The Hockey News has been providing the most comprehensive coverage of the world of hockey since 1947. In each issue, you'll find news, features and opinions about the NHL and leagues across North America and the world.

August 15, 2016

The Hockey News - 8/15/2016

<div class="byline">PHOTO BY TOM SZCZERBOWSKI/GETTY IMAGES</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0006-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-017/18791-1-eng-US/f0006-012.jpg"></div><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

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IN THIS ISSUE

DIAMOND DAYS FOR SUBBAN

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-024/19439-1-eng-US/f0025-022.jpg" title="f0025-02" width="699" height="408"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p>ANDY DEVLIN/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES</p><p>NEW KING OF VEGAS Las Vegas&rsquo; initial roster should be chock full of motivated, talented vets, like L.A.&rsquo;s Dustin Brown.</p></figcaption></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-015/19453-1-eng-US/f0025-012.jpg" title="f0025-01" width="105" height="102"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><p>WITH MATT LARKIN</p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon2.jpg" title="common" width="21" height="17"></span><p>@THNMATTLARKIN</p><p><b>ANY SMUG PROGNOSTICATOR</b> convinced Las Vegas&rsquo; NHL franchise will be a laughing stock has a head start. It&rsquo;s an expansion team, after all, and recent NHL history tells us brand-new franchises normally fall flat on their faces.</p><p>The San Jose Sharks joined the NHL 25 years ago and won a combined 28 games in their first two seasons. The Ottawa Senators arrived a year later and won 24 games over their first two years. The Tampa Bay Lightning, Anaheim Ducks, Atlanta Thrashers, Columbus Blue Jackets, Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predators&hellip; each of those franchises wobbled out of the womb like a baby calf. The 1993-94 Florida Panthers set the gold standard of modern expansion club respectability, and even they didn&rsquo;t even finish .500, going 33-34-17. None of those teams made the post-season in its first two tries.</p><p>It thus stands to reason Vegas, a market already inviting some skepticism of its ability to fill an NHL arena long term, is in trouble. History suggests teams take years to build their youth crop and field competitive clubs. If the Vegas fan base is as fickle as some perceive it to be, that&rsquo;s a deadly combination of lack of winning and lack of interest.</p><p>But Vegas has something going for it no franchise has before upon its inception: the salary cap. Vegas is the cap era&rsquo;s first expansion team, and it will have advantages every other new NHL franchise has lacked.</p><p>When the expansion draft arrives next June, the other 30 NHL clubs will protect seven forwards, three defensemen and one goaltender or eight skaters and one goaltender. They&rsquo;ll have to use a protection slot if they want to retain any players with continuing no-movement clauses at the time of the draft. They must expose at least one D-man and at least two forwards who (a) are under contract in 2017-18 and (b) played at least 40 games this past season or 70 games over the past two seasons.</p><p>Meanwhile, Vegas will choose a player from all 30 clubs, with a minimum of 14 forwards, nine defensemen and three goalies. That means it can build a 30-player base comprised entirely of NHL-caliber players. How many existing NHL teams can do so? And that doesn&rsquo;t include a potential highceiling first-round pick Vegas will get in the entry draft. Vegas will have the same odds as the team with the third-lowest point total in 2016-17, meaning Vegas picks no lower than sixth overall.</p><p>While Vegas doesn&rsquo;t have to hit the salary floor, with a Scrooge McDuck-rich owner in Bill Foley, who just dropped a record $500 million for the franchise, do we really expect Vegas to crawl around near the poverty line? Especially with so much pressure to prove the fans will support the team? Don&rsquo;t be surprised if Foley gives the green light to take on significant salary. The team will have wait several years for its first entry-draft classes to develop into a legitimate farm system anyway, so why not keep their seats warm with decent players, albeit expensive ones?</p><p>Here&rsquo;s where the other 30 teams come in. The expansion draft will create the equivalent of compliance (free) buyouts for any highpriced players the teams choose not to protect. It wouldn&rsquo;t be remotely surprising to see the Los Angeles Kings expose Dustin Brown, the Washington Capitals Brooks Orpik or the New York Rangers Dan Girardi. Doing so benefits the existing franchises, relieving them of albatross contracts, and it also helps Vegas meet its salary requirements. One of those players may weigh down an elite team, but if Vegas loads up on expensive veterans, it will end up with a feisty, competitive roster loaded with good leaders. A lame duck roster in the long run? Sure. But a tough, savvy veteran group that could prey on young upstart opponents? Very possibly. We also know each existing franchise can only protect one goalie. With the position&rsquo;s talent pool never better or deeper, we can bank on Vegas landing at least one quality stopper. Marc-Andre Fleury? Semyon Varlamov?</p><p>The NHL knows it has something to prove by taking a chance on a second desert market. That&rsquo;s why it, pardon the pun, stacked the deck in Vegas&rsquo; favor. The expansion draft rules and salary cap will help Bill Foley construct a surprisingly decent roster in the early years. That doesn&rsquo;t guarantee long-term success. It&rsquo;ll be up to whatever hockey brain trust he hires to accomplish that. But out of the gate, this newborn franchise won&rsquo;t embarrass itself.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

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AN EXPANSION TEAM LIKE NO OTHER

<div class="byline">BY RYAN KENNEDY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-017/19603-1-eng-US/f0034-012.jpg" title="f0034-01" width="608" height="775"><figcaption class="caption-body">THE WHOLE PACKAGE Nichol combines analytics with the basics in sport science for training clients like Seguin. <span class="photo-credit">(PHOTOS COURTESY OF BIOSTEEL)</span></figcaption></div><h2><b>MATT NICHOL</b></h2><p>BIG CLIENTS Tyler Seguin, Mike Cammalleri, Wayne Simmonds</p><p>There&rsquo;s a lot of noise in the training world, and for an experienced vet such as Nichol, it&rsquo;s important to straddle the line between innovation and data clutter. &ldquo;Everything has been about analytics lately, and that has trickled down to sport science and guys like me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But the fundamentals are still really important. That has been my revelation.&rdquo;</p><p>Nichol&rsquo;s first concern when the summer arrives is to make sure his client-athletes are actually ready to perform. He does this through musculoskeletal assessments. Players may come into Nichol&rsquo;s care with a specific off-season goal &ndash; gain five pounds of muscle, increase their explosiveness &ndash; but it becomes irrelevant if the client isn&rsquo;t ready. A bad knee, poor sleep patterns or nutrition and movement issues are barriers that must be dealt with first. So Nichol deals with them, ensuring he is working with &ldquo;healthy, happy human beings.&rdquo;</p><p>Another crucial aspect of Nichol&rsquo;s philosophy is hockey-specific: generating power and skating effectively. &ldquo;No one cares how much you bench if you can&rsquo;t skate,&rdquo; he said.</p><p>Along with his on-the-ground work with NHLers and future stars such as Arizona&rsquo;s Dylan Strome, Nichol is known for BioSteel, the line of products he created to supplement his clients&rsquo; healthy diets. &ldquo;Drink the Pink&rdquo; is the company&rsquo;s well-known slogan. And while Nichol teased that some new products are coming down the pipeline, he didn&rsquo;t want to play spoiler for his own company. He did note, however, that his goals with BioSteel are rooted in a staunch philosophy. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not going to have vitamins A to Z, or fat burners,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I want my athletes eating real food. BioSteel supplements that.&rdquo;</p><p>And with the knowledge his clients are healthy and getting the right nutrients, then it&rsquo;s time to put in the work.</p><h2><b>GARY ROBERTS</b></h2><p>BIG CLIENTS Steven Stamkos, Connor McDavid, James Neal</p><p>The Roberts story well known. With his NHL career virtually over due to a neck injury, he began building himself back up with the help of mentor Lorne Goldenberg. Roberts has gone on to become one of the premier off-season trainers in the sport. But his vision goes beyond weights and sprints. Promoting a lifestyle that introduced many NHLers to quinoa and, in the case of Michael Del Zotto, sprouts, Roberts is known as a nononsense guru who gets results, even if the meals he prescribes don&rsquo;t have a lot of zing to them. It&rsquo;s more important for him that the food be organic.</p><p>His reputation has grown to the point that Roberts was named sports performance director for the brand-new UPMC Sports Performance Complex outside Pittsburgh (Mario Lemieux&rsquo;s name is on the complex that houses it). He was also a consultant for the Dallas Stars when old buddy and former teammate Joe Nieuwendyk was GM, but it&rsquo;s Roberts&rsquo; rigorous summer training that really gets the accolades.</p><h2><b>DARRYL BELFRY</b></h2><p>BIG CLIENTS Patrick Kane, John Tavares, Auston Matthews</p><p>Belfry has been a skills coach for elite players since 2003, with Nathan Horton as his first big client. Since then, his cast of NHLers has exploded, and some of the most talented players in the sport work with him in the summer. Belfry attacks the game from a research perspective, using video to track game habits and skill execution to answer the question: what does a player do the most and how successful is he in those situations? Belfry also looks at less efficient areas of a player&rsquo;s game and problem-solves with him to build a new skill or evolve his game. Metaphorically, it&rsquo;s like adding a room to a house. &ldquo;Every drill, every shot, every movement of my skates is geared toward improving my game personally,&rdquo; Kane said. &ldquo;That goes a long way.&rdquo;</p><p>Belfry&rsquo;s 1-on-1 training with players includes having a TV monitor on the ice for instant feedback, and his methods have been so effective he was hired by the Toronto Maple Leafs as the franchise&rsquo;s skill development consultant two years ago, though he&rsquo;s still allowed to work with clients from other teams.</p><h2><b>ANDY O&rsquo;BRIEN</b></h2><p>BIG CLIENTS Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, Matt Duchene</p><p>There&rsquo;s no better endorsement of O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s work than Pittsburgh&rsquo;s Stanley Cup win this past season. O&rsquo;Brien, who has long worked with Sidney Crosby, was hired as the Penguins&rsquo; director of sport science and performance in the summer of 2015 and victory followed immediately. Sure, he wasn&rsquo;t the only reason &ndash; coach Mike Sullivan&rsquo;s midseason takeover was huge &ndash; but the speed with which the Penguins burned teams in the post-season came from a combination of natural ability and conditioning. O&rsquo;Brien was the strength and conditioning coach for the Florida Panthers from 2005 to 2009 but is most famous for his work with Crosby, MacKinnon and crew in the summer.</p><p>Managing energy late in the season is something O&rsquo;Brien tries to instill in his charges and, on the flip side, making sure they come to training camp prepared in the fall. Otherwise, there is an adjustment period for the player, who likely will end up overtraining for the first month. That leads to difficult adaptation, and then the player is always trying to play catch-up.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-016/19596-1-eng-US/f0035-012.jpg" title="f0035-01" width="611" height="364"><figcaption class="caption-body">KEEPING IT CLEAN For Roberts, an ex-NHLer himself, fitness is integrally tied to nutrition, with an emphasis on organic food.</figcaption></div><h2><b>BEN PRENTISS</b></h2><p>BIG CLIENTS Jonathan Quick, Max Pacioretty, James van Riemsdyk</p><p>Prentiss, based in Connecticut, is closing in on two decades of work with NHLers, starting with Jason Arnott. That hook-up came from Charles Poliquin, the trainer who gave Prentiss his big break. He still keeps those early lessons in mind. &ldquo;He taught me the values of tempo,&rdquo; Prentiss said. &ldquo;How you control the (weight) bar. You don&rsquo;t just pick it up and go up and down.&rdquo;</p><p>The idea of pausing at the bottom of a rep to get a different result is an overlooked one, but there are many things that still excite Prentiss, despite his years of experience. Inertia-based systems, for example, overload the E-centric parts of the body. That means lowering a dumbbell slowly during a bicep curl, for example. In velocity-based training, Prentiss can measure power in watts, force in neutrons and bar height in millimeters, getting important data from his athletes in the process. There&rsquo;s also the popular notion of pairing exercises for maximum effect. Doing chin-ups after a bench press is one example of an agonist/antagonist combination.</p><p>But ultimately, Prentiss has one goal: take the 12 to 14 weeks he has in the summer with his clients and whip them into shape. That &ldquo;toxic, skinny-fat&rdquo; form that comes from a season filled with battering is transformed into an elite athlete ready to take on a new chapter by the end.</p><p>As for the current state of the game, Prentiss gets weary when a team tells a player they don&rsquo;t need to get stronger or faster, especially in today&rsquo;s speedy climate. &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t understand biomechanics,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no such thing as being &lsquo;strong enough&rsquo; or &lsquo;fast enough.&rsquo; One leads to another. And if you&rsquo;re slow, you&rsquo;re in trouble.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>MATS EMANUELSSON</b></h2><p>BIG CLIENTS Henrik and Daniel Sedin, Mikael Backlund</p><p>Emanuelsson began as a player in Sweden before jumping to the training side. He&rsquo;s been a university physical education teacher, a hockey coach and worked with Sweden&rsquo;s World Junior Championship team.</p><p>In 1998, he started the Sweden Hockey Institute. His work with players such as the Sedins, Mikael Backlund and Jacob Josefson includes both on-ice and off-ice sessions, and he breaks training down into four categories: mental, tactical, technical and physical. It&rsquo;s all about how to get input to the brain. For iconic players like the Sedins, these days the work is about finishing touches. &ldquo;They are so close to the optimal,&rdquo; Emanuelsson said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about small, small parts now. The older they get, the more they need to be free. It&rsquo;s the mental approach, because they need energy when they&rsquo;re out there.&rdquo;</p><p>Core work is very important, as that can be a weakness between the upper and lower bodies. With that in mind, you can find the trainer&rsquo;s clients skating up the ice with parachutes flying out of their backs in the summer, providing a great deal of resistance to their stride. Emanuelsson is also a big believer in skating technique. For him, it&rsquo;s a matter of marrying power and frequency (the speed between the skate blade leaving and returning to the ice).</p><p>But on top of everything, the purpose of training needs to be strong. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s more about how to filter out what to do,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you do too much, you do less.&rdquo;</p><p>Goalies can also find help at the Institute, with one fun drill called &ldquo;desperation saves,&rdquo; where the netminder has to touch the back boards before scrambling back to the crease to make a stop.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

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MEET THE TRAINERS

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OFF-SEASON WINNERS & LOSERS

<div class="byline">Jason Kay</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-017/18762-1-eng-US/f0004-012.jpg" title="f0004-01" width="338" height="382"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(JACLYN LOCKE)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>W</span>HENEVER THE TIME</b> comes for the NHL to hire its next commissioner, we suggest it targets someone named Lou. Or Stu. Or Babu. Anything that might weaken the fire blown at hockey&rsquo;s top suit every time he makes a public appearance will do.</p><p>The disdain for Gary Bettman isn&rsquo;t new, but it&rsquo;s not abating. If you were at the draft in Buffalo, you were either booing him lustily as he tried to launch the proceedings, or you were squirming. In some ways, the vitriol is curious, especially in small markets benefitting from the cap. In addition, Bettman presumably played a key role in bringing aboard Sabre savior Terry Pegula, perhaps the most beloved owner in all of sport.</p><p>On the other hand, we get the tribal mentality, the desire for a villain on whom to focus frustrations for unpopular decisions. On Bettman&rsquo;s watch, a season was killed and two others amputated as the result of brassknuckled negotiations. He presided while the Nordiques and original Jets flew south for winters ever after. And he will have a bullseye on his ego if (when?) the league puts the kibosh on sending its assets to PyeongChang in 2018. As things stand, it looks inevitable. On this occasion we can&rsquo;t find fault.</p><p>A collection of circumstances is conspiring to deprive us of another best-on-best event, on the planet&rsquo;s foremost stage. Ostensibly, the players are victims of their own success; their contracts have become too bloated to insure. Combine that with the requisite expenses for sending them and their families to the other side of Earth and there&rsquo;s a multi-million-dollar bill that nobody wants to own.</p><p>We understand NHLers want to participate, but how badly? Are they willing to pay their own way or raise funds as some other aspiring Olympians do? There is government money available to some athletes, but there&rsquo;s an ocean of difference between their circum circumstance and an NHLer&rsquo;s. For a luger, getting to the Olympics is the culmination of a lifelong dream replete with personal and financial sacrifice. For an NHL star, it&rsquo;s a highlight, perhaps even No. 1, on a street paved with gold.</p><p>It&rsquo;ll be a shame for fans if the NHL-Olympic flame is extinguished. There&rsquo;s no denying it&rsquo;s a fabulous event that creates brilliant moments and indelible memories. But we&rsquo;ll get over it; it&rsquo;s not as if we don&rsquo;t have other championship hockey to watch. Our previous issue was dedicated to all that glitters.</p><p>Of course, the primary consolation is the World Cup of Hockey, which returns in September. The talent level in Toronto will be every bit as high as in the Olympics, if not the aura &ndash; at first. There has been criticism it&rsquo;s a money-grab, but so what? If we&rsquo;re served a good product, why is it distasteful for the NHL and PA to want to turn a profit? It&rsquo;s a business venture that is not without risk.</p><p>If hockey&rsquo;s governing bodies can come anywhere close to replicating the FIFA model (minus the nasty corruption), in which their World Cup trumps the summer Games, we&rsquo;ll all be happy. And the Olympic hockey dream will still live &ndash; for athletes with just one or two commas in their salaries.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-027/18755-1-eng-US/f0004-022.jpg" title="f0004-02" width="209" height="112"></div><p>Editor in chief</p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon2.jpg" title="common" width="21" height="17"></span><p><b>@JKTHN</b><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

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LIFE AFTER OLYMPICS

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0008-017/18820-1-eng-US/f0008-012.jpg" title="f0008-01" width="467" height="384"></div><h2><b>A trip back in time</b></h2><p class="dropcap"><span>T</span>he features on Gordie Howe and all the champions made the July 18, 2016 edition one of your best ever. I am 73 and it brought back so many memories of when the NHL was truly great. This is a magazine I will keep forever. Well done.</p><p><b>Stewart Jack, Paris, Ont.</b></p><h2><b>You missed one</b></h2><p>Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the &ldquo;Champions&rdquo; issue. However, one very important champion was disappointingly omitted: the West Kelowna Warriors, who won the RBC Cup, the national Jr. A tournament held in Lloydminster, Alta. They defeated heavily favored teams on their way to the title. Imagine the disappointment felt by the Warriors not seeing their logo on your global map of champions.</p><p><b>Allie Phillips, Penticton, B.C.</b></p><h2><b>Goodbye, Gordie</b></h2><p>I was sorry to hear of Gordie Howe&rsquo;s passing, but I have to say it: I hated the guy.</p><p>I hated the guy throughout my childhood because he was a Red Wing, and I was an avid Black Hawks fan. Even as a 10-yearold, I could see what he was and what he was capable of.</p><p>As homers, we saw <i>our</i> guys as the best scorers, tough guys and even intimidators. But our reality was always brought down to earth when Gordie showed up. No matter how tough we thought our players were, Howe seemed to nonchalantly hurt us, sometimes even with goals.</p><p>Howe was a grandmaster of crease play in his own era, despite the tough-as-nail defenders whose sticks were used like lumberjack axes at times. He was simply meaner, more balanced in his boots, and more committed to getting what had to be done, done.</p><p>OK, Gordie, I don&rsquo;t hate you anymore.</p><p>I did love hating you, though. You made it easy.</p><p><b>Bill Placzek, St. Petersburg, FlA.</b><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

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YOUR SAY

<span class="image-inline"><img src="mon2.jpg" title="common" width="21" height="17"></span><p class="dropcap"><span>C</span>algary Flames, no doubt about it. Added Matthew Tkachuk and finally have a credible goalie in Elliott. Should be right back in the playoffs.</p><p><b>&ndash; @NYIJames</b></p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon12.jpg" title="common1" width="17" height="17"></span><p>The N.J. Devils, because Taylor Hall is the kind of player that gets us those seven or eight extra wins, and those wins push us into the playoffs. With adding Ben Lovejoy, who now has Cup experience, as well as Vern Fiddler for good depth, the playoffs are a realistic possibility, and with Cory Schneider in net anything goes.</p><p><b>&ndash; AJ Rubin</b></p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon2.jpg" title="common" width="21" height="17"></span><p>Hands down the Lightning. They re-signed Stamkos (who was the biggest UFA in years), long-termed Andrei Vasilevskiy for a bargain and re-signed Hedman to a big contract. Sometimes the biggest thing about free agency is not losing assets. Tampa did well.</p><p><b>&ndash; @NicholasMarek</b></p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon12.jpg" title="common1" width="17" height="17"></span><p>I&rsquo;m biased, no doubt, but the Oilers definitely improved the most. They got a defenseman in Adam Larsson, who had top-pairing stats last season on an offensively challenged team, they got a hulking Finn in Jesse Puljujarvi, who could be the next superstar in the league, and got Milan Lucic.</p><p><b>&ndash; Mitchell J Skene</b></p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon2.jpg" title="common" width="21" height="17"></span><p>The Panthers. Keith Yandle gives them lethal L-R combo on the PP with Ekblad. Reimer is a perfect backup for Lou, and Jason Demers and Jared McCann will help.</p><p><b>&ndash; @dkeeping</b></p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon12.jpg" title="common1" width="17" height="17"></span><p>Detroit Red Wings. They added a player that was described as &ldquo;invaluable&rdquo; by the Islanders in Frans Nielsen. They moved Datsyuk&rsquo;s contract, and Steve Ott and Thomas Vanek are great buy-low options in that they are low-risk, high-reward. They drafted a D-man (Dennis Cholowski) to start refilling their pipeline. They still need to add an NHL-ready D-man and to trade Jimmy Howard, but it&rsquo;s a great start!</p><p><b>&ndash; Jamie Bennett</b></p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon2.jpg" title="common" width="21" height="17"></span><p>Jets. Adding Patrik Laine alongside Mark Scheifele gives them that pure goal scorer they&rsquo;ve lacked since the move. Big things to come.</p><p><b>&ndash; @DMalles98</b></p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon12.jpg" title="common1" width="17" height="17"></span><p>The Buffalo Sabres. This team added a great scoring winger in Kyle Okposo and another winger on the other side who will be in impact-maker in a season or two in Alex Nylander. They traded away a depth right-handed defenseman for a great left-handed defenseman in Kulikov. All they need to do is get Jimmy Vesey locked up and add another goaltender, in case Robin Lehner gets hurt again, and this team will definitely be a playoff team this season or the next!</p><p><b>&ndash; John Stanton</b></p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon2.jpg" title="common" width="21" height="17"></span><p>Maple Leafs. Got a No. 1 goalie in Frederik Andersen and a No. 1 center in Auston Matthews.</p><p><b>&ndash; @JayVanVeen116</b></p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon12.jpg" title="common1" width="17" height="17"></span><p>Canucks! Sorry, couldn&rsquo;t keep a straight face. But I&rsquo;m going down with the ship.</p><p><b>&ndash; Cam Traviss</b><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

