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.

September 14, 2015

The Hockey News - September 14, 2015

<div class="byline">By Sal Barry of PuckJunk.com</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0008-0219/83210-1-eng-US/f0008-022.jpg" title="f0008-02" width="546" height="354"></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>T</span>rading card company Score</b> received a license to make hockey cards in 1990, and it looked to hockey&rsquo;s future when hiring a spokesman to hype its new product. Instead of opting for a current NHLer, they scooped up junior league phenom Eric Lindros, signing him to an exclusive endorsement deal. Lindros was still a year too young to be eligible for the NHL draft, and only Score could issue cards of him until he played in the NHL. The last card in their inaugural 1990-91 set was this &ldquo;Future Superstar&rdquo; one of Lindros, showing the future first-overall NHL pick with the OHL&rsquo;s Oshawa Generals.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

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departments

In The CARDS

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0044-0126/83968-1-eng-US/f0044-012.jpg" title="f0044-01" width="703" height="441"><figcaption class="caption-body"><b>CCM ULTRA TACKS. PROTECTIVE GEAR.</b></figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0044-0219/83961-1-eng-US/f0044-022.jpg" title="f0044-02" width="187" height="305"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0044-0311/83954-1-eng-US/f0044-032.jpg" title="f0044-03" width="186" height="299"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0044-049/83947-1-eng-US/f0044-042.jpg" title="f0044-04" width="219" height="300"><figcaption class="caption-body"><b>CCM RESISTANCE HELMET.</b></figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0044-058/83940-1-eng-US/f0044-052.jpg" title="f0044-05" width="225" height="293"><figcaption class="caption-body"><b>CCM FITLITE HELMET.</b></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>H</span>ockey keeps getting faster and its impacts keep getting harder, but CCM&rsquo;s new Ultra Tacks line of gloves, pants and underprotective equipment has players covered with D3O technology.</p><p>Ultra Tacks gear is designed for skaters who need to absorb energy from hits and pucks at an NHL tempo. CCM is introducing D3O &mdash; an engineered smart foam &mdash; to hockey following its success in football, lacrosse, motor sports and protective clothing.</p><p>&ldquo;The Ultra Tacks line redefines standards in protection with cuttingedge D3O technology,&rdquo; said Charles Benoit, CCM Hockey&rsquo;s product manager. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s engineered to react to fluctuating intensities from opponent hits, flying pucks or anything else on the ice.&rdquo;</p><p>D3O works at the molecular level. The foam is normally soft and flows freely, but when there&rsquo;s a shock, it locks together to absorb and disperse energy. Then it returns instantly to a flexible state.</p><p>The greater the impact force, the tighter the molecules lock together to protect.</p><p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve placed D3O in the strategic spots of the Ultra Tacks gear that protect joints,&rdquo; Benoit said. &ldquo;That makes Ultra Tacks the gear of choice for shotblocking D-men and forwards who plow into high-traffic areas.&rdquo;</p><p>The Ultra Tacks pants are built off CCM&rsquo;s best-selling pants designs. The D3O covers the hip joints and the pants have a length adjustment feature.</p><p>Ultra Tacks gloves have a tapered silhouette that hugs players&rsquo; hands and an open cuff that improves stick handling and control. D3O foam is integrated throughout the back of the fingers and backhand for slash and puck impact protection.</p><p>Ultra Tacks shoulder pads have D3O built into the molded shoulder caps to protect against big hits, both dished out and received. The pads&rsquo; design allows players to freely lift and move their arms while the core of the pads remains close to the chest and doesn&rsquo;t move.</p><p>D3O is embedded in the Ultra Tacks shin guards&rsquo; molded shells to maximize protection for shot blocking. A dual-molded anatomical HD foam calf-wrap provides snug, wrap-around protection.</p><p>In the elbow pads, a joint discharge PE cap is reinforced with D3O foam for added energy dispersal and protection of sensitive joints and bones.</p><p>Also new from CCM are FitLite helmets that integrate an engineered subshell and CCM&rsquo;s groundbreaking R.E.D. (Rotational Energy Dampening) System into its comfort liners.</p><p>Launched last season on CCM&rsquo;s Resistance helmets, the R.E.D. System uses a series of liquid-filled bladders that slows rotational acceleration when players absorb impacts or move quickly. So FitLite models protect players from both straight-line impacts and hits that cause the head and neck to twist.</p><p>FitLite models use the Microdial II system and a low-density flexible EPP liner with lycra-laminated cushions for a comfortable, snug 360-degree adjustable fit.</p><p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve combined the best fit with a blend of proprietary technology to give players elite protection and performance,&rdquo; Benoit said.</p><p>For more information, visit <a href="http://ccmhockey.com">ccmhockey.com</a> or follow CCM on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

CCM’s New Gear Offers Cutting-Edge Technology

<p class="dropcap"><span>H</span>ow a player dictates shot rates while he&rsquo;s on the ice is by far the most important contribution he can make to his WAR. That means a player who generates shots on offense and stops shots on defense has the biggest impact. To separate the team&rsquo;s effect on those rates, calculations that look at how players do with and without each other, while adjusting for things like shot locations, teammates and competition, are used. The next biggest impact depends on how good of a shooter a player is, which comes from putting a lot of pucks on net, like Alex Ovechkin, or converting at a high rate, like Steven Stamkos, while for goalies it&rsquo;s about how often they stop pucks. Penalty differential accounts for players who can draw more penalties than they take, with every six penalties drawn equalling a goal above replacement. Same idea goes for faceoff wins but on a much smaller scale: roughly every 75 faceoff wins is worth a goal. Here are the top average WAR players per 82 games over the past three seasons for each position.</p><h2><b>FORWARDS</b></h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-0121/83597-1-eng-US/f0027-012.jpg" title="f0027-01" width="623" height="355"></div><h2><b>DEFENSEMEN</b></h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-0215/83590-1-eng-US/f0027-022.jpg" title="f0027-02" width="623" height="355"></div><h2><b>GOALIES</b></h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-036/83583-1-eng-US/f0027-032.jpg" title="f0027-03" width="621" height="228"></div><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

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Features

WAR WINNERS

<div class="byline">By Charlie Teljeur</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0008-0128/83181-1-eng-US/f0008-012.jpg" title="f0008-01" width="618" height="838"></div><h2><b>Blast from the PAST</b></h2><p>From the THN archives</p><p>In the 1990s, we ran a regular sponsored campaign featuring reader-submitted youngsters. Who would have thought two of those kids - Tyler Seguin and Logan Couture &ndash; would go on to NHL stardom?</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0008-0314/83174-1-eng-US/f0008-032.jpg" title="f0008-03" width="278" height="598"></div><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

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THE INSTIGATOR

<div class="byline">WITH JASON KAY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-0126/83088-1-eng-US/f0004-012.jpg" title="f0004-01" width="290" height="502"></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>I</span>F YOU SUBSCRIBE TO THE BILLY JOEL SCHOOL</b> of philosophy and tend to love things just the way they are, good on you. Loyalty is an admirable trait, traditions are important.</p><p>That reality, however, doesn&rsquo;t apply to hockey. Sure, you can claim to be a purist and rail against change, but the concept of permanency in the game is fallacious. Alterations to it began before Howie Morenz could skate and have been a constant ever since.</p><p>And we&rsquo;re not just talking tweaks. The brand that was played when the NHL and its predecessor, the NHA, emerged in the early 20th century, is worlds apart from what we see today, which will be markedly different 25 years from now. If virtually all had remained status quo since 1910-11 &ndash; the first year of &ldquo;Major Rule Changes&rdquo; cited in the NHL&rsquo;s Guide and Record book &ndash; games would look a little like this:</p><p>Teams would play seven a side, in two 30-minute halves. Goalies would be penalized for falling to the ice to make saves. They wouldn&rsquo;t have backups and wouldn&rsquo;t wear masks. Teams would have to play shorthanded the remainder of games if one of their players received a match penalty. There would be no bluelines, no icings and no forward passes permitted in the defending or neutral zones.</p><p>The scoring race would be a goal race &ndash; assists wouldn&rsquo;t be recorded. All sticks would be made from wood. There wouldn&rsquo;t be scoreboards hanging over center ice and that ice wouldn&rsquo;t necessarily be flooded between periods, er, at halftime. Net sizes from one rink to the next would not be standardized, nor would pucks. High sticking would not be a penalty and you could continue to use that twig if it broke. There would be just one ref and one linesman on the ice, and they&rsquo;d have no video replay to fall back on. Heck, games wouldn&rsquo;t even be televised.</p><p>You get the drift. Every facet of the game has been impacted by evolution. We grow out of some rules and technologies and into others. What seems radical today may be the norm in 10 years. That&rsquo;s important to bear in mind as you peruse the pages of our Future of Hockey edition. We can&rsquo;t say with certainty what our favorite passion will look like in a decade or five, or if we&rsquo;ll like it more or less, but it&rsquo;s an absolute given that the game &ndash; even though its gatekeepers have a reputation for being resistant to change &ndash; will be different.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-0226/83081-1-eng-US/f0004-022.jpg" title="f0004-02" width="271" height="139"></div><p><b>NEXT ISSUE</b> OCTOBER 12, 2015</p><p><b>CUSTOMER SERVICE AND TO SUBSCRIBE:</b><a href="http://THN.com">thn.com</a></p><p><b>CONTACT US:</b><a href="mailto:editorial@thehockeynews.com">editorial@thehockeynews.com</a><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

