My salute to Jacques

The New Jersey Devils come to town for a game tomorrow, and rightfully so, the home team Minnesota Wild will salute its former coach and current Devils coach, Jacques Lemaire. To honor the organizations first every head coach, and one that lasted up until his resignation was announced last April, is one classy move by the Wild. The 1984 Hall of Fame inductee in Jacques was the mastermind behind what I would consider a very successful start to Minnesota as an expansion team. Many NHL fans, including a good portion of Wild followers, despise his defensive style of coaching, but it is hard to argue with his playing and coaching resume. Lemaire, who was a two-time winner of the Jack Adams Trophy as the NHL's top coach, has been a part of 11 Stanley Cup Championship teams, winning one as a head coach during his first stint with the Devils during the 94-95 season.

So this is my salute to Jacques Lemaire...for giving the Wild organization a great start to its existence and for putting together a system that saw our team working hard and playing competitively on a nightly basis, I thank you.

The Classic was just that

Yeah, that was a classic game. And as good as it was, it is funny to me how a league that seems to get so many things wrong, can on occasion get it right. It is a shame that the NHL cannot put as much effort and forethought into its daily decisions, because if that were done, it would be the most popular sporting league world-wide. You can pick your poison as to what issue you believe needs repair, but at the top of the list has to be the point system and lack of consistency when it come to player suspensions. And don't forget to throw into the mix a lack of a good league wide television deal. On a personal and selfish note, I for one and growing ever so tired of the Versus & DirecTV squabble. The Wild are scheduled for 3 games this month (05 @ Blackhawks, 11 V Penguins, 18 @ Stars), but more importantly, the playoffs are now on the radar. If there is no deal in place by then, the NHL will continue to be without approximately 14 million households, so one would think that they would be looking to get this settled.

Another condensed month

After a grueling, yet very successful month of December, things don't slow down a bit for the NHL or the Wild. Minnesota, which earned 10 wins breaking a club record for the month in wins and point earned (20 pts) and also tied the franchise record for most wins in a month (March 2007), faces another jam packed month ahead. The only possible savior is that instead of being top-heavy with road games, Minnesota should get better acquainted with the X because they are scheduled to play 8 at home out of a total of 14 January games. The Olympic years play havoc on the scheduling and taking a full 2-weeks off at the end of February does create difficulties in playing a full 82-game schedule, one that when you include the post season, already drags too far into the spring. The question of whether it is good for the NHL to allow its players to participate in the Winter games has been going back and forth since the league allowed its players to participate in the games back in 1998. The league has its business to promote and protect while the NHLPA has its membership to consider.

More on this later. As you may have guessed, I do have an opinion on this and it is probably not going to be a popular one...