Links, some delayed for technical reasons, from last night: Sean Backman credited Mike Stothers’ faith in his offensive game as a big factor in recapturing it. (Stothers was money.) Catching up, albeit briefly, with Dustin Jeffrey and Yann Danis.
Alan Quine wears No. 6 tonight, because apparently “the night before” isn’t time enough to turn around a new sweater. (Not the first time that’s happened to a Sound Tiger.) We’ll try to be funny and say it’s a Joel Broda tribute. Checked in and was told Ryan Pulock’s day-to-day; we’ll see how the day’s going on Thursday.
(Noticed this afternoon: Quine fits right into Pulock’s spot alphabetically among all the all-stars. Fortunate for Jason Chaimovitch and company: No need to rearrange the notes.)
At his annual presser this morning, Dave Andrews said the league expects no franchise movement this summer. That includes Bridgeport; he has said before and reiterated that he expects the city to be part of the league for a long time.
Some other notes from the “state of the league,” which began with a few more introductory remarks than usual, I think:
–The new CBA guarantees the players’ playoff pool, as was reported when the sides announced it; Andrews was a little more specific about it, saying that the guarantee will come about by teams paying a set, flat fee to host playoff games. What’s interesting about that is that, because the players’ share isn’t tied to ticket revenue, and the players don’t need to be protective of that revenue, teams can get creative with their playoff ticket sales: discount packages, incentives to buy season tickets, probably myriad other ideas. (I think the Sound Tigers, if reports from fans were accurate, tried a few over the years only to be told they weren’t technically doable under the CBA at the time.)
–They’ve got a new deal with the NHL to develop officials, including a lot of new linesmen (“You can recognize them: They’re the really, really big guys who look like they’re going to be NHL linesmen”); they hope to develop their pool of officials well enough to staff two referees for every game by the end of the four-year deal.
–A lot of the league’s increase in ticket revenue comes from California. It was a hard transition getting everything done out there, but “like anything else, three months after we dropped the puck out there, it’s the new normal.”
–The league considered dumping the #dryscrape but will keep it; concern for the product. (#pointsforall obviously remains as well.)
–No change to the 68/76-game-schedules schism; he suggested they’d probably need movement from both sides on that. (72 is just too obvious, I guess.) Kevin Oklobzija went deeper into it. “It’s not an issue I’m putting at the front of my agenda now,” Andrews said.
Those two also had a long back-and-forth about fighting and its future that I am sure Kevin will relate better than I could, so we’ll link then.
Andrews was glad that one of his league’s players was MVP of the NHL all-star game.
The Hall of Fame induction is always a great time; sometime poignant (like Rick Keller accepting on behalf of his ill dad, Ralph), sometimes just personally cool (fantastic to see Tim Leone on the video introducing Keller), sometimes just awesome (like Don Cherry, on video, wearing a white-and-blue Marlies jacket), sometimes hilarious. Scott Walker, the honorary Western Conference captain, joked that other NHL teams were in good shape with him developing kids for Vancouver. He said playing in Syracuse was “as close as I got to university: I went up on the hill for Dollar Beer Night.” About Crunch owner Howard Dolgon, who he called a master promoter: “Not to say he encouraged fighting, or me fighting, but he encouraged me to fight.”
The introductory video for J.F. Labbe included fellow Hall of Famer Ken Gernander saying that once Labbe put a little mustard on a glove save. Gernander was right there as Labbe made the save and asked the goalie what he was doing. “I just want ’em to know I’m on,” Gernander said Labbe replied.
Then Bruce Landon closed his acceptance speech with a gorgeous line, telling players, coaches, young executives not to take the AHL for granted, to treat it with respect, “because it’s a very special league to so many people.” If you’re like me (and, apparently, MC John Bartlett) and will sometimes answer “where’d you grow up” with section-row-seat number, it might’ve brought a tear to your eye.