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TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-024/83145-1-eng-US/f0005-022.jpg" title="f0005-02" width="646" height="401"></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-032/83138-1-eng-US/f0005-032.jpg" title="f0005-03" width="1058" height="476"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>BEST OF BOTH WORLDS</b></p><p>The Islanders hope to tap into a new fan base in Brooklyn while retaining Long Island loyalists.</p><span class="photo-credit">(FANS: MIKE STOBE/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; BARCLAYS CENTER: AL BELLO/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>T</span><b>HE ISLANDERS&rsquo; MOVE FROM</b> suburban Nassau County to Brooklyn, New York City&rsquo;s largest borough, means more than a new venue in a new town for the up-andcoming club. It also has serious implications for the franchise&rsquo;s existing Long Island fan base and presents an opportunity to develop a new one.</p><p>What is little known, however, is that the move ushers in a unique business model for owner Charles Wang and his partners, Jon Ledecky and Scott Malkin, one that offloads the team&rsquo;s back-office operation to the Barclays Center staff. Essentially, the Islanders no longer administer or control their own business operation, a highly unusual situation.</p><p>The agreement to move the franchise includes the provision that the arena pays Islanders ownership an annual sum to play at Barclays Center and, in exchange, Barclays Center acquires all ticket and suite sales, sponsorships, marketing and promotions and their revenue.</p><p>That arrangement was confirmed by Brett Yormark, CEO of Barclays Center and the NBA&rsquo;s Brooklyn Nets, the original tenant in the building. &ldquo;Charles made a promise to us, and he&rsquo;s delivered a very good team,&rdquo; Yormark said. &ldquo;And we&rsquo;re going to monetize it.&rdquo;</p><p>The Islanders declined comment on the agreement. And no one would confirm how much the Islanders will receive, though last year the <i>New York Post</i> reported Barclays has guaranteed them $50 million annually. Yormark said the maximum guarantee is contingent on the revenues his organization generates and claims it is a relatively easy target. &ldquo;We did make a revenue guarantee,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not going to discuss what the number is, but the number, when we hit it, would only put us 20th in the NHL in revenue.&rdquo;</p><p>If so, that number would be around $100 million, using <i>Forbes&rsquo;</i> most recent listing of the 30 NHL club revenues. After that number is reached, Barclays keeps the surplus.</p><p>This isn&rsquo;t how most pro sports franchises function. They generally control the business side and, through it, the team&rsquo;s finances. Under this model, the Islanders control none of the business revenue, and their share from Barclays is capped by the agreement.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-0128/83131-1-eng-US/f0006-012.jpg" title="f0006-01" width="786" height="438"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>SMOOTH TRANSITION</b></p><p>Malkin and Ledecky will take over from Wang as majority owners of the Islanders in 2016-17.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(BRUCE BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>Will this work for Wang and his two partners (who will become majority owners in 2016-17)? Considering his long-standing annual losses at Nassau Coliseum, Wang is likely quite happy. This not only provides him and his partners a degree of financial certainty, they&rsquo;re probably no longer swimming in red ink. &ldquo;For him, it&rsquo;s better than losing $20 million a year, or whatever he was losing playing out of the Colisuem,&rdquo; said Glenn Gerstner, chairman of the Sports Management Department of St. John&rsquo;s University in New York, and a longtime Islanders fan.</p><p>Gerstner, whose background is in economics, points out that ownership&rsquo;s bottom line increased by outsourcing the team&rsquo;s business department. &ldquo;The savings for Wang is that he just cut his overhead,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If there has been another arrangement like this (in sports),&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I am not aware of it.&rdquo;</p><p>This unusual business model isn&rsquo;t likely to be replicated by other franchises. &ldquo;It was a unique deal structure that was driven by a unique set of circumstances,&rdquo; said Bill Daly, the NHL&rsquo;s deputy commissioner.</p><p>A major question remains: will this setup provide Ledecky, Malkin and Wang enough funds to finance the hockey operation &ndash; paying the GM, players, coaches, scouts, trainers, support staff, travel, etc. &ndash; without going too deeply into their own pockets?</p><p>Unlike traditionally run teams, the Islanders won&rsquo;t benefit from raising ticket prices if they need to boost player payroll. There don&rsquo;t seem to be provisions in the agreement for Barclays to increase its payments to the club if the salary cap rises precipitously.</p><p>It appears, however, the Islanders&rsquo; revenue picture has improved, and after making estimates from various published reports, the hockey operation should be adequately funded &ndash; at least in the short term.</p><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;IF THERE HAS BEEN ANOTHER ARRANGEMENT LIKE THIS, I AM NOT AWARE OF IT &ndash; Glenn Gerstner</blockquote><p><i>Forbes&rsquo;</i> most recent estimate of the Islanders&rsquo; revenue at Nassau Coliseum was $83 million, and it set Wang&rsquo;s losses at $2.5 million. In 2012, the <i>New York Times</i> reported an estimated operating deficit of $8 million.</p><p>Under the new setup, not only will the Islanders get their presumed $50 million share of Barclays revenue, they also have their lucrative, long-term local TV rights fee from MSG Network (perhaps worth $20 million annually, and reportedly maxing out at $36 million when the deal ends in 2030). Then there&rsquo;s their share of NHL-generated revenues. The 30 teams share $633 million a season in national TV revenues alone, around $20 million a team (though currency fluctuations in Canada could decrease this sum). Plus there&rsquo;s national sponsorship and licensing fees.</p><p>That could all total around $90 to $100 million annually in revenues for Islanders ownership this season, which would wipe out their annual losses. That upper end is a good chunk more than $83 million and all without the overhead of a marketing and sales department. The 2015-16 Islanders player payroll as of mid-July, according to <a href="http://generalfanager.com">generalfanager.com</a>, stood at slightly less than $67 million.</p><p>Additionally, the Islanders would share in NHL expansion fees. If reports are correct that an expansion team would sell for $500 million, the share to each existing NHL club could amount to an additional $15 million. And, unlike those other revenue streams, the owners don&rsquo;t share half of it with the players, though expansion fees are one-time payments.</p><p>The foundation for the Islanders maximizing their revenue from the Barclays Center deal is ticket sales, and that is off to a good start. Yormark characterized the early season ticket drive as being &ldquo;in great shape,&rdquo; exceeding his expectations. He told <i>The Wall Street Journal</i> in early July they had sold more than 8,000 full season ticket seats. And Yormark said Islanders tickets at Barclays are roughly twice the price of a ticket at Nassau Coliseum, though the premium tickets include food and other inducements.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-0211/83124-1-eng-US/f0006-022.jpg" title="f0006-02" width="868" height="458"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(MIKE STOBE/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>But just who is buying Islanders tickets in Brooklyn? Yormark said about 25 percent of sales at Barclays come from the established Long Island fan base, a larger percentage than he expected. Many of them will now have to travel greater distances to see their team. More tickets have been sold to Brooklynites, however, 33 percent of the total, while another 21 percent have come from Manhattan.</p><p>Although the Islanders have had a presence throughout the New York metropolitan area since their inception and their fans come from all over the region, Long Island was groundzero for Islanders Country. The fate of those who overwhelmingly made up the home crowd and supported the team since 1972 is among the bigger issues involved with the move.</p><p>Wang and Yormark have taken great pains to help the team keep as much of its original identity as possible, including not changing the Islanders name or the colors and recognizing all the team&rsquo;s championships and honored members with banners in the rafters.</p><p>Additionally, Yormark has engaged the Long Island Railroad to add trains from Jamaica station to the Atlantic Yards station on game nights for fans in Nassau and Suffolk County. But it remains questionable whether they&rsquo;ll be happy about waiting on the platform at Jamaica station on a winter night to change trains for the ride home.</p><p>It has traditionally been a family oriented fan base, and the club did its initial ticket sales push last winter exclusively to Long Islanders. But when the Islanders&rsquo; home schedule was released this summer, those fans noted that the team plays a weeknightheavy schedule with just four home games on Saturdays &ndash; the final two in April &ndash; and only three Sunday or holiday Monday matinees. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s geared for a corporate crowd,&rdquo; said Jim Johnson, who worked for the Islanders in the &rsquo;80s and &rsquo;90s, including six years as the team&rsquo;s director of marketing and ticket sales. &ldquo;It seems they took their best shot on Long Island but then went to Plan B. Their objective now is to bring in a whole new audience and build off the legacy of the championship years and the good faith derived from last season.&rdquo;</p><p>Consequently, while the Barclays Center is only about 25 miles from Nassau Coliseum, there has been some sadness and even hostility toward the move from a segment of those longtime fans in Nassau and Suffolk counties. The regional antagonism between the suburbs and the big city to the west &ndash; and the fact the Isles always embraced their Long Island identity &ndash; won&rsquo;t be easy for some Long Islanders to overcome. &ldquo;At the end of the day, you&rsquo;re not going to please everyone,&rdquo; Yormark said. &ldquo;The only thing we can do &ndash; and by the way, I don&rsquo;t think there are lots of angry fans, but a smaller group who are very verbal about it &ndash; is give them many reasons to sample us. Then, if it&rsquo;s the experience of the Barclays Center or the product itself, whatever the reasons are, we hope we can give them enough of a reason to say, &lsquo;You know what? I&rsquo;m going to give it a shot.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p><p>Equally to the point, the convenience factor and the habit of driving to the game has vanished, replaced for many by a train ride that, if families are involved, will be far more expensive than piling everyone into the car for the drive to Uniondale. Also lost will be the tailgating tradition in the Coliseum&rsquo;s parking lot. &ldquo;The feedback I&rsquo;ve heard from those who live in Eastern Nassau and all of Suffolk has not been favorable to changing the culture that was 42 years in the making of driving to Nassau Coliseum,&rdquo; Johnson said.</p><p>Gerstner, a Long Island resident, sees it another way, believing Long Islanders may eschew the train for the car trip to Brooklyn. &ldquo;People from Long Island like to drive,&rdquo; he said.</p><p>Regardless, Gerstner and Johnson agree that these fans won&rsquo;t emotionally abandon the Islanders. &ldquo;People in New York have an allegiance to one team or the other,&rdquo; Gerstner said. &ldquo;And they don&rsquo;t switch.&rdquo;</p><p>Added Johnson: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s still their team. It&rsquo;s just not as convenient. They&rsquo;ll still go to games &ndash; just not as often.&rdquo;</p><p>That leaves the Barclays Center courting a new fan base, one right in their neighborhood. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what happened with the Nets,&rdquo; Gerstner said. &ldquo;People from Brooklyn said, &lsquo;Hey, we&rsquo;ve finally got a team.&rsquo; People who were ambivalent about buying a ticket to a game (featuring the Knicks in Manhattan) now say, &lsquo;Hey, let&rsquo;s go support our team.&rsquo; You might get that same effect with hockey in Brooklyn. Maybe they&rsquo;re not huge hockey fans, but they&rsquo;ll say, &lsquo;This is our team, let&rsquo;s go support it.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p><p>That&rsquo;s what the Islanders and the Barclays Center are banking on. <b>&ndash; STU HACKEL</b></p><h2><b>FORBES MAGAZINE</b></h2><h3><b>FRANCHISE RANKINGS</b></h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0007-019/83117-1-eng-US/f0007-012.jpg" title="f0007-01" width="239" height="1272"></div><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