SOAPBOX

<div class="byline">BY MATT LARKIN</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-017/18948-1-eng-US/f0010-012.jpg" title="f0010-01" width="923" height="1042"><figcaption class="caption-body">Desjardins knows coaching has become more than just tapping guys on the shoulder. Being savvy with stats and smart with media are now job requirements. <span class="photo-credit">(MARIANNE HELM/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>F</span>OR UP-TO-THE-MINUTE COVERAGE, VISIT <b><a href="http://THN.com">THN.COM</a></b> 12 INSTIGATOR 13 TRAINING PAIN-O-METER 14 DOWN GOES BROWN 16 GOODS, GEAR, LIFE: ZOMBIES! 18 LIKE A PRO: TRAINING MYTHS</p><p><b>JOHN CHAYKA AND</b> Kyle Dubas have a lot in common. They became high-level executives with professional sports teams in their 20s; they climbed their respective ladders by evaluating talent with advanced statistics; and if they sat down for coffee together, they couldn&rsquo;t compare scars from years playing elitelevel hockey. They represent a new regime of generals with no front-line battle experience.</p><p>When we see the rise of whizkid hirings across the NHL, with Arizona Coyotes GM Chayka and Toronto Maple Leafs assistant GM Dubas being the most significant, it&rsquo;s natural to wonder if it&rsquo;s a fad. The rise of sports management education at the grassroots level, however, suggests Chayka and Dubas are merely the first of many. A generation of deep-thinking sports minds has spawned, and that&rsquo;s why we&rsquo;re seeing courses, conferences and seminars sprout up like crazy, training academic thinkers to follow the sports path.</p><p>Imagine a fresh-faced 22-yearold with a business degree chatting up someone of legendary Boston Bruins GM Harry Sinden&rsquo;s ilk once a week, picking his brain for tips on how to become a better talent evaluator. It would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. Now, it&rsquo;s part of the standard curriculum if you enroll in a program like Sports Management Worldwide. Dr.</p><p>Lynn Lashbrook, an NFL player agent and former athletic director at multiple NCAA schools, founded SMWW as a conference circuit and virtual university. The program covers dozens of sports and, on the hockey end, includes courses called Hockey GM & Scouting and Hockey Analytics. A wannabe GM can learn from Sinden in weekly real-time audio chats. Someone interested in statistics can consult with Peterborough Petes GM Mike Oke.</p><p>Lashbrook believes pro sports are undergoing a &ldquo;democratization of information.&rdquo; Hockey isn&rsquo;t as advanced as baseball or basketball yet, but it&rsquo;s trending that way. &ldquo;Analytics provides another penetration point to become a GM someday,&rdquo; Lashbrook said. &ldquo;Before, it was your letterman jacket. If you didn&rsquo;t play the game, you didn&rsquo;t have the credentials. Now, there&rsquo;s a lot of people coming through the back door.&rdquo;</p><blockquote class="pullQuote"><b>BEFORE, IF YOU DIDN&rsquo;T PLAY THE GAME, YOU DIDN&rsquo;T HAVE THE CREDENTIALS &ndash; Lynn Lashbrook, SMWW founder</b></blockquote><p>The coaching revolution is different. It requires hands-on experience, but the strategic element is evolving. That&rsquo;s reflected at modern coaching conferences. &ldquo;I know everybody thinks it&rsquo;s power play and penalty killing, but lots of times things will come up like player development, relations to the media and using statistics,&rdquo; said Vancouver Canucks coach Willie Desjardins, a regular guest speaker at TeamSnap, a conference advising coaches across every echelon.</p><p>What it means to be a coach is transforming. The next generation of bench bosses must be more media savvy. In the Twitter generation, when every last word can be publicly picked apart, Desjardins champions honesty. That way, he says, you&rsquo;ll never be trapped weeks later for saying something inaccurate.</p><p>Up-and-coming coaches typically embrace analytics, too. Mike Sullivan&rsquo;s Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup with a north-south, speed-game approach, and as more and more teams try to win with the possession game, that philosophy will be drilled into new coaching recruits. &ldquo;As a coach you have to be careful,&rdquo; Desjardins said, &ldquo;because it&rsquo;s one thing to run a system with one team, and then all of a sudden you have different personnel, and the system won&rsquo;t work with different personnel. You always have to adjust what you&rsquo;re doing to your personnel. Just because it&rsquo;s worked for one team it doesn&rsquo;t mean that system will work for you.&rdquo;</p><p>Instead of copycats, we may see customized approaches to analytics as forward-thinking coaches rise up the ranks. Oke is a big proponent of Statstrack, an iPad app created by Sudbury Wolves associate coach and ex-NHL defenseman Drake Berehowsky and his sister Danielle. To them, controlling the puck and suppressing shots matter as much as generating the attempts, and Statstrack can depict how well teams and players do it. &ldquo;I believe just because a player&rsquo;s shooting pucks on a net, that&rsquo;s not telling the whole story,&rdquo; Berehowsky said.</p><p>See the trend? It&rsquo;s information. A lot of it. If there&rsquo;s one takeaway about the next wave of team management and coaching, it&rsquo;s that the times are more inclusive than ever. No philosophy or statistic is unwelcome. The best candidates are judged less on their athleticism or gender. And the brightest young brains, those who never would&rsquo;ve had the opportunity to get involved in hockey in the past, haven&rsquo;t even arrived yet.</p><h2><b>DID YOU EVEN PLAY, BRO?</b></h2><p>Half the cadre of NHL coaches and GMs played the game at its highest level. That&rsquo;s a trend expected to change in the coming years.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0011-016/18941-1-eng-US/f0011-012.jpg" title="f0011-01" width="304" height="1149"></div><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

f0010-01

NEW SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

<div class="byline">BY CHARLIE TELJEUR</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-017/18977-1-eng-US/f0012-012.jpg" title="f0012-01" width="659" height="873"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(HEALY: GRAIG ABEL/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

f0012-01

THE INSTIGATOR

<div class="byline">&#x2013; SAL BARRY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-025/19006-1-eng-US/f0012-022.jpg" title="f0012-02" width="210" height="252"></div><p class="dropcap"><span>D</span>id you know that Wayne Gretzky was a straight-C student in high school? Or that Jean Beliveau&rsquo;s hobbies, circa 1952, were &ldquo;golf & women?&rdquo; In Greg Oliver&rsquo;s <i>Blue Lines, Goal Lines & Bottom Lines: Hockey&rsquo;s Contracts & Historical Documents from the Collection of Allan Stitt</i>, we get a unique look at the hockey history via hundreds of pieces of paperwork.</p><p>The book reproduces invaluable documents, including Gretzky&rsquo;s contract from junior, his 21-year pact with the Oilers from 1979 and, yes, even his report card. Some are funny, such as an exchange between North Stars&rsquo; GM Wren Blair and General Mills Foods, who offered to send a case of cereal to help D-man &lsquo;Moose&rsquo; Vasko lose weight. Others provide a look at the inner workings of the league, such as a three-page rant from the Maple Leafs over inadequate compensation for a player lost to free agency, or a terse note from Glen Sather to Mike Keenan over an owed waiver fee.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0012-02

BLUE LINES, GOAL LINES & BOTTOM LINES

<div class="byline">&#x2013; KEN CAMPBELL</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-035/19035-1-eng-US/f0012-032.jpg" title="f0012-03" width="342" height="411"></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>I</span>F GLENN HEALY</b> wants to escape the public scrutiny that has followed him around for the better part of the past 15 years as a broadcaster, he might want to avoid getting involved in politics.</p><p>But surprisingly, that&rsquo;s one of the career paths Healy is contemplating after being let go as a game analyst for <i>Hockey Night in Canada</i>. &ldquo;There has been interest in the past in getting into the political side of things,&rdquo; Healy told <a href="http://THN.com">thn.com</a> June 27. &ldquo;When (former Canadian finance minister) Jim Flaherty was alive, I was approached about being an MP on a couple of occasions. The next chapter will come.&rdquo;</p><p>Healy&rsquo;s dismissal from HNIC is part of a purge by Rogers that included host George Stroumboulopoulos and six other on-air personalities as well as a number of behind-thescenes workers. The moves come as a result of Rogers sustaining losses on their broadcast deal with the NHL and, says one industry insider, because the decision makers are listening to the social media crowd: &ldquo;You know what this is? This is leadership by Twitter. This is why executives shouldn&rsquo;t be on Twitter.&rdquo;</p><p>Healy said he never allowed the criticism to bother him. And, in reality, it comes with the territory. &ldquo;It tells me they&rsquo;re listening,&rdquo; Healy said. &ldquo;How many times have you turned on a TV and said, &lsquo;What am I watching? I&rsquo;m not even paying attention to it.&rsquo; I never tweeted and was never on Twitter, so for me it was white noise. I can tell you I never, ever, had anyone ever say anything negative to me, on the street, in a restaurant, anywhere. Not one.&rdquo;</p><p>It turns out Healy has three years left on his deal, all of which will be paid in full. He doesn&rsquo;t know what is coming next, but he has time to be picky. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a pretty lucky guy,&rdquo; Healy said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no pity party here. It&rsquo;s just your livelihood. It&rsquo;s not your life.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0012-03

THE PURGE

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-016/19064-1-eng-US/f0013-012.jpg" title="f0013-01" width="675" height="1132"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><i>JUST KILL ME!</i></p><p><i>UNBEARABLE BURN</i></p><p><i>SERIOUSLY SUCKY</i></p><p><i>PAIN-O-METER</i></p><p><b>SHANE DOAN, ARI</b> &ldquo;I hate <b>inchworms</b>. You have to walk yourself out and stretch your hamstrings on the way back in. I hate that exercise. I hate stretching my hamstrings. I&rsquo;m not good at it, so I don&rsquo;t want to do it.&rdquo;</p><span class="photo-credit">(JERSEY+DOAN+HANIFIN: JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES, JONES: DEREK LEUNG/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>&gt;<b>NICK FOLIGNO, CLB</b></p><p>&ldquo;No one really likes to <b>run</b>, but it&rsquo;s so important for your conditioning. A lot of <b>hill runs</b>, too, those are never fun. Those are always a exercises you hate when you see them on the board.&rdquo;</p><p>&gt;<b>VLADIMIR TARASENKO, STL</b></p><p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t <b>run</b>. When I was young, it would drive me crazy. On our AAA team back home, we would run eight to 10 kilometers. At the start, when you know there are eight more kilometers to go&hellip;it&rsquo;s tough. Running is the worst, for sure.&rdquo;</p><p>&gt;<b>BRANDON SAAD, CLB</b></p><p>&ldquo;When you have to do <b>sprints</b>, those are tough days because you&rsquo;re out in the sun. Those are tiring and gruelling days.&rdquo;</p><p>&gt;<b>SETH JONES, CLB</b></p><p>&ldquo;<b>Forearm planks</b>. The program I&rsquo;ve been doing the past few years has had some pretty hefty planks &ndash; two to two-and-ahalf minutes long. They&rsquo;re not fun.&rdquo;</p><p>&gt;<b>JUSTIN FAULK, CAR</b></p><p>&ldquo;<b>Pull-ups</b> are terrible. I hate pull-ups. They&rsquo;re just not fun.&rdquo;</p><p>&gt;<b>BRETT PESCE, CAR</b></p><p>&ldquo;When I work out in the summer, the first month is heavy-load <b>sled pulls</b>&hellip;they&rsquo;re brutal.&rdquo;</p><p>&gt;<b>NOAH HANIFIN, CAR</b></p><p>&ldquo;For summer training, we do a lot of <b>sled work</b>, and it can be really tough. It&rsquo;s pretty strenuous, but it definitely helps for conditioning on the ice.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0013-01

GYM? RATS!

<div class="byline">&#x2013; RYAN KENNEDY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-026/19093-1-eng-US/f0013-022.jpg" title="f0013-02" width="321" height="321"></div><p class="dropcap"><span>W</span>hile tradition dictates that the Maple Leafs never do anything too radical to their jerseys, it is fun to get an update every once in a while. The latest is a throwback to the team&rsquo;s glory days (yes, a long time ago), but with a modern feel.</p><p>First worn by No. 1 pick Auston Matthews at the draft (symbolism!), the new Toronto sweater was widely speculated about, but the super-wide band at the bottom thankfully turned out to be false.</p><p>The crest itself has elements from the 1940s version and mid-1960s version, with some careful updates. The new leaf has 31 points (Maple Leaf Gardens opened in 1931), for example. The 13 veins up top represent the franchise&rsquo;s 13 Stanley Cups.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0013-02

JERSEY HOUND

<div class="byline">&#x2013; Sal Barry of PuckJunk.com</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-035/19122-1-eng-US/f0013-032.jpg" title="f0013-03" width="236" height="330"></div><p class="dropcap"><span>A</span> trainer is a hockey team&rsquo;s &ldquo;first responder&rdquo; when a player is hurt during a game. Trainers also help players rehabilitate from injuries. Despite their relative importance, athletic trainers are seldom, if ever, featured on hockey cards. When they are, they are typically shown standing behind the bench or giving that &ldquo;deer in headlights&rdquo; look for an awkward head shot. However, the Colorado Eagles included a card of their Head Athletic Trainer, Chris Porowski, in their 2006-07 team set. Even better, the card shows Porowski in action, tending to a fallen player on the ice.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0013-03

IN THE CARDS

<div class="byline">BY SEAN MCINDOE</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0014-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-017/19151-1-eng-US/f0014-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(MILWAUKEE: MYLOUPE/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES, CLEVELAND: WILLIAM EDWARDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES, BALTIMORE: ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES, NORFOLK: JOHN GREIM/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES, MAP: ISTOCK, SEATTLE: GEORGE ROSE/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><blockquote class="pullQuote"><b>WHILE IT SOUNDS FAR-FETCHED, THE UNDERDOG BID TO BRING THE NHL TO VIRGINIA HAD PLENTY GOING FOR IT</b></blockquote><p class="dropcap"><b><span>T</span>HE NHL IS</b> expanding to Las Vegas, becoming the first major pro sports team to take up residence in the city. That will no doubt come as a relief to hockey fans in Vegas, since history has shown that proposed new NHL teams have a way of falling through. The expansion era began in 1967 and has seen the league continue to grow ever since. But its history of near-misses dates back even further and includes some cases where a new team seemed to be all but a sure thing.</p><p>So as we welcome the official arrival of Las Vegas to the NHL family, let&rsquo;s look back on some of the times when the league seemed headed to a new home, only to have it evaporate.</p><h2><b>NO. 1</b></h2><h3><b>1952: CLEVELAND</b></h3><p>The NHL&rsquo;s roster of teams remained unchanged for 25 years between 1942 and 1967, a period of time that every fan knows as The Original Six era. Those six teams serve as the NHL&rsquo;s foundation to this day, with a celebrated history and tradition that the league embraces and promotes. Which may be why it&rsquo;s been all but forgotten that at one point, that group was supposed to become an Original Seven.</p><p>Back in the early 1950s, professional hockey was booming in Ohio thanks to the American League&rsquo;s Cleveland Barons. By 1952, the team had set its sights on a move to the NHL, which was open to adding a seventh team. The Barons&rsquo; application for membership was received, debated and formally accepted by the league&rsquo;s board of governors.</p><p>But that approval came with a catch: The Barons had to secure funding, an amount later reported to be in the $500,000 range. They failed to do so, and the deal fell apart. Barons attendance eventually faltered, and the team fell on hard times as the years went by, eventually moving to Jacksonville in 1973.</p><p>The NHL did eventually come to Cleveland, relocating the California Golden Seals in 1976 and reviving the Barons name. That move ended in ruin, with the franchise lasting just two years. The team folded in 1978, making it the last franchise in North American major pro sports to do so.</p><h2>NO. 2</h2><h3><b>1967: BALTIMORE</b></h3><p>Most fans know the details of the 1967 expansion that ended the Original Six era, doubling the league to 12 teams and welcoming Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Minnesota and Oakland. Despite some early bumps in the road, including a ridiculous format that put all the rookie teams in the same division, the 1967 expansion was reasonably successful. Two franchises &ndash; the Seals and North Stars &ndash; eventually relocated, but the NHL believed in those markets and returned to both with stronger ownership.</p><p>But while the NHL was settling on those six cities, they were also working on a backup plan. And wisely so &ndash; it was far from certain all six teams would actually launch. The Blues in particular were dicey; Chicago&rsquo;s ownership group insisted on this geographical rival, and St. Louis was conditionally awarded a team despite the absence of a confirmed bidder.</p><p>And so the NHL hedged its bets by announcing a Plan B, and the &lsquo;B&rsquo; stood for Baltimore. The city was a finalist, and while the bid was temporarily rejected, the league determined that if St. Louis or any other team failed to get off the ground, Baltimore would be the replacement.</p><p>That never happened, with the league eventually finding an ownership group for what became the Blues, and the rest of the teams meeting their obligations in time for the 1967-68 season. Baltimore was mentioned as a candidate for the 1970 and 1972 expansions, but didn&rsquo;t get a team, and the birth of the Washington Capitals in 1974 essentially spelled the end of the city&rsquo;s chances of joining the NHL.</p><h2><b>NO. 3</b></h2><h3><b>1974: SEATTLE</b></h3><p>That 1974 expansion wasn&rsquo;t exactly the NHL&rsquo;s most successful. The Capitals were profoundly bad for years, while the Kansas City Scouts only lasted two years before moving to Colorado and later New Jersey. But as those two teams were getting set to make their debut, the league was busy rounding out its expansion roadmap. Next stop: Seattle.</p><p>The NHL even made a formal announcement in June of 1974, with the new team set to begin play in 1976. But the ownership situation was complicated, involving the Seattle Totems of the Western League, who were partly owned by the Vancouver Canucks. That left potential expansion owner Vince Abbey with several financial hurdles to clear prior to icing a team. He failed to do so, and the NHL rescinded the expansion offer in 1975. Abbey subsequently sued the league &ndash; and lost.</p><p>The NHL&rsquo;s dance with the Northwest has continued ever since. Seattle was mentioned as a landing spot for the Seals in 1976 and for the Capitals in 1982, and the league was rumored to be eyeing Tacoma for much of the early &rsquo;80s. Seattle also factored prominently in virtually all of the league&rsquo;s expansion adventures from 1990 right through to today&rsquo;s, with reports the NHL had been hoping to receive a bid to pair with Las Vegas. The city has a history with hockey, including America&rsquo;s first Stanley Cup win in 1917, but as of today it remains the league&rsquo;s longest running expansion bridesmaid.</p><h2><b>NO. 4</b></h2><h3><b>1992: MILWAUKEE</b></h3><p>After taking the 1980s off, the NHL&rsquo;s expansion machine roared back to life in the early &rsquo;90s, with its sights set on adding teams in time for the 1992-93 season. And in addition to the usual suspects such as Seattle, Hamilton and Houston, one city emerged as an early favorite, bordering on a sure thing: Milwaukee.</p><p>The bid seemed to check all of the NHL&rsquo;s boxes. The city had a state-of-theart building in the Bradley Center, which they would have shared with the NBA&rsquo;s Bucks. They&rsquo;d proven they would support pro hockey, hosting one of the IHL&rsquo;s most successful franchises for years. And there was a solid ownership group in place, led by Lloyd Petit.</p><p>But in October 1990, Petit&rsquo;s group stunned the NHL by dropping out of the process, citing concerns with the $50-million fee and the league&rsquo;s insistence on an expansion-draft format that would virtually ensure new teams would struggle to get off the ground.</p><p>Milwaukee remained a top candidate for NHL expansion for several years, based largely on the strength of its arena. But that advantage faded over time, as did the city&rsquo;s place in the league&rsquo;s future &ndash; it wasn&rsquo;t a serious player when the NHL went back to the expansion well in the late-90s. Despite reports Milwaukee could be a contender during the most recent round, a bid never gained steam.</p><h2><b>NO. 5</b></h2><h3><b>1997: NORFOLK</b></h3><p>This may be the strangest bid on the list, which is why we&rsquo;re willing to stretch the definition of &ldquo;near miss&rdquo; just a little bit to include it.</p><p>While it sounds far-fetched in hindsight, the underdog bid to bring the NHL to Virginia had plenty going for it, including a strong ownership group led by Charlotte Hornets owner George Shinn and plans for a new arena. And while the area didn&rsquo;t have much history of supporting major pro sports franchises, it had a reasonably successful ECHL club in the Hampton Roads Admirals.</p><p>Most memorably, they already had a name (the Rhinos), a color scheme (purple and teal were prominently involved) and a rumored logo. The Hampton Roads Rhinos even had a mascot &ndash; a rhino named (what else?) Rhockey. The entire package was presented to the NHL, reportedly leaving many in the league impressed with Shinn&rsquo;s vision.</p><p>Sadly, the NHL didn&rsquo;t feel like playing along with the fun, shutting down Shinn&rsquo;s bid in February of 1997. There was occasional talk of reviving attempts at landing a big-league team in subsequent years, but they never got off the ground.</p><p>Sadly, at this time, it seems as if the odds of Rhockey the purple and teal rhinoceros ever skating onto an NHL rink are slim.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0014-01

