Penguins Win the Cup...

Very happy for Petr Sykora and I loved seeing him lift the Stanley Cup, although I'm pretty sure he cursed very loudly on TV last night. (Thought he said "F***in' right!" as he lifted it.)

People are villifying Marian Hossa, but for no reason. He did the noble thing, it just didn't work out for him. He could've taken somewhere around $80M from Edmonton to play there for a few years, but he took a cut to play in Detroit. Granted, $7.4M is still a nice chunk of coin, but at least he wants a Cup. What's next for him, back to the Penguins? Head over to San Jose? Stick with Detroit? I doubt that one, because they have a bunch of players to re-sign as well.

Besides Petr Sykora, the one guy on the Penguins I really love is Max Talbot. Not only does he rock awesome facial hair (he used to have a huge mustache), but he is the nicest guy. Of all the NHL players I've met/seen, him and Martin Biron are the most genuine and the nicest. He signs everything, he gives pucks to all the kids in the crowd. Good guy, always smiling. And now, he goes down in history as scoring 2 goals in a Game 7, much like his teammate Ruslan Fedotenko did in 2004 in a 2-1 win after trailing in the series 3-2. (One difference, Tampa Bay was at home, not in Calgary for that Game 7.)

No, I'm not ashamed to have rooted for the Penguins to win last night. I was much happier seeing them win than I would've been had the same team as last year won.

Saw this phrase written somewhere, and I found a picture of the two of them together, so, here it is.

Two Girls, One Cup

Need To Laugh?

While this news broke yesterday (we here at The Rivalry were out at the NHL Store and a number of city bars), it still remains baffling today.

The Penguins, reeling after losing out on Marian Hossa, picked up the pieces by signing Ruslan Fedotenko and Miroslav Satan to one-year deals. Fedotenko will be getting $2.5 million next year; Satan will receive $3.5 million. So, to recap, that's a lot of mediocre play for $6 million.

Will these two players benefit from playing with superior talent? Absolutely. Will they be worth the money? Hell no! Satan fell off dramatically on Long Island (a development that shocks absolutely no one who follows the Islanders) and Fedotenko never seemed to stand out among the random grinders the Islanders brought in last year. I guess Pittsburgh was right to take the chance, but $6 million is a lot of money for two guys who combined for 74 points last year.

My question is this. If the defending Eastern Conference champions saw it appropriate to pay Fedotenko $2.5 million and Satan $3.5 million, how on Earth could Garth Snow fail to get anything in return for these guys at the trade deadline? Makes you wonder.

Where the Islanders Went Wrong...

When you title a post "Where the Islanders Went Wrong," you could conceivably take unlimited cheap shots at their collective abdomen, mentioning hiring Mike Millbury, any of his trades (turns out Oleg Kvasha and Mark Parrish aren't as talented as Roberto Luongo and Olli Jokinen), talking about how people with no money bought a multi-million dollar franchise, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I won't do that. I will rise above that level.

I also won't be talking about the signing of "character players" like Josef Vasicek and Jon Sim, and how we were told it's because of their heart and grit that they were signed, as opposed to the real reason that no one wants to play for the Islanders (except, for some reason, Bryan McCabe).

I want to talk about how Garth Snow messed up at the trade deadline this year.

I'm not anti-Snow. Sure, I thought it was a joke when Blogger Bryan texted me about them firing Neil Smith and promoting their back-up goalie (much like me texting him "Isles trade DP to Ottawa for Eaves, Corvo and 2 1st rounders"), but I think he isn't an awful GM, especially compared to Millbury. 

When he traded the farm for Ryan Smyth, he did what he had to do. The opportunity came up, he swung the deal. The grand prize wound up being a few weekday sell-outs and 2 extra home games, but he did what he had to because he felt he had a team worthy of making the playoffs.

This year, he completely dropped the ball. He had to have known Rick DiPietro was hurt, unless he wasn't watching Versus during the skills competition when DP said into his mic "Fucked up my hip." 

A bunch of his veterans, including key faceoff man Mike Sillinger, were hurt, and the ones that weren't should have been shipped out to make way for the future, not held onto in a pathetic, desperate, unintentionally funny attempt to make the playoffs.

The NHL is simple and cyclic (except for the Red Wings). Teams are bad, stay bad a few years, get high draft picks, sell off overpriced vets for more picks and prospects, have a few okay years, get good. Read the book on the Penguins (Fleury, Whitney, Crosby, Malkin, and Staal were all Top 5 picks). 

When teams are good, they don't stay good for very long because of what they sacrificed to be there. The Rangers won the Cup in 1994 and Neil Smith gave up a lot for that, even noting that they would be bad for a while when he did it, and they were. Tampa Bay won in 2004, then signed Conn Smythe winner Brad Richards to a huge deal. So big, in fact, that had to let their goalie go. They then paid 4 players so much that they couldn't sign or keep any role players (see: Pavel Kubina moving to Toronto).

Then, there are teams that are bad but won't admit it. Teams like the 1998-2003 Rangers, or the current Maple Leafs. The Maple Leafs should have had a firesale, but their players wouldn't waive no-trade clauses (bad management in John Ferguson, Jr.) and then they played decent down the stretch, giving them slight, slight hope for a top-8 seeding. The Rangers thought they were always one big name away from glory, so they spent the money they had and it brought nothing. They never re-built from within until 2004, when the upcoming CBA gave them no choice.

The Islanders were a bad team last year, even when they were winning. Mike Comrie will never be more than a 2nd line center on other teams. Sillinger shouldn't be playing 19 minutes a night at age 36. Hell, at age 26 he shouldn't have been. Miro Satan is not a top-line winger or your go-to guy with an empty net.

Yet, the Islanders stood pat. They didn't sell for the future. A team like Ottawa would have loved Satan, who would have contributed more than Cory Stillman eventually did for them. Ruslan Fedotenko is a proven playoff performer, scoring both goals in the Lightning's 2-1 Game 7 win over Calgary in the '04 Finals. He could have been a useful player in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia (instead of Vinny Prospal) or Dallas. Vasicek will never score 40 goals, but Nashville could have used him again (instead of Jan Hlavac) or maybe Calgary to give a pop to their offense.

They had no studs to trade away, no Smyth's, Marian Hossa's or Cristobal Huet's, but they could have fetched a 2nd and 4th rounder for Satan, and a 3rd rounder for Tank and Vasicek. This is a very deep draft, and those picks could have turned into something more than what they got for trading Marc-Andre Bergeron.