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BACK IN THE BLACK

<div class="byline">&#x2013; Don Weekes</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0009-0115/83239-1-eng-US/f0009-012.jpg" title="f0009-01" width="404" height="648"><figcaption class="caption-body">RICK <b>NASH</b> <span class="photo-credit">(Elsa/Getty Images)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>H</span>omerism ain&rsquo;t what it used to be. That&rsquo;s good news given what we now know about how one NHL official nearly tainted the first Art Ross Trophy race in 1948.</p><p>Of course, controversies back then typically involved Montreal&rsquo;s Maurice Richard, who unwittingly became the first of only two NHLers to record an unassisted hat trick. Unfortunately, his never should have counted.</p><p>Richard&rsquo;s linemate Elmer Lach was battling Rangers center Buddy O&rsquo;Connor for the scoring crown in March, 1948 during their last game as opponents at Madison Square Garden. O&rsquo;Connor had 57 points, Lach 56, and each had two games left. With the Canadiens up 4-3, the Rangers pulled goalie &lsquo;Sugar&rsquo; Jim Henry. Twice in the final minute Lach won faceoffs in the Canadiens zone and passed to Richard, who empty-netted both. Instead of two points for Lach, the game&rsquo;s New York official scorer suspiciously registered Richard&rsquo;s goals without helpers, denying Lach the scoring lead at game&rsquo;s end. But after an earlier solo marker in the match, it left the Rocket with the league&rsquo;s first unassisted hat trick, though game reports failed to report the feat.</p><p>At stake was the Art Ross, and Montreal coach Dick Irvin planned to nag NHL president Clarence Campbell about it. Irvin was on firm ice. The rulebook had nothing about assists on empty netters, and helpers were awarded on several goals into vacated nets that year. Most damning, O&rsquo;Connor and Neil Colville earned points on Tony Leswick&rsquo;s emptynetter in a game a week earlier at MSG. But Irvin&rsquo;s protests fell on Campbell&rsquo;s deaf ears. Lach didn&rsquo;t get his two points on Richard&rsquo;s goals, as the president sided with his New York official.</p><p>The hockey gods, however, meted out justice. Lach pocketed five points to O&rsquo;Connor&rsquo;s three in two final matches to win Art Ross&rsquo; approval. Lach had nosedout O&rsquo;Connor, 61 points to 60.</p><p>Given all this, what&rsquo;s it mean today? Well, we haven&rsquo;t nicknamed an unassisted hat trick yet, but how about calling it the &lsquo;Nash Trick&rsquo;? Rick Nash popped in three unaided as a Columbus Blue Jacket in an 8-2 shellacking of Detroit March 7, 2009. To date, he remains the only player to truly pull off the trick without the help of an official scorer who took it upon himself to play by some other rules.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

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THE BIRTH OF The Nash Trick

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-0128/83282-1-eng-US/f0010-012.jpg" title="f0010-01" width="521" height="509"><figcaption class="caption-body">JAMES <b>NEAL</b> <span class="photo-credit">(BIOSTEEL SPORTS)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>G</span><b>ary Roberts had a surprise</b> for his players when they started training with him again this summer. It wasn&rsquo;t a sleek new machine, a powerful new superfood or a funky new core exercise. It was far more scientific.</p><p>As his NHL clients returned to his gym in Toronto &ndash; Steven Stamkos, Connor McDavid and James Neal among them &ndash; Roberts had each player&rsquo;s DNA tested. An ex-NHLer himself, he understands a player&rsquo;s mindset when it comes to training and knows he prefers to be shown, not told, what to do. &ldquo;What I like is that a player is going to see his own DNA,&rdquo; Roberts said. &ldquo;You can tell them something, and they won&rsquo;t clue in, but if they actually see their results, they say, &lsquo;S---, my DNA doesn&rsquo;t lie.&rsquo; &rdquo;</p><p>Among the biggest benefits Roberts sees with genetics testing is that it can reveal susceptibilities to certain kinds of injuries, which allow strength and conditioning coaches to tailor players&rsquo; programs more precisely. Say, for example, a player is predisposed to hip, knee or ankle injuries. Roberts might take back squats out of his program and replace them with single-leg exercises to lessen the load on those joints. &ldquo;What we&rsquo;re trying to convince these young guys of is, &lsquo;These are your DNA results, this is what you&rsquo;re going to be more susceptible to and this is how we&rsquo;re going to avoid it,&rsquo; &rdquo; Roberts said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re not going to avoid all injuries, because no one does, but they&rsquo;re going to avoid some injuries.&rdquo;</p><p>Tests are usually done using DNA from a simple saliva swab, and they can tell a lot about a player. On the fitness side, they can show a player&rsquo;s VO2 max potential, injury risk and recovery speed. On the nutrition side, they can catch sensitivities to carbohydrates and saturated fat, as well as any lactose intolerance. And that&rsquo;s just a sampling of the possibilities (see sidebar on pg. 11).</p><p>Still, DNA testing is only in its infancy in the hockey world. It&rsquo;s been in use for many years overseas in soccer, rugby and tennis, but even there it&rsquo;s only regarded as one factor among many. The models in pro circuits like the English Premier League are far more sophisticated and aren&rsquo;t limited to a single source of information said Andy O&rsquo;Brien, strength and conditioning coach for Sidney Crosby. He estimates they&rsquo;re looking at as many as 50 different data streams &ndash; daily &ndash; taken from saliva, blood and urine. They&rsquo;re measuring a mountain of other data, including muscle output, nervous system fatigue, sleep, as well as genetics. &ldquo;Interpretation of the testing is the main thing that people really struggle with,&rdquo; O&rsquo;Brien said. &ldquo;Ultimately, what you&rsquo;re doing is you&rsquo;re using this just like many other tests as one factor in a holistic analysis that&rsquo;s going to tell you whether an athlete is predisposed to injury. You can&rsquo;t hang your hat on one test.&rdquo;</p><p>Where O&rsquo;Brien sees DNA testing being applied best is in the kitchen, as does fellow trainer Ben Prentiss, whose clients include Chris Kreider, Brad Richards and Eric, Marc and Jordan Staal. Tests can tell how well a player digests proteins, carbohydrates and fats, helping trainers adjust a client&rsquo;s nutrition program. Take carbohydrates, for example. There are copies of certain enzymes in human saliva that help break carbs down. If a player has more copies of those enzymes, then he&rsquo;ll handle carbohydrates more easily than someone who doesn&rsquo;t. &ldquo;In exercise, there really isn&rsquo;t anything new &ndash; it&rsquo;s just guys coming up with new inter pretations from old methodologies,&rdquo; Prentiss said. &ldquo;In terms of the food, I absolutely believe it&rsquo;s a huge component. And you want to talk about DNA and genetics, to me it&rsquo;s all about how you&rsquo;re supposed to eat for your genetic makeup.&rdquo;</p><p>It&rsquo;s unclear whether NHL teams are doing DNA testing on their players or to what extent if they are. Requests for interviews were sent to all 30 NHL teams, but every one of them said they didn&rsquo;t do such testing, turned down the opportunity or didn&rsquo;t respond.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0011-0213/83275-1-eng-US/f0011-022.jpg" title="f0011-02" width="874" height="484"><figcaption class="caption-body"><b>DEVIL IN THE DETAILS</b> For O&rsquo;Brien, left, unlocking the potential of DNA testing lies in proper interpretation by experts. <span class="photo-credit">(O&rsquo;BRIEN SPORT)</span></figcaption></div><p>As with the beginning of the analytics movement, when many teams were largely denying using advanced statistics while setting up departments dedicated to them, the temptation is to equate silence with secrecy and conclude teams are actually testing players and just aren&rsquo;t admitting to it. But BioSteel&rsquo;s Matt Nichol, who trains the likes of Tyler Seguin, Wayne Simmonds and Mike Cammalleri, doesn&rsquo;t think DNA testing is widespread among the NHL&rsquo;s 30 teams for two reasons: they just aren&rsquo;t aware of it or they fear the potential consequences from the results. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s Pandora&rsquo;s Box,&rdquo; Nichol said. &ldquo;A lot of teams know that, for example, &lsquo;If I do this test, and it determines that a player needs to rest for 24 hours immediately following your game, what does that mean? No intensive training? Do we have to cancel practice? What if that means he needs a completely different style of training than what is currently being suggested by the team?&rsquo;&hellip;This is just my opinion, but I think maybe as a team you have got to be careful in doing all of this expensive testing, because then they will get scared that they are obligated to act. If you do not have the information, you can plead ignorance. If you have that information at your disposal and you choose to ignore it, you are held liable.&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0011-0122/83268-1-eng-US/f0011-012.jpg" title="f0011-01" width="517" height="523"><figcaption class="caption-body">GARY ROBERTS & <b>MARK SCHEIFELE</b> <span class="photo-credit">(BIOSTEEL SPORTS)</span></figcaption></div><p>What we do know is that offseason strength and conditioning coaches are using DNA testing as part of their programs. Roberts uses Bespoke Diet and Fitness in Ancaster, Ont., Nichol tests his clients through Younique Genomics in Toronto and Prentiss uses Cyrex Labs in Phoenix, Ariz. Even NHL players are looking into it. Brad Marchand and James Sheppard are both clients of Nova Scotiabased Athletigen.</p><p>For his part, Roberts is already a big believer in the potential of DNA testing. But he also expects it to have the added benefit of raising the level of commitment from his players. In the summer, he can stay on top of them, because he sees his guys regularly, many of them daily. During the season, however, they&rsquo;re left to their own devices, with all of the distractions the road can bring. &ldquo;Your DNA can&rsquo;t lie, so maybe that will educate them to buy into it more when they&rsquo;re not working with me,&rdquo; Roberts said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s when they&rsquo;re away from me that I have my worries, when they&rsquo;re playing hockey for eight or nine months and I&rsquo;m not getting any phone calls. Some guys check in, some guys don&rsquo;t check in. The guys that don&rsquo;t check in, there&rsquo;s a good chance those guys aren&rsquo;t staying on the program.&rdquo;</p><p><b>&ndash; RONNIE SHUKER</b></p><h2><b>DNA TESTING CHECKLIST</b></h2><h3><b>FITNESS PROFILE</b></h3><p>&#10003; <b>POWER/ENDURANCE RATIO</b></p><p>Determines the optimal proportion of power training versus endurance exercises during workouts</p><p>&#10003; <b>VO2 MAX CAPACITY</b></p><p>Measures the potential to deliver oxygen to the muscles needed during intense exercise</p><p>&#10003; <b>INJURY RISK</b></p><p>Reveals susceptibilities to certain injuries, particularly joint injuries in ankles, knees, hips, elbows, shoulders</p><p>&#10003; <b>RECOVERY SPEED</b></p><p>Predicts the amount of time required to recover from sickness and injury</p><p>&#10003; <b>MICRONUTRIENT REQUIREMENTS</b></p><p>Suggests proper levels of small-dosage vitamins and minerals, such as iodine, iron and vitamin A</p><h3><b>NUTRITION PROFILE</b></h3><p>&#10003; <b>CARBOHYDRATE DIGESTION</b></p><p>Shows how well an athlete breaks down simple carbs (fruits, greens) and complex carbs (legumes, whole grains)</p><p>&#10003; <b>SATURATED FAT DIGESTION</b></p><p>Shows how well an athlete breaks down saturated fat in foods such as coconut, butter, animal fat, cheese, nuts</p><p>&#10003; <b>ALCOHOL, CAFFEINE & SALT SENSITIVITY</b></p><p>Discloses sensitivity to any or all three and determines daily max intake or suggests not consuming at all</p><p>&#10003; <b>LACTOSE INTOLERANCE</b></p><p>Exposes any inability to break down a natural type of sugar found in dairy and milk products</p><p>&#10003; <b>CELIAC PREDISPOSITION</b></p><p>Uncovers any sensitivity to gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley that causes inflammation in the body<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0010-01

