PACIFIC HEAT
Give credit to Phoenix Coyotes general manager Don Maloney and his hockey operations department. After four years and over 15,000 minutes of work, franchise goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov departed for Philadelphia and opened the door for a July 1 free agent signee coming off a 13-win, sub-.900 save percentage season.
“We looked at a couple of younger goaltenders. There were a number of goaltenders available in trades, but we kept coming back to Mike Smith. … He was really our No. 1 pick,” Maloney said of the team’s offseason evaluation to Matt Reitz of NBC Pro Hockey Talk.
Smith, who had never won more than 14 games in his first five seasons, earned his sixth shutout of 2011-12 when he stopped 38 shots in a 2-0 blanking of the San Jose Sharks on Thursday night. His 34th win of the season lifted the Coyotes into seventh place in the packed Western Conference playoff race that now has the makings of a Pacific Division sprint.
With three games remaining and two points behind an eighth place team that has two games in hand, Colorado’s season has effectively ended, as has Calgary’s after a 3-0 home loss to Los Angeles on Wednesday, which dropped the Flames to 11th place and needing to make up three points and leapfrog two teams over four games.
Instead, it will be Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Jose fighting for three playoff berths, with the winner – in a division in which one point separates first and fourth place – earning a three-seed and home-ice advantage in the first round against either Detroit, Nashville or Chicago.
As it stands, entering Friday night’s action, with games played and regulation wins serving as tiebreakers:
3) Dallas – 89 points (35 regulation wins); 5 remaining games: @VAN, @SJ, SJ, @NSH, STL
7) Phoenix – 89 points (32); 4 remaining games: ANA, CBJ, @STL, @MIN
8) Los Angeles – 88 points (32); 5 remaining games: @EDM, @MIN, EDM, SJ, @SJ
9) San Jose – 88 points (31); 4 remaining games: DAL, @DAL, @LA, LA
While the Kings’ three-game Edmonton-Minnesota-Edmonton stretch seems like an advantage, Los Angeles has lost six of its last eight home games to Edmonton and will be facing a hellacious schedule getting into St. Paul early Saturday morning, a back-to-back scheduling challenge that caused Darryl Sutter to tell LA Kings Insider, “That’s illegal.” Dallas also faces a tough Vancouver-San Jose road schedule on Friday and Saturday.
San Jose is the team that looks to be the most uncomfortable heading into the final two weekends, where they’re looking at having to win at least three games to have any shot at a playoff berth. That will be a tall order, considering their four games come against desperate teams in a similar predicament unlikely to give up much ground. They were outscored 5-2 while dropping both ends of their two-game Anaheim-Phoenix swing this week.
“I keep saying that we’ve got to leave this behind and move on, but with four left we better make some hay quick," coach Todd McLellan said after Thursday’s loss in Phoenix.
The Stars, who currently occupy the third seed, are looking to win their eighth division title in Dallas, quadrupling the number of divisions won by the Minnesota North Stars. Glen Gulutzan has taken his foot off the gas pedal recently, allotting recovery time liberally over the season’s final weeks.
“We haven’t practiced in a month,” Gulutzan said after Wednesday’s win in Edmonton. “We’ve been playing every second night, so we’ve just been maintaining it the best we can. We pregame every morning … and every off-day we take off.”
He’ll look to navigate his club above the Kings, who will be without Jeff Carter for Friday’s game in Edmonton and potentially Saturday in Minnesota due to an ankle injury suffered late in Wednesday’s win in Calgary. It’s not a good development for a team with a power play that “has been awful,” according to Sutter. LA has one power play goal in its last 24 opportunities.
Though there won’t be a playoff bounce like Anaheim experienced by leapfrogging several teams for the fourth seed last season, there will still be plenty of movement on Saturday, April 7, the season’s final day. Dallas hosts a Presidents Cup-contending St. Louis team, while Phoenix travels to Minnesota and Los Angeles visits San Jose in game No. 1,230 of the NHL regular season.
“Those are all points that we need to try to claw, scrape or whatever we could do to get something out of those games,” Gulutzan said of the season’s final week, which also includes a one-off trip to Nashville.
CALL-UP CRAZINESS
Torrie Jung remembers getting the call in 2009 and how it disrupted a 20-year-old junior player’s typical afternoon off.
“I was planning on snoozing the majority of the day,” the Edmonton Oil King said at the time. “But I would much rather sit on the bench at an NHL game than nap.”
Jung still managed to get his pregame rest in before he sat on the Edmonton Oilers’ bench that night as a backup to Jeff Deslauriers in a 5-2 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks. He became the fourth goalie since 2003 to sign an amateur tryout contract as an emergency option, a number that stretched to nine this week when former Michigan Wolverine goaltender Shawn Hunwick dressed as Allen York’s backup with both Steve Mason and Curtis Sanford out of action for the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Courtesy of a terrific list compiled earlier in the season by Trevor Smart of Sportsnet’s Fan Fuel blog, no emergency goaltending option has received one minute of NHL playing time – not Jung, who watched Deslauriers allow three early goals; not 51-year-old embroidery shop owner Paul Deutsch, who appeared in warmups for the Minnesota Wild earlier this season; and not University of British Columbia third-stringer Chris Levesque, who remained on the Vancouver Canucks’ bench in 2003 despite Johan Hedberg’s violent collision at center ice resulting in a broken wrist. Hedberg played through the injury, spawning the predictable jokes about how both Hedberg-with-a-broken-wrist and a third-string college goalie were viable options alongside Dan Cloutier.