FIVE EXPANSION CITIES

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-017/19201-1-eng-US/f0016-012.jpg" title="f0016-01" width="337" height="336"></div><h2><b>&lsquo;PHIL&rsquo; UP YOUR BACKYARD</b></h2><p><b>WHAT STARTED OUT</b> as a cheeky drawing of a &ldquo;Phil Kessel chair&rdquo; has now become a go-to outdoor chair for fans.</p><p>My Custom Sports Chair produces Adirondack chairs customized with player names, numbers and team colors. &ldquo;The fans love them and so do the players,&rdquo; said Matt Ruberto, the company&rsquo;s marketing director. &ldquo;The chairs are the highest quality you can find, as well as 100 percent customizable. We offer all 30 NHL teams, every CFL team, some NCAA teams, Molson Canadian licensing, and we&rsquo;re working on NFL licensing right now.&rdquo;</p><p>The chairs, which are made in Canada from high-density polyethylene, weigh 56 pounds and can be folded for easier storage. They&rsquo;re also made out of 95 percent recycled materials. <i>(<a href="http://mycustomsportschair.com">mycustomsportschair.com</a>)</i> &ndash; MO CRANKER</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-024/19194-1-eng-US/f0016-022.jpg" title="f0016-02" width="423" height="348"></div><h2><b>STICK IT TO THE BBQ</b></h2><p><b>SUMMER BARBEQUING WOULDN&rsquo;</b> be as good without that little touch of hockey.</p><p>Hat Trick BBQ Canada, based in Burlington, Ont., has started making BBQ accessories out of hockey sticks. Each set includes a pair of tongs, a spatula and your choice of a brush and/or fork. The sticks, which are game used, come from teams in the OHL, NHL and Ontario University Athletics and would be thrown out if they weren&rsquo;t repurposed. According to Hat Trick&rsquo;s website, approximately 40,000 sticks are broken each season from the NHL, OHL, WHL and QMJHL combined, and they are &ldquo;trying to lessen the amount that goes into landfill and make a cool product that hockey fans love.&rdquo;</p><p>The company also converts old sticks into ice scrapers, bottle openers and golf brushes. <i>(<a href="http://hattrickbbq.ca">hattrickbbq.ca</a>)</i> &ndash; EMMA MASON</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-033/19187-1-eng-US/f0016-032.jpg" title="f0016-03" width="334" height="536"></div><h2><b>IS YOUR TEAM DEAD?</b></h2><p><b>HAVE YOU EVER</b> wanted to represent your favorite team and scare your neighbors &ndash; and maybe some pesky squirrels &ndash; at the same time? If so, the zombie gnome is the perfect addition of disgusting cuteness to your garden. With tattered pants and hockey stick in hand, each hand-painted figure stands eight inches tall and is adorned with the NHL team logo of your choosing. And if you prefer your living dead inside, there&rsquo;s also a selection of zombie bobbleheads and zombie piggybanks. <i>(<a href="http://forevercollectables.com">forevercollectables.com</a>)</i> &ndash; EMMA MASON</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-043/19180-1-eng-US/f0016-042.jpg" title="f0016-04" width="336" height="230"></div><h2><b>BRINGING COMFORT TO THE MASSES</b></h2><p><b>CUSTOM SKATES ARE</b> one of the luxuries of being an elite hockey player, but the technology may be in place to bring custom skates to the masses in the future.</p><p>CCM for example, now has 3-D foot scanners that it uses to make custom skates for pros. Length, width, arch height and instep can all be pinpointed with the scanner, and that can help the manufacturer determine if any extra cushioning is needed. &ldquo;We really get a tool to fit the player better,&rdquo; said CCM&rsquo;s Philippe Lapierre. &ldquo;It can even go as far as a custom last.&rdquo;</p><p>The new CCM Super Tacks will also feature a one-piece boot, which offers durability and fit advantages over the traditional two-piece skate. While public customization of these skates isn&rsquo;t here yet, it&rsquo;s definitely on the company&rsquo;s radar. &ndash; RYAN KENNEDY<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0016-01

GOODS | GEAR | LIFE

<div class="byline">BY JOEL WARD</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0017-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-015/19230-1-eng-US/f0017-012.jpg"></div><h2><b>HELMET</b></h2><h3><b>CCM (custom)</b></h3><p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s comfy. I took a shot off the head from Ilya Kovalchuk a few years ago, and I thought I was going to be hospitalized, but this helmet saved my life, and I said, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll never change.&rsquo; &rdquo;</p><h2><b>SHOULDER PADS</b></h2><h3><b>CCM U+ CRA ZY LIGHT</b></h3><p>&ldquo;Super light. I&rsquo;m a big fan of lightness. Comfy.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>ELBOW PADS</b></h2><h3><b>CCM U+ CRA ZY LIGHT</b></h3><p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re just light and comfy. I&rsquo;ve had no problems with them. I like to feel light. I tend to think I&rsquo;m a heavy guy, so the less weight the better.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>GLOVES</b></h2><h3><b>CCM PRO (custom)</b></h3><p>&ldquo;This ia a pair of gloves I had when I was playing in the minors, and I&rsquo;ve just kind of stuck with them. They&rsquo;ve changed the design a little bit over the years, but for the most part I&rsquo;m pretty Plain Jane.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>STICK</b></h2><h3><b>CCM RIBCORE 40K</b></h3><p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been using it for many years. There&rsquo;s a lot of familiarity and a real comfort level. I&rsquo;m just used to the kick point on it, so it makes it easier for me to hold onto it.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>SHIN PADS</b></h2><h3><b>JOFA 6070</b></h3><p>&ldquo;These are a pretty old model. I try to keep my gear as long as I can. I might have to replace the shells the odd time after a blocked shot, but for the most part, I hang onto them.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>SKATES</b></h2><h3><b>CCM U+ CRA ZY LIGHT</b></h3><p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re a little older, and they&rsquo;ve been trying to force me out of them. They don&rsquo;t make them anymore. I&rsquo;ve been using these since I started my pro career and I like them.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0017-01

EQUIPPED

<div class="byline">BY JARED CLINTON</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-017/19259-1-eng-US/f0018-012.jpg" title="f0018-01" width="603" height="934"><figcaption class="caption-body">For elite athletes like Perry, training is more than sweat. It&rsquo;s about cultivating good habits and economy of movement. <span class="photo-credit">(GRAIG ABEL/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>S</span>PT PERFORMANCE&rsquo;</b> Spero Mantzavrakos has worked with Joe Thornton, Corey Perry, Jeff Carter and Nazem Kadri, so suffice it to say he knows a thing or two about training high-performance athletes. But that doesn&rsquo;t mean coaches and GMs don&rsquo;t approach him with some bizarre ideas.</p><p>One of the most common is the misconception &ndash; the myth &ndash; that an hour of high-intensity training for a high-performance athlete should be the limit. The fear is that anything more could do more harm than good.</p><p>Over-training happens, but 60 minutes shouldn&rsquo;t be the set limit or even necessarily the guideline. Players who&rsquo;ve gone through the rigors of a season need at least half an hour each session to simply prepare to train. Add in proper technique and rest times and any worthwhile training is going to exceed an hour.</p><p>Mantzavrakos understands why the time-limit myth perpetuates, however. &ldquo;I believe the concerns stem from past experiences with practitioners who execute long, intense, military-style workouts,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Or trainers who think it&rsquo;s cool to see the athlete puke during a session.&rdquo;</p><p>SK8ON&rsquo;s Jari Byrski can&rsquo;t understand the mentality that a good on-ice workout has to mean a player is left gasping for air. Byrski said in his decades of training players, he&rsquo;s come across a number of parents who want to see their children sweating profusely following an on-ice workout.</p><p>When it comes to skating, sweat can mean a player is working hard, but it doesn&rsquo;t necessarily mean it&rsquo;s doing the player any good. The goal is efficiency of movement, which is the building block for a strong skater and lends itself to a more powerful stride. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s imperative that we pay more attention to the details to give the body the best chance to adopt something that will be more efficient,&rdquo; Byrski said.</p><p>More than any other area, nutrition in training is rife with myths. Nutritionist Pearle Nerenberg said gluten avoidance has become an issue, because only one to three percent of North Americans actually need to avoid the wheat protein. But worse yet may be the labelling of foods as good or bad for you. It&rsquo;s more nuanced than that, Nerenberg said.</p><blockquote class="pullQuote"><b>IT&rsquo;S IMPERATIVE THAT WE PAY MORE ATTENTION TO THE DETAILS &ndash; Jari Byrski, skills trainer</b></blockquote><p>For instance, recent research has shown proteins in milk can help athletes recover from exercise, but it may leave some restless or disrupt sleep. Athletes need to understand their bodies, educate themselves and know what they need at what times for their specific build. &ldquo;If the food is edible, it&rsquo;s not poison,&rdquo; Nerenberg said. &ldquo;If your body&rsquo;s digestive system and immune system accepts the food, and also within the food there&rsquo;s components your body needs, then it could be a perfect fit for you.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0018-01

LIGHTEN LIMITS, BUT NO PUKING

<div class="byline">&#x2013; WITH RYAN KENNEDY</div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-017/19288-1-eng-US/f0019-012.jpg" title="f0019-01" width="138" height="162"><figcaption class="caption-body" style="width: 138px"><span class="photo-credit">(FOLIGNO: ANDRE RINGUETTE/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES, BROWN: JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>A</span>ll year long, I knew the draft was coming, but I didn&rsquo;t look at the rankings. Then, with just a couple days left, I found myself sitting on the couch, bored. I told myself I&rsquo;d look at one list, but that soon turned into 20 rankings and I was just killing myself. It was horrible.</p><p>Fortunately, I have a dad who knows exactly what I was going through, since he was drafted way back in 1984, by the Quebec Nordiques. He told me not to read into any of the hype; whatever happens, happens. (Brown ended up being drafted 11th overall by the Ottawa Senators.)</p><p>I actually know my dad more as a coach than I do as a player. Jeff Brown the player retired in 1998, the year I was born. We had old VHS tapes around the house, and I still remember watching him thread a pass up to Pavel Bure to spring the &lsquo;Russian Rocket&rsquo; for a breakaway against Calgary. That was a Game 7, double-OT-winner for the Canucks, and watching that clip lit the fire in my belly. I wanted to be an NHLer, too.</p><p>Growing up in St. Louis, my dad coached my team, which had several tremendous talents that wound up getting drafted, like Clayton Keller and Matthew Tkachuk. My dad took pride in developing that group. It was incredible that five kids in St. Louis ended up getting taken in the first round. How many other cities have ever done that?</p><p>For all the help my dad gave me growing up, now it&rsquo;s his job to stop me. See, I play in the OHL for Windsor, and he&rsquo;s the bench boss for the Ottawa 67&rsquo;s. He always jokes that when we play each other, he wants to win 4-3&hellip; but that I get a hat trick.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p></div>

f0019-01

WHAT IT’S LIKE...

<div class="byline">&#x2013; WITH MATT LARKIN</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-025/19331-1-eng-US/f0019-022.jpg" title="f0019-02" width="537" height="489"></div><p><b>Why do you wear No. 71?</b></p><p>It was given to me when I first got to camp with the Ottawa Senators. The trainers thought it would be funny, because that&rsquo;s what number my dad (Mike Foligno) wore. I don&rsquo;t think they realized I was just was just happy to be there, so I didn&rsquo;t care what number I was going to wear.</p><p><b>Whom do you model your game after?</b></p><p>I don&rsquo;t know if I&rsquo;ll ever be able to model my game after him, but Peter Forsberg. Besides my dad, he was my idol growing up. He was a guy I was lucky enough to get to know a little bit when my dad was coaching in Colorado, too. He was an outstanding player in terms of how physically he played the game and how good he was, too. He was someone I looked up to big-time.</p><p><b>Your &ldquo;welcome to the NHL&rdquo; moment?</b></p><p>Andy Sutton, big, hulking defenseman, hit me when I cut across the middle, and my stick ended up going about four feet into the rafters, and I went about four feet the other way. I was like, &ldquo;This better be that last time I get hit like that.&rdquo;</p><p><b>What&rsquo;s your strangest fan interaction?</b></p><p>I do this thing with Sergei Bobrovsky where we hug at the end of games. It&rsquo;s turned into a pretty big thing in Columbus. And I just find it weird when grown men ask me to hug them like Bob. It makes for an awkward conversation when they&rsquo;re like, &ldquo;Can you just give me the Bobrovsky hug?&rdquo; and I&rsquo;m like, &ldquo;Dude, that&rsquo;s really weird. Why would you want that?&rdquo; That one always bugs me a little bit, but it&rsquo;s great that they love the hugs so much. It makes it pretty comical.</p><p>READ AN EXPANDED VERSION OF THIS Q&A AT <b><a href="http://THN.COM/RAPIDFIRE">THN.COM/RAPIDFIRE</a></b></p><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-034/19324-1-eng-US/f0019-032.jpg" title="f0019-03" width="98" height="88"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2><b>CHALK TALK</b></h2><h3><b>QUICK FEET &ndash; PASS-OFF-WALL DRILL</b></h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-043/19317-1-eng-US/f0019-042.jpg" title="f0019-04" width="310" height="326"></div><p>Use the boards, and your creativity, in this puck-possession exercise</p><p>Pucks at blueline, players line up towards corner.</p><p>&gt; Skate into neutral zone, turn towards boards, pass puck off of boards then pick it up and attack blue line with speed.</p><p>&gt; Approach obstacle, miss the puck intentionally, let it slide by obstacle, and pick it up on the other side.</p><p><b>KEY TEACHING POINTS</b></p><p><b>+</b> Head or shoulder fake, then slide stick off puck or over puck to create deception</p><p>SEE A VIDEO OF THIS WORKOUT ON THE <b>SAMSUNG DRILL HUB</b> AT <a href="http://hockeycanada.ca">HOCKEYCANADA.CA</a><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0019-02

RAPID FIRE

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-052/19360-1-eng-US/f0019-052.jpg" title="f0019-05" width="263" height="211"></div><p class="dropcap"><span>P</span>earle Nerenberg, author of <i>The Nutrition Edge for Hockey Performance,</i> said her &ldquo;Performance Lasagna&rdquo; has been a staple for the CWHL&rsquo;s Les Canadiennes de Montreal for the past two seasons. &ldquo;They are eating better than many NHLers when it comes to getting a good recovery meal after a game that ends late,&rdquo; Nerenberg said.</p><h2><b>INGREDIENTS</b></h2><p>14-20 lasagna noodles</p><p>550 g ricotta</p><p>140 g baby spinach</p><p>1 cup (260 g) white beans</p><p>100 g shredded mozzarella</p><p>1 butternut squash, oven-baked</p><p>3 tbsp olive oil</p><p>1 cup fresh basil</p><p>&frac14; tsp nutmeg</p><p>1 tsp salt</p><p>&frac12; tsp pepper</p><p>3 tbsp canola oil</p><h2><b>PREPARATION</b></h2><p>Cut the squash in half lengthwise, remove the seeds and place each halve in a bowl, partially covered, then cook in the microwave on high about eight minutes for each half. Let cool and carve out the pulp. Combine squash, white beans, olive oil, salt and pepper in a food processor and puree until smooth. Set aside.</p><p>Combine ricotta, spinach, half the basil and the other seasonings in large bowl. Mix well.</p><p>Generously coat a six-quart or larger slow cooker with canola oil. Arrange three noodles as the base of the lasagna in the slow cooker. Spread half of the squash mixture in the slow cooker. Arrange three noodles over the sauce, overlapping them slightly and breaking into pieces to cover as much of the sauce as possible. Spread the ricotta mixture over the noodles and firmly pat down, then arrange three more noodles over the ricotta mixture. Spoon on remaining squash mixture. Finish with three more noodles and sprinkle with mozzarella. Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook on high for three to four hours. Turn off the slow cooker and sprinkle the remaining basil on the lasagna. Serve.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0019-05