LEAN, MEAN FIGHTING GENES

<div class="byline">&#x2013; MATT CARLSON</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-0128/83318-1-eng-US/f0012-012.jpg" title="f0012-01" width="786" height="544"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>FLEET OF FOOT</b></p><p>Skates are getting so form-fitting that players like Stamkos won&rsquo;t even feel like they&rsquo;re on blades.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(MINAS PANAGIOTAKIS/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>T</span><b>OMORROW&rsquo;S NHLERS WON&rsquo;T</b> resemble Robocops, but they will take off quicker and fly on the ice with lighter, streamlined skates, sticks and protective gear. The future New York Rangers will probably look more the like the Power Rangers, with a dash of Speed Racer.</p><p>Equipment will help players maneuver more naturally and perform better. And despite the reduction in bulk, gear will be more protective to compensate for faster shots and harder impacts. New materials and technologies handed down from the aerospace industry are already propelling the evolution. They&rsquo;ll be more prominent as the composites and foams that make a Boeing 787 Dreamliner lighter and fuel-efficient land in the sporting goods industry.</p><p>Those new materials will be deceptively rugged. Besides absorbing and channelling collisions and stress, they&rsquo;ll be tuned to help players better transmit energy to skate and shoot faster. &ldquo;Advances in raw materials at the high-end to make airplanes will move down the chain,&rdquo; said Keith Perera, Warrior Hockey&rsquo;s brand manager. &ldquo;Aerospace pays topdollar for them. Even right now, we&rsquo;re getting access to the best materials we&rsquo;ve ever seen from a durability and performance standpoint.&rdquo;</p><p>Hockey gear-makers aren&rsquo;t relying just on spin-off technology. They&rsquo;re immersed in research and development for their sport&rsquo;s specific needs. Bauer Hockey, which has a new facility in Blainville, Que., has already provided a glimpse of the future with its sleek OD1N gear for players and goalies. It&rsquo;s not in retail yet, but a handful of NHLers have used OD1N pieces, which include a protective body suit that blends a body-hugging base layer with flexible padding and protection.</p><p>Skate weight will dip well below the current 700- to 800-gram range for high-end models. Skate boots will rise barely above the ankle for needed protection while providing support for the foot, and maximum knee and ankle flexion for power and agility. &ldquo;We want the player to have the sensation of not even feeling there&rsquo;s a blade attached to the bottom of the foot,&rdquo; said Craig Desjardins, Bauer Hockey&rsquo;s general manager. &ldquo;The idea is to have as integrated a feel and fit as possible.&rdquo;</p><p>Desjardins predicts that skates, including the blade and holder, will be customized for player strides and styles. What starts with tomorrow&rsquo;s Patrick Kane or Steven Stamkos will trickle down to ordinary players. Expect greater customization of sticks, too, including funky shaft geometries and new recipes for blending and layering materials. The tapered lower part of the shaft and the hosel &ndash; where the shaft meets the blade &ndash; will be as thin as the equivalent section of a golf club. That narrow shape permits additional energy loading, meaning the shot velocity from even third-line NHLers will routinely soar above 100 mph. The engineering also means shots will be more accurate, even for kids and beer leaguers.</p><p>Helmets will offer 360-degree fits that caress players&rsquo; heads and absorb impacts from all angles. Transparent shields will completely cover players&rsquo; faces, though not conceal them. They&rsquo;ll actually enhance player vision and never fog or scratch.</p><p>Hockey gloves are already starting to look like their lacrosse counterparts. But down the line, gloves, pants and underprotective wear will be even more tailored and anatomical while flexing seamlessly with player movements. Despite being thin, the gear will absorb 125 mph shots and cover almost every millimeter of the body.</p><p>Goalies are a different story. Rules determine the size of leg pads, catch gloves, blockers and other pieces, but everything will be way lighter &ndash; 1.5-pound leg pads that can absorb a 130 mph shot. The biomechanics of goalie styles will affect equipment development. At the same time, the evolution of the gear &ndash; and making goalies quicker and less constrained &ndash; will affect netminders&rsquo; styles. &ldquo;As goalie equipment was mandated to get smaller, it allowed goalies to focus on their techniques,&rdquo; Desjardins said. &ldquo;As it gets lighter, it will allow them to move more quickly and with less fatigue. If they&rsquo;re an inch faster, that&rsquo;s the width of a puck.&rdquo;</p><p>Equipment also will be smart, with sensors providing realtime data to players or coaches on everything from body temperature to hydration levels to shift length. &ldquo;The player and the equipment will be fully integrated,&rdquo; Desjardins said. &ldquo;Sensors will measure performance, too, including player speed and the speed of their shots.&rdquo;</p><p>Hockey players will always find ways to push themselves to higher levels. And advances in equipment will help them to do it.</p><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-0125/83311-1-eng-US/f0013-012.jpg" title="f0013-01" width="1093" height="1355"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(BAUER HOCKEY)</span></figcaption></div><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

f0012-01

GEAR FINDS ANOTHER GEAR

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0014-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-0127/83347-1-eng-US/f0014-012.jpg"></div><p class="dropcap"><span>S</span>unbelt hockey hotbeds? TV better than the real thing? 120 mph slapshots? One statistic to rule them all? Video gamers more popular than &lsquo;Alex The Great&rsquo;? Technology is advancing fast and furiously, and the possibilities are exciting. There are no guarantees, but we can project &ndash; near and far &ndash; what&rsquo;s in store for hockey in the next five to 25 years. Buckle up because the array of goodies on the way will take the game and the fan experience off the charts<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0014-01

