new NHL season
Jeff Richardson
Our computer's been down or off the network for about two weeks, but I'm
back now with a short discussion on the new NHL season. It's short
because there's nothing really happening. It looks to me like the only
team that's making any effort to improve is Montreal. They picked up
Lucien Deblois in exchange for Perry Turnbull -- a steal when you consider
the way Turnbull had been playing and how much Deblois meant to the Jets.
The fact that he's French will help too. There are too many Anglos on
the Canadiens, who at one point were only allowed, by a league rule, to sign
French-Canadian players. (Not that I think that French-Canadian players are
better, it's just that most of the Canadiens' fans are French-Canadian and
they have a greater tendency to make heroes out of French-Canadian players.
There's also the French media to consider. It's not the same when you watch
an interview done through an interpreter. It's for these reasons mainly that I
thought the Canadiens were stupid drafting Doug Wickenheiser a few years ago
instead of Denis Savard. I didn't even know that Savard would turn out to
be a much better player. Team managements sometimes forget that it's the
fans who pay the bills.) They've also picked up another highly rated Swede
(Mats Naslund is certainly working out well for them.) and a Czech. The
late season additions from last year like Rick Green (He was injured most
of the year.), Chris Chelios, and Steve Penney, plus the improved play of
aging Larry Robinson should make their previously weak defence much better,
and the newcomers plus a couple of youngsters shooting for first-string
jobs should make their well-balanced but unspectacular offence better too.
Goaltending could be a bit of a problem, though. Rick Wamsley was traded
to Hartford and Richard Sevigny was claimed by Quebec when he was accidentally
left unprotected, so the load will fall entirely on the young shoulders of
Steve Penney. He was great in last year's playoffs, but it remains to be
seen whether he can handle the load of a full season in the NHL. Of course,
the same could have been said about Ken Dryden before his first full season.
I still think it would help Penney's development to have an experienced
goalie on the team with him, even if the experienced goalie never played.
All things considered, I think they'll be the most improved team in the
league this season.
On the other end of the spectrum is the Toronto Maple Leafs. As a Torontonian,
I've sat through a lot of bad performances from the Leafs in the last 17 years,
but I've always stuck with them because I always (mistakenly) thought that they
were on the right track and were making a good effort to improve, until now.
They're biggest problem is that they don't realise that they have a big
problem. They blame last season's failure on injuries instead of lack of
talent and/or effort, but I believe that there's a certain type of player who
gets injured a lot, and they're not the type of players around whom you build
a team. They continue to collect excellent young defence prospects, but
without good two-way veterans on the team they'll ruin the young guys because
they can't bring them along slowly. (They have veteran defensemen, but their
not very good except for Salming, and he doesn't strike me as the type of guy
that could bring the young defensemen along. Even if he was, one is not
enough.) They have some extra forwards that they might be able to trade for
defensemen, but instead they cut Dale McCourt, one of their hardest workers
last season before he was inexplicably benched, and sat tight with the rest
of them. Maybe their best bet would be to trade one of their defence
prospects for a good veteran, sort of sacrificing one so that the others
can develop better.
I guess this wasn't so short after all, but normally I'd talk about every
team instead of just two, but there's nothing to say about the others.
Oh well, the regular season doesn't mean anything anyway, and it'll be tough
to get excited about it after the Canada Cup.
--
Jeff Richardson, DCIEM, Toronto (416) 635-2073
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