PERFORMANCE LASAGNA

<div class="byline">BY STEVE CARP</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0020-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-015/19410-1-eng-US/f0020-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">The closest Las Vegas has come to NHL hockey has been pre-season games with the Kings. In 2016-17, it&rsquo;ll finally have a team to call its own.</figcaption></div><p><b>THREE YEARS AGO,</b> Las Vegas in the NHL had more than a hint of absurdity to it. Vegas? Hockey? Gambling? Really?</p><p>The city&rsquo;s ECHL team, the Wranglers, was on the verge of eviction from its home at Orleans Arena, and if an ECHL team didn&rsquo;t have a place to play, how could an NHL team fare better?</p><p>But as quickly as teams transition from defense to offense in 3-on-3 overtime, Las Vegas changed. An arena project on the Strip materialized and went beyond the concept stage. A very wealthy man, billionaire businessman Bill Foley, expressed interest in owning an NHL team. The area&rsquo;s population was surging past two million. And the economy, which absorbed a dramatic hit during the Great Recession of 2008-09, showed signs of bouncing back.</p><p>In less than three years, Las Vegas went from being known for casinos, shows, fancy restaurants and big fights to being a major league city. It was an historic moment when NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announced June 22 the league was expanding to Las Vegas at a record cost of $500 million. For the first time, residents had a major league professional franchise to call their own. No longer would they have to wear some other team&rsquo;s jersey whenever they attended a hockey game. Kids who never had a team to root for would now have one they could call their own. The team name won&rsquo;t be announced until September or October, but, rest assured, whatever it&rsquo;s called, it&rsquo;ll sell a lot of jerseys, hats and T-shirts.</p><h2><b>LONG TIME COMING</b></h2><p>Las Vegas&rsquo; relationship with the NHL goes back to the 1991 pre-season when Caesars Palace hosted an outdoor game Sept. 27 between the Los Angeles Kings and the New York Rangers. Because there were no dressing room facilities, players had to suit up in conference rooms and tromp through the casino out to the makeshift rink. The game was nearly cancelled after the tarp providing shade for the ice accidentally fell onto the surface, causing the ice to melt. Only some quick thinking saved the ice and the game. The Kings won 5-2, and it will always be remembered for the grasshoppers that thought the playing surface was a respite from the heat only to meet an untimely death from the blades of players from both teams as the skaters went up and down the ice.</p><p>Later in the decade, the Kings began making an annual call on Las Vegas, playing a pre-season game inside the MGM Grand Garden, which seated just fewer than 12,000. The annual affair quickly became a mustsee event, as fans from southern California joined the Las Vegas hockey crowd to pack the Grand Garden.</p><p>In 1999, only months after becoming Las Vegas&rsquo; mayor, Oscar Goodman visited Bettman at his Manhattan office. The two talked for an hour, and Bettman informed Goodman that for Las Vegas even to be considered for expansion, it would need an arena, local ownership and a population base that could support an NHL team. He also had concerns about legalized betting on NHL games in the Vegas sports books. Because the city didn&rsquo;t meet any of the criteria he laid out, Bettman didn&rsquo;t worry about gambling. After all, Vegas wasn&rsquo;t ready for the big leagues and everyone knew it.</p><blockquote class="pullQuote"><b>WE&rsquo;RE GOING TO HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SELECT SOME VERY GOOD PLAYERS. WE&rsquo;RE ALSO GOING TO DRAFT NO LOWER THAN SIXTH IN THE ENTRY DRAFT. PLUS, WE&rsquo;RE GOING TO PURSUE FREE AGENTS &ndash; Bill Foley</b></blockquote><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-017/19403-1-eng-US/f0022-012.jpg" title="f0022-01" width="92" height="72"><figcaption class="caption-body" style="width: 92px"><span class="photo-credit">(LEADWAY GLOBAL LLC/NOUNPROJECT)</span></figcaption></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2><b>THE PERFECT STORM</b></h2><p>As years went by, things changed and new questions emerged. Could a city so dependent on tourism support a major league sports team on its own? Was Foley an owner the NHL would want to associate with? Would the arena get built?</p><p>The litmus test came Feb. 10, 2015. With Bettman in attendance, Foley launched a season ticket drive to measure the city&rsquo;s temperature. The goal was 10,000 deposits for a team that did not exist, playing in an arena under construction, yet to open. That day, 5,000 people placed deposits of $150-$900 to reserve seats.</p><p>By March 23, Foley had reached his goal of 10,000. By Feb. 8, 2016, the number had grown to 14,000. And that wasn&rsquo;t considering the tickets purchased by hotels and casinos. Those entities snatched up the 44 suites and the 1,600 to 2,000 club seats in what is now called T-Mobile Arena. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t overstate how important that was,&rdquo; Bettman said of the ticket drive.</p><p>Within hours of the June 22 announcement that the city joined the NHL, sales surpassed 15,000 and approached 16,000.</p><p>With 2.1 million people living in southern Nevada, an NHL-ready arena that seats 17,500 and an ownership with deep pockets willing to pay $500 million to join the NHL as its 31st team, everything came together at the perfect time.</p><h2><b>WILL IT WORK?</b></h2><p>Las Vegas has a reputation for supporting winners and having little tolerance for losers, even though the city was built with billions of dollars lost by those at the slot machines and blackjack and craps tables.</p><p>UNLV, the closest Las Vegas has had to a big-time sports team until now, plays to packed houses when its basketball team wins. When Jerry Tarkanian&rsquo;s Runnin&rsquo; Rebels captured the NCAA basketball championship in 1990, they held a parade beginning downtown, travelled down the Strip and finished at the campus&rsquo; Thomas & Mack Center. Last season, with an underachieving team and its coach fired in mid-January, attendance plummeted to its lowest since the mid-1990s with crowds around 4,000.</p><p>The city&rsquo;s previous two hockey teams had small but loyal fan bases. The Thunder, which played from 1993 to 1999 in the International League, averaged 8,000 its first year before dropping to 5,000 in its final season, while the Wranglers, who played in the ECHL from 2003 to 2014, averaged 5,500 in their third season and around 4,600 in their last year.</p><p>Those numbers wouldn&rsquo;t suffice in the NHL. But Foley believes his team can succeed quickly thanks to the rules for next June&rsquo;s NHL expansion draft. Teams can only protect one goaltender, three defensemen and seven forwards or one goalie and eight skaters. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to have the opportunity to select some very good players,&rdquo; Foley said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re also going to draft no lower than sixth in the entry draft. Plus, we&rsquo;re going to pursue free agents.&rdquo; Las Vegas will start with a fresh salary cap, meaning no bad contracts to absorb and plenty of money to attract free agents.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-014/19396-1-eng-US/f0023-012.jpg" title="f0023-01" width="922" height="548"><figcaption class="caption-body">LET &rsquo;S TAKE THIS TO THE STRIP Nevada&rsquo;s Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak and Las Vegas owner Bill Foley were in a celebratory mood at the NHL Awards after their city got its long-coveted first major pro league franchise.<span class="photo-credit">(PREVIOUS: ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IM AGES+ISTOCK, BRUCE BENNETT/GETTY IM AGES)</span></figcaption></div><h2><b>FOLEY&rsquo;S VISION</b></h2><p>Foley already has a vision for how he wants his team to look and play. &ldquo;I want us to be a fast-skating team, a tough team, a team that works hard every night and never backs down,&rdquo; he said.</p><p>To build that team, he needs a strong hockey staff. That means bringing in a GM, hiring scouts, finding someone who understands the salary cap, employing an analytics expert and tabbing the right coach and assistants who fit the model.</p><p>The GM search is under way. Foley hopes to have his man by Aug. 1. He also wants his scouting staff hired and on the road working soon. &ldquo;The coach can wait,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The GM and the scouts are the priority.&rdquo;</p><p>Foley plans to take an active role with the team. Not like George Steinbrenner, but more like the late Ed Snider, who loved his Philadelphia Flyers and made sure the team always had the necessities to win.</p><p>Foley has a practice facility planned for construction, 20 minutes from McCarran International Airport and 25 minutes from T-Mobile Arena, in the Summerlin area, northwest of the Strip. The 105,000 squarefoot facility will have two sheets of ice, an NHL-quality dressing room, offices for coaches, sports medicine and strength and conditioning areas, a players&rsquo; lounge and video and meeting rooms. The team&rsquo;s offices will be headquartered on the building&rsquo;s second floor.</p><p>If you&rsquo;re a free agent and winning the Stanley Cup is not an immediate priority, Las Vegas might be an attractive destination. Not only is the weather great during hockey season, there&rsquo;s no state income tax in Nevada and several of the neighborhoods near the team&rsquo;s proposed headquarters have some of the best schools in the state, along with churches, shopping and health care facilities. &ldquo;When players see the city away from the Strip and what we&rsquo;ll have to offer, they&rsquo;ll want to play here,&rdquo; Foley said.</p><p>Calgary Flames defenseman Deryk Engelland knows a thing or two about Las Vegas. He played for the Wranglers from 2003 to 2005 before graduating to the NHL and still owns a home in Sin City. &ldquo;Living in Vegas, we knew where not to go and how to get our rest,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;When other teams came here, sometimes they didn&rsquo;t always focus 100 percent on hockey, and we felt like we had an advantage in that regard. We had a good group of guys, and the fans were great to us. I thought it was a great place to play, and that&rsquo;s why I think it&rsquo;ll work there. There are a lot of people in Vegas who know hockey.&rdquo;</p><p>But like other non-traditional markets, the team will need to educate a segment of the population. &ldquo;The key is getting out in the community and selling the sport,&rdquo; Engelland said. &ldquo;If they do that, they&rsquo;ll be successful.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>A SURE BET?</b></h2><p>While legalized sports gambling has remained part of Las Vegas&rsquo; culture for decades, hockey betting sits at the bottom of the annual handle.</p><p>Of the $4.2 billion legally bet in Nevada sports books in 2015, only $1.66 million (about two percent) was on the NHL. And with casinos all over North America, the gambling issue isn&rsquo;t as significant as it was back in 1999 when Bettman met with Goodman.</p><p>Bettman doesn&rsquo;t want fans walking into T-Mobile Arena and placing bets on the night&rsquo;s game, but he need not worry. T-Mobile sits between two casinos, but there&rsquo;s no sports book in the arena. If someone wishes to bet, they can stop at one of the many sports books on the Strip or simply click an app on their phone through an account with a Nevada book.</p><p>When Las Vegas submitted its application last July, the gambling issue never emerged. The local sports books informed the NHL that the books are always on the lookout for any improper activities. If a game suddenly saw unusual one-sided action, the books would contact the league as well as the FBI or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and they would remove the game from the board.</p><p>But that hasn&rsquo;t happened with an NHL game and don&rsquo;t expect that to change now that the city has its own team. Look for the Las Vegas team to appear on the betting boards, and some books are already taking action on the team even though their inaugural season is a year away.</p><p>The Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook lists Las Vegas a 100-1 to win the 2018 Stanley Cup. Station Casinos has a line up for opening night with the visiting team a minus-150 favorite along with an over-under bet on how many points (72.5) Las Vegas will finish with in 2017-18.</p><h2><b>BETTMAN&rsquo;S LEGACY</b></h2><p>By placing another team in a non-traditional hockey market, Bettman is betting Las Vegas will turn out like Anaheim or San Jose or Tampa Bay, not Arizona.</p><p>How big of a gamble? The NHL is the first major professional sports league to bring a franchise to Las Vegas. There are discussions to move the Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas, pending resolution on building a 65,000-seat domed stadium. But that process hit a snag over financing and the division of the final costs. Plus, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell seems to prefer the Raiders remaining in Oakland rather than relocating to Vegas.</p><p>Foley reaps the rewards of being first to line up corporate sponsors. He has already begun negotiating contracts. By being first, he has the opportunity to establish long-term relationships with local businesses, which will bring in millions of dollars and a chance to generate a profit.</p><p>He also has a fair lease with T-Mobile Arena. That was important to other NHL owners, who don&rsquo;t want to have to prop up another failing franchise after a few years. Foley earns revenue from the suites, signage and obviously merchandise. He plans to position a team store at the airport along with one at the arena and the team&rsquo;s practice facility. Las Vegas has 41 million visitors annually, 43 percent of whom come through Mc-Carran. Foley wants many of those 41 million to board their flight back home having purchased a team jersey, hat or shirt.</p><p>All three California teams made the playoffs this past season, and San Jose made it to the Stanley Cup final. That gives Bettman confidence that Las Vegas, assuming it hires the right hockey people, can achieve that kind of success sooner than later.</p><h2><b>A UNIQUE TOWN</b></h2><p>There&rsquo;s no city in the NHL like Vegas. It&rsquo;s a 24-hour town where anything you can want is available at any time. And while that might be attractive, it&rsquo;s not without its challenges for a pro sports team.</p><p>At any given time, a portion of the city&rsquo;s population is working in the hotels and casinos. Critics use it as Exhibit A why pro sports won&rsquo;t work. However, it hasn&rsquo;t stopped UNLV from drawing good crowds, and the same should hold true for the NHL. Games beginning 7 p.m. will still give the swing shift people enough time to arrive at work by midnight. And with the area&rsquo;s population at 2.1 million, there are more people to take the place of those whose jobs prevent them from going.</p><blockquote class="pullQuote"><b>I THOUGHT IT WAS A GREAT PLACE TO PLAY, AND THAT&rsquo;S WHY I THINK IT&rsquo;LL WORK THERE. THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE IN VEGAS WHO KNOW HOCKEY &ndash;</b> Deryk Engelland</blockquote><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0024-016/19389-1-eng-US/f0024-012.jpg" title="f0024-01" width="92" height="73"><figcaption class="caption-body" style="width: 92px"><span class="photo-credit">(LEADWAY GLOBAL LLC/NOUNPROJECT)</span></figcaption></div><p>Weekend afternoon games are an option that worked well with the Wranglers and the Thunder. But the NHL team shouldn&rsquo;t need some of the zany promotions the minor league teams had, such as Bikini Night, Dick Cheney Hunting Vest Night or a midnight hockey game. Las Vegas has grown up some since the Thunder and Wranglers tried those stunts to get people to come out.</p><p>Still, it is Vegas, the entertainment capital of the world. Expect fireworks, lasers and a DJ pumping up the crowd with special musical mixes on game night.</p><p>And look for the playing surface to exceed expectations. There&rsquo;s a dehumidifying system in T-Mobile Arena to combat ice&rsquo;s worst enemy. And while it can be in the triple digits in early October, T-Mobile is equipped with state-of-the-art compressors and ice-making equipment. The arena plays host to its first hockey games Oct. 7 and 8 when the Kings play pre-season tilts against the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche, so any issues arising from the ice in those games can be analyzed and corrected in time for the Las Vegas team&rsquo;s debut in 2017.</p><p>If you&rsquo;re looking for an NHL city that Las Vegas best resembles, think Nashville. It&rsquo;s a non-traditional hockey market that relies on tourism with a strong fan base. And if the Raiders join Foley&rsquo;s team, Las Vegas would be mirror Nashville with NHL and NFL teams of its own.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2><b>SILENCING THE SKEPTICS</b></h2><p>Ever since Foley submitted his bid July 2015, there has been skepticism that Las Vegas will survive and succeed. Many out-of-towners believe there isn&rsquo;t enough local support to sustain the team&rsquo;s viability. Local critics are concerned that interest will wane should the team struggle on the ice and people with money to spend on hockey tickets will retreat to their neighborhood bar and play video poker.</p><p>But optimism seems to be trumping pessimism early on. The majority of folks in southern Nevada appear excited to finally have their own team. And while there are concerns about how quickly the team can attain success, Foley seems to have won over the citizens. He may be a billionaire, but he comes across to them as a regular Joe.</p><p>However, in the final analysis, Foley is the man who will bear the responsibility as to whether this venture succeeds or fails. He will make all the critical hires, including the chief operating officer and the GM. He will have the final say as to what the team&rsquo;s nickname and logo will be. He is the man out on the front lines for Las Vegas hockey, and that West Point educational background no doubt will bode well for him as he serves as steward for what he likes to call, &ldquo;The community&rsquo;s team.&rdquo;</p><p>But like it or not, Foley will get the chance to make it work. That wasn&rsquo;t the case 17 years before when a bearded guy in a navy pinstripe suit showed up in midtown Manhattan and planted the seeds for Las Vegas to one day join the NHL. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s our time,&rdquo; said Oscar Goodman, the guy in the suit who planted the seeds. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re all grown up. We&rsquo;re big league now.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0020-01

WELCOME TO Falulour LAS VEGAS

<div class="byline">BY KEN CAMPBELL</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0026-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-017/19517-1-eng-US/f0026-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p>PATRIK LAINE</p><p>AUSTON MATTHEWS</p></figcaption></div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-017/19510-1-eng-US/f0028-012.jpg" title="f0028-01" width="701" height="567"><figcaption class="caption-body">At the draft, Matthews got a taste of the media frenzy that awaits him with the Maple Leafs.<span class="photo-credit">(LAINE (HEAD): MIKA KYLMANIEMI; LAINE (BODY): JONATHAN KOZUB/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; MATTHEWS (HEAD): ANDRE RINGUETTE/HHOF-IIHF IMAGES; MATTHEWS (BODY): ANDRE RINGUETTE/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; TOP: BILL WIPPERT/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; MIDDLE: JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-024/19503-1-eng-US/f0028-022.jpg" title="f0028-02" width="338" height="324"></div><blockquote class="pullQuote"><b>I&rsquo;M READY FOR ALL OF THIS</b>. I&rsquo;M HAVING A GOOD TIME AND PRACTISING HARD, AND I WILL BE READY AFTER THE SUMMER &ndash; Patrik Laine</blockquote><p class="dropcap"><b><span>I</span>T&rsquo;S FUNNY HOW</b> a guy can go to Buffalo hundreds of times and never come across the Erie Basin Marina. That&rsquo;s because it&rsquo;s not such a great place to visit in the middle of the winter, and they don&rsquo;t play hockey there. But it&rsquo;s spectacular. Like downtown Buffalo, once a wasteland where they now hold mass yoga classes on Saturday mornings, it&rsquo;s undergoing a startling renaissance. Just down the canal is the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park, home to several decommissioned U.S. naval vessels, including the Fletcher-class destroyer USS The Sullivans, named for five brothers aged 20 to 27 who lost their lives in the Second World War.</p><p>On this day, though, it&rsquo;s the teenagers built like battleships that have taken center stage nearby. It&rsquo;s Media Day outside for the top prospects of the 2016 draft. At one pod is Jakob Chychrun, a man-boy who could walk into any NHL dressing room, throw up an Arnold and not look out of place. At another is his boyhood pal, Logan Brown, who stands 6-foot-6, weighs 220 pounds and, if there&rsquo;s a perfect storm in his development, could turn out to be a bigger version of Joe Thornton.</p><p>But it&rsquo;s a pod right by the water where all the action is. It&rsquo;s a little more elevated than the others, presumably to represent the two players about to occupy them. It&rsquo;s where, a little more than 24 hours before they become the first two selections in the draft, Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine will display the difference in their personalities. They couldn&rsquo;t be more diametrically opposed players or people. Matthews, you get the sense quickly, was born with a severe case of seriousness. He&rsquo;s all business. Laine, meanwhile, is more playful. On this day, he&rsquo;s wearing a Minnesota Twins baseball cap, backward of course, and sporting a pair of denim cutoffs with holes strategically located to maximize the fashion statement. Before Laine takes to the podium, an NHL employee asks him to remove his sunglasses, to which he asks how he&rsquo;s supposed to deal with the sun in his eyes. After a brief conversation, he agrees to take them off and tucks them into the collar of his NHL-issued golf shirt.</p><p>Laine takes the podium first and speaks freely and comfortably, in Finnish and English. He has matured in his game and his attitude since the Ivan Hlinka Tournament in 2014 when, frustrated with his playing time, he was kicked off the Finnish team for flipping the bird to coach Mika Marttila and making a veiled death threat. It was a game against the Czech Republic, and with his team trailing by a goal and his goaltender out of the net, Marttila didn&rsquo;t put Laine on the ice to try to get the equalizer. So Laine handled it like the immature 16-year-old he was at the time. &ldquo;Yeah, I remember the game,&rdquo; Laine recalled. &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t let me play. I was 16, and I couldn&rsquo;t handle it because I played all those minutes of the games with my home team as a kid. I couldn&rsquo;t handle that, and I just said to the guy next to me that I was going to punch the coach, and that kind of started that thing. It was all over the news, and it wasn&rsquo;t fun.&rdquo;</p><p>Next comes Matthews, wearing perfectly pressed dress shorts and sporting a buttoned-down demeanor to match. In his 18-minute and 36-second interview, he uses &ldquo;surreal&rdquo; (a word that, with &ldquo;obviously,&rdquo; must be eliminated from every player&rsquo;s lexicon) to describe the whirlwind of the past couple days. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s been a lot of fun, pretty hectic, but it&rsquo;s been a cool experience,&rdquo; Matthews said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s something you dream about as a kid, and now that it&rsquo;s a day away from possibly happening, it&rsquo;s definitely pretty surreal.&rdquo;</p><p>The most interesting nugget from Matthews is that he wears No. 34 in honor of his grandfather, Billy, who played college basketball at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. Clearly, some of Matthews&rsquo; best coaching has come off the ice.</p><p>There&rsquo;s nothing wrong with that, of course. If Matthews sounds like he&rsquo;s programmed, it&rsquo;s because he&rsquo;s been groomed for this moment and everything that comes with it for the past couple years. Like Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid, he&rsquo;s a phenom. And with that great gift of talent come great responsibilities. One of them is to refrain from saying or doing anything stupid that&rsquo;ll tarnish the brand. Laine, meanwhile, is relatively new to the spotlight. This time last year, not many people even knew who he was, but his maturity and improvement on the ice has thrust him into the hockey world&rsquo;s consciousness. And he&rsquo;s still young. He hasn&rsquo;t had the genes that make him a unique individual surgically extracted from him yet.</p><p>So what we have here are the seeds for a good old-fashioned career rivalry. The fact Matthews went first overall to the Toronto Maple Leafs and Laine to the Winnipeg Jets adds spice to the proceedings. Eleven years ago, the NHL was blessed with the emergence of a down-to-earth young man with sublime talent, a center who played and conducted himself well beyond his age. Because of the cancelled season in 2004-05, the league had a dynamic winger with charisma and superstar potential drop into its lap at the same time.</p><p>And just like that, Crosby vs. Alex Ovechkin was born. Save for a couple years when one or the other took a brief leave from his place among the game&rsquo;s top performers, the battle has been going on since.</p><p>Before you get worked up, we&rsquo;re not suggesting there&rsquo;s a place in the Hall of Fame reserved for Matthew&rsquo;s and Laine&rsquo;s plaques like the ones being held for each of Crosby and Ovechkin. A more apt comparison could very well be the Taylor vs. Tyler rivalry that was sparked six years ago when Hall, Taylor went first overall to the Edmonton Oilers and Seguin, Tyler was taken second by the Boston Bruins. But there are connections to be made to &lsquo;Sid&rsquo; and &lsquo;Ovie&rsquo; when forecasting the future of Matthews vs. Laine. &ldquo;It could very well be Crosby vs. Ovechkin, Part II,&rdquo; said Shane Malloy, who wrote a book on NHL scouting and co-hosts Hockey Prospect Radio on Sirius XM. &ldquo;The reason why it could be is Laine and his cockiness and confidence in him being a great player. If he were a subdued Finn, like they normally are, then maybe not. But because he&rsquo;s so brash and he wants to succeed so badly, it could be a fight.&rdquo;</p><p>There is, of course, a cavernous difference between 2016-17 and 2005-06. More than a decade ago, the NHL was coming back after taking a year off so the millionaires could go to war with the billionaires. The league, eager to win fans back quickly, rebranded itself with a renewed crackdown on obstruction and a double cohort of young players who could exploit them. This led to the perfect storm that let Crosby and Ovechkin enter the league at the same time and, even better, in the same conference. It wasn&rsquo;t long before both of them were going hammer and tong, scoring matching hat tricks in just their second playoff game against each other. It was the NHL&rsquo;s version of Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson. More than a decade later later, both are poised to record their 1,000th career points in the NHL. &ldquo;It was a different time,&rdquo; said TSN scout and former NHL GM Craig Button. &ldquo;Sidney Crosby was a generational player, and from the minute they stepped out onto the ice, you had two moribund franchises, Pittsburgh and Washington, that were instantly energized. Winnipeg and Toronto are not moribund franchises. Washington and Pittsburgh were dying. This was a major injection of life into these franchises.&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-015/19496-1-eng-US/f0029-012.jpg" title="f0029-01" width="699" height="420"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(CARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES; MINAS PANAGIOTAKIS/HHOF-IIHF IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;I BELIEVE I CAN BE A FRANCHISE CENTERMAN, THE NO. 1 CENTERMAN IN THE NHL. THAT&rsquo;S MY ULTIMATE GOAL&rdquo; &ndash; Auston Matthews</blockquote><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-025/19489-1-eng-US/f0029-022.jpg" title="f0029-02" width="700" height="408"><figcaption class="caption-body">PLAYING FOR PRIDE Being in separate conferences, Laine and Matthews won&rsquo;t face each other much in the NHL, but their international showdowns will be must-see.</figcaption></div><p>But there&rsquo;s enough to intrigue us. Matthews and Laine have been on parallel paths to the NHL for a while now, and that was never more evident than during the World Championship. Despite being only 18 years old, Matthews was the best player for the United States. Despite turning 18 just before the tournament, Laine was the best player in the whole tournament, capturing MVP and best forward honors. Both were brilliant at times, making jaw-dropping plays and leaving NHL players shaking their heads in disbelief. Laine is the more decorated of the two so far, winning gold at the world juniors and silver at the World Championship, but many observers think the opposite could happen in the NHL, the same way it has with Crosby and Ovechkin. Multiple scouts mentioned that Laine would win the Calder Trophy next season and gain more individual accolades, while Matthews would finish his career with more Stanley Cups. Despite not yet having played a game in the NHL, neither will be without confidence when his NHL career begins this coming season. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m ready for all of this,&rdquo; Laine said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m having a good time and practising hard, and I will be ready after the summer.&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;I believe I can be a franchise centerman, the No. 1 centerman in the NHL,&rdquo; Matthews said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s my ultimate goal.&rdquo;</p><p>One thing is certain: their backgrounds couldn&rsquo;t be more different. Laine comes from Tampere, the third-largest and most hockeycrazed city in Finland. It&rsquo;s home to 23 players who have played in the NHL, including Teppo Numminen, whose 1,372 games are second only to Teemu Selanne among Finnish-born players. The first hockey game ever played in Finland was reputedly in Tampere on Lake Nasijarvi. Its climate is described as sub-arctic. The first arena ever built in the country is there, and the city is home to two teams in the Finnish League, Laine&rsquo;s Tappara team and Ilves, a team that has won 16 championships and is the most successful team in league history. Matthews, by con-trast, was born in Scottsdale, Ariz., where the average high is 100 degrees in September, when NHL training camps begin, before dipping down to 89 in October for the start of the season. (But it&rsquo;s a <i>dry</i> heat.) Matthews&rsquo; first exposure to hockey came when his father took him to a Coyotes game in the former America West Arena in downtown Phoenix. This was before the Coyotes messed everything up by moving to the <a href="http://Jobing.com">Jobing.com</a> Arena (now Gila River) in Glendale. Had his father been forced to drive into the blinding sun to get to a game, perhaps little Auston would have never been turned on to hockey. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t really remember much because I was so young,&rdquo; Matthews said. &ldquo;I just remember it being extremely loud. I don&rsquo;t remember who they were playing or what the score was, but I remember I found it very intriguing. I started playing a couple years later and just fell in love with it.&rdquo;</p><p>The hockey world will have the better part of the next two decades to get to know Matthews and Laine more. Until then, here&rsquo;s how they stack up against each other:</p><h2><b>ON-ICE MATURITY</b></h2><p>Both are 18-year-olds on the verge of playing in the NHL, so suffice to say they&rsquo;re advanced beyond their years. Matthews could give Jonathan Toews a run for his money as &lsquo;Captain Serious,&rsquo; and Laine, it appears, has truly begun to grasp what it takes to become an NHL player. Scouts who have watched Laine closely marvel at how far his game progressed this past season. &ldquo;I think everyone knows now that I can handle everything on the ice and off the ice,&rdquo; Laine said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve matured a lot as a person and a player.</p><h2><b>OFF-ICE MATURITY</b></h2><p>Don Granato, who coached Matthews with the U.S. National Team Development Program, tells a story about his prized player&rsquo;s quick learning. After Granato took him to a game at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, where he dropped in on his protege&rsquo;s future NHL coach, Mike Babcock, Matthews spotted Flyers center Claude Giroux leaning against the wall and talking on his cellphone in the hallway. &ldquo;He came to me and said, &lsquo;That&rsquo;s Claude Giroux! Can I get get a picture?&rsquo; &rdquo; Granato said. &ldquo;I said to him, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you dare get a picture.&rsquo; He looked at me, and for one quick second I was dealing with a 12-year-old. For one quick second. And that was it.&rdquo;</p><p>For Laine, the notoriety surrounding the Ivan Hlinka incident caused him to take stock and reset his attitude. &ldquo;That situation,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;helped me grow a lot.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>SKILL LEVEL</b></h2><p>Off the charts for both. There&rsquo;s a video Granato has seen of Matthews on the golf course. He&rsquo;s keeping up a golf ball with an iron in one hand and in the other is his driver. At one point, Matthews drops the iron, grips his driver like a baseball bat and smacks the golf ball down the fairway. So he has sublime skill, though he&rsquo;s closer to the 80-point, 200-foot player Sidney Crosby has become than the 100-point scorer he started out being.</p><p>Laine, meanwhile, has an Ovechkin-like shot and projects as a dynamic scorer. His physical play and onice smarts make him an imposing player. &ldquo;Laine is a big, brash, one-shot goal scorer who can hammer the puck and go to the crowd and raise the roof,&rdquo; Malloy said. &ldquo;If he&rsquo;s with the right center, if he&rsquo;s with (Mark) Scheifele and they grow together, he&rsquo;ll be scoring 40 goals before long.&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-017/19482-1-eng-US/f0030-012.jpg" title="f0030-01" width="1154" height="1338"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><h2><b>HANDLING LIFE IN A FISHBOWL</b></h2><p>It&rsquo;s one thing to be drafted No. 1 overall and have to shoulder the hopes of a franchise. It&rsquo;s another when that franchise is in the biggest, most hockey-crazed market in the league, one that will mark 50 years this coming season since its last Stanley Cup. But there&rsquo;s nothing in Matthews&rsquo; makeup to suggest he&rsquo;s not up to the task. &ldquo;Toronto is the hockey mecca of the world,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It comes with a lot of pressure and everything, but that&rsquo;s something I think I can handle.&rdquo; Even though Winnipeg is a fraction of the size, Jets fans are just as rabid, possibly more. And after five years reacquainting with their team, they&rsquo;re starting to get restless for results. Perhaps for now ignorance is bliss when it comes to what Laine is facing. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard that it&rsquo;s pretty cold out there and it&rsquo;s a big city and nice city,&rdquo; Laine said. &ldquo;Those are the things I know.&rdquo;</p><p>So what can we expect from Matthews and Laine in 2016-17? Crosby and Ovechkin combined for 91 goals and 208 points their first season. It&rsquo;s difficult to believe Matthews and Laine will hit those numbers, but the pair will be neck-and-neck for the Calder Trophy, just as Crosby and Ovechkin were in their rookie year. Ovechkin edged Crosby for the honor, and Laine should have the inside track over Matthews. He&rsquo;s in a good situation in Winnipeg, on a team with a lot of veteran players. With him, the Jets should have one of the league&rsquo;s best power plays. Matthews, however, is on a team that&rsquo;s still a work in progress. Although William Nylander and Mitch Marner lead an emerging group of prospects, the Leafs will continue to feel the pain coach Mike Babcock talked about when he took the job. Still, Matthews is a game-changer. &ldquo;Obviously, we got a lot better,&rdquo; Babcock said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s an elite player, elite drive train, big-body guy, makes players better. We&rsquo;re going to have to look after him because he&rsquo;s just a kid. But he&rsquo;s going to make us better, and he&rsquo;s going to develop into a top, top center in the National Hockey League.&rdquo;</p><p>No pressure. But there&rsquo;s no less on Matthews and Laine than there was on Crosby and Ovechkin 11 years ago. Oh and, by the way, you might want to reserve your spot on the barcalounger for the night of Oct. 19. That&rsquo;s the first game of the season between the Leafs and the Jets and the first career meeting for Matthews and Laine. It&rsquo;ll be fun to watch.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0026-01