A Hobey Baker top-10 finalist and a starter for two and a half years at Michigan, the 5-foot-7 Hunwick’s senior season came to a conclusion last Friday after an opening round NCAA tournament loss to Cornell, giving him free agent status for NHL teams to consider. When Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson called Wednesday morning and erased any potential inkling of his NHL call-up being an elaborate prank, Hunwick quickly loaded his pickup truck and set out for a three-and-a-half hour drive to Columbus – only to detour back to his Ann Arbor apartment because he had forgotten his wallet and a pair of dress shoes.
After making it to Columbus and proving to security outside Nationwide Arena that he was, in fact, suiting up as a goaltender for that evening’s game against the Detroit Red Wings, he signed a one-day ATO contract, took warmups and sat on the bench for a prime view of the Blue Jackets’ 4-2 win in the season’s 77th game.
On Thursday, Hunwick received a contract “extension” through the remaining five games that will pay him a pro-rated NHL base salary. The former walk-on who achieved cult-like status amongst Michigan hockey fans for his tenacity in net while earning his playing time against more heralded recruits and whose three NCAA tournament runs ended in heartbreaking 3-2 overtime losses – including one in the 2011 championship game – has been rewarded with a spot on an NHL roster, if only for five games.
“I think staying [on the bench] was probably the safest bet tonight,” Hunwick said after Wednesday’s game, though there will be a legitimate opportunity for him to see minutes in the NHL should York struggle, which isn’t entirely out of the question.
Before that happens, we suggest the Jackets kick in for some different-colored pads. It’s not that Hunwick is representing Michigan’s colors in Ohio State territory, it’s that maize-and-blue highlighted pads clash with an alternate Columbus jersey to make up one of the worst uniform abominations we’ve seen in the NHL for years.
HAB-ITUAL MEDIOCRITY
The Montreal Canadiens fired general manager Pierre Gauthier on Thursday in the latest string of a comedy of errors that has befallen one of sports’ most iconic franchises.
While rivals will spare their tears, Montreal’s Cup drought has extended to its franchise-record 18th season, only the second stretch in the club’s NHL history in which they went more than six seasons without a Cup.
Nothing went right from the outset, with a 1-5-2 start to the season eventually leading to coach Jacques Martin’s December firing and the unnecessary spat over the language interim coach Randy Cunneyworth spoke all distractions plaguing the Canadiens during the first half slide they were unable to pull out of. Scott Gomez, who Montreal traded Ryan McDonagh to acquire as part of a 2009 trade with the New York Rangers, didn’t score his first goal until February and will cost the Habs $7.4 million of cap space through 2014, though his contract is likely to be bought out. All of this wasted the All-Star efforts of Carey Price, who provided the club a consistently firm backbone in net as an injury-plagued club only twice was able to win more than two games consecutively.
While continually referencing the fans’ passion and impact on the direction and image sought by the storied club, CEO and team president Geoff Molson went out of his way to acknowledge that he understands the frustrations of watching the team bottom out competitively with a likely last-place finish in the Eastern Conference.
“We need to remember that our fans want us to win, period,” Molson said. “Our organization’s culture needs to support and adopt this passion for victory. Nothing else matters.”
“The Montreal Canadiens are a storied franchise, often cited as one of the greatest sports organizations in the world. Our 24 Stanley Cups are a testament to this. However, the traits that are common to all successful organizations have been lacking in recent years. When one looks at the great organizations of the past, or the ones that are performing particularly well currently, the root of their success lies in their consistency and stability.
Special adviser Bob Gainey also mutually agreed to step down, though the Hall of Famer and former Canadiens captain will retain close ties to his former club.
Serge Savard, Montreal’s general manager for its last two Stanley Cups in 1986 and 1993, will be consulted by Moulson throughout the team’s search for its next general manager. Re-establishing stability and a winning culture will be a top priority for the club.
“We play in the best hockey market in the world, and we have the best fans in hockey,” Moulson said. “Our fans care deeply about our team and want nothing more than a winning team, one that follows in the tradition of our storied past.
“This season did not deliver in those expectations.”
Game of the Weekend
Dallas Stars at San Jose Sharks
Saturday, 10:30 p.m. ET, FOX Sports Southwest
By taking zero points out of a two-game Anaheim-Phoenix swing, the San Jose Sharks are grasping onto a rock as they try to pull themselves atop the playoff cliff. If they drop this one, they’re putting an awful lot of stock in other team’s abilities to beat Dallas and Phoenix in the season’s final week. They’ll challenge a road-weary Stars team fresh off an emotional Vancouver game (since when are Vancouver games not emotional?) to the Shark Tank for a game that will determine momentum heading into Tuesday’s rematch in Dallas. With a Los Angeles home-and-home also looming on the horizon, San Jose can’t afford to lose this game.
