Inside The Penalty Box 09.24.07: NHL Expansion To Europe
Posted by Neil Borenstein on 09.24.2007
As if the NHL hadn’t expanded enough in America, there are rumors coming out that the NHL could be looking to expand to Europe on a permanent basis. The usual suspect, Gary Bettman, hasn’t endorsed this notion. But he hasn’t nixed it completely either. Neil Borenstein takes a look at what he hopes is a non-issue in the latest edition of Inside The Penalty Box!
just had my Fantasy Hockey draft for the 2007-2008 season last night. I'm fairly happy with what I ended up with. I will admit, I've been happier in past years with teams I've drafted. But I think I'm set to have a pretty good season.
I used Yahoo! Sports, since that's naturally the best Web site to use for fantasy sports. And no, I'm not getting paid by Yahoo! to say that – I'm just an amazing shill. I'm in a 12-team pubic league. Drafting was 16 rounds. There are four bench players with starters including two centers, two left wings, two right wings, four defensemen and two goaltenders.
Here's a look my team with the round the player was drafted in and what overall pick he was (round/overall):
Centers
Scott Gomez, New York Rangers (9/102)
Marc Savard, Boston Bruins (3/30)
Martin Straka, New York Rangers (13/150)
Left Wings
Alex Tanguay, Calgary Flames (8/91)
Thomas Vanek, Buffalo Sabres (4/43)
Richard Zednik, Florida Panthers (16/187)
Right Wings
Jaromir Jagr, New York Rangers (1/6)
Martin St. Louis, Tampa Bay Lightning (2/19)
Mike Knuble, Philadelphia Flyers (15/174)
Defensemen
Tomas Kaberle, Toronto Maple Leafs (10/115)
Marek Zidlicky, Nashville Predators (11/126)
Michal Rozsival, New York Rangers (12/139)
Erik Johnson, St. Louis Blues (14/163)
Goaltenders
Ryan Miller, Buffalo Sabres (5/54)
Rick DiPietro, New York Islanders (6/67)
Cam Ward, Carolina Hurricanes (7/78)
I was happy to grab Jaromir Jagr in the first round with the sixth overall pick. I think he had an off-year last season, which is saying something since he had 96 points. I'm pretty sure he'll up his goal total to at least 45-50, which was a big thing for me since big-time goal scorers are not the easiest things to find for fantasy hockey. His assist total should be bigger and I'm counting on Jagr for about 110-120 points this year. Scott Gomez in the ninth round was a solid pickup for me, since he will play on the top line with Jagr and should grab a nice assist total as a result. Martin Straka was also a decent selection, though he is questionable since we're not even sure what line he'll play on with New York yet. But I figure Marcel Hossa will fizzle out on that top line eventually and Tom Renney will realize Straka and Jagr have enough chemistry to bump Straka back up to the top line with his countryman and Gomez. Even if that doesn't work out, I got Straka in the 13th round, so it wasn't too much of a risk. And for the other Ranger I landed, defenseman Michal Roszival, his offense will hurt with a full year of Paul Mara being the Rangers' top power play blue liner. But Roszival will still see time with the man advantage and should still finish with a decent point total. I'm also expecting a good plus/minus season out of him, as well.
I'm not thrilled with my goaltending, though I did grab my netminders well after all the big names were off the market. Since the Buffalo Sabres are a question mark right now, there isn't a guarantee out there to say Ryan Miller will land 40 wins again. However, I don't think he'll dip below 32-33, and I'm okay with that as long as his goals against average and save percentage make up for it. That means I'm hoping for a better GAA than he had last year (2.78) and at least similar numbers in SV% (.911). From strictly a fantasy standpoint, I'm hoping Rick DiPietro is prepared to stand on his head for the New York Islanders. He's going to be the guy that has to bail out the Islanders, since they're fairly screwed in every other area of the game coming into the season. I'm hoping for at least 30 wins from DiPietro and maybe a 2.60 GAA and .915 SV% from the former first overall selection. And Cam Ward is a guy I just want to bounce back. He had 30 wins in a sub par season for the Carolina Hurricanes, who were defending the Stanley Cup last season. So that's still pretty good. However, he had a 2.93 GAA and .897 SV% in his first season as the starter in Carolina, and that needs to improve. I think Carolina is primed to make another run for the playoffs, so I hope Ward is going to be one of the leaders. I'd be content with a 32-33-win season with a 2.70 GAA and .905 SV% at the very least. Shutout-wise, things are up in the air. But if they can grab me 12 between the three of them, I can deal with it. I don't have the strongest goaltenders in the league, but I'm hoping they can surprise me.