FIRE & ICE

<div class="byline">BY MATT LARKIN</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-017/19567-1-eng-US/f0032-012.jpg" title="f0032-01" width="685" height="1290"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>J</span>ACK JOHNSON LOVED</b> stuffing the run. Nothing gave him greater pleasure during his days as a middle linebacker in Pop Warner football growing up in Ann Arbor, Mich. &ldquo;At that age, not many kids could throw the ball, so I knew pretty much every play was going to be a handoff,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You just try to hit the running back as hard as you possibly can.&rdquo;</p><p>Every time he pulverized an opponent, he did so wearing No. 45 as a tribute to his hero, star Ohio State linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer.</p><p>Johnson, 29, now patrols the Columbus Blue Jackets blueline instead of a football field, but that didn&rsquo;t prevent his world from colliding with Katzenmoyer&rsquo;s. When the Jackets acquired Johnson in 2012, it was public knowledge he was a diehard Michigan Wolverines supporter. That didn&rsquo;t exactly jive with his new address in Buckeyes country. To win over some Blue Jackets fans, he told his tale of idolizing Katzenmoyer, star of Michigan&rsquo;s hated rival. It worked and even caught Katzenmoyer&rsquo;s attention. He decided to surprise Johnson one day after Jackets practice. &ldquo;He was actually sitting in my locker,&rdquo; Johnson said. &ldquo;I thought it was a reporter at first. Then, as I got close, I thought, &lsquo;This guy is way too big to be a reporter.&rsquo; And then he stood up, he was still a little bit taller than I was, even with my skates on. I was like, &lsquo;Oh my God, that&rsquo;s Andy Katzenmoyer. I can&rsquo;t believe it.&rsquo; &rdquo;</p><p>They became fast friends, even movie buddies who double date with their wives. Katzenmoyer was retired due to injury but had started up his own gym in Westerville, Ohio. Johnson asked Katzenmoyer if he would train him. &ldquo;Whatever you did, do it to me,&rdquo; Johnson told him.</p><p>And it worked. Johnson explains while his workouts aren&rsquo;t football focused, they help him build impeccable strength. He&rsquo;s the rare NHLer who prefers to lift weights during the season&rsquo;s dog days, as he feels it armors him for potential post-season runs. His favorite exercise: heavy squats. And his power-lifting regimen under Katzenmoyer has done wonders. Johnson is one of NHL&rsquo;s strongest players pound for pound, and Jackets trainers named him their fittest player when The Hockey News asked.</p><p>Not that Johnson sees himself as The Hulk. His brothers-in-law are NFLers A.J. Hawk and Brady Quinn. Johnson and Hawk are married to Quinn&rsquo;s sisters. Their workouts are crazy competitive. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not even the strongest guy in my family,&rdquo; Johnson said with a laugh.</p><p>That just means Johnson will keep pushing himself harder. On the opposite page, we identified Johnson&rsquo;s counterparts &ndash; the strongest and/or fittest player on all 30 NHL teams. They&rsquo;re the guys who treat a gym like most of us would our living rooms.</p><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-016/19560-1-eng-US/f0033-012.jpg" title="f0033-01" width="1063" height="488"></div><h2><b>JOSH MANSON</b></h2><p>His father, Dave, was a nasty NHLer, so it&rsquo;s no surprise Manson rates as brawniest Duck.</p><h2><b>ZDENO CHARA</b></h2><p>&lsquo;Big Z&rsquo; grew up with a chin-up bar in his yard and would pound out reps every time he walked by.</p><h2><b>SHANE DOAN</b></h2><p>Strength coach says &ldquo;no question&rdquo; Doan, 39, is the strongest. He&rsquo;s known for constantly changing his workouts.</p><h2><b>MARCUS FOLIGNO</b></h2><p>The Sabres say team strength title is a tossup between this 6-foot-3, 226-pound monster and Evander Kane.</p><h2><b>MARK GIORDANO</b></h2><p>Even on a team with Micheal Ferland and Deryk Engelland, Giordano is the most powerful, say the Flames.</p><h2><b>LUKE GLENDENING</b></h2><p>Green Bay Packers tackle T.J. Lang has worked out with Glendening and says he&rsquo;s tough to keep up with.</p><h2><b>DARNELL NURSE</b></h2><p>Nurse is 6-foot-4 and hardened by gruelling workouts, including hill sprints in desert heat.</p><h2><b>JAROMIR JAGR</b></h2><p>Jagr&rsquo;s in the gym rat Hall of Fame. He&rsquo;s famous for working out wearing weight belts &ndash; at all hours of the night.</p><h2><b>KYLE CLIFFORD</b></h2><p>Clifford&rsquo;s exemplary fitness techniques have been singled out by legendary MMA referee &lsquo;Big&rsquo; John McCarthy.</p><h2><b>CHARLIE COYLE</b></h2><p>Coyle is a team workout virtuoso. His ability to drive the net helped him score a career-best 21 goals in 2015-16.</p><h2><b>CHRIS NEIL</b></h2><p>His granite-like build is a big reason why he can handle the fisticuffs. He leads active NHLers in pim:</p><h2><b>RADKO GUDAS</b></h2><p>Built like a hard-hitting tank, Gudas gets his power by sprinting on a treadmill &ndash; wearing skates.</p><h2><b>KRIS LETANG</b></h2><p>There are YouTube videos of his seemingly inhuman workouts, including pull-ups wearing weights.</p><h2><b>BRENT BURNS</b></h2><p>His favorite workouts include jiu-jitsu and hiking mountains. You didn&rsquo;t expect something ordinary, did you?</p><h2><b>RYAN REAVES</b></h2><p>He regularly places first in the Blues&rsquo; fitness testing. The brawler&rsquo;s specialty: bench press.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-025/19553-1-eng-US/f0033-022.jpg" title="f0033-02" width="418" height="256"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p>KRIS LETANG</p><p>CHRIS KREIDER</p><span class="photo-credit">(LETANG: FRANCOIS LACASSE/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES, KREIDER: MINAS PANAGIOTAKIS/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-033/19546-1-eng-US/f0033-032.jpg" title="f0033-03" width="1063" height="488"></div><h2><b>JORDAN STAAL</b></h2><p>The Hurricanes aren&rsquo;t known for their brute strength, but towering Staal is the best of the bunch.</p><h2><b>NIKLAS HJALMARSSON</b></h2><p>He was named fittest Hawk in camp last year. His physique must help him withstand all those shot blocks.</p><h2><b>JAROME IGINLA</b></h2><p>No surprise: &lsquo;Iggy&rsquo; is a training beast. One of his specialties: skating and stickhandling drill&hellip;on one leg.</p><h2><b>JACK JOHNSON</b></h2><p>Johnson, a big football fan, trains in heavy weightlifting with former Ohio State linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer.</p><h2><b>JAMIE BENN</b></h2><p>It takes a special athlete to have off-season surgery on both hips and not miss a game.</p><h2><b>BRENDAN GALLAGHER</b></h2><p>Only 5-foot-9, but the Habs champ. Built his tree-trunk legs working with dad, Ian, a high-performance trainer.</p><h2><b>MIKE FISHER</b></h2><p>Country music star Carrie Underwood must be a gym beast. She trains with her husband, known for his fitness.</p><h2><b>BOBBY FARNHAM</b></h2><p>An Ivy Leaguer and a pure athlete who even undergoes boxing training to prepare himself for fisticuffs.</p><h2><b>NIKOLAY KULEMIN</b></h2><p>Dogged in weight room, even when he&rsquo;s injured. He&rsquo;s one of the NHL&rsquo;s hardest to knock off puck.</p><h2><b>CHRIS KREIDER</b></h2><p>He can jump out of a pool from a standing position in the shallow end. A workout freak.</p><h2><b>BRAYDON COBURN</b></h2><p>It says something that Coburn is the strongest on a team with giants Brian Boyle, Andrej Sustr and Victor Hedman.</p><h2><b>ROMAN POLAK</b></h2><p>He was asked to stop his bench press at 315 pounds during testing as he couldn&rsquo;t improve his score any more.</p><h2><b>THE SEDINS</b></h2><p>Henrik and Daniel aren&rsquo;t intimidators but regularly rank among Canucks&rsquo; best in annual fitness testing.</p><h2><b>JOHN CARLSON</b></h2><p>Fuels 6-foot-3, 215-pound frame with exemplary diet. No wonder he topped 26 minutes per game in playoffs.</p><h2><b>DUSTIN BYFUGLIEN</b></h2><p>There&rsquo;s no denying Big Buff&rsquo;s strength. He might be the NHL&rsquo;s hardest hitter.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0032-01

MUSCLE MEN

<div class="byline">By ronnie shuker</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-016/19653-1-eng-US/f0036-012.jpg" title="f0036-01" width="610" height="925"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(COURTESY OF JEFF SMITH)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>I</span>T WAS DAY 3</b> of the Marathon des Sables, and Jeff Smith had barely made it across the finish line after more than 10 hours of running through the desert. He was malnourished, dehydrated and his feet were badly blistered from traversing the Moroccan Sahara for three days straight. And he still had two more to go, including the dreaded double marathon set for the following day. For the first time in the five-day April endurance test, Smith was thinking of quitting. Twenty-five years ago, when he was in his prime as a professional hockey player in the British League, he would&rsquo;ve had youth on his side. But he was 52, now, and running on two artificial hips, the result, his doctors told him, of more than a decade of playing goal.</p><p>Smith had faced a similar situation two years earlier when he had to abandon his quest to climb Mount Everest after an accident killed 16 climbers, effectively shutting down the climbing season. But that decision had been entirely out of his control. Here, in the middle of the Sahara Desert, it was all on him. So Smith downed liters of water and force-fed himself in hopes he&rsquo;d be able to continue. Yet thoughts of quitting didn&rsquo;t leave him as he slept. Nightmares plagued him throughout another night sleeping out in the open under the desert sky. &ldquo;I dreamt I wasn&rsquo;t going to be able to make it, that I had to go home and that I had let everybody down, including myself,&rdquo; Smith said. &ldquo;I was in a really crappy way. And then, strangely, the next morning was the double marathon day &ndash; so I had 52 miles to run &ndash; and I was fine. I woke up and realized it was all a bad dream. I just got my shoes on and prepped, and I actually really enjoyed that day.&rdquo;</p><p>On Day 4, popped blisters and all, Smith ran more than 50 miles over dunes, sand strips and jebels &ndash; all under an assaulting sun and a punishing temperature pushing 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Two days later, he&rsquo;d completed the Marathon des Sables.</p><p>It was latest in a string of physical feats for Smith since retiring more than 20 years ago.</p><p>Smith played 11 seasons in the BHL from 1983 to 1995. He made roughly $1,000 USD a week &ndash; not bad, he said, for what was an obscure pro league more than 20 years ago. His best years were with the Devils in Cardiff, where he won the BHL title in 1990. &ldquo;I turned pro when I was 21 or 22,&rdquo; Smith said. &ldquo;Somebody offered me money to play, which was kind of mad. I was, like, &lsquo;Wow.&rsquo; There were no professionals at all in Britain at the time, apart from the Canadians, so for Brits like myself to be actually paid and get other benefits like a car was pretty amazing to me.&rdquo;</p><p>After Smith retired in 1995, his competitive spirit lay dormant until his eldest daughter asked him to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with her in 2010. He was immediately hooked. He then tackled some of the biggest, most challenging mountains in the world, working his way up to the granddaddy of them all, and doing it on the new hips he got a few years earlier. He climbed Mount Elbrus in Russia in 2011, Mount Denali in Alaska in 2012 and Mount Manaslu in Nepal in 2013. Then at 50 years old, he trekked to Base Camp to take on Everest in 2014, only to be turned back when it was shut down.</p><p>That&rsquo;s when Smith began training for the Marathon des Sables (Marathon of Sands), billed as, &ldquo;The Toughest Footrace on Earth,&rdquo; as his next challenge. It&rsquo;s not for the unfit, weak-willed or faint of heart. The race&rsquo;s website sells itself as possibly the worst vacation ever: &ldquo;Imagine yourself in the Sahara Desert with nothing but rolling sand dunes for miles around. When you plough your feet through the sand, a fine dust kicks up. You can&rsquo;t feel the sweat dripping down your face because it&rsquo;s evaporating in the baking heat. Your lungs feel parched. Today&rsquo;s temperature is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Part of your brain is screaming at you to stop, right now, to drop out of the race, but the other part of your brain is stronger. The other part of your brain knows that when you complete the final stage of the Marathon des Sables, you will have run the equivalent of five and a half marathons in five or six days.&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-016/19646-1-eng-US/f0037-012.jpg" title="f0037-01" width="459" height="449"><figcaption class="caption-body">Days of running in the white-hot desert left its mark Smith&rsquo;s body, especially his feet.<span class="photo-credit">(DEVILS: RICHARD MURRAY; MARATHON: COURTESY OF JEFF SMITH)</span></figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-024/19639-1-eng-US/f0037-022.jpg" title="f0037-02" width="338" height="272"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-033/19632-1-eng-US/f0037-032.jpg" title="f0037-03" width="338" height="637"><figcaption class="caption-body">THE DEVILS AND BEYOND In addition to Cardiff, Smith also suited up for the Streatham Redskins, Telford Tigers, Basingstoke Beavers and Swindon Wildcats in the BHL.</figcaption></div><p>Over five days, Smith ran more than 150 miles through the desert with a 15-pound backpack. (As if that weren&rsquo;t hell enough, he also ran in the event&rsquo;s charity marathon held on the sixth day.) He carried two large water bottles, which he sipped from every five minutes to stay hydrated, and he also took salt and nutrient tablets to keep his mineral levels up. In case of emergency, he had a GPS on which he could hit an SOS button anytime to receive medical attention. He never needed it, but some runners did after collapsing in the 90- to 100-degree heat and being helicoptered out. Of the roughly 1,300 participants, roughly 400 had to quit.</p><p>The biggest problem Smith faced was with his feet. At the end of every race day, a medi-cal team of about 50 people tended to racers in a massive tent. Smith&rsquo;s feet screamed at him so loud that he was forced into the foot tent three times during the marathon. By Day 4, the balls of his feet had worn away, and he&rsquo;d lost two toenails. The medics who treated him would clean his feet with disinfectant, cut his blisters with a scalpel and put iodine on them. &ldquo;Every time I went there, without fail, they&rsquo;d look at my feet and go, &lsquo;Oh my God!&rsquo; &rdquo; Smith said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d see their faces change, their eyes open wide, their mouths drop, and they did it every time. That gave me a feeling of, &lsquo;Oh my God, what are my feet like?&rsquo; But also, &lsquo;Yeah, I&rsquo;m hardcore.&rsquo; &rdquo;</p><p>Smith is finished with the Marathon des Sables &ndash; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done it now, got the T-shirt, don&rsquo;t want to do it again&rdquo; &ndash; but he&rsquo;s not done challenging himself. Next on his wish list is to run a 100-mile race in one day and then return to Everest to finish what he started. &ldquo;I want to climb it and have the opportunity to measure myself to see if I&rsquo;m capable,&rdquo; Smith said. &ldquo;I genuinely think I am. I just feel like I&rsquo;ve got it in me. I&rsquo;d like to do that before I die.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0036-01

ENTER SANDMAN

<div class="byline">BY RYAN KENNEDY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0038-02" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-026/19682-1-eng-US/f0038-022.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(ANDY DEVLIN/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-017/19689-1-eng-US/f0038-012.jpg" title="f0038-01" width="73" height="83"></div><p>FOR UP-TO-THE-MINUTE COVERAGE, VISIT <b><a href="http://THN.com">THN.COM</a></b> 40 SHEA WEBER: HABS&rsquo; NEW TOWER OF POWER (PLAY) 42 BRIAN ELLIOTT: FINALLY &lsquo;THE MAN&rsquo;</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><p><b>NOT MANY PLAYERS</b> have been sad to leave Edmonton in the past decade. The Oilers have been a trainwreck in the standings, failing to make the post-season every year since their stunning run to the 2006 Stanley Cup final, so that&rsquo;s pretty understandable.</p><p>But the shocking trade that sent left winger Taylor Hall to New Jersey in exchange for blueliner Adam Larsson managed to inspire real passion in the newest member of the Devils. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a proud person and I do take this as an indictment on me as a hockey player,&rdquo; Hall told reporters. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s any other way to treat it.&rdquo;</p><p>Since he was taken first overall by Edmonton in 2010, Hall has been one of the few bright lights on an Oilers squad that has suffered through desolation. More first overall picks joined him &ndash; Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Nail Yakupov and Connor McDavid &ndash; but none have helped Edmonton back to the playoffs just yet. Now Hall heads to a New Jersey team that was in need of a gamebreaking scorer &ndash; a role Hall can certainly fill. The Devils already have a star, game-stealing goaltender in Cory Schneider and even though Larsson was New Jersey&rsquo;s second-busiest blueliner, playing more than 22 minutes per game this past season, the advantage in the trade goes to the Devils.</p><p>Larsson struggled in the possession department (as did many Devils defenders, to be fair), but Edmonton needed a top-pairing guy in return for Hall&rsquo;s talents. The Oilers think they have their man, but the key will be shouldering a big load on a team that doesn&rsquo;t have much in the way of two-way forwards to help out. Plus, their goalie, Cam Talbot, still has something to prove.</p><p>Edmonton did get a big win when nasty power forward Milan Lucic decided to sign with the Oilers as a free agent. The Cup-winner&rsquo;s presence alone will give McDavid and his fellow scorers a few more feet of clear ice when they&rsquo;ve got the puck. Can Larsson&rsquo;s minutes help take pressure off young and rising blueliners Oscar Klefbom, Darnell Nurse and Brandon Davidson? It&rsquo;s a tough task, especially in the cutthroat West. Just ask Mark Fayne, Andrew Ference and Andrej Sekera.</p><p>New Jersey will have an easier time in the Eastern Conference, where a motivated Hall is reunited with junior teammate Adam Henrique. The Devils will need someone to step into Larsson&rsquo;s skates &ndash; and perhaps Damon Severson can be the answer &ndash; but looking at the trade 1-for-1? Getting Hall is a big win.</p><p>On the next page, you&rsquo;ll find our winners and losers from the first part of summer. Trades and free agent signings both counted in our determinations, but not the draft &ndash; we&rsquo;ve got grades for all 30 teams on page 54.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0038-02

