Mike Smith and Olaf Kolzig have a job to do in Florida.
That job is to stop pucks for the Tampa Bay Lightning. But recently, Lightning ownership re-defined the role of goaltenders within the organization. Smith and Kolzig are being used as billboards for owners more concerned with cross-promoting movies and hockey than winning games.
Oren Koules and Mark Burg are co-owners of the Tampa Bay Lightning, but they also co-produced the Saw movie series, the fifth and most recent ill-advised edition having been released 10 days ago.
In conjunction with the release, the owners had Smith and Kolzig repaint their masks in Saw-like themes to promote the release.
Two words: Complete garbage.
And I'm not talking about the movie, although it's not that far off.
Koules and Burg did not break any rules here. But the questionable move by the unfocussed owners of the Tampa Bay Lightning sets a dangerous precedent.
Let’s be clear that each and every NHL owner has a business to promote. Some have so many that their accountants are the only ones that could give you an accurate number.
This move effectively opens the door for the other 29 NHL owners to put guns to the heads of their own goaltenders to create advertising space on their masks unrelated to the team, goaltender, or even the sport of hockey.
In case you missed it, Oren Koules and Mark Burg are part of the same ownership group named in a recent Hockey Night in Canada report claiming that one of them busted into the Tampa dressing room last month and started diagramming plays for the power play and penalty kill.
It's a report that the owners have since publicly denied, but in the wake of stunts like the Saw movie cross-promotion, would anyone really be surprised if it was true?
I'm quite sure that Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz has more respect for the game of hockey and the goaltending position than to strong-arm Mathieu Garon into sticking a Rexall family of pharmacies logo on the front of his lid, but we simply cannot assume that the other 29 owners share that same appreciation for the artistic tradition of the goalie mask.
At the very least, we know that one of them definitely does not.
Gerry Cheevers must be disgusted.