THE FUTURE OF HOCKEY

<div class="byline">BY RYAN KENNEDY</div><p class="dropcap"><span>L</span>ittle-known fact about top 2016 draft prospect Auston Matthews: his nickname is &lsquo;Papi.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s because his mom was born in Mexico, before coming to Arizona, where Matthews was born and raised. And while Matthews appears to be a lock to go first overall next June, he could be dethroned by defenseman Jakob Chychrun, who hails from Florida originally. And when 2017 rolls around, NHL scouts will likely be keeping an eye on blueliner Max Gildon, a pure Texan.</p><p>It&rsquo;s been a long time since Montreal, Northern Ontario and the Prairies propped up hockey, but the diversification of the game is increasing at an incredible rate, and it&rsquo;s not just in players coming from non-traditional markets in the United States. Top talent now hails from all different backgrounds and ethnicities, while the number of nations producing players is also growing. Simply put, the face of hockey is changing.</p><p>Oliver Kylington is a perfect example. The Calgary Flames prospect comes from Sweden, but his biracial family is made up of a Swedish dad and an Eritrean mom. Borje Kylington met his future wife on a plane when he was coming back from a vacation in Greece. &ldquo;I started to speak English with her because I didn&rsquo;t know where she came from,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Then she said she was from Sundbyberg, outside of Stockholm, so I said, &lsquo;OK, now we can talk in Swedish.&rsquo; We laughed.&rdquo;</p><p>Borje got her number and, months later, invited her to a Christmas party. That&rsquo;s how the Kylington clan came together, and though the two have been divorced for nine years now, both were at the draft when their son was selected in the second round by Calgary. He was raised by both parents and is very aware of his African roots, having visited his war-torn homeland twice. &ldquo;It is poor,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The people are suffering. The economy is not so good. They don&rsquo;t have a lot of electricity.&rdquo;</p><p>But he also knows how great Eritrean culture can be. His mother&rsquo;s family is large, and many of them live in Sweden, so holidays and birthdays are big deals featuring home cooking. When he is with his dad, he experiences Swedish culture, so there is a nice plurality. And though Kylington doesn&rsquo;t fit the blonde, blue-eyed Scandinavian stereotype, he didn&rsquo;t feel out of place in metropolitan Stockholm. &ldquo;I grew up in a place with lots of people from other countries,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;For me, it wasn&rsquo;t a problem, I blend in very well. Maybe there have been some words, but not so much.&rdquo;</p><p>Actually, playing hockey is what exposed Kylington to prejudice, particularly when his teams would leave the big city. &ldquo;In the countryside they don&rsquo;t have as much experience with foreigners and other cultures,&rdquo; Borje said. &ldquo;When he was young, some guys on other teams would call him the &lsquo;N&rsquo; word, and there was a big argument about that.&rdquo;</p><p>Kylington isn&rsquo;t the first visible minority to come out of Sweden, but as immigration has become more ingrained in Europe, there will be more global products working their way up hockey&rsquo;s ranks. Johnny Oduya, who just won his second Stanley Cup, is a Swede with Kenyan heritage. Ottawa&rsquo;s Mika Zibanejad is Swedish with roots in Iran. Pierre-Edouard Bellemare just broke through with the Flyers and counts France as his homeland and the Caribbean island of Martinique in his roots. And Auguste Impose, a Swiss national with roots in the Congo, will join the Quebec Remparts next season.</p><p>Similar results are coming in Canada as well. Thanks to a long-standing tradition of loving hockey, finding more players at the grassroots level is key to growth in a nation with a smaller population. Engaging new Canadians and second-generation citizens is one of the only tangible ways of doing that, and the results are coming. Peterborough Petes center Jonathan Ang was a first-round pick in the OHL draft and has been listed by NHL Central Scouting as one to watch in 2016. Cliff Pu, who went from Oshawa to London in the Michael McCarron trade, joined him in the first round. The New York Islanders also have a couple of elite prospects with multi-racial backgrounds in Josh Ho-Sang and Mitch Vande Sompel, while out west players such as Kevin Sundher (Buffalo) and Jujhar Khaira (Edmonton) represented the South Asian community of Surrey, B.C.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-0126/83404-1-eng-US/f0016-012.jpg" title="f0016-01" width="406" height="424"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>NEW WAVE</b></p><p>Matthews is one of several prospects who&rsquo;ve emerged due to the NHL&rsquo;s Sunbelt expansion.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(RICHARD T GAGNON/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-0124/83397-1-eng-US/f0017-012.jpg" title="f0017-01" width="1066" height="1356"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>MIXED HERITAGE</b></p><p>Swedish-born with Eritrean roots, Kylington is a prospect of Brian Burke&rsquo;s Flames.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(DAVE SANDFORD/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;THE NHL IS READY FOR AN OPENLY GAY PLAYER &ndash; Patrick Burke&rdquo;</blockquote><p>And these are not fluke occurrences. The First Shift is a program organized by Hockey Canada and Bauer Hockey that seeks to increase enrollment at the grassroots level and remove any intimidating roadblocks to the sport that families less familiar with the game may have. One recent initiative conducted by First Shift surveyed 875 Canadian parents from Ontario and Nova Scotia about perceived barriers, with 200 of those being Southeast Asian immigrants who had been in the country for more than a year. Meanwhile, the long-running Skillz Hockey program has put an emphasis on diversifying the game and has helped produce NHLers such as Wayne Simmonds and Chris Stewart, who now give back their efforts to the group.</p><p>For a country with a low birthrate that not so long ago was beginning to worry about stagnating participation numbers in its favorite sport, Canada can feel good about finding multicultural talent, because the rivals from the south are catching up fast.</p><p>While NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has often taken his lumps for expanding the league deep into the Sunbelt, seeing players such as Matthews and Chychrun at the top of prospect charts must feel pretty good. Because the pipeline is already open. Nashville&rsquo;s Seth Jones played his formative hockey in Texas, and younger brother Caleb Jones, who was just taken by the Edmonton Oilers in the draft, is also a Lone Star State product. Caleb believes there is room to grow, but he&rsquo;s also optimistic. &ldquo;There aren&rsquo;t too many high-end players in Texas,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There are a few in every age group. It&rsquo;s tough because there&rsquo;s high-end talent and then a big drop-off, not a lot of depth. But it has come a long way in the past 10 years. It&rsquo;s starting to become a hockey hotbed.&rdquo;</p><p>The Dallas Stars deserve a lot of credit for their work in helping hockey bloom in Texas, but even states that have lost the NHL are beginning to catch on. Chase Pearson, the son of ex-NHLer Scott Pearson and a 2015 Detroit Red Wings pick, grew up in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, for example. &ldquo;The hockey down there is getting a lot better,&rdquo; Pearson said. &ldquo;From when I started to when I finished, you could definitely see the strides it took. Kids are getting more interested down there, and it helps when more players come from there. It opens the game up.&rdquo;</p><p>In 1990-91, USA Hockey counted 11,287 players in the Pacific region and 4,462 in the Southeast. This year, the numbers were 45,537 and 46,643.</p><p>One market that could really open the game up is China. With a population that tops one billion and a culture that has proven in the past that athletics can be made a priority, China will be part of hockey&rsquo;s future The fact Beijing was just named host of the 2022 Winter Olympics is huge, since the Chinese will want to put on a good show at the rink, much like they did when the same metropolis hosted the summer games in 2008. China won more gold medals at the summer games than any other nation, and while getting on the podium in men&rsquo;s hockey will be impossible, there&rsquo;s no way the hosts will just give up ahead of time. And, hey, the nation already has one NHL draft pick.</p><p>When the New York Islanders selected defenseman Andong Song in the sixth round of the 2015 draft, a wave of shock and curiosity coursed through BB&T Center in Florida. Who is Andong Song? The NHL&rsquo;s website didn&rsquo;t even have stats for him, but he did have a Chinese camera crew following him around and a pretty great story for the assembled press to gobble up.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-0125/83390-1-eng-US/f0018-012.jpg" title="f0018-01" width="632" height="492"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>LONE STATE STAR</b></p><p>Nashville&rsquo;s Seth Jones played minor hockey in Texas, where his dad, Popeye, used to ply his trade in the NBA.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(FREDERICK BREEDO N/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><h2><b>MARKET GROWTH</b></h2><p>Growth rates in hockey participation from the past five years</p><p>796%</p><p><b>HONG KONG</b></p><p>350%</p><p><b>UNITED ARAB EMIRATES</b></p><p>153%</p><p><b>BELARUS</b></p><p>119%</p><p><b>HUNGARY</b></p><p>96%</p><p><b>UNITED KINGDOM</b></p><p>Born and raised in Beijing, Song started playing hockey as a boy when his mother wanted her oftensick child to find a sport. Carving out a passion for the icy game wasn&rsquo;t exactly easy, however. &ldquo;Growing up, there were only two rinks in Beijing at the time,&rdquo; Song said. &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t even a full NHL rink or anything. It was just sectioned off, parts of the ice, for skating. That&rsquo;s how I started.&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-0120/83383-1-eng-US/f0019-012.jpg" title="f0019-01" width="706" height="442"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>CARVING A NICHE</b></p><p>Song, an Islanders draftee, isn&rsquo;t as popular as Yao Ming in China, but he is a trailblazer, too.</p><span class="photo-credit">(MING: DU YANG/CNSPHOTO/CHINAFOTO PRESS /CHINAFOTO PRESS VIA GETTY IMAGES; SO NG: BRUCE BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>When he was 10, Song captained a Chinese team that came to Canada for a tournament and won the whole thing. That spurred him to move to the hockey-mad nation to take things to the next level. Song played for the Oakville Rangers program in the Toronto suburbs until he was 15, then decamped for Lawrenceville prep school in New Jersey, where the Islanders found him. A big fan of Hall of Famer Nicklas Lidstrom, Song will play this season for Phillips-Andover prep school in Massachusetts (former stomping grounds of Chris Kreider, Cory Schneider and both George Bush presidents). He is currently looking into NCAA options for after that. Right now Song&rsquo;s a trailblazer &ndash; the first-ever NHL draft pick born and raised in China &ndash; but he hopes to have a cavalry follow him. &ldquo;When I started playing, there weren&rsquo;t a lot of people playing or a lot of support,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But last year when I went back &ndash; it had been about eight years since I saw Chinese hockey &ndash; it&rsquo;s tremendous how far they&rsquo;ve grown. I&rsquo;m sure they&rsquo;ll try to catch up to North America, Europe and Russia. There&rsquo;s still a gap, but if we focus we can definitely catch up.&rdquo;</p><p>Right now, the Chinese men&rsquo;s team is 38th in the IIHF world rankings. The women are significantly better off, coming in at 16th.</p><p>Speaking of catching up, there&rsquo;s one other area of diversity that hockey is actually a little behind on, despite its best efforts: of the four major North American sports, hockey is the only one yet to have a current or retired player publicly identify as gay. Baseball had Glenn Burke in the 1980s, Jason Collins played NBA minutes with Brooklyn as recently as in 2014, while numerous NFLers have come out after retiring (not to mention Michael Sam, who came out before he was drafted and is now trying his luck in the CFL).</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-0212/83376-1-eng-US/f0019-022.jpg" title="f0019-02" width="621" height="671"></div><p>Hockey? It has happened on the women&rsquo;s side but not so much with the NHL. Which is strange, since many NHLers have openly supported having a gay teammate. Patrick Burke, the NHL&rsquo;s director of player safety, is also co-founder of the You Can Play project, an organization that strives to foster a safe environment in all sports for LGBT athletes. &ldquo;The hockey world has been wonderful with us since Day 1,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;While our players may have some work to do with language, I believe our league is absolutely ready for an openly gay player.&rdquo;</p><p>Burke cites Andrew Ference, Tommy Wingels, Ben Scrivens and Henrik Lundqvist as examples of NHLers who have been very helpful to the cause, while many other stars, from Claude Giroux to Duncan Keith, have participated in PSAs for the group. As for why no NHL players have come out yet, Burke believes it&rsquo;s more a hockey culture issue &ndash; the team is always more important than the individual and you never want to draw attention to yourself &ndash; than anything to do with fear of acceptance. &ldquo;There are a lot of people who know &lsquo;out&rsquo; retired players,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Those players just don&rsquo;t want to do a newspaper article on it. I mean, we&rsquo;ve had players criticized for high-fiving too exuberantly.&rdquo;</p><p>Simple odds and demographics tell you there are gay players in the NHL, but it&rsquo;s up to them to skate their own path and tell their own story. Until that day, Burke will continue to work with straight players who often have curious and honest questions about homosexuals. And perhaps the sport will become more inclusive just from having a wider knowledge base.</p><p>So don&rsquo;t be surprised when an openly gay player hoists the Stanley Cup over his head, or the Hart Trophy winner hails from Scottsdale, Ariz. The face of hockey is changing, and the sport will get much more competitive as it does.</p><h2><b>FAMILY TREE</b></h2><p>A lot of sons of NHLers are now prospects, but so are the children of other athletes. That means hockey is drawing from a wider and more elite talent pool. Here are a few notables:</p><p>SETH JONES (NSH) & CALEB JONES (EDM)</p><p>Basketball (Dad)</p><p>JUSTIN BAILEY (BUF)</p><p>Football (Dad)</p><p>COLIN WHITE (OTT )</p><p>Football, Track (Dad), Tennis (Mom)</p><p>JOSH HO-SANG (NYI)</p><p>Tennis (Dad)</p><p>DARNELL NURSE (EDM)</p><p>Football (Dad), Basketball (Sisters), Volleyball (Aunt)<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0016-01