THE DEVILS GET THEIR DUE

<div class="byline">&#x2013; PAT HICKEY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-026/20097-1-eng-US/f0040-022.jpg" title="f0040-02" width="645" height="445"><figcaption class="caption-body">SHEA WEBER <span class="photo-credit">(HARRY HOW/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-017/20104-1-eng-US/f0040-012.jpg" title="f0040-01" width="138" height="100"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><p><b>AFTER 11 YEARS</b> in Nashville, six as captain of the Predators, the last thing Shea Weber expected was a trade.</p><p>The veteran defenseman left his phone at home when he went out to enjoy a summer day with his wife, Bailey, and their young son. &ldquo;When I got back home, my phone was blowing up,&rdquo; said Weber.</p><p>He was initially shocked to learn he was going to the Montreal Canadiens in a blockbuster trade for P.K. Subban. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve spent a lot of time in Nashville and we have a lot of friends,&rdquo; said Weber. &ldquo;As the day went on, I realized I was going to an Original Six team, a team with a great history. It&rsquo;s a good team with one of the best goaltenders in the world, a good defense and some talented forwards.&rdquo;</p><p>Trades can be traumatic at the best times. After more than a decade living south of the border, Weber &ndash; a native of Sicamous, B.C. &ndash; is returning to Canada. He and his family have to adjust to new teammates and new friends, find a new home. But this trade is different, because Weber is replacing Subban, a largerthan-life personality in Montreal. Over his six years with the Canadiens, Subban became a beloved figure in his adopted hometown. Off the ice, he played the role of philanthropist, pledging to raise $10 million for the Montreal Children&rsquo;s Hospital. On the ice, he was one of the league&rsquo;s most dynamic players. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not P.K. Subban,&rdquo; Weber said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not going to try to be him. &ldquo;</p><p>Weber hopes to win over the fans with hard work, a good attitude and, most importantly, wins. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t wait to meet the guys and get started,&rdquo; he said.</p><p>The one guy who will not need an introduction is goaltender Carey Price. He was one of the first people to &ldquo;blow up&rdquo; Weber&rsquo;s phone. They were teammates on Canada&rsquo;s gold medal-winning Olympic team in Sochi, and they train together in the summer in Kelowna, B.C.</p><p>Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin went to lengths to deny that the trade was the result of an alleged rift between Subban and some of his teammates, particularly captain Max Pacioretty. There were stories about Subban arriving late for a team meeting and not showing up for a team Christmas party.</p><p>Bergevin addressed the media at the draft in Buffalo and said: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not shopping P.K. Subban. Teams have called me and I listen, but I have no intention to trade him.&rdquo;</p><p>That quelled some of the speculation, but two days before the no-trade clause kicked in on Subban&rsquo;s eight-year, $72-million contract, he was gone. Bergevin insisted the deal was a hockey trade that improves the Canadiens, and he may be right in the short term. Weber, at 6-foot-4 and 236-pounds, adds size and a physical presence. He was fourth among NHL defensemen with 20 goals last season, and a league-leading 14 of them came on the power play.</p><p>The power play in Montreal has been brutal for nearly three seasons, and there&rsquo;s an argument to be made that Subban was part of the problem. While he owns one of the NHL&rsquo;s hardest shots, he often hesitates, allowing opposing defenders to close the shooting lane.</p><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0041-015/20090-1-eng-US/f0041-012.jpg" title="f0041-01" width="1062" height="680"><figcaption class="caption-body">Some worry that Weber, 30, will break down well before his contract ends in 10 years, but his skating and skills coach believes the &ldquo;rare specimen&rdquo; will &ldquo;break barriers.&rdquo; <span class="photo-credit">(JONATHAN KOZUB/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>Weber, who likes to shoot from the faceoff circle, is one reason why the Habs should improve when they have the extra man. The additions of Alexander Radulov and Andrew Shaw will also help, but don&rsquo;t overlook the contribution of Kirk Muller, who returns as an associate coach. Muller guided the power play in an earlier stint as an assistant, and the Canadiens ranked first or second in the league in three of his five seasons.</p><p>Radulov was the team&rsquo;s major free-agent acquisition, and Weber played a role in the Russian&rsquo;s return to the NHL. When Bergevin performed his due diligence on the talented but troubled forward, he turned to Weber, Radulov&rsquo;s teammate in Nashville, and Sergei Fedorov, GM of Radulov&rsquo;s former KHL team, CSKA Moscow. &ldquo;Shea told me that Alex&rsquo;s problem was a lack of maturity, and Sergei told me that Alex got married and had a kid and that he was his captain and the hardest worker on the team,&rdquo; Bergevin said.</p><p>So the trade looks decent now, but what about down the road? The major concern is Weber will celebrate his 31st birthday this summer and is nearly four years older than Subban. Weber&rsquo;s contract runs for another 10 seasons, and the wear and tear on his body worries critics.</p><p>But Shawn Allard, who served as a skating and skills coach with the Predators and continues to work with Weber in the off-season, said the defenseman&rsquo;s work ethic will allow him to continue playing at an elite level. &ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s going to break barriers because he moves so well,&rdquo; Allard told TSN 690 radio. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a rare specimen, like a LeBron James or a Tom Brady.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0040-02

MONTREAL MAKES A POWER PLAY

<div class="byline">&#x2013; RANDY SPORTAK</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0042-025/20140-1-eng-US/f0042-022.jpg" title="f0042-02" width="533" height="444"><figcaption class="caption-body">BRIAN ELLIOTT <span class="photo-credit">(DARCY FINLEY/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0042-017/20147-1-eng-US/f0042-012.jpg" title="f0042-01" width="138" height="98"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><p><b>BRIAN ELLIOTT&rsquo;</b> welcome-to-Calgary moment took only a few minutes to arrive from eight time zones and 4,600 nautical miles away.</p><p>The affable veteran goalie, acquired via trade by the Flames from the St. Louis Blues on the first day of the NHL draft, has long been nicknamed &lsquo;Moose&rsquo; because of his ability to moose call &ndash; yep, for hunting &ndash; and how he honors a late family friend on his mask.</p><p>Shortly after the trade was announced, a fan sent him a perfect picture to feature on his Twitter profile: A plush moose donning a Calgary Flames jersey. Using it was a no-brainer. &ldquo;Obviously I didn&rsquo;t have any photos of me wearing a Flames jersey, and I thought it was pretty cool, so I had to put it up,&rdquo; Elliott said.</p><p>Elliott, 31, vacationing in Croatia with his wife, Amanda, was awakened in the middle of the night with news of the trade. He was a fan favorite in St. Louis &ndash; especially after his performance this spring while backstopping the Blues to the Western Conference final for the first time in 15 years &ndash; and loved playing in the shadows of the Gateway Arch. But he now has a golden chance to take his career to another level in the Stampede City.</p><p>Elliott has a litany of impressive accomplishments through his career, among them holding the modern-day record for lowest goals-against average in a season (the 1.56 mark he set with the Blues in 2011-12), sharing the William Jennings Trophy that year and a couple of All-Star Game appearances, but this season will mark the first in which he&rsquo;ll start it pegged as the No. 1 goalie.</p><p>All through his years in St. Louis, regardless of how well Elliott performed, the club was always looking for someone else to be the main man between the pipes, whether it was Jaroslav Halak, Ryan Miller or Jake Allen.</p><p>In Calgary, however, Elliott&rsquo;s expected to take the bulk of the load, making it easier to accept going from Stanley Cup contender to a rebuilding squad. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s fun being on a winning team and going out there knowing it&rsquo;s yours to lose, that you should win this game, but Calgary is a good young team,&rdquo; he said.</p><p>Elliott requested a trade following this past season in the hopes of getting his big chance. Now it&rsquo;s up to him to make the most of it. The question is whether he&rsquo;s up to the task. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think they really knew what they had,&rdquo; said Troy Brouwer, who spent last season in St. Louis and joined the Flames a few days later after Elliott via free agency. &ldquo;I understand when the window&rsquo;s open, you only have a couple years to win a Stanley Cup, and they were doing what they thought was right, but you saw what he was able to do last year.</p><p>&ldquo;You give a guy like that confidence, and it&rsquo;s gonna be scary to see where it takes him.&rdquo;</p><p>Scary, in the negative sense, would be the right word to describe Calgary&rsquo;s goaltending in 2015-16. While the analytics crowd predicted the team wouldn&rsquo;t duplicate it&rsquo;s outof-the-blue trip to the second round of the playoffs the previous year, the biggest culprit for the Flames&rsquo; disappointing step backward was the performance of their goalies. When the smoke cleared from the horrible campaign, the collection of puckstoppers, namely Karri Ramo, Jonas Hiller and Joni Ortio, combined for the worst goaltending in the NHL, and it wasn&rsquo;t even close.</p><p>Sure, you can&rsquo;t pin all the club&rsquo;s struggles on the masked men, but it&rsquo;s obvious why the Flames jettisoned all their NHL goalies and brought in Elliott, for a second-round pick and conditional third-round pick in 2018 if he re-signs with the club or is traded next season. Calgary also signed free agent backup Chad Johnson, who spent 2015-16 in Buffalo.</p><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-014/20133-1-eng-US/f0043-012.jpg" title="f0043-01" width="1062" height="846"><figcaption class="caption-body">Despite record-setting, award-winning performances in St. Louis, Elliott could never lock down the Blues&rsquo; starting role. In Calgary, he&rsquo;ll be the Flames unquestioned No. 1. <span class="photo-credit">(JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>Elliott, who leaves the Blues as their alltime leader with 25 shutouts, is coming off an excellent campaign and is being counted on to pull the Flames back into the playoff picture. That may be a tall order, not only because the Flames are built around young talent still learning the NHL game, but also because Elliott doesn&rsquo;t have a track record of being the main man, having only twice played more than 50 games in a season.</p><p>Elliott is in the final year of a contract with a salary cap hit of $2.5 million and knows the challenge ahead, but he believes his ability to succeed through all the ups and downs over his career has him ready for the quest. &ldquo;You get stronger after all the things you go through, especially with battling for a net and also being a good teammate and good partner,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Mentally, it serves you well. I&rsquo;ve seen everything the last five years, and having that experience in my back pocket really prepares me for what&rsquo;s to come.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0042-02

FINALLY THE TOP MOOSE

<div class="byline">BY SAL BARRY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0044-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0044-017/20225-1-eng-US/f0044-012.jpg"></div><blockquote class="pullQuote"><b>IF YOU WERE BORN BEFORE 1980, CHANCES ARE <i>YOUNGBLOOD</i> IS ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOCKEY MOVIES AFTER <i>SLAP SHOT</i>.</b></blockquote><p class="dropcap"><span>H</span>eck, it might even be your favorite. Whereas the 1977 comedy lampooned hockey&rsquo;s violence, 1986&rsquo;s <i>Youngblood</i> portrayed it as a necessary part of the game, while also highlighting hockey&rsquo;s grace and skill. The film stars Rob Lowe as Dean Youngblood, who leaves his family farm in upstate New York to play junior hockey for the Hamilton Mustangs. Although he can skate and score, he can&rsquo;t fight. He tries to fit in with his teammates, woos his coach&rsquo;s daughter and in the end has to stand up to the league&rsquo;s biggest bully. Thirty years later, <i>Youngblood</i> stands tall as one of hockey&rsquo;s cult classics.</p><p>Adding to its realism were the people involved in the film. Writer and director Peter Markle was a former minor-pro and international player for the U.S. (see pg. 48). Cinematographer Mark Irwin donned skates and a helmet and devised a special rig to shoot the movie on ice. Eric Nesterenko, who played 20 seasons in the NHL, was the film&rsquo;s hockey consultant and also played Dean Youngblood&rsquo;s dad, Blane. George Finn, who portrayed nemesis Carl Racki, was a former OHL enforcer. Most of the players in the film, such as Steve Thomas, Don Biggs, Peter Zezel and James Richmond, were OHL or NCAA players at the time. Thomas and Zezel went on to lengthy NHL careers.</p><p>THN reached out to Lowe, but he declined the opportunity to talk. No matter. Lowe might have been the pretty face in front of the camera, but so many people worked hard to make him look good. This is their story.</p><p><i>After two successful films, Markle decided he wanted to make a hockey movie. MGM green-lit</i> Youngblood<i>. First, though, Markle had to assemble a cast and crew.</i></p><h2><b>PETER MARKLE</b></h2><h3><b>WRITER & DIRECTOR:</b></h3><p>I wrote <i>Youngblood,</i> and my agent gave it to producer Peter Guber at MGM, who played club hockey. He liked the script, and we had a lot of actors interested in it. We had it cast up pretty quickly.</p><h2><b>MARK IRWIN</b></h2><h3><b>CINEMATOGRAPHER:</b></h3><p>When producers would come to Toronto, in those days, you actually had to apply to work on a film. The night before my interview, there was this giant blizzard. On Thursday morning, there was four feet of snow, and the whole city was shut down. No one called me to cancel the meeting. I couldn&rsquo;t drive there, because they hadn&rsquo;t plowed the streets. So I walked in the snowdrifts, which were up to my waist. I got to the meeting and nobody was in the whole building except for Peter, (associate producer) Mark Allan and myself. I got the gig because of that meeting but also because Peter was impressed that I braved the snow.</p><p>MARKLE: A really good friend of mine skied all the time in Vail, Colo. He became pretty close to Eric Nesterenko, who taught ski lessons. I was working on the project, looking for someone to play Youngblood&rsquo;s dad, and my friend suggested Nesterenko as the dad and as my hockey consultant.</p><p>Youngblood <i>featured a lot of up-and-coming actors. Lowe was cast in the lead role, while Patrick Swayze played Derek Sutton, the Mustangs&rsquo; captain and star center. Even Keanu Reeves appears in the movie (his second film role), as Heaver, one of the Mustangs&rsquo; goalies. While Reeves actually played hockey growing up, Swayze and Lowe needed doubles to do a lot of their on-ice work.</i></p><h2><b>ERIC NESTERENKO</b></h2><h3><b>HOCKEY CO-ORDINATOR & &ldquo;BLANE YOUNGBLOOD&rdquo;</b></h3><p>Swayze wasn&rsquo;t a bad skater, but Lowe couldn&rsquo;t skate, so we set him up with a figure skater. She got him to stand on his skates and go from Point A to Point B without looking too bad. They basically shot him from the waist up.</p><p>MARKLE: We had a couple doubles for Rob: Scott MacPherson and Randy Walker. Scott was a fantastic player, totally ambidextrous. Randy didn&rsquo;t shoot the same way as Rob, but he was a perfect-looking double. Scotty could shoot both ways, and that helped.</p><h2><b>DON BIGGS</b></h2><h3><b>PATRICK SWAYZE&rsquo;S HOCKEY DOUBLE:</b></h3><p>Patrick and I had to tape our skates, shin pads and stick blades the same so that they didn&rsquo;t miss a beat when they flipped from me to him.</p><h2><b>JAMES RICHMOND</b></h2><h3><b>BOMBERS CAPTAIN &ldquo;STORDAHL&rdquo;</b></h3><p>It was the best summer job I ever had. Patrick Swayze and I got pretty close during the filming. We&rsquo;d go for dinner or to get a couple drinks. He&rsquo;d come over to visit my mom and dad, and we hung out a few times when we weren&rsquo;t shooting.</p><h2><b>STEVE THOMAS</b></h2><h3><b>MUSTANGS PLAYER &ldquo;JORDE&rdquo;</b></h3><p>Keanu was a heck of a goalie. He knew what he was doing out there. He hung out with the players. We played cards together. He was a lot of fun.</p><p><i>Every good movie needs a great villain, and Finn fit the bill. Like Racki, Finn was an enforcer who could also score. He played in the OHL against Thomas, Biggs and many of the other players cast in</i> Youngblood<i>, but he almost didn&rsquo;t become one of hockey&rsquo;s most popular bad guys.</i></p><h2><b>GEORGE FINN</b></h2><h3><b>&ldquo;CARL RACKI&rdquo;</b></h3><p>My agent told me that they were looking for a villain for a hockey film. I said no at first. But then I thought about it and ended up auditioning. Once I got there, I felt really good about it. I read some lines, and Peter Markle and (producer) Pat Wells actually liked me.</p><p>MARKLE: George was a decent player in junior. Casting brought him in. I loved his look, and he handled the part well. He never acted before in his life, and I thought he did a really great job.</p><p>THOMAS: George Finn and I fought in junior, when he was with Windsor and I was with the Marlies. We had a really good scrap. And then the movie came around, and I&rsquo;m looking at him as we&rsquo;re filming. He&rsquo;s got this huge beard and looks like an animal. I&rsquo;m thinking to myself, &ldquo;My god, where did I get the courage to fight this guy?&rdquo;</p><blockquote class="pullQuote"><b>ROB LOWE HAD THE WARDROBE PEOPLE GETTING HIM DRESSED AND TYING HIS SKATES. WE JUST LOOKED AT EACH OTHER, THINKING, &ldquo;OH MY GOD, HE CAN&rsquo;T EVEN TIE HIS SKATES. COME ON, SERIOUSLY?&rdquo;</b> &ndash; Steve Thomas</blockquote><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0047-016/20218-1-eng-US/f0047-012.jpg" title="f0047-01" width="1062" height="508"><figcaption class="caption-body">THOROUGHBREDS IN THEIR MIDST The fictional Mustangs had real life talent in future NHLers Biggs (kneeling, left with &lsquo;C&rsquo;), Thomas (back row, ninth from right) and Peter Zezel (front row, third from right). <span class="photo-credit">(ROB MCEWEN)</span></figcaption></div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0047-026/20211-1-eng-US/f0047-022.jpg" title="f0047-02" width="519" height="522"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0047-035/20204-1-eng-US/f0047-032.jpg" title="f0047-03" width="520" height="403"><figcaption class="caption-body">TAKING THEIR BEST SHOTS Markle and Irwin devised a special rig to shoot much of the hockey footage, including the fight between Youngblood and Racki, with Stordhal watching.</figcaption></div><p>FINN: Actually, I was supposed to be called Brophy in the film, after (former minor pro D-man and NHL coach) John Brophy, but John didn&rsquo;t want to release his name. So Peter Markle named me after (stuntman) Branko Racki. I said, &ldquo;You&rsquo;re the director, so you can call me whatever you want to call me.&rdquo;</p><p>IRWIN: George was a really nice guy, as is usually the case. The worst guys are portrayed by the nicest people. The villain is always a great guy.</p><p><i>The hockey scenes for</i> Youngblood <i>were shot at three Toronto rinks over the summer of 1984. Filming hockey is difficult. You need to co-ordinate players, navigate expensive cameras around the ice and have enough people in the stands to make it look like a real game.</i></p><p>IRWIN: We shot the hockey action in slow motion, at 32 frames per second, because 24 frames per second looked over-cranked, like an old silent Buster Keaton film.</p><p>NESTERENKO: The action scenes on the ice had to be choreographed. It really helps to have somebody who understands what the plays should look like. Real plays. Markle was pretty busy running the whole film, so he wanted somebody to organize the play on the ice. It was fun being the smart guy on the set, as far as hockey&rsquo;s concerned, and it was a good experience.</p><p>IRWIN: We tried shooting from a wheelchair. It worked fine, but we ended up designing and manufacturing dollies with vibration isolators. We made actual skate blades for the dollies so that we could put the dolly on the ice and drive it around. It worked real well.</p><p>BIGGS: We were working on one play for maybe three hours, over and over again. I had to put the puck through my skates, back onto my stick and then come in on the goalie and throw it top shelf. Then we changed the area the fans were sitting, and did it again. Then I went through a stage where I missed a bunch of times, so it took quite a while. Then we were ready for Patrick, who was out there for four or five minutes. He skated behind the net, put his hands in the air and was done for the day.</p><p>IRWIN: We had around 100 extras every day. We&rsquo;d jam them together for tight stuff around the benches on both teams. But when we got to the skating, we&rsquo;d see this whole side of the arena, which was empty. A hundred people wouldn&rsquo;t fill it. You&rsquo;d need 400 or more. So the prop guys, wardrobe and myself built these scarecrows out of wooden T-shaped frames with a Styrofoam head, painted flesh color. We&rsquo;d put a shirt or jacket or whatever on it, and the sleeves would be safety-pinned to the sleeves of the extras. So when one person waved or shook his arms, the scarecrow people would do the same thing. It worked great.</p><p>THOMAS: We were putting our gear on for a scene, and Rob Lowe had the wardrobe people getting him dressed and tying his skates. We just looked at each other, thinking, &ldquo;Oh my god, he can&rsquo;t even tie his skates. Come on, seriously?&rdquo; Then the following day, Lowe was putting on his own equipment. He didn&rsquo;t have the wardrobe people around him all the time, doing the little things and tying his skates after we started to heckle him a little bit.</p><p>MARKLE: We had a local actor Peter Faussett, who played Huey Hewitt. He was a decent player, but he wasn&rsquo;t a junior. Eric got pissed because Peter didn&rsquo;t do a drill properly, so he took a slap shot from center ice and came two inches from hitting Peter right in the head. Oh my god! I&rsquo;m glad it didn&rsquo;t hit him, but it got a laugh from the crew and players.</p><p>RICHMOND: Instead of having a lunch break, because we could eat anytime, we&rsquo;d have a pickup game. Some guys were pretty high level, so those games would get pretty serious sometimes. The makeup people would get ticked off because guys would be drenched in sweat after these games. And if you were doing the same scene as you did before lunch, you looked different.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-026/20197-1-eng-US/f0048-022.jpg" title="f0048-02" width="338" height="555"><figcaption class="caption-body">WAYNE GRETZKY & ROB LOWE <span class="photo-credit">(ROB MCEWEN)</span></figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-034/20190-1-eng-US/f0048-032.jpg" title="f0048-03" width="338" height="340"><figcaption class="caption-body">ERIC NESTERENKO & ED LAUTER</figcaption></div><p><i>The Mustangs square off against the Thunder Bay Bombers, the toughest team in juniors, for the championship series. In the first period, a bench-clearing brawl ensues after Racki decks the Mustangs&rsquo; goalie.</i></p><p>RICHMOND: The Bombers were the goon squad. We weren&rsquo;t supposed to smile. We were told to look angry or mean on the ice.</p><p>THOMAS: That was so much fun. It was mock fighting, but it looked like a real brawl. Guys were pushing and shoving each other. I loved it. They paired us off, and then we just jostled each other. Some guys would get into it a little bit more, and then it would escalate. I don&rsquo;t know how many takes they did, but it was really tiring.</p><p>RICHMOND: In the big fight scene, I was paired up with Swayze. In one shot, he actually connected with a punch and got me right under the eye. That was pretty funny. And then he ended up kissing the linesman when he&rsquo;s breaking us up. Swayze adlibbed that. It wasn&rsquo;t scripted, and they put that take in the movie. We got a good chuckle out of that.</p><p><i>In the story&rsquo;s nadir, Racki slew-foots Sutton, who hits his head on the ice and is hospitalized.</i></p><p>BIGGS: The stunt team had me a harness, with a blood pack on the back of my head. When George would kick out my feet, they&rsquo;d yank the rope, and I&rsquo;d go up on the harness. You put it all together, and it looked realistic.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0049-016/20183-1-eng-US/f0049-012.jpg" title="f0049-01" width="544" height="340"><figcaption class="caption-body">STARS ON ICE? ER, NOT SO MUCH Neither Lowe nor Ed Lauter (Mustangs coach) knew how to skate, though Swayze had taken figure skating lessons prior to acting in <i>Youngblood</i>.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0049-026/20176-1-eng-US/f0049-022.jpg" title="f0049-02" width="499" height="416"><figcaption class="caption-body">MARK IRWIN</figcaption></div><p>THOMAS: If someone were to do that in a game, back in the era when I played, that guy wouldn&rsquo;t be alive. If that happened in a real game, there&rsquo;d be problems.</p><p><i>In the final game between the Mustangs and the Bombers, Youngblood scores a hat trick, including the winning goal on a penalty shot. But his work isn&rsquo;t done. For this hero&rsquo;s journey to be complete, Youngblood needs to stand up to Racki.</i></p><p>FINN: I was given blood capsules to put in my mouth. When Rob hit me I would bite the capsules so it looked like I was bleeding. I even told Rob, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be shy to hit me. I can take a punch. Just hit me, but don&rsquo;t break my nose.&rdquo;</p><p>MARKLE: That was the last scene we shot. I was just trying to choreograph something that looked semi-realistic. It was mayhem, just like any scene that involves shooting two or more people. In this case, it was two teams, and we had to finish it by midnight due to budget constraints.</p><p>IRWIN: We were determined to break the record for most shots in a day. We did 128 shots over 14 hours.</p><p>Youngblood <i>hit theaters in 1986. Made on a $4.2 million budget, it grossed $15.4 million in U.S. theaters. The movie became a popular rental on VHS and was aired regularly on cable TV. Even in the late 2000s, a PG-rated edit of</i> Youngblood <i>was shown in the U.S. during the NHL playoffs when a series ended early.</i></p><p>BIGGS: When they first put <i>Youngblood</i> out on VHS, on the back there was a picture of Youngblood and Sutton laughing. But it was actually me with Rob Lowe. They had to pull it and change the cover.</p><p>THOMAS: I still get ribbed for that scene where I&rsquo;m doing the leg press and get snapped with a towel. I was in good shape back then. Looking in the mirror these days, I looked a lot better then.</p><p>IRWIN: I shot The Mighty Ducks 2 as well, so we evolved the dollies that we built in 1984 for <i>Youngblood</i>.</p><p>MARKLE: I sent the masks used in <i>Youngblood</i>, the pucks with the Mustangs&rsquo; logo, the script and a bunch of photos to the Hockey Hall of Fame. They were really excited to get it all.</p><p>FINN: I was at a graduation party recently, and somebody came up to me and said, &ldquo;Do you want to go, pretty boy?&rdquo; I get that everywhere.</p><p>RICHMOND: I played in Denmark for a few seasons. My teammates there loved <i>Youngblood</i> and used to watch it all the time. They thought it was the best thing in the world that I was in it. So the next year, when I came back, I gave one of my teammates my Stordahl jersey.</p><p>NESTERENKO: I didn&rsquo;t realize, but when you&rsquo;re together for two or three months, a real camaraderie really builds up among the film crew, the actors and all the people who are brought together to make the film. I really enjoyed that.</p><blockquote class="pullQuote"><b>IN THE BIG FIGHT SCENE, I WAS PAIRED UP WITH SWAYZE. IN ONE SHOT, HE ACTUALLY CONNECTED WITH A PUNCH AND GOT ME RIGHT UNDER THE EYE. &ndash;</b> James Richmond</blockquote><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

