So Colin Campbell never really did like Marc Savard, calling him "that little fake artist" in an email.
That’s OK — the Calgary Flames didn’t much like Savard either, dealing him to Atlanta back in ’02 for one Ruslan Zainullin, who never did make it across the pond from Russia. (There, the mighty Zainullin conquered the 12-goal plateau but once, never managing to ascend to such heights again as a KHL journeyman.)
Also, in emails revealed by Tyler Dellow of mc79hockey.com, it appears the National Hockey League’s senior V.P. wasn’t real big on the work of referee Dean Warren.
"A bend in the road is a dead end if you round the corner and Dean Warren is standing there," Campbell wrote in an e-mail that surfaced as evidence in Warren’s wrongful dismissal suit, a case that was dismissed by the Ontario Labour Relations Board in October.
Campbell wanted Warren gone because he thought he was a poor referee.
Warren argued that the league had it out for him because of his work inside the official’s union.
In the end, the OLRB decided there was no bias in Warren’s dismissal. For what we can unearth inside the union, some ref’s thought highly of Warren’s work, and others thought he wasn’t very good at all.
So let the headlines read: NHL ref has some bad games, some good ones.
If that’s enough to get a guy fired, we might be going back to the one-referee system soon.
Nice Guys Finishing Last
The mounting losses in Edmonton aren’t disconcerting.
You knew this 30th place team wasn’t going to be much better this season, and the deeper they finish in the standings, the better the draft picks.
So lose away.
But do they have to be such a bunch of pushovers? This is a team that doesn’t throw a punch until it’s down 6-1.
Somehow, an organization founded on tough guys (Dave Semenko and Dave Brown) and super pests (Esa Tikkanen and Ken Linseman) now has no pests, and a heavyweight in Steve MacIntyre who skates like a Coke machine.
He can sure fight, but you can barely use him.
Edmonton’s biggest forward — Dustin Penner — is surely their softest, least competitive one. Penner, the team’s leading goal scorer last season and counted on heavily to do the same this year, scored twice on the recent road trip. Both goals came when the Oilers were behind 6-0.
Sunday in New York, Ladislav Smid didn’t even know enough to keep his dukes up around Sean Avery after requesting a fight, and got one-punched. And don’t believe the stuff about Smid turning his head — the tape shows he was watching Avery every step of the way.
The culture in Edmonton is such that Smid didn’t have the street smarts to watch out for Avery. He fell back on "The Code" — like Avery every respected "The Code."
Said Vancouver’s Alex Burrows when asked by Sportsnet’s Dan Murphy about the punch: "I didn't mind it. I don't like Ladislav either, so I thought it was a pretty good thing that someone gave it to him."
Guys like Avery and Burrows play this Oilers team like a fiddle, and have for years.
With passive leaders like Tom Gilbert, Penner, Shawn Horcoff, and the collection of Smurfs among their forwards, Edmonton still has the softest, easiest to play against team in the league.
They’ve got a nice pipeline of talent in Edmonton. But unless they find some gritty players who will leave a mark once in a while, Edmonton’s rebuild won’t get off the ground.
Three Amigos
Collectively in their past 22 games, Calgary, Toronto and Edmonton have amassed a record of 2-20-3.
That’s seven of a possible 44 points.
It is in Calgary, of course, where the trouble appears deepest. No one began the season talking rebuild in Southern Alberta, and suddenly the Flames are a 26th place team.
If Calgary remains a lottery team, the good news is they have their No. 1 pick in 2011. The bad news is, their second-rounder is in Chicago’s hands (traded to the Blackhawks by Toronto), and the third-rounder went to Edmonton for Steve Staios.
Ouch!
Snow Job
When we first spoke with Garth Snow after he took over the New York Islanders back in 2007, we mistook his quiet, close-to-the-vest demeanour of that of a man with a quiet plan.
Well, it turns out we confused "saying nothing" with "nothing to say." We see now that there is no plan in Long Island at all — or money, it seems — as the hiring of one Jack Capuano as the new head coach attests.
Who is Capuano?
He’s the latest minor league coach wiling to work for peanuts behind the Islanders’ bench, following in the footsteps of the fired Scott Gordon, the desperate Ted Nolan before him, and the minor league call up, Steve Stirling before him.
In his teleconference Monday, Snow painfully repeated that he wasn’t looking past Wednesday game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Maybe that’s the problem. You can’t manage in two day increments.
"I think the biggest issue for our team right now is confidence," Snow said Monday.
All right then.
