Snowman On Fire

I’m trying to make sense of all of the noise building up to the trade deadline, because there wasn’t anything ear-piercing or earth-shattering that happened this week. There were some deals that raised my eyebrow (singular): Dallas passing Halpern to Tampa Bay as part of the package for Brad Richards, which I think will reduce Halpern’s ice time and efficiency; the Penguins picking up a Hoss(a) and a Big Hal (Gill) in exchange for young guns; Peter Forsberg rejoining the Avalanche for what seems like his 17th tour in the NHL. Let’s start there with some overly general comments:

Cap-o-nomics and the trade deadline are intimately tied. Yes, it’s possible for GMs to sign players like Forsberg right at the trade deadline, or for guys like Niedermeyer to decide to un-retire at the last minute and create a pro-rated cap hit. That said, the team is without the use of that player’s skills, leadership and point-generating capabilities until the deal is done. If Anaheim strides into the playoffs in the middle of the Western dog pack, I’d feel confident in saying it was due to Niedermeyer and Selanne returning mid-season; but I’m not convinced they’re going to roll deep into May one way or the other. Same thing goes for Forsberg: if the Rocky Mountain high fixes his ankles, good for him and the Avs, but I’m not betting on it. Commit for the season and build the chemistry. The flip side of this argument also applies — new players traded to a team aren’t likely to be effective for at least part of season, if not longer as they discover their place(s) and roles. Best example: The Hockey News railed on the Langenbrunner/Nieweundyk trade for McKay/Arnott as one of the worst all-time by Dallas, but it wasn’t clear that it was one of the best for the Devils until this year when Langenbrunner assumed the captaincy. This is why I feel like Halpern is getting scrogged in the Tampa Bay trade: he went from cap of the Caps to Dallas as a free agent, having one of his better years in the big D, only to end up in the standings toilet with the Bolts. Here’s hoping his ice time remains constant as TB puts his to good defensive use, but I’m not confident they’ll figure out what to do with him. Remember, this is the same management group that signed Richards to a 5-year deal for almost $40M in 2006. Which brings us to…

Long-term deals should be the centerpiece of a team’s plan. Clearly the Capitals are putting their capital where their mouths are, signing Ovechkin for an A-Rod sized deal (but with results, not whining). Two years ago, when Tampa Bay signed Brad Richards, the howls went up about the deal being over-priced, but Lightning management stuck to its charges and claimed the deal gave them a baseline to build on. Oops. For anyone who will defend Richards by saying that he didn’t know that Tampa Bay would be only slightly ahead of the Cuban national team in geography and the NHL standings, well, sorry, but he signed a long-term deal. It’s nice that he’s going to get to play for a Cup contender, but Tampa Bay looks doubly dumb — and will be suspect in future dealings. There’s a counterpoint here as well: Pittsburgh made out wonderfully this week by grabbing Marian Hossa (but see point (1) above) but gave up some up and coming talent in Christensen and Armstrong. If longer-term deals are going to be shelled out, why not focus on 2nd line talent like these guys, giving them the piece of mind to develop as team and individual players, without needing a spark plug gap gauge to measure room under the cap?

Big ticket deals are becoming less interesting than big-ticket development. Teams seem to be stimulated this year by talent developed in the various farm systems rather than acquired through trades and free-agent signings. While Gomez is having a good year with the Rangers, it’s Dubinksy and Dawes who are creating excitement. Are Zubrus and Rachunek (when he plays) having as much impact as, say, Zajac and Oduya? If Brad Richards suddenly improves his plus/minus out of the winter weather zone (-25 at last look) and closer to parity with the Stars, then maybe I’ll be convinced otherwise, but for now I believe that comments about “getting the last piece” are mis-guided. Pieces don’t win Stanley Cups, teams do.

OK, that’s perhaps one of the most statistically unlikely titles ever. Cam Janssen is now back home in St. Louis (this will make long-suffering ticket-share partner Sok happy, I think) and the Devils pick up Bryce Salvador in a one-for-one exchange. There’s little to say about this one; Salvador gets about half the ice time of a regular blueliner, and he has one goal with a dime of assists this year. Goodbye, Cam, thanks for being friendly to all of the youth players, signing autographs and knocking some smug looks off of inappropriately smug faces.

What to make of this deal? I think Lou is stockpiling defense talent for the playoffs. Once the Lowell season ends, Lou can keep a number of players on reserve to move between the big and little Devils, working them out with Coach K (the fun one, not the Dookie) and ensuring he’s got options should Sutter blow a gasket (or a player blow a ligament) down the stretch with any of the seven D-men. It can and does happen.