f0044-01

BLOOD GUTS & GLORY

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-017/20254-1-eng-US/f0048-012.jpg" title="f0048-01" width="338" height="576"><figcaption class="caption-body">Peter Markle with the Flint Generals in 1969-70.</figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>N</span>OT MANY FILM</b> directors can boast that they played for the U.S. national team. Peter Markle is likely the only one. And it was at a New York Islanders training camp, of all places, that he decided to quit hockey and make movies.</p><p>Born in Danville, Pa., Markle moved to Minneapolis when he was in first grade, learning to skate on frozen ponds and outdoor rinks. He played three years of college hockey at Yale. &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t have a good team my senior year,&rdquo; he recalled. &ldquo;Cornell, with Ken Dryden in net, beat us 19-1.&rdquo;</p><p>After his collegiate career wrapped up, Markle played a season with the Rochester Mustangs of the United States League, back when it was a semi-pro circuit. The Boston Bruins invited him to training camp in 1969, after which they assigned him to the Flint Generals of the International League. The U.S. national team scouted Markle in Flint, and he ended up playing three seasons alongside Herb Brooks.</p><p>But it was at a tryout with the Islanders in 1973 when Markle had an epiphany. &ldquo;I gave it one last shot,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I went to camp and realized that it wasn&rsquo;t going to happen.&rdquo;</p><p>The Islanders wanted to assign Markle to the Muskegon Mohawks of the IHL and sent him to speak with the Mohawks&rsquo; coach/GM Morris &lsquo;Moose&rsquo; Lallo. &ldquo;I made my decision to direct films right then,&rdquo; Markle said. &ldquo;Lallo couldn&rsquo;t believe that somebody would give up hockey.&rdquo;</p><p>One of Markle&rsquo;s earliest directing jobs was making a 20-minute promotional film for the Minnesota Fighting Saints of the WHA. He wrote, shot, produced and directed an indie film called <i>The Personals</i>. His next film, a Hollywood comedy called <i>Hot Dog...The Movie</i>, grossed $20 million at the box office. <i>Youngblood</i>, which Markle wrote and directed, was his third film. Now, he has more than 50 directing credits to his name, including films <i>Bat*21</i> and <i>Flight 93</i>, as well as episodes of <i>C.S.I.</i>, <i>Rescue Me</i>, <i>Burn Notice</i> and <i>The X-Files</i>.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0048-01

HOCKEY TO HOLLYWOOD

<div class="byline">BY DEBRA RUGHOO</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0050-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0050-017/20304-1-eng-US/f0050-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(STREET HOCKEY: ARIZONA COYOTES; MATTHEWS (DRAFT): BRUCE BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES; MATTHEWS (KID): COURTESY OF MATTHEWS FAMILY)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>W</span>HEN AUSTON MATTHEWS went first overall to Toronto, it wasn&rsquo;t just a victory for the superstar-starved Maple Leafs. Even though Arizona had to watch its best homegrown player head north, Matthews&rsquo; No. 1 selection was proof of the growth and development of grassroots hockey in the desert that&rsquo;s taken place since the Coyotes came to town.</b></p><p><b>It has been 20 years since Arizona got its NHL team, when the original Winnipeg Jets moved there to become the Phoenix Coyotes in 1996. And from the beginning, there were doubts about whether hockey could take hold in the Grand Canyon State. Although the Coyotes&rsquo; low attendance and persistent relocation rumors indicate it hasn&rsquo;t, the state&rsquo;s grassroots hockey paints a different picture.</b></p><p><b>Arizona has quietly grown into a budding hockey hotbed. Increased amateur participation and strong homegrown talent have put the state firmly on the hockey map. &ldquo;There are scouts from everywhere that are watching hockey in Arizona,&rdquo; said Tyson Nash, who played 119 games with the Coyotes and is now the team&rsquo;s TV analyst. &ldquo;Five years ago, you might have seen one, and they might have come to watch one specific player. Now you&rsquo;ve got eight or 10 scouts in for a big tournament in town, and they are looking at five or six different players on Arizona teams.&rdquo;</b></p><p><b>Although the Coyotes have had limited success in Arizona, reaching the conference final just once, hockey participation has continued to rise: USA Hockey named Arizona one of the fastestgrowing states for the sport in 2015.</b></p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0051-015/20297-1-eng-US/f0051-012.jpg" title="f0051-01" width="519" height="338"><figcaption class="caption-body">HOMELAND SECURITY As Arizona&rsquo;s best homegrown talent, Matthews&rsquo; first-overall status has put the state firmly on the development map.</figcaption></div><p>There are now more registered players in Arizona than in other southern states like North Carolina and Tennessee, which got their NHL teams shortly after Arizona did (in 1997 and 1998, respectively), and higher even than Missouri, which has had the St. Louis Blues since 1967.</p><p>Several programs have helped get more people playing the game in the state. Matt Shott, manager of amateur hockey development for the Coyotes, said one example is the street hockey clinics his program runs through schools&rsquo; physical education classes, which sees about 32,000 kids each year.</p><p>Little Howlers Hockey has also helped boost participation with its four-week, on-ice Learn to Play program aimed at kids four to eight years old. It is run in co-operation with the Coyotes, the Arizona Amateur Hockey Association, One Goal and local hockey rinks. Parents put up a small deposit, and the program equips kids with all the gear they need to play. At the end of the program, kids return the gear (though they get to keep their jersey) and parents get their deposit back. &ldquo;The NHL is now funding that program, so if kids sign up for the next step, they get to keep the gear and they don&rsquo;t have to pay anything for it,&rdquo; Shott said. &ldquo;The rinks said that almost half of the kids who did the program came back for the next step or at least tried house league.&rdquo;</p><p>An important part of grassroots hockey is coaching, and several retired Coyotes, including Derek Morris, Ray Whitney, Steve Sullivan and Nash, have gone behind the bench of youth teams to help develop the sport through the state. &ldquo;Arizona is a beautiful place to live, and our alumni here is growing exponentially because of it,&rdquo; Nash said. &ldquo;Kids are getting some of the best coaching in the world in Arizona.&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0051-025/20290-1-eng-US/f0051-022.jpg" title="f0051-02" width="248" height="366"><figcaption class="caption-body">AUSTON MATTHEWS</figcaption></div><p>The grassroots growth of the game has even extended into the university ranks, giving local players more opportunities right at home. Arizona State University men&rsquo;s team is transitioning to Div. I status, making it the first school in the southwestern U.S. to have a program at the highest level of NCAA hockey. ASU will add a women&rsquo;s team this fall, and Shott will be an assistant coach. The men&rsquo;s roster features five players from the state.</p><p>Arizona-born players are making national team rosters as well. Lyndsey Fry won a silver medal with the women&rsquo;s team in the 2014 Olympics, while Ryan Savage (son of former Coyote Brian Savage) and Erik Middendorf (whose uncle Max Middendorf had a brief NHL career) captured gold at the 2016 Youth Olympics.</p><p>And, of course, there&rsquo;s Matthews, who starred for the U.S. at both the world juniors and World Championship before going first overall at the draft in Buffalo. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had many kids from Arizona play Div. I hockey, but to actually make that leap to the NHL and play there &ndash; it would be huge for the state,&rdquo; said Tim Reckell, president of the AAHA. &ldquo;It shows that you can make it from Arizona to that ultimate level, and we have the coaches and associations in place to get you there.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>GROWING THE GAME</b></h2><p>From the desert to the East Coast, grassroots hockey has risen steadily in many nontraditional markets since 1990-91 when none of these states had an NHL team.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0051-034/20283-1-eng-US/f0051-032.jpg" title="f0051-03" width="447" height="291"></div><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

f0050-01

ARIZONA RISING

<div class="byline">BY MATT LARKIN</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0052-016/20333-1-eng-US/f0052-012.jpg" title="f0052-01" width="920" height="465"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(DAVE SANDFORD/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>FOR UP-TO-THE-MINUTE COVERAGE, VISIT <b><a href="http://THN.com">THN.COM</a></b></p><p><b>DIDN&rsquo;T VINNY LECAVALIER</b> retire? You&rsquo;d swear it was him, or a teenage version of him, standing at a podium addressing the media on the eve of the 2016 NHL draft. That&rsquo;s what it felt like talking to Pierre-Luc Dubois, whom a day later the Columbus Blue Jackets would draft third overall, breaking the supposed ironclad top three of Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine and Jesse Puljujarvi.</p><p>Was the pick a reach? Don&rsquo;t be so sure. Dubois, a friendly, rosycheeked tank at 6-foot-3 and 208 pounds, carries himself like a young Lecavalier. Coincidentally, the last time the draft was in Buffalo, in 1998, Lecavalier went first overall. Stranger still: Dubois will report to coach John Tortorella, who guided Lecavalier to a Stanley Cup in 2004. Dubois is easygoing and impressively articulate for his age. He seems to enjoy interviews. The novelty hasn&rsquo;t worn off.</p><p>On the ice, Dubois earns comparisons to Jamie Benn. Like Benn, Dubois is lauded for his responsible, pro-style game. Like Benn, Dubois fills the net and projects as a front-line NHLer. And, like Benn, Dubois has one hell of a mean streak. It got him into trouble with the QMJHL&rsquo;s Cape Breton Screaming Eagles, when he was suspended in March for boarding. &ldquo;I try not to go too far,&rdquo; Dubois said. &ldquo;I like to be hard to play against, not just with the puck but without the puck and on the forecheck. It&rsquo;s a big part of my game, especially being a center&hellip;I&rsquo;m not scared to get dirty in the corners and go to the net and get cross-checked.&rdquo;</p><p>The other trait Dubois shares with Benn: positional swingman. Dubois is often listed as a left winger but says he much prefers the right side if asked to play the wing. The Eagles switched him to center around Christmas.</p><p>And that, coupled with a monster year in which Dubois ripped off 42 goals and 99 points in 62 games, is why he beat Puljujarvi to the podium. The Jackets need a top-line center and believe Dubois is it. He prides himself on being a late bloomer. He points out he gained 50 pounds over the past two years. He doesn&rsquo;t believe he&rsquo;s done growing, literally or figuratively. &ldquo;Now everybody is talking about the two Finns and Matthews,&rdquo; Dubois said, &ldquo;but in the next couple of years, I think I&rsquo;d be in that discussion, too.&rdquo;</p><p>A love affair between Dubois and the Jackets began following the draft combine in early June. Soon afterward he toured Columbus. He met some Blue Jackets players and team president John Davidson. It went swimmingly.</p><p>Is Dubois perfect? No. He has to keep that temper in check, and he admits he must add explosiveness to his step. But his frankness and positive attitude suggest he&rsquo;s more than just a talented kid. He&rsquo;s a future face of the franchise. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been scouting for more than 20 years,&rdquo; Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen said. &ldquo;You like a guy, but there might be a red flag here or there, but you let it slide because you like the guy too much. We love this guy, and everything checked green.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0052-01

A COLUMBUS LOVE STORY

<div class="byline">BY RYAN KENNEDY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-016/20369-1-eng-US/f0053-012.jpg" title="f0053-01" width="519" height="593"><figcaption class="caption-body">McAvoy is going into his second year at Boston University and is sure to see a lot of his future bosses in the college stands.<span class="photo-credit">(MCAVOY: JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; KELLER: DAVE SANDFORD/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-026/20362-1-eng-US/f0053-022.jpg" title="f0053-02" width="98" height="99"></div><p><b>CHARLIE MCAVOY POS</b> D <b>AGE</b> 18 <b>HT</b> 6-0 <b>WT</b> 205 lbs <b>STATUS</b> Drafted 14th overall by Boston Bruins in 2016</p><p><b>BRUINS FANS WON&rsquo;</b> have to travel far to keep an eye on firstrounder Charlie McAvoy. He&rsquo;s already been in the city for a year.</p><p>The mobile defenseman is about to enter his sophomore season with the Boston University Terriers, and there was a lot of growth in Year 1. &ldquo;He took a lot of pride in becoming a well-rounded defenseman,&rdquo; said coach David Quinn. &ldquo;His defensive play improved dramatically, and he had a physical edge to his game. At times he tried to do too much, but I think a lot of that had to do with it being his draft year.&rdquo;</p><p>McAvoy learned to reel himself in when necessary but also knows creativity and risk-taking are two of his strengths. That swashbuckling attitude made him a top-scoring blueliner in the conference and netted him a spot on Team USA&rsquo;s world junior squad, which earned bronze in Helsinki. The trust McAvoy gets from the Terriers coaching staff has gone a long way. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re so good at letting me try things, and that comes back to development: you try things and you learn,&rdquo; McAvoy said. &ldquo;When it doesn&rsquo;t work, you can&rsquo;t get rattled.&rdquo;</p><p>McAvoy is no glamor boy. The son of a teacher and a plumber, the Long Island, N.Y., native lives the lessons he grew up with. &ldquo;Hard work,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My dad, since he was 20 he&rsquo;s been a plumber. Almost 30 years later, it&rsquo;s those principles he has taught me: nothing is going to come to you. You have to go out and get it.&rdquo;</p><p>The Bruins, a team that has faltered on the blueline of late, got McAvoy with their first of two top-30 draft selections (center Trent Frederic was the other). On top of being able to see McAvoy at Agganis Arena, the B&rsquo;s brass could also count on intel from Terriers center Jakob Forsbacka-Karlsson, whom they drafted last season.</p><p>The biggest takeaway? McAvoy finds the middle of the ice and springs his forwards with ease. &ldquo;JFK spoke highly of that,&rdquo; said Bruins GM Don Sweeney. &ldquo;A center wants the puck, and he wants it in motion. Today it&rsquo;s paramount for a defenseman to establish more than one option and recognize it and be able to execute it. Charlie does that.&rdquo;</p><p>McAvoy grew up a Rangers fan but admitted before the draft his allegiances were fading &ndash; in part due to the knowledge he&rsquo;d likely be taken by another franchise. The first jersey he owned was a Brian Leetch number, and McAvoy has also followed Ryan Mc-Donagh over the years. The ability to play a lot like Leetch and McDonagh is something McAvoy is working on with Quinn at BU. The coach recalled speaking with his freshman after one game where McAvoy played 26 minutes and was totally gassed. It was a teachable moment. &ldquo;Great efficient defenseman can play 30 minutes a night,&rdquo; Quinn said, &ldquo;because they let the game come to them and make it easy.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p></div>

f0053-01

BOSTON HOME COOKING

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-035/20398-1-eng-US/f0053-032.jpg" title="f0053-03" width="232" height="285"><figcaption class="caption-body">CLAYTON KELLER</figcaption></div><h2><b>1. CLAYTON KELLER</b></h2><h3><b>ARI, 7TH OVERALL</b></h3><p class="dropcap"><span>T</span>he Terriers will have to fight a pitched battle with Memorial Cup host Windsor for the creative and highly skilled center, but watch out for B.U. if it does land him. Keller played some of his best hockey against NCAA teams this past season as the star of the U.S. NTDP.</p><h2><b>2. DANTE FABBRO</b></h2><h3><b>NSH, 17TH OVERALL</b></h3><p>A two-way defenseman who put up a ton of points with BCHL Penticton, Fabbro may turn out to be more of a shutdown guy thanks to his deft defensive coverage, but he also has a hard shot that he can leverage on the power play.</p><h2><b>3. KIEFFER BELLOWS</b></h2><h3><b>NYI, 19TH OVERALL</b></h3><p>Keller&rsquo;s triggerman with the U.S. NTDP this past season, Bellows owns a devastatingly quick release and excellent offensive instincts. The son of ex-NHLer Brian Bellows will use college to round out his overall game.</p><h2><b>4. CHAD KRYS</b></h2><h3><b>CHI, 45TH OVERALL</b></h3><p>A superb athlete who takes off like a shot thanks to his powerful legs, Krys is another NTDP product and brings a modern puck-moving game from the blueline.</p><h2><b>5. PATRICK HARPER</b></h2><h3><b>NSH, 138TH OVERALL</b></h3><p>The Johnny Gaudreau-sized center has a ton of skill and quickness. He played prep school hockey for Avon Old Farms and will join the Terriers in 2017-18. He has already played some games for the USHL&rsquo;s Omaha Lancers and found success in that realm.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0053-03

