We waited through endless negotiations and we can finally sit back and watch our sport. It's been a grueling and seemingly unnecessary process but at least we got to where we are.
Although there was much excitement surrounding the first week of games, it was evident that something was wrong.
This was a wonderful weekend for the NHL.
However, it was NOT a great weekend for hockey.
After the NHL lockout, the league only gave teams 6 days of training camp without any preseason games. This was expected, seeing the need to make room for a compactly made regular season.
So take a bunch of athletes, sit them down for months and months without any playing time (aside from those who went overseas), don't give them a good amount to train, and then throw them into the proverbial "line of battle". What do you think you're going to get?
What resulted was 8 teams giving up 5 or more goals in the first 19 games with another 5 teams giving up 4 goals.
No it wasn't the offense clicking immediately for teams. It wasn't (always) the goaltenders not playing well. What we saw a lot of in the first slew of games was sloppy play all over the ice.
Defensemen were slow picking up men. Forwards made ill-advised passes in the neutral zone. Awful line changes. Lazy goaltending (ehem, ehem, Mr. Quick). Defensive lapses.
This happened over and over again opening night. It was truthfully hard to watch, and this is coming from someone who, if given the choice between ensuring world peace and watching a hockey game, I'd want to know which teams were playing.
One easy example of this type of play came in the routing of the Detroit Red Wings at the hand of the young St. Louis Blues team.
The final score was 6-0 and every single goal was from either a breakaway or defensemen chasing the puck. Watch the highlights here. (Holy Geez that Tarasenko kid is good)
But we saw this all across the league. Vancouver got obliterated because their defense was sleep walking all night and that led to 7 goals by Anaheim, of all teams.
Yes this return to hockey was bittersweet. It was fun to see the sport back and the fans involved but at the same time the hockey was a little bit painful to watch. Players all over the league were quoted to have said that the hockey that was being played was ugly. But as I mentioned earlier, that was almost expected after such a long time off.
One game that was fun to play before the season started was to predict who would have a good season. Read the following post from DownGoesBrown:
This season will be 48 games long, which is about 60 percent of a typical NHL schedule. That seems like a big enough gap that we should factor it into our predictions for this year. But how?
Maybe young teams benefit most, since they’ll be able to handle the physical demands of a shortened training camp and condensed schedule. But maybe veteran teams will actually be better off, since they’ll be able to get into a rhythm more quickly.
A short season can be torpedoed by one losing streak, so it might make sense to say that streaky teams will be hurt most (if “streaky teams” is even a thing that really exists). Unless that streaky team has a winning streak, in which case they’re in great shape, so definitely go with them.
About the only thing we do know is that a shorter season means more variance — the smaller sample size leaves more room for random chance to take over. In theory, that helps bad teams, since anything that works against true talent levels is good for teams who don’t have much. But those teams are already at a disadvantage because, well, they’re bad, and they should get blown out by good teams who won’t be tempted to take their foot off the accelerator this year.
So basically, you want to be old and also young and streaky and also not streaky and preferably bad but also really good.
That honestly puts it perfectly. It's so hard to tell which players and team will benefit from the shortened season. Already, after the first weekend, we saw underdogs win, rookies play well, and veterans step up. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.
One thing we saw this weekend was old players stepping up.
40 year old Jaromir Jagr proved to us again that he can play with his 4 point opening night performance with his 40 year old teammate Ray Whitney who had 2 points that game. Alex Kovalev made a return to the NHL with the Florida Panthers and at the age of 39 with a 3 point performance opening night. Then there was Martin Brodeur who made 18 saves, surrendering one goal in a win at the age of 40. Martin St. Louis, 37, has 5 points in the first two games, showing his continued dominance of the league. And last but not least, perhaps the most loved NHLer, Teemu Selanne, a player who the whole world feared wouldn't get a chance to play because of the lockout, notched 4 points in the opening night at the ripe age of 42 years young.
Like DownGoesBrown hypothesized, it could be because these players know what it takes to just throw themselves into the game. They've been playing for so long that they just know how to continue in stride.
But how about the youngsters?
Well most of the younger players and rookies played in the AHL during the lockout so they were all pretty fresh as well.
Rookie Vladimir Tarasenko of the St. Louis Blues had two nasty goals the first night of the season and added a goal and assist in his second. Jonathan Huberdeau of Florida also got the first of his career on opening night in Carolina. Mikael Granlund (remember him?) also got the first of his career for Minnesota. And Cory Conacher has 4 points in the first two games for Tampa (this last one isn't that impressive, though. If I lined with Steven Stamkos I'd probably boast the same numbers...)
Another thing that caught my attention was the fans excitement. During the negotiations, it sounded like a broken record, fans claiming they were discontinuing their fandom of the National Hockey League. I wrote a while ago how untrue those claims were and that I was certain as soon as the puck dropped on opening night, nearly all the fans will be back, salivating.
Sure enough NBC drew in a 2.0 overnight rating, the highest in it's existence. It was also the best for any regular season game on any network (aside from the Winter Classic) since a 2.3 rating for a game in 2002 on ABC.
Wow.
This is a rather optimistic sign for the league. The fans came back just as Gary Bettman anticipated. It shows the passion and dedication these fans have. It's no doubt that hockey fans are the best in the world and, just like they did in 2006, they show us once again how good they are.
My last comment on this opening weekend post is something that truly warms all of our hearts.
During the lockout, Minnesota Wild goaltender Josh Harding was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, "an autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. MS
affects the ability of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord to communicate
with each other effectively." The story was terribly sad for someone we all loved and wanted to succeed. PuckDaddy posted this and it's a great read.
Well Josh Harding started in net for Minnesota's second game of the season, and in perhaps one of the most heartfelt performances of the season, posted a 24 save shutout.
Harding has been a great player and goaltender in the league who's been unfortunate to have to ride the bench so far but this win meant a lot to him, the team, and fans everywhere.
This victory, in a way, put the whole weekend into perspective. It started out as a weekend to get in as much hockey as possible to get us to drool in front of the TV for hours. We watched the past stars and the games future have big games. But in the end, we were given this great story, showing that NHL isn't only about the moments, but about the emotions and triumphs that come with it.
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