BRANCHING OUTWARDS

<div class="byline">BY AMBER DOWLING</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-0125/83440-1-eng-US/f0020-012.jpg" title="f0020-01" width="627" height="521"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>ZEBRA EYES</b></p><p>You can see what the referee sees via one of many new camera views introduced recently.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>F</span>ORGET HD RESOLUTION OR VIEWING PARTIES ON massive projector screens. It won&rsquo;t be long until fans will feel as though they&rsquo;re sitting front and center ice rather than lounging on their tired sofas, cold beers in hand. At least that&rsquo;s the virtual future now being presented at conferences across North America, where participants are plunked right into the thick of the game via a headset and clever camera angles. &ldquo;4K resolution seems like the next move in camera coverage, although the Japanese I think are just going to go right to 8K &ndash; that&rsquo;s what they&rsquo;re planning on doing for the Olympics as the host broadcaster,&rdquo; said John McGuinness, co-ordinating producer, Hockey on NBC and NBCSN. &ldquo;Any time you can make it easier for the viewer to see, a sport like hockey could definitely benefit from it because of the old, &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t see the puck&rsquo; argument.&rdquo;</p><p>The rapid transformation of the way viewers consume their hockey has been a long time coming. With Rogers taking over the NHL deal in Canada and working in tandem with NBC Sports and TVA, there have been many broadcast experiments with Q-balls, rail cams and even the ref cam. Online, a future where viewers pick which broadcast &ndash; home or away &ndash; to watch, complete with color from their favorite commentators and a view from their preferred camera angle is possible. &ldquo;Favorite screen&rdquo; will replace &ldquo;best screen,&rdquo; as TV execs like to say. &ldquo;Hockey will look as different in 2025 as it does in 2015 compared to 2005,&rdquo; said Scott Moore, President of Sportsnet and NHL at Rogers. &ldquo;Back then we were really just getting into HD. You&rsquo;ll see evolutionary choice and ability for the consumer and the sports fan to watch it in the way they want to watch, not just when and on what platform they want to watch.&rdquo; Meanwhile, Moore said cost-cutting ventures could begin to emulate Olympic strategies, with producers and editors hanging back in a central location and only cameramen travelling to games. Those savings could translate into more R&D investment. &ldquo;Innovation investment will always be important,&rdquo; said Mark Milliere, TSN&rsquo;s senior VP of production. &ldquo;The industry continues to evolve, and it&rsquo;s important to stay on top of the trends and constantly evaluate what makes sense for your business.&rdquo;</p><p>In the U.S., the NFL is a frontrunner in innovative graphics aimed at enhancing the viewer experience. Tracking measurements designed to display how far a certain player has run or how hard he&rsquo;s thrown a ball are being experimented with and have slowly found their way to hockey with last year&rsquo;s NHL All-Star Game. Updated versions of those tracking tools and on-screen graphics could be headed to the NHL in the next few years. &ldquo;Player tracking will reach hockey soon, where a player like P.K. Subban will have a chip on him so you can see how fast he&rsquo;s skating or what distance he&rsquo;s skated in one period,&rdquo; said Louis-Philippe Neveu, TVA Sports&rsquo; executive producer of hockey. &ldquo;There will be advanced stats that are not available right now, and graphics showing stuff you see in the NFL. It&rsquo;s pretty cool. In the next 10 years every network will have it.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>TV TAKING A TUMBLE</b></h2><p>The rise of the digital age is contributing to the demise of broadcast TV, according to a study in the <i>Wall Street Journal.</i> Since 2010, time spent watching the traditional networks has dipped across the board &ndash; as much as 32 percent in the 18-24 age bracket. Instead, consumers are turning to on-demand and streaming services to get their viewing fix.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-029/83433-1-eng-US/f0020-022.jpg" title="f0020-02" width="346" height="478"></div><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