TERRIER PUPS LIT UP DRAFT

<div class="byline">BY RYAN KENNEDY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0054-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0054-016/20427-1-eng-US/f0054-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p>ALEX NYLANDER</p><p>DANTEF ABBRO</p><p>HENRIK BORGSTROM</p><span class="photo-credit">(DAVE SANDFORD/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES, NYLANDER: JEFFREY T. BARNES/GETTY IMAGES; FABB RO: JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; BORGS TROM: BRUCE BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>T</span>HE BEST THING</b> about the NHL draft? You can&rsquo;t really fail. Every team makes selections and if even one pans out, your team gets a roster player. Having said that, good scouting goes a long way, and for the teams that made the ace decisions in Buffalo, the future looks a lot brighter than it once did. So which teams deserve the most praise in 2016?</p><p>I&rsquo;ve ranked all 30 teams and assigned grades based on how much they helped themselves at the draft. For those teams that picked high, their chances of success are that much easier, but one selection can&rsquo;t be the only measure. Finding value on the second day of the draft is also important, and breadth can&rsquo;t be discounted, either. Those teams that made more picks are better off than those who mortgaged the future at the trade deadline.</p><h2><b>TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS</b></h2><p>GRADE: A+</p><p>When you get the consensus best player in the draft, you&rsquo;re off to an easy start. But the Leafs added much more than Matthews. They grabbed a very good goalie in Joseph Woll, a tenacious winger in Carl Grundstrom and took some chances with great payoff potential.</p><h2>PHILADELPHIA FLYERS</h2><p>GRADE: A+</p><p>First-rounder German Rubtsov was a solid pick, but the Flyers did a ton of damage in the second round and beyond, as well. They landed the top goalie in Carter Hart, a high-rising force up front in Wade Allison and some nice, feisty skill with Pascal Laberge.</p><h2><b>CALGARY FLAMES</b></h2><p>GRADE: A+</p><p>With nine selections and a great amount of variety in those picks, the Flames could practically make a team out of this draft class. Matthew Tkachuk was a huge gift, while Tyler Parsons was underrated in net for OHL London. Keep an eye on 6-foot-7 D-man Stepan Falkovsky.</p><h2><b>EDMONTON OILERS</b></h2><p>GRADE: A</p><p>Defense may have been a need, but no way was Edmonton passing on Jesse Puljujarvi&rsquo;s talent up front. And when it came to the blueline, the Oilers did well, tabbing big Markus Niemelainen and the solidly built Matt Cairns. Both have nice mobility from the back end.</p><h2><b>BUFFALO SABRES</b></h2><p>GRADE: A</p><p>It started with Alex Nylander, but the Sabres continued the skill parade by adding Rasmus Asplund and Cliff Pu. Brett Murray, a mountain heading to Penn State, is one to watch, as is Vasily Glotov, a small but quick and skilled seventh-rounder with definite sleeper upside.</p><h2><b>NEW JERSEY DEVILS</b></h2><p>GRADE: A</p><p>Punking Ottawa for a third-rounder and still getting Mikey McLeod was pretty incredible, and the Devils weren&rsquo;t done there. Nathan Bastian and Joey Anderson are perfect top-six support players, while Mikhail Maltsev is a big, talented kid with sleeper potential.</p><h2><b>TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING</b></h2><p>GRADE: A</p><p>The Bolts didn&rsquo;t make a bang, but they didn&rsquo;t need to with their depth. What Tampa accomplished at the draft was lining up solid prospects such as Brett Howden, Libor Hajek and Taylor Raddysh. Also took a good flyer on late-blooming USHL star Ross Colton.</p><h2><b>CAROLINA HURRICANES</b></h2><p>GRADE: A</p><p>GM Ron Francis added to his already impressive stable of blueliners with offensive defenseman Jake Bean, then grabbed a couple goal scorers in Julien Gauthier and Janne Kuokkanen. Keep an eye out for goalie Jack LaFontaine, too &ndash; he&rsquo;s a Michigan commit.</p><h2><b>WINNIPEG JETS</b></h2><p>GRADE: A</p><p>Though the Jets made only six picks, they got strong value from the crop. When you start with two first-rounders in Patrik Laine and Logan Stanley, you&rsquo;re already ahead of the game. Watch out for sixth-round goalie Mikhail Berdin; he&rsquo;s a biggamer.</p><h2><b>COLORADO AVALANCHE</b></h2><p>GRADE: B+</p><p>First-rounder Tyson Jost is a heart-and-soul player who also happens to set fire to scoresheets with his offensive skill. Cam Morrison may be the next Andrew Brunette, as he too can put the puck in the net. Keep tabs on Travis Barron, a late pick with lots of potential.</p><h2><b>OTTAWA SENATORS</b></h2><p>GRADE: B+</p><p>Tough to get a good grade with only five selections, but the Sens made them count. Logan Brown has the raw potential to be a dominant No. 1 center one day, while Jonathan Dahlen has lots of smarts and skill. Take note of Todd Burgess, an underrated goal scorer.</p><h2><b>PENGUINS</b></h2><p>GRADE: B</p><p>The Penguins didn&rsquo;t pick until late in the second round, but they still managed to snag one of the best goalies in the class in Filip Gustavsson. On the back end, they picked up a couple physical defensemen in shutdown Connor Hall and offensive Joseph Masonius.</p><h2><b>NASHVILLE PREDATORS</b></h2><p>GRADE: B</p><p>Boy, do the Predators know defense. With their first two selections, they got a safe guy in Dante Fabbro and a risk/reward guy in Samuel Girard. Nashville could use some more weapons up front, but keep the name Patrick Harper in your memory bank. Small but very skilled.</p><h2><b>ARIZONA COYOTES</b></h2><p>GRADE: B</p><p>Props to the Coyotes for taking a sub-5-foot-11 player in the top 10 in Clayton Keller. The Dogs also snagged Jakob Chychrun, so it was a big first round. They were very quiet on Day 2, however, with only three picks. Offensive defenseman Cam Dineen is intriguing.</p><h2><b>MONTREAL CANADIENS</b></h2><p>GRADE: B</p><p>Much of Montreal&rsquo;s grade goes off the strength of the Mikhail Sergachev selection. The Windsor D-man was a perfect pick for a team that will need him soon. Otherwise, it&rsquo;s hard to beat William Bitten&rsquo;s drive, and Victor Mete has back-end skill, though both are on the small side.</p><h2><b>ANAHEIM DUCKS</b></h2><p>GRADE: B</p><p>Max Jones fell into Anaheim&rsquo;s lap at No. 24, so a team that already has a nice dose of size and nastiness up front just got a little tougher for the future. More was expected from Sam Steel this year, and Josh Mahura had a major knee injury, but both are capable of big things.</p><h2><b>DETROIT RED WINGS</b></h2><p>GRADE: B</p><p>Was it a bit of a reach taking raw offensive defenseman Dennis Cholowski in the first round? Perhaps. But the payoff could be worth it. Filip Hronek is also pretty good at lugging the puck up from the blueline, while Givani Smith is a physical load to handle up front.</p><h2><b>COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS</b></h2><p>GRADE: B</p><p>That Pierre-Luc Dubois pick was a shock, wasn&rsquo;t it? If Jesse Puljujarvi becomes a star, the Jackets may wince over this one, but they got a pretty good player themselves. Otherwise, Columbus had only five picks. Andrew Peeke is solid, while Vitaly Abramov was a steal at No. 65.</p><h2><b>BOSTON BRUINS</b></h2><p>GRADE: B</p><p>The Bruins erred in dubbing late first-rounder Trent Frederic as a &ldquo;third-line center,&rdquo; as the powerful kid has more upside than that. Fellow first-rounder Charlie McAvoy is the type of modern, mobile D-man teams crave, while Ryan Lindgren has great leadership qualities.</p><h2><b>VANCOUVER CANUCKS</b></h2><p>GRADE: B</p><p>Only six picks for the Canucks, but at least they got a great fit with lottery selection Olli Juolevi, who will help the Dcorps immensely in the near future. William Lockwood has speed and jam on the wing, while late-rounder Brett McKenzie plays a solid two-way game at center.</p><h2><b>SAN JOSE SHARKS</b></h2><p>GRADE: C+</p><p>Dylan Gambrell was a really good get for the Sharks, who had no firstround pick and only five selections overall. The U. of Denver center was huge for the Pios as a freshman. Otherwise, San Jose must hope Noah Gregor continues his meteoric rise with WHL Moose Jaw.</p><h2><b>CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS</b></h2><p>GRADE: C</p><p>When you&rsquo;re one of the top &ldquo;now&rdquo; teams in the NHL, you can take chances. The Hawks went small with Alex DeBrincat, Chad Krys and Artur Kayumov, but given the team&rsquo;s cap crunch and dwindling pipeline, what happens if the gambles don&rsquo;t pay off?</p><h2><b>DALLAS STARS</b></h2><p>GRADE: C</p><p>In Riley Tufte, the Stars selected a big left winger with loads of raw potential, but the Minn.-Duluth commit still has a ways to go. Colton Point is also NCAA-bound (Colgate) and has the chance to be a very good goaltender. Dallas had just six selections overall.</p><h2><b>NEW YORK ISLANDERS</b></h2><p>GRADE: C</p><p>The Isles led with Kieffer Bellows, one of the best goal scorers in the draft. He&rsquo;ll need to round out his game &ndash; much like another recent N.Y. pick, Michael Dal Colle. Never ones for orthodoxy, the Isles also jumped on three players who come in at just 5-foot-8 (one&rsquo;s a D-man).</p><h2><b>NEW YORK RANGERS</b></h2><p>GRADE: C</p><p>The Rangers waited a long time to make their first pick, then used No. 81 on the divisive Sean Day. If they can reach the physically gifted D-man, it will be a steal. Otherwise&hellip; yikes. New York had just six picks, but keep an eye out for the Soo&rsquo;s 6-foot-5 Timmy Gettinger.</p><h2><b>WASHINGTON CAPITALS</b></h2><p>GRADE: C</p><p>Washington&rsquo;s first selection, Lucas Johansen, has a lot of potential as a modern D-man thanks to his excellent skating. Garrett Pilon plays a two-way game with skill, and Beck Malenstyn has nice size, but overall the Capitals didn&rsquo;t go for many kids that have high ceilings.</p><h2><b>ST. LOUIS BLUES</b></h2><p>GRADE: C</p><p>The Blues are one of those teams that don&rsquo;t really need the draft desperately right now, but they did have some reaches they might regret later. There&rsquo;s definitely potential in the group, especially if goalie Evan Fitzpatrick gets more support in front of him in junior next season.</p><h2><b>FLORIDA PANTHERS</b></h2><p>GRADE: C</p><p>The Panthers are in a place now where their prospect pipeline is bountiful, but they sure did take a lot of chances with the 2016 class. Henrik Borgstrom has lots of potential, but he&rsquo;s still raw. Adam Mascherin is undersized, and Jonathan Ang needs to bulk up.</p><h2><b>MINNESOTA WILD</b></h2><p>GRADE: C</p><p>With just four picks in the draft, Minnesota did not have much to work with. First-rounder Luke Kunin was a nice selection as he brings lots of tools up front. The jury is still out on seventh-rounder Dmitry Sokolov; was the OHL too much for him, or just Sudbury?</p><h2><b>LOS ANGELES KINGS</b></h2><p>GRADE: D</p><p>Los Angeles had just four selections in the draft, tying the Wild for fewest. In Kale Clague, they have a defenseman who struggled in his draft year but does have good overall potential. Defenseman Jacob Moverare is smart and steady, but will his skating drag him down?<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0054-01

THN’S 2016 DRAFT GRADES

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0056-025/20456-1-eng-US/f0056-022.jpg" title="f0056-02" width="701" height="387"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p>DAVE SANDFORD/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES</p><p>RUN OF EMOTIONS Jost had smiles of joy after getting selected 10th overall by Colorado. His Grandpa had tears of joy.</p></figcaption></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0056-016/20470-1-eng-US/f0056-012.jpg" title="f0056-01" width="125" height="107"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><p>WITH RYAN KENNEDY</p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon2.jpg" title="common" width="21" height="17"></span><p>@THNRYANKENNEDY</p><p><b>THE ENDURING IMAGE</b> of the 2016 draft was of Tyson Jost&rsquo;s grandfather exploding with emotion when the Colorado Avalanche beckoned his grandson to the stage with the 10th overall selection. And the man makes no excuses. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a crier,&rdquo; said Jim Jost, 77. &ldquo;I cry watching the late-night news. Don&rsquo;t ask me why, it&rsquo;s just in my genes. I was overjoyed.&rdquo;</p><p>And he had every right to be. Seeing your grandson get selected by an NHL team is an incredible moment, especially when you&rsquo;ve been an integral part of the journey. The NHL draft is a great place to remember the sacrifices hockey families make for the dream, and the Jost clan is a beacon in that regard.</p><p>Tyson Jost and his younger sister, Kacey, were raised by their mother in Fort Saskatchewan, near Edmonton. Laura works as a senior manager at Bell Canada and has been closely involved in her kids&rsquo; interests from the beginning. She logged countless hours in the car driving Tyson to hockey practice and Kacey to dance or volleyball, sometimes getting little sleep before she had to wake up and head out to work.</p><p>When Tyson got the chance to play at the prestigious Pursuit of Excellence hockey school in Kelowna, B.C., in 2011, Laura was going to move out with him, but her job kept her in Alberta. That&rsquo;s when Laura&rsquo;s parents stepped in. Jim and Emily were retired and had a son in the B.C. interior, so they decamped for Kelowna so Tyson could stay with them. It was a pretty good scenario, but still a wrenching one. &ldquo;It was hard,&rdquo; Tyson said. &ldquo;I was 13 and I would have to leave home and my mom.&rdquo;</p><p>Similarly for Laura, her world was being flipped, even if she had the good fortune of knowing her boy was in the same steady hands that raised her. &ldquo;Honestly, it was horrible,&rdquo; Laura said. &ldquo;I coached Tyson, so when he left, my hockey world and my social circle kind of disappeared. Tyson made it easier &ndash; he promised he would call every day and he did &ndash; but I cried myself to sleep.&rdquo;</p><p>But everyone was on the same page. Back in the 1970s, Jim Jost was an assistant coach for the Jr. A Fort Saskatchewan Traders, where his players included Keith Brown, Dave Babych and future Canucks GM Jim Benning. So he knew what kind of commitment was needed if his grandson was going to make a run at being an NHLer. Fortunately, Tyson was self-motivated during his time under his grandparents&rsquo; watch. &ldquo;It was a joy,&rdquo; said Jim, whose trade occupation before retirement was a millwright and maintenance man. &ldquo;Never once did we have to wake him at 6:15 a.m. for practice. He thrived on it.&rdquo;</p><p>Often, grandparents are a soft touch, but that&rsquo;s not how the Josts roll. Laura considers herself &ldquo;old school&rdquo; as a parent and she got that from her upbringing. Her parents encouraged her in all pursuits, but hard work was expected and no meant no. Tyson found that out in Kelowna. &ldquo;My grandpa was tough on me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But it was a good tough. You have to work for everything; nothing is handed to you in life.&rdquo;</p><p>Originally, Jim and Emily planned on staying in Kelowna for Tyson&rsquo;s two years with Pursuit of Excellence, but then the talented youngster got an offer to play minor midget for the local Okanagan Rockets, based out of Kelowna. All his friends were now in the area, so the grandparents stuck around an extra year and Tyson tore up the league for 88 points in 33 games.</p><p>From there, he headed an hour&rsquo;s drive away to Penticton in the BCHL, and once again, the notion that it takes a village reared around again. This time, it was the family of teammate Dante Fabbro, another top prospect who ended up going 17th overall to Nashville this year. Fabbro&rsquo;s parents have a cabin outside Penticton, so they would drive up from Vancouver and have family dinners with their son and Jost. The hockey community was coming through. &ldquo;You learn who your true friends are,&rdquo; Laura said. &ldquo;You learn who you can trust.&rdquo;</p><p>Jost was a firebomb in Penticton, tallying more than two points a game this past season. He&rsquo;ll be a key recruit for the University of North Dakota in the upcoming year, following in the footsteps of idol Jonathan Toews. &ldquo;At the end of the day, I want to be in the NHL,&rdquo; Jost said. &ldquo;And I want to win the Stanley Cup.&rdquo;</p><p>Meanwhile, grandparents Jim and Emily have moved back to Fort Saskatchewan, their three-year nurturing assignment completed on draft day. Can&rsquo;t imagine what Grandpa Jim&rsquo;s reaction will be when Tyson eventually makes the NHL and achieves his goal of lifting the Stanley Cup.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0056-02

FAMILY TIES AND FAMILY CRIES

<div class="byline">BY LARRY HUMBER</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-016/20520-1-eng-US/f0057-012.jpg" title="f0057-01" width="457" height="457"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(GUESS WHO: ROBERT LABERGE /ALLSPORT; NEELY: STEVE BABINEAU/NH LI VIA GETTY IMAGES; MASK: DAVID GUNNARSSON/DAVEART.COM; BLAST: HHO F IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><h2><b>ACROSS</b></h2><p>1 Hockey&rsquo;s Greatest Photos features the work of Bruce ___</p><p>4 He wears the &lsquo;C&rsquo; in Chicago</p><p>7 Knock down, ___ over</p><p>8 Called up from the minors</p><p>10 Very talented youngster, like Detroit&rsquo;</p><p>Dylan Larkin</p><p>12 The &lsquo;W&rsquo; in WHA</p><p>13 Cam ___ , pictured, is now president in Boston</p><p>14 Tied</p><p>18 Experienced, like an old pro</p><p>19 Kurt Russell played ___ Brooks in <i>Miracle</i></p><p>20 Pekka ___ is between the pipes in Nashville</p><p>21 Picks up the pace, ___ ___ up</p><h2>DOWN</h2><p>1 Music that was popular during 4 Down&rsquo;s heyday</p><p>2 One of hockey&rsquo;s classic games took place on ___ ___ Eve, 1975</p><p>3 Number retired by many teams</p><p>4 He snapped Doug Harvey&rsquo;s Norris streak in 1959</p><p>5 Stalls, ___ up the clock</p><p>6 Where Nick Foligno played as a junior</p><p>9 He wore the number of this clue and loved doing crosswords</p><p>11 Those who hassle players from the safety of their seats</p><p>12 Where the Spitfires are based</p><p>15 Suit up</p><p>16 First appearance</p><p>17 Slang for an old arena</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-026/20513-1-eng-US/f0057-022.jpg" title="f0057-02" width="279" height="199"><figcaption class="caption-body">GUESS WHO!</figcaption></div><p><b>CLUE #1</b></p><p>&ldquo;I was a Canada Cup champ and Olympic silver medallist before I played my first NHL game.&rdquo;</p><p><b>CLUE #2</b></p><p>&ldquo;I played in one Stanley Cup final and led the NHL in playoff points that season, too.&rdquo;</p><p><b>CLUE #3</b></p><p>&ldquo;My 1.36 points per game as a Philadelphia Flyer is the highest in franchise history.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>SAME AS IT EVER WAS</b></h2><p><i>The Hockey News</i>, Jan. 7, 1948</p><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;Hockey was much rougher in the old days, so that what is being played nowadays in the National Hockey League is by comparison a cross between ballet and figure skating &ndash; Jim Burchard, writer at the <i>New York World Telegram</i></blockquote><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-055/20506-1-eng-US/f0057-052.jpg" title="f0057-05" width="570" height="304"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-063/20499-1-eng-US/f0057-062.jpg" title="f0057-06" width="68" height="69"></div><p><b>Blast</b> from the <b>Past</b> from The Hockey Hall <i>of</i> Fame</p><p><b>Bobby Bauer, Milt Schmidt and Woody Dumart made up Boston&rsquo;s &lsquo;Kraut Line&rsquo; &ndash; and shared a barber, evidently.</b></p><p>CROSSWORD SOLUTION: ACROSS 1. BENNETT, 4. TOEWS, 7. BOWL, 8. PROMOTED, 10. PHENOMENON, 12. WORLD, 13. NEELY, 14. DEADLOCKED, 18. SEASONED, 19. HERB, 20. RINNE, 21. STEPS IT DOWN 1. BEBOP, 2. NEW YEAR&rsquo;S, 3. THREE, 4. TOM JOHNSON, 5. EATS, 6. SUDBURY, 9. GORDIE HOWE, 11. HECKLERS, 12. WINDSOR, 15. DRESS, 16. DEBUT, 17. BARN</p><p>GUESS WHO ANSWER: <b>ERIC LINDROS</b><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p></div>

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CROSSWORD

<div class="byline">&#x2013; MATT LARKIN</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-035/20556-1-eng-US/f0057-032.jpg" title="f0057-03" width="241" height="239"></div><p class="dropcap"><span>S</span>ubban had a terrifying experience this season when a shot fractured his larynx, but one look at his mask tells us he faces his fears &ndash; even the grim reaper. The design from David Gunnarsson depicts a body bag unzipping, and the reaper&rsquo;s skeletal fingers prying his way out, exposing his skull. It&rsquo;s a morbid but stunning image, fit for a guy who survived just about the scariest thing that can happen to a goalie.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-045/20549-1-eng-US/f0057-042.jpg" title="f0057-04" width="244" height="245"></div><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

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BEHIND THE MASK

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0058-025/20585-1-eng-US/f0058-022.jpg" title="f0058-02" width="647" height="495"><figcaption class="caption-body">P.K. SUBBAN <span class="photo-credit">(FRANCOIS LACASSE/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0058-016/20599-1-eng-US/f0058-012.jpg" title="f0058-01" width="138" height="114"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><p>WITH KEN CAMPBELL</p><span class="image-inline"><img src="mon2.jpg" title="common" width="21" height="17"></span><p>@THNKEN CAMPBELL</p><p><b>THE DAY BEFORE</b> the NHL draft, when rumblings about a possible P.K. Subban trade took flight, Montreal Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin was asked whether Subban did things &ldquo;the Canadien way.&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the Canadien way?&rdquo; Bergevin asked. It was a valid question. It&rsquo;s one of those things hockey people can&rsquo;t explain or quantify. It&rsquo;s like the indefinable &ldquo;code&rdquo; in the game. People don&rsquo;t know exactly what it is, but they know it when they see it. But when Bergevin dealt Subban to Nashville for Shea Weber, we all got a pretty good idea of what &ldquo;the Canadien way&rdquo; actually is. And despite his on-ice brilliance and dynamic personality off the ice, Subban never, ever embodied it. With Bergevin and coach Michel Therrien running things, Subban was a square peg being driven into a round hole. Chances are Weber, who is everything off the ice Subban is not, will exemplify &ldquo;the Canadien way.&rdquo;</p><p>So what if the trade has the potential for disastrous ramifications for Montreal? At least the Habs received a good guy who will be popular among teammates and never say or do anything that will compromise the dignity of the brand. Good work. It&rsquo;s hard to believe this trade has anything to do with improving Montreal, either now or in the future. At best, it will be a saw-off in the short term and a win for the Predators in the long term. All Bergevin had to do was ask his analytics consultant, Matt Pfeffer, to run the numbers to know Subban&rsquo;s performance is better than Weber&rsquo;s now and perhaps significantly superior in the future. But Bergevin instead dealt its best defenseman since Chris Chelios. Old-school thinking ruled the day, as it almost always does in hockey.</p><p>And we should not be surprised. You know why the NHL is so stuck in its ways? Well, it represents the biggest old boys&rsquo; network among the four pro sports. Of the 30 GMs in the NHL, 16 played in the NHL. Another three played in the minors and two played college hockey. Compare that to Major League Baseball, where two of the 30 GMs played at the highest level. In the National Football League, just six of 32 GMs played in the league and in the National Basketball Association, only eight of the 30 GMs were NBA players.</p><p>When hockey people who played in the NHL talk about the product, they refer to it as &ldquo;our game,&rdquo; as though they are The Chosen Ones, charged with the task of preserving all the game&rsquo;s sacred traditions, like fighting and allowing forwards to get cross-checked in the back repeatedly when standing in front of the net. Hockey is stuck in the dark ages because too many people who have been indoctrinated with &ldquo;the code&rdquo; are holding the levers of power. There are exceptions, as the Arizona Coyotes proved with John Chayka, a young man with no pro hockey background who did a good job of cutting his chops at his first NHL draft. But even then, Chayka can&rsquo;t do much without the approval of Coyotes coach Dave Tippett, who played 721 NHL games and holds a dual portfolio that also includes executive vice-president, hockey operations. The process is a slow and painful one.</p><blockquote class="pullQuote"><b>HOCKEY IS STUCK IN THE DARK AGES BECAUSE TOO MANY PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN INDOCTRINATED WITH &lsquo;THE CODE&rsquo; HOLD THE LEVERS OF POWER</b></blockquote><p>Look at analytics. Those who run hockey departments claim they&rsquo;re embracing the concept, but then they seem to ignore them when it suits their purposes. The Subban-for-Weber trade was terrible for Montreal from an analytics perspective. The same day as the Subban trade was made, Edmonton traded Taylor Hall to New Jersey for Adam Larsson in a deal that defied analytics. And the Oilers have one of the best in their consultant, Tyler Dellow. The only conclusion you can make is Dellow either didn&rsquo;t show up for work that day or the Oilers ignored his advice.</p><p>Because from an analytics perspective, trading Hall for anything short of a bona fide No. 1 stud defenseman results in a net loss for the Oilers. Hall is one of the best left wingers in the NHL. Even the eye test tells you that. But over the past five seasons, the Oilers have had a goal differential of plus-98 when Hall was on the ice and a mind-boggling minus-146 when he was not. A swing of 244 goals is staggering. Even someone who barely passed Grade 12 math recognizes that. Over the past five seasons, only Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Jamie Benn, Evgeni Malkin and Tyler Seguin have more pointsper-60 minutes in 5-on-5 play than Hall.</p><p>There are some who assert race was a factor in Subban being traded. It&rsquo;s an assertion that&rsquo;s impossible to substantiate. Would the Canadiens have had more patience with Subban&rsquo;s penchant for drawing attention to himself if he were white? There&rsquo;s nothing to suggest they would have. That Subban&rsquo;s teammates voted Max Pacioretty as the team&rsquo;s nominee for the King Clancy Award in a year when Subban pledged to raise $10 million for the Montreal Children&rsquo;s Hospital is, to put it mildly, curious. But, again, there&rsquo;s nothing to prove race played a role. (And in fairness, Pacioretty is helping to raise $3.5 million to purchase a high performance MRI machine for the Montreal General Hospital.) Lord knows P.K. Subban has his detractors, yet they all could have made this work. But with a wall of philosophical differences between them, there was no way it was ever going to be a match between Subban and his former employer. And as long as the old boys&rsquo; network rules the game, don&rsquo;t expect those attitudes to change.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

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August 15, 2016

DIAMOND DAYS FOR SUBBAN

AN EXPANSION TEAM LIKE NO OTHER

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OFF-SEASON WINNERS & LOSERS