Bottom line: Salvador leads the Blues with a +12 on-ice rating. While he doesn’t get a freezer full of ice team, when he’s out there, he’s not making mistakes. On some level, this feels like the shipment of David Hale to Calgary last year (a player who is third in line for a particular role gets to play elsewhere — Janssen was behind Rupp and Clarkson for the tough winger slot), and on another, perhaps it’s a prelude to something bigger.

In the midst of much cheering of all Devils teams, big, small and Lowell-oriented, I failed to comment on Princeton clinching the Ivy League men’s ice hockey championship for the first time this {decade, century, coaching era}. Last time the Tiger strode atop the Ivy halls, some kid named Jeff Halpern (now #11 on the Dallas Stars) was captain, and the Tigers also ran the table in the ECAC tournament.

The ECAC regular season wraps up this weekend, and Princeton already has a first-round bye. Unfortunately, that means my one shot at seeing a playoff game happens to be the same weekend we’re closing out our youth hockey season in the nation’s capitol, but I can cheer while listening to a netcast of the game. Hip, hip, rah, rah, etc: Go Tigers!

I’ve been trying to squeeze the most out of the latest version of WordPress while simultaneously moving, converting, converging and editing down old content. I’ve taken down the old homepage of agrosnowman.com and replaced it with a pointer to the blog; anything of interest there now shows up as a page on the right-hand nav bar here.

In an attempt to get more readership, and after that, more sponsorship, I also signed up as a Project Wonderful ad destination. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you’ll see three ad boxes that are up for bid; anyone who wants to sponsor the site can do so at the “market rate” determined by a continuous auction for those three spots. It’s one of the features I like in R. Stevens’ Diesel Sweeties comic web site, so I followed suit and put a similar footer here. Now all I need are sponsors: the going market rate to run a footer ad here is whatever epsilon charge about absolute zero is at PW — probably a dime a day (you could feed a starving child, or support a well-fed Devils fan).

Next steps: bringing over the entire hockey book list as a page, editing the theme a bit more to make it more red&black friendly, adding some custom graphics, and of course loading the last 60 or so entries that got lost in the shuffle.

In every ice rink, there’s a box at the center red line with the clock, something resembling a table top, and occasionally a microphone and/or music system, all covered in the cruft of graffiti, coffee stains, sandwich debris, hot chocolate spills, and fingerprints that give rinks their character. It’s the scorer’s table, and the people who occupy that box are a special breed. They have to pay as much attention to the game as any coach or on-ice official, and typically their only reward is anonymity.

There’s a reason we cheer loudly for John DeCarlo at the Rock. He’s been the Devils timekeeper for most home games since they moved to the swamp in 1982. A stand-out hockey player in his day, John went to open try outs for the expanded NHL on-ice officials pool when the Devils created the need for striped speed. He didn’t make the cut, but made the team as an off-ice official. Aside from spending many nights at South Mountain Arena (he was a former rink manager there), it’s something he and I have in common: we run a mean and lean clocking operation. Talk to people who have been to a handful of games in any Devils season, and ask if they know who runs the clock. Chances are, John DeCarlo is not a household name, which is a shame, because he’s been doing a great job with the longest tenure of anyone in the organization.

What got me started down this path? Our Hockey North America game last night at South Mountain Arena found us facing a team hot on our tail in the standings with just enough skaters to keep the lines even and shifts short. As the home team, however, we are required to provide a scorekeeper for the game; if you’re wearing white you’re also filling the center ice box. The job comes with minor compensation (you get a credit towards next season’s registration for any game you score), and we’ve had an assortment of kids, spouses, significant others, and friends run the clock on our behalf. Last night, the clock ran out on us without a timekeeper, so I faced the prospect of splitting box duties with half a game on the ice. But the true spirit of adult hockey provided the last second kick save.

One of the players from the game before us found out we needed a scorekeeper, and stayed an extra 90 minutes to work our game. The $20 in HNA credit he’ll get may or may not make up for getting home two hours later than planned, or sitting in a confined area by himself rather than at home or having a post-game beer with his linemates. But it kept 2 or 3 of us on the ice for the entire game, and for that we give a large cheer from the home bench. Adult hockey is about the guys you play with, because they set the tone for everything before, during, after and between the games.

The Assist From Bubba autism awareness and fundraising campaign is now two full weeks underway.