f0020-01

SEEING IS BELIEVING

<div class="byline">BY KEN CAMPBELL</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0021-0119/83518-1-eng-US/f0021-012.jpg" title="f0021-01" width="747" height="1279"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>NEW NORM?</b></p><p>Will all NHLers look like Chara in 25 years? The numbers say that&rsquo;s not likely.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(SCOTT AUDETTE/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>C</span>ITIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS. IT&rsquo;S</b> a term that belongs to the Olympics &ndash; the International Olympic Committee has wisely had its motto trademarked &ndash; but it could just as easily describe hockey. It would be impossible to look at today&rsquo;s NHL player and argue he&rsquo;s not faster, higher, stronger, not to mention more skilled, better coached, better equipped, better nourished and better prepared than ever. The good old days might harken to a time when players were less complex and more like the common man, but they weren&rsquo;t nearly as good.</p><p>In today&rsquo;s game, we have freaks of nature like Zdeno Chara, who can shoot the puck in excess of 100 miles per hour. We have cyborgs such as Duncan Keith, who can log enormous minutes playing in every situation and never seem to get tired. We have kids such as Sarnia Sting defenseman Jakob Chychrun, a candidate to go first overall in the 2016 draft, who could have walked into an NHL dressing room at 15 and not looked out of place from a body-type standpoint.</p><p>It makes you wonder what the future has in store for the game. If the average NHL player has grown two inches and gained 20 pounds over the past 50 years, does that mean he&rsquo;ll be 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds in the 2065-66 season? If the top players can shoot the puck more than 108 miles per hour now, does that mean they&rsquo;ll be blasting it 120 miles per hour before long? If players are more than a second faster blueline to blueline than they were 20 years ago, does that mean some day they&rsquo;ll be skating fast enough to get a speeding ticket in a residential zone? &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to say the possibilities are endless or anything like that, because that would be kind of silly,&rdquo; said Matt Nichol, one of the most respected strength and conditioning coaches in hockey and a founder of BioSteel Supplements. &ldquo;There was a time when they said it was humanly impossible to beat the four-minute mile and to run the 100-meter in under 10 seconds. And now people are doing it all the time. You&rsquo;re going to continually see guys get bigger and stronger.&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-0128/83511-1-eng-US/f0022-012.jpg" title="f0022-01" width="413" height="405"><figcaption class="caption-body">JAKOB <b>CHYCHRUN</b><span class="photo-credit">(CHYCHRUN: CHL IMAGES; WEBER: DAVE SANDFORD/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>But hockey will always remain a skill-based sport, and that is no truer than it is in today&rsquo;s game. Despite the low-scoring contests, players are better than ever. Many will argue the small gap between the best and worst players in the NHL is so small now it&rsquo;s created a game in which it&rsquo;s more difficult to create offense. The league has almost organically eliminated one-dimensional players who are big and strong but can only fight.</p><p>And we might have maxed out in terms of the size of NHL players. In 1997-98, the average NHL player was 73.2 inches tall and weighed 204.9 pounds. Last season, it was 73.1 inches tall and 201.2 pounds. The height of players hasn&rsquo;t deviated from 6-foot-1 &ndash; give or take a tenth of an inch &ndash; since 1996-97 (see chart on pg. 24). That&rsquo;s an awfully long time. But players are indeed getting stronger, and that only makes sense. Most elite players at any level of the game employ a personal trainer such as Nichol or former NHLer Gary Roberts. They&rsquo;re far more tuned to nutrition and are making far better life choices. The training they&rsquo;re doing is sport specific, and there&rsquo;s more emphasis on core strength than ever. Nichol is seeing it in his gym every day in the summer. &ldquo;I have junior and NCAA guys in here, and these guys are throwing up NHL numbers and are among the strongest guys I have in my gym,&rdquo; Nichol said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re 10 years younger than the NHL guys, and they&rsquo;re highly skilled guys. Their games are just going to keep going in that direction.&rdquo;</p><p>So perhaps the key in the future will not be getting bigger and stronger but in having the skill level keep pace with the growth. After all, players are only four inches taller than they were 100 years ago, and the height of them hasn&rsquo;t changed demonstrably in a generation. But the weight has fluctuated greatly. When the league expanded to 12 teams in 1966-67, almost 50 years ago, the average weight of a player was 184 pounds. That same player is more than 17 pounds heavier today. But in 2005-06, when the NHL came back from the 2004-05 lockout with a new look and rules that promoted offense, players were an average of 206.3 pounds. That has gone down by more than five pounds in subsequent years.</p><p>Unlike in the past when size and strength were often enough to get a player into the NHL, players have realized there&rsquo;s at least a modicum of skill that&rsquo;s required, regardless of the size of the player. When Eric Lindros came along in the early 1990s, people marvelled at how a man-child so big and so strong could have that kind of skating speed, skill level and soft touch around the net. Lindros would leave scouts agog as to how he was as rambunctious as a bull in a china shop on his way to the net and then as delicate as a surgeon once he got there. That kind of player is far more prevalent now than ever before, and much of it is because of the training these players do in the off-season. They&rsquo;re on the ice and in the gym and their skill levels are keeping pace with their increase in bulk. &ldquo;If you could have the size of Zdeno Chara or Dustin Byfuglien and the skill set of Patrick Kane, why wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; Nichol said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no downside to it. As long as you&rsquo;re not sacrificing conditioning or speed for the increase in size, why would you not do that?&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-029/83504-1-eng-US/f0022-022.jpg" title="f0022-02" width="1145" height="596"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>HO-HUM HUMMER</b></p><p>Shea Weber&rsquo;s modern-day blast from the point could become the norm in the years to come.</p></figcaption></div><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;I HAVE JUNIOR AND NCAA GUYS THAT ARE AMONG THE STRONGEST IN MY GYM &ndash; Matt Nichol&rdquo;</blockquote><p><b>5.1</b></p><p>Weight decrease, in pounds, from the average NHL player in 2004-05 to last season</p><p>Players are indeed bigger, faster and stronger than ever, but experts in genetics are wary of indicating that it has anything to do with human evolution. What&rsquo;s more likely is that advances in nutrition, training and equipment have more to do with it. For example, David Epstein, the author of <i>The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance</i> notes sports that require more agility have actually seen their athletes get smaller. In women&rsquo;s gymnastics, for instance, the competitors are smaller and lighter now than they&rsquo;ve ever been. In the past 30 years, female gymnasts have gone from an average of 5-foot-3 to 4-foot-9, all the better for the power to weight ratio they need to spin in the air.</p><p>Epstein also points out that at the 1936 Olympics, Jesse Owens ran the 100-meter in 10.2 seconds, while Usain Bolt ran the same race at the 2013 world championship in 9.77 seconds. That would have put him 14 feet ahead of Owens. But Bolt was using starting blocks and running on a surface that was designed to allow him to travel as fast as humanly possible. Owens, on the other hand, was running on a track made of cinders and used a gardening trowel to dig out his starting blocks in the ground. Epstein goes on to say that a biomechanical analysis of the speed of Owen&rsquo;s joints indicates that if he had starting blocks and had been running on the same track, he would have finished the race one stride behind the world&rsquo;s fastest man almost 80 years later.</p><p>Will players get faster? Maybe. But consider that at this year&rsquo;s All-Star Game, Jonathan Drouin was the fastest skater. He skated from the blueline to the end zone, then did an outward turn, raced down the ice, did an inward turn and skated to the red line. And he did all that in a remarkable 13.103 seconds. But almost 20 years ago, Mike Gartner posted a time of 13.386 seconds, although on a different course. At the All-Star Games and individual team skills competitions, there hasn&rsquo;t been that much of a deviation over the years. Yet we see the game now, and it seems like it&rsquo;s going faster than it ever has before. Players with little or no foot speed are weeded out of the game rather quickly, but again that&rsquo;s due more to the game changing than the players.</p><h2><b>BOMBS AWAY</b></h2><p>THE HARDEST SHOT IS INCREASING AT ABOUT 0.4 MILES PER HOUR EVERY YEAR AND SOME BELIEVE IT WILL CONTINUE TO TREND UPWARDS</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-0118/83497-1-eng-US/f0023-012.jpg" title="f0023-01" width="529" height="268"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-0212/83490-1-eng-US/f0023-022.jpg" title="f0023-02" width="623" height="505"><figcaption class="caption-body">DAVID CLARKSON & <b>DUSTIN BYFUGLIEN</b> <span class="photo-credit">(BYFUGLIEN: MARIANNE HELM/GETTY IM AGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>One area where we will likely see the most change is in shooting. Even though players don&rsquo;t seem to be getting any bigger, their shots are getting harder. It&rsquo;s no surprise stick technology has made enormous strides and continues to get better with every passing year. At last year&rsquo;s all-star weekend, Shea Weber won the hardest shot competition with a blast of 108.5 miles per hour. Unlike some of the other areas, this is one where there has been a marked uptick in results. In 1990, Al Iafrate won the hardest shot competition with a reading of 96 miles per hour and, discounting two anomalous years where Iafrate registered shots of 105.2 and 102.7, there has been a fairly steady progression (see chart above). Alan Moses, an associate professor at the University of Toronto in the department of cell and systems biology, ecological and evolutionary biology and computer science, ran the numbers and reckons there will be 120 mile-per-hour shots within 20 years.</p><p>In terms of skill level, a growing number of young players are opting to get 1-on-1 skills training during the off-season, play spring hockey and use personal trainers. The upside of that is players are more highly skilled at younger ages. The downside is that not using any other muscle groups and not taking breaks are causing more injuries. Nichol said one area where everyone in the game has begun to be more proactive is in area of rest and recovery and sleep patterns. When Nichol worked for the Toronto Maple Leafs at the turn of the 21st century, hockey people would scoff at things such as measuring readiness to train and sleep quality, but they have begun to embrace it more. As the players learn more, they&rsquo;ll be able to exploit their talents more fully. And that&rsquo;s where hockey still might have work to do. &ldquo;As fit and strong as guys are, there&rsquo;s still a lot of room for improvement,&rdquo; Nichol said. &ldquo;If you look at most NHL teams, I would hazard a guess that a third of their roster isn&rsquo;t even scratching the surface of their potential. I have football player clients who are journeymen or never make it, who are bigger, stronger, faster than any of my NHL guys.&rdquo;</p><p>That brings us to the gene pool, which unearths a whole host of other factors along with it. The first is attraction and retention of players. How far hockey advances depends on what kinds of athletes it has playing the game. In Canada, that&rsquo;s usually the best athletes but not always. The influx of European talent that began in the late 1970s has given the NHL more athletes to choose from and a greater pool of players. The United States has been progressively producing more players and more from far-flung places. Chychrun, for example, played all of his minor hockey in Florida, and Auston Matthews, the projected No. 1 overall pick in 2016, grew up in Phoenix. The late Bob Johnson always maintained if you could get a hockey stick in the hands of the next John Elway or Joe Montana early enough, you would make better hockey players.</p><p>Which takes us to another interesting aspect of the future. Some athletes have certain genetic advantages. You probably can see where we&rsquo;re going here. And if you don&rsquo;t think there are parents out there who might try to engineer genetic advantages to give their offspring the best chance at an NHL career, well, consider that people are willing to move to other countries, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and make all sorts of personal sacrifices just to get a ticket for the lottery.</p><h2><b>STUNTED GROWTH</b></h2><p>AFTER DECADES OF GRADUAL BUT STEADY INCREASE, THE AVERAGE HEIGHT OF NHL PLAYERS HAS STABILIZED AROUND 73 INCHES, OR 6-FOOT-1.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0024-0126/83483-1-eng-US/f0024-012.jpg" title="f0024-01" width="557" height="380"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0024-0212/83476-1-eng-US/f0024-022.jpg" title="f0024-02" width="624" height="821"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>THE REGULAR &lsquo;E&rsquo;</b></p><p>Lindros&rsquo; onceunique combo of size and skill set is a lot more common in today&rsquo;s game.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(STEVE BABINEAU/ALLSPORT)</span></figcaption></div><p>Moses of the University of Toronto compares genetic engineering to combining two decks of cards. The mother is handing half of her deck and the father half of his deck to their children. You could imagine, instead of randomly handing over the cards, you could look in the father&rsquo;s deck and the mother&rsquo;s deck and choose the best cards. &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t actually choose how the shuffling is done right now,&rdquo; Moses said. &ldquo;But we&rsquo;re at the stage where you can shuffle the deck a lot of times by combining sperm and eggs. Then you could measure which cards those sperm and eggs have, and then basically throw away the embryos that don&rsquo;t have the cards you want. Then you can choose the one that does have the cards you want and put that one into the mother and you basically have a designer baby.&rdquo;</p><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;GENETIC SHUFFLING IS POSSIBLE BUT NOT ALLOWED &ndash; Alan Moses, University of Toronto&rdquo;</blockquote><p>Nobody&rsquo;s saying this could happen within the next 10 years &ndash; after all, we&rsquo;re still as a society debating the ethics of using stem cells to help cure diseases. So we&rsquo;re not about to start messing with nature to build better athletes. But what about the long-term future? Moses said even now it would be possible to take hockey players, sequence their genomes, identify the differences they have and isolate those. &ldquo;We already have the technology to do custom genome editing,&rdquo; Moses said. &ldquo;Technically, these things are possible, but they&rsquo;re absolutely not allowed. In principle, if you gave the sports world its way, perhaps it would take us to a place where these things are happening, but that&rsquo;s not the world we&rsquo;re in now. We&rsquo;re still at the stage where it&rsquo;s really scary to take someone&rsquo;s cells and do genetic manipulation and put them back in their bodies.&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-0125/83469-1-eng-US/f0025-012.jpg" title="f0025-01" width="629" height="528"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>TIRELESS TRAINING</b></p><p>Freakish fitness allows Keith to play the mega-minutes thought impossible not too long ago.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(BILL SMITH/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>Until then, we&rsquo;ll just have to continue on with players training harder, eating healthier, devoting themselves more to their craft and being better coached. Those aspects of the game are improving with every passing season. And we didn&rsquo;t even touch on goaltending, the position in the game that has outpaced the ability of skaters to produce offense. More pure athletes are gravitating to the crease than ever, and they&rsquo;re being better coached. Many of them have discovered the advantages of tracking the puck wherever it goes, using a &ldquo;head trajectory&rdquo; technique that allows them to keep a step ahead of the play in front of them.</p><p>Players will continue to get better, and it will be more and more difficult to play in the best league in the world, even with expansion on the horizon. The few who are chosen will be those who continue to get higher, faster, stronger.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0021-01