Outside of Gomez and Straka at center, I have Marc Savard. Savard is a guy I'm counting on heavily for assists. And I want nothing less than 70 out of him this season. He'll still have Glen Murray on the wing, and Murray is a guy that has chemistry with top playmakers, i.e., Joe Thornton. Penalty minutes and power play points should also be big stats for Savard.
At left wing, I'm very happy with Thomas Vanek and Alex Tanguay. These are both top line guys with contrasting styles. Tanguay will put up a good amount of assist, while I'm counting on Vanek for a decent assist total with 40-plus goals. I also need Vanek to be good at plus/minus, even if he dips from his league-leading plus-47 from last season. Richard Zednik is a guy I'm just taking a chance on, hoping he lands on a scoring line in Florida and can produce maybe 50-to-60 points over the season. If somebody comes out early in the year as a guy to grab off the waiver wire, Zednik will probably be the first guy off my team if he isn't producing.
At right wing, Martin St. Louis and Mike Knuble are good compliments to Jagr. Like Jagr, St. Louis is a good all-around player with a strong goal-scoring upside. He had 102 points last year, and I'm looking for similar numbers. Maybe 45 goals and 50 assists from the Lightning spark plug, with a high amount of power play numbers to boot. Knuble is on the top line in Philly with Simon Gagne and Daniel Briere, so I'm hoping he benefits from that. He won't get astounding numbers. But if Knuble can land 25 goals and 35 assists for 60 points, I'm happy.
On defense, I probably should have grabbed some guys earlier and drafted five instead of four. But I kept stalling since defense is extremely deep in fantasy hockey. After watching some of the names I felt like waiting for get taken – like Rob Blake, Jay Bouwmeester and Zdeno Chara, I figured by round 10 it was time to get cooking. I think I'm still okay, just not as good as I could have been had I jumped on grabbing D a bit earlier. Tomas Kaberle will have a big year offensively, especially with high power play numbers. With Kimmo Timonen out of town, Marek Zidlicky has the chance to step up as the No. 1 guy in Nashville. Again, Rozsival will be No. 2 behind Paul Mara when it comes to offense in the Big Apple, but I'm still looking for some decent production and good plus/minus numbers out of him. And Erik Johnson has me hoping the rookie can come up big in his first year and solidify himself as St. Louis' No. 1 guy fairly early. It's a risk I was happy to take, especially in round 14.
At this point, I just can't wait for the puck to drop on the season and see how my players shake out. I'm not looking to make any huge moves at the moment, but I know I'll want to change a few things up when we get to see some of the unknown players get in some game action.
Feel free to drop me a line at br7qbsteelers@yahoo.com to tell me what you think about my team, as well as anything you want to let me know about any of your fantasy teams. I love fantasy hockey, so I look forward to anything you want to send along. And to those who play, good luck!
NHL Expansion Overseas
NHL Premiere Series Start Of Something Bigger?
While most of the NHL starts the 2007-2008 regular season on Oct. 3, the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks drop the puck on their seasons on Sept. 29 in London, England. The NHL picked those two franchises to player their first regular season contests at the 02 Arena in London, mainly to bring the NHL to a fanbase that never gets to see it live.
Many players have expressed a strong acceptance of spreading the game through means like this Premiere 2007 series, including Scott Gomez' comments in a recent media conference call:
"If it's great for the game, if helps expand it," Gomez said. "I think it's great, too, because also one thing about our sport that once people see a live hockey game, they're going to come back for more. It's just the way it is. It's kind of tough sometimes when it's on TV just from the fan's point of view. But if you get a fan to really see a live professional hockey game, especially right now with the product of the speed and everything, fans get into it."
But that has recently brought up strong discussions about potentially expanding the league into Europe, not just holding certain games there.