We’ve received a steady stream of traffic from Autism Town, a very clever fund raising effort based on selling “real estate” off of their home page.

Donations have come in from the good folks at Stick Sock as well as the creators of the Miracle on Ice Poster. Look for both of them up on the web site in the next few days.

The USA Hockey American Special Hockey web site put up a pointer as well, thanks to one of our DareDevils coaches.

Donations topped $600 this week, ranging from people we haven’t met who are supportive and enthusiastic, to a wonderful mix of family and friends.

Assist From Bubba. Send it on to your hockey friends, those who believe in diversity in youth sports, anyone you know who is touched by autism or Asbergers or their effects, or anyone who believes that the world can be improved one dollar at a time.

The last two Devils games have been delights to watch. Dismantling the Islanders after 11 months of frustration was pure joy on Saturday afternoon. Normally the only thing that should give you that much heartburn for that long is the Long Island Expressway. Today’s game in the nation’s capitol was fun in a different way. Over the past few years, the Devils haven’t always been a strong matinee team, whether from disruption to the usual pre-game schedule or from short-spacing games and practices. A pair of afternoon delights with the shutdown of the Ovechkin skyrocket in flight was twice as good as the double entendre might suggest. Elias has six points in four games; Parise’s point streak was stopped at six games; but scoring once again game fairly evenly across the board. When opponents can’t focus on shutting down the top line and then playing even up across three lines there’s inherently more pressure on them from the first face-off. This is a good thing.

Best of all, the Devils are now sitting on the top of the Eastern heap for the first time in about seven years. Just to put it in perspective, the last time the Devils had sole possession of the #1 conference seed (even temporarily), nobody had heard of blogs, Google or Facebook; Yahoo was cool and not about to be a node in the Borg matrix; and some of us still believed that the NASDAQ would go back to its pre-bubble heights. The only thing that’s remained constant is the work ethic from the black and red.

There are twenty games left, so no ken a horas, and a pair of points separates an awful lot of teams. But for everyone who counted on the Rangers while counting out the Devils, I’ll add this: Some history does repeat itself.

If you’re wondering why the performance of the blog is only slightly worse than that of, say, Philadelphia’s third line, it’s because iPowerWeb (the folks I pay to host it) moved to a new platform that is basically miserable.

On top of that, I’ve filed two trouble tickets and haven’t heard back, so it’s likely the Snowman will go on the road again, in search of reasonable mySQL performance, Wordpress knowledge and a hosting provider that actually knows something about technology.

Of course, blogging about problems with your blog is so self-referential that I believe it’s illegal in South Dakota, but if I keep someone else from going down the money toilet with these guys it’s a win.

I’ll admit to a bit of off-hours entertainment this week that didn’t involve Devils games: I started reading Questionable Content, an aboslutely brilliant web comic, and was so intrigued by the few panels that I saw that I went back to square one (post one, if you must) and began reading the whole strip.

This is the beauty of web comics — unlike something in your local newspaper, you don’t enter storylines without context. You can absorb the crispy goodness of someone else’s warped mind and see the whole thing evolve. I’ve been digesting about 150 strips a day, with a goal to get caught up to early 2008 before I head off to China next week. This is definitely a strong-R rated strip, and there are references that I’d have to explain to more than a few of my friends. But after spending reasonable amounts of time in the 413 area code, and working at a college radio station for a few years, I can say with certainty that QC captures the mash-up of both. Perfectly.

When you’re reading something, and one of the characters reminds you of a good friend in every way, then the illustrator and writer have connected with you such that art imitates life. It makes for a good story, even if your own life doesn’t have the same number of parental warning labels affixed.

In previous years, the arrival of March signaled any number of sad events: the end of the youth hockey season, the end of a proper winter, and usually the mathematical elimination of the Rangers from post-season hockey. The blue shirts are managing to hold on this season, though, with thoughts of last year’s series win versus the Thrashers precipitating their Gomez and Drury-laced dreams of hockey in May.

However, the hockey gods are tempted by superstitious belief and karma. Logic, payroll and math need not apply. How else do you explain that the Rangers blew a five goal lead against Montreal tonight, squeezing out only one point via the shootout? There were three pairs of goals scored within a minute of each other, two of them by the Rags, but even that double extreme momentum-shifter didn’t accelerate the Broadway payload through the third period. Oh yeah, Straka and Gomez were -1 in a game in which their team scored five goals. Talk about a five hole.