EVOLUTION REVOLUTION

<div class="byline">BY DOMINIK LUSZCZYSZYN</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0026-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-0127/83554-1-eng-US/f0026-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>CROS & EFFECT</b></p><p>Sid&rsquo;s impact isn&rsquo;t reflected in hockey WAR because playmaking isn&rsquo;t accounted for.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>T</span>HE MOST IMPORTANT THING to know about a player is how valuable he is to his team. In hockey, that&rsquo;s a difficult question to answer and one usually met with fierce debate.</p><p><a href="http://war-on-ice.com">War-on-ice.com</a> founders and academic hockey researchers Andrew Thomas and Sam Ventura, the latter of whom was recently hired by the Pittsburgh Penguins, hope to make things a bit clearer. It starts with part of the website&rsquo;s name: WAR.</p><p>If you&rsquo;re familiar with baseball stats, you&rsquo;ll recognize the acronym WAR &ndash; wins above replacement. It determines how many wins a team gets from a player compared to one who&rsquo;s easily replaceable.</p><p>Figuring that out means putting all the things that lead to wins on the same wavelength. Hockey is full of events that help or hurt a team and, for Thomas, figuring out the relative worth of each of those events is the most important aspect of creating a hockey version of WAR. &ldquo;I always wince when I see people say faceoffs are worthless,&rdquo; Thomas said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re worth less than Corsi rates, but it&rsquo;s really important to capture what that value is. It&rsquo;s not that you&rsquo;re putting everything into one number, but that you&rsquo;re putting all the other numbers into a context where comparison is now easier.&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-0215/83547-1-eng-US/f0026-022.jpg" title="f0026-02" width="407" height="416"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>NO DOUGHT</b></p><p>Though he may not rank high in hockey WAR, Doughty&rsquo;s value to the Kings is unquestioned.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p><b>5.34</b></p><p>WAR rating for Joe Pavelski over the past three seasons, tops among all NHL forwards</p><p>Some argue hockey is too dynamic to quantify accurately, but Thomas doesn&rsquo;t see it that way. &ldquo;People are already taking measurements of everything,&rdquo; Thomas said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s always a way of breaking it down enough into the component bits that, over time, we&rsquo;re going to get closer and closer to that full combined process.&rdquo;</p><p>Those components are shot rates, shooting/goaltending talent, penalty differential and faceoffs, each separating offense and defense (see sidebar). There&rsquo;s obviously more to hockey, but the measure is limited by the data available. Thomas will be the first to say the current form of WAR is an incomplete description.</p><p>Two important skills they haven&rsquo;t been able to work out are playmaking and defending. The biggest reason for that is the difficulty of separating players. Playmakers create a larger share of scoring chances, but there are four other skaters contributing, so it&rsquo;s difficult to determine the driving force. Same goes for defending, in which it&rsquo;s hard to separate a defenseman from his partner and difficult to quantify the effects of playing big minutes.</p><p>Because of that, players known to excel in those traits, like Sidney Crosby and Drew Doughty, will have a lower WAR than you might expect. For both skills, the problem comes back to a lack of data. Some dedicated hockey fans and bloggers aim to fill in those blanks. Among them is the Passing Project, a group of fans &ndash; led by Ryan Stimson, an SB Nation blogger for the Devils &ndash; who are tracking passes. &ldquo;Understanding how much a player actually contributes versus what they&rsquo;re on the ice for is a massive gap right now in player evaluation,&rdquo; Stimson said. &ldquo;Players may be impacting possession in other ways, but the more we can quantify their actual contributions, the better we can separate the possession drivers and passengers.&rdquo;</p><p>That&rsquo;s led to &ldquo;Corsi contribution,&rdquo; which is essentially every individual shot attempt plus all shot attempts a player &ldquo;assisted&rdquo; on. Compare that to the total shot attempts a player was on the ice for and it&rsquo;s immediately apparent how vital he was to a team&rsquo;s offense.</p><p>Tracking passes has also led to advances in tracking shot quality, specifically how shots preceded by passes are more likely to go in than non-pass shots, with multiple passes being especially potent.</p><p>The same is true for zone entries and exits, according to Corey Sznajder, who spent the past two years tracking such events for the 2013-14 season. &ldquo;Winning the neutral zone has a big impact on a team&rsquo;s shot differential,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;A player entering the zone or carrying the puck in more often than not might be the catalyst on his line as opposed to a player who doesn&rsquo;t play a big role on entries.&rdquo;</p><p>Ditto for the blueliners who stop them, doing their teams a huge service that goes unnoticed.</p><p>Richer data from player tracking will better reflect how much a player contributes to the existing and new criteria that go into WAR, creating a much clearer picture of a player&rsquo;s total value. Whether fans accept that is a very different story. That&rsquo;s why it&rsquo;s important to have everything in context and understand the strengths and weaknesses of any stat. &ldquo;People are always going to make conclusions based on whatever number they like,&rdquo; Thomas said. &ldquo;No debate will ever be ended by a new number.&rdquo;</p><p>And so, the war continues.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0026-01

A NEW HILL TO DIE ON

<div class="byline">BY RACHEL VILLARI</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0028-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-0128/83647-1-eng-US/f0028-012.jpg"></div><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;THERE COMES A POINT WHEN YOU ASK YOURSELF, IS IT EVEN <b>WORTH WHILE</b> BUILDING AN OUTDOOR RINK?&rdquo;</blockquote><p class="dropcap"><span>H</span>ockey is entering a new ice age, and how the community deals with it could have a significant bearing on the evolution of the game. Climate change may not affect where we can put an indoor rink, even in the warmest climes, but it&rsquo;s having a profound impact outdoors, where the game was born and its mystique still lies.</p><p>Today, Torontonians get about 60 days of outdoor skating a year. So do those in Montreal. That&rsquo;s two months to play keep away with your siblings, pretending to be various members of the Staal family out on a sod farm in Thunder Bay. Or maybe you and your buddy are John Tavares and Sam Gagner, who used to skate in Gagner&rsquo;s backyard so often the pizza delivery guy knew to bypass the house and head straight to the homemade rink. Either way, play hard now, because those days are dwindling.</p><p>This shouldn&rsquo;t come as a newsflash. In 2012, members of McGill University&rsquo;s department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences proved the skating season in Canada was shrinking. Fifty-five years prior, you&rsquo;d have had upwards of 15 more days of outdoor shinny. But those days are getting fewer as we continue to burn fossil fuels. Will hockey have to sacrifice the outdoