings might have done had they been healthy all year. But through the tough times, a big reason they stayed close to the pack was the play of goalie Jimmy Howard, who shut out the Predators on Saturday though regulation and overtime and then won the post-game skills competition. On his MLive blog today, George Malik rounds up the latest kudos being dished out to the Wings’ rookie. Drew Miller has been another less trumped key to Red Wings success and Chris McCosky of The Detroit News explains why. The Wings have won five straight and are once again, for the moment at least, flying high.