Commissioner Gary Bettman hasn't said this is going to happen. While he hasn't completely nixed the idea, he also understands a lot of planning would need to take place in order for this type of drastic change to the game to occur. Logistical concerns, like finding arenas to play games and taking care of travel issues that will arise from needing to cross over the Atlantic and Pacific, will present some very difficult obstacles for the NHL to overcome if the league plans to go this route. Right now, it seems like something somewhat under the rug in the league's front office – an idea that's getting some attention, but not very much of it.
Chris Pronger, a participant in the NHL Premiere 2007 series as a member of the Ducks, finds expanding into Europe a bit of a difficulty for newly drafted players.
"How do you get around to the draft? Will you take a Canadian kid and ship him off to Europe? That's the only logistical problem," Pronger said in a media conference call last Thursday. "When I heard that – if I get drafted, I don't want to go to Europe. I want to play the NHL in North America. So from that perspective, I can see that being as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to that happening.
"Or do you just break up the teams here and say the European teams play in Europe and the Americans play here? I don't know how that would work. But obviously that's going to – if that's the route they are looking at, they have obviously got a lot of questions to be answered and things, you know, logistics like we just spoke about to be answered, as well."
Personally, I don't even know where all this got started. I'm not sure if playing a couple of regular season games all of a sudden sparked some interest in the higher ups to try and expand the league on a permanent basis overseas. Or if it just really started from nothing in particular. But the concept of the NHL expanding into Europe is almost as bad an idea as the NBA expanding into Europe.
It just doesn't make sense.
If the NHL is really interested in having some involvement overseas with hockey, where there are already plenty of leagues, then an entirely different league seems like the only proper approach. Somewhat like NFL Europe was to the NFL, establish an NHL Europe that is pretty much a second-rate NHL for development of younger players and a place for some aging veterans to get some game action while they're on their last legs. Yes, there is the AHL and several other minor league options in America. But NHL Europe, or whatever it would be called, would open some doors for foreign players that don't want to cross over to America if they're not going to be in the NHL. And it would allow those international fans the opportunity to see something that can be considered an NHL product, even if it isn't the actual NHL.
To me, the biggest logistical concern is travel. I understand what Pronger is saying, but I doubt playing in North America is a big demand for certain players so long as the Stanley Cup is the common trophy around the league. This is especially true considering the various different backgrounds of current league stars.
But how can teams playing in North America play teams in Europe considering the travel would be one hell of a hassle?
I'm not a big fan of teams on one continent playing teams only on that same continent. For the most part, the NHL has been a league where every teams plays at least most of the other teams in the league – with the exception of what the league is trying to change now where each division is skipped by another division in any given campaign.
It just doesn't seem healthy to have that kind of travel.
Plus, the NHL cannot afford to expand without contraction. It's a word Bettman despises, and we all know that. But 30 teams in the NHL is enough, and there's probably at least two more American teams on the horizon in Las Vegas and Kansas City. For the NHL to expand to Europe, you're adding at least six-to-eight teams for a grand total of almost 40 clubs comprising the NHL. A bit insane, no? Especially for a league that really should drop to maybe 24 teams at most, going up to 40 just puts the league even more out of whack.
The NHL would need to drop some of the fledging American markets that Bettman wants everyone to believe are doing fine. And that's just not going to happen.
For now, everybody just needs to be content with the idea that the only expansion the NHL will have overseas is through a few games every year – whether they be preseason or regular season contests. To expand the brand permanently presents too many obstacles and too many more issues for a league that's not really doing so hot in its own country of America to begin with. For the sake of the league and the sake of my sanity, I hope these are just some sparks that are quickly extinguished and never really discussed, as the NHL simply can't handle taking a league over two continents when it's having a hard enough time just dealing with operations in one.
Linkage
All right folks, I've been working my tail off to bring some more NHL coverage to the good ‘ol Sports Zone here at 411. So if you haven't done so already, be sure to take a look at some of the NHL media conference calls that took place last week with some of the biggest stars in the NHL:
just had my Fantasy Hockey draft for the 2007-2008 season last night. I'm fairly happy with what I ended up with. I will admit, I've been happier in past years with teams I've drafted. But I think I'm set to have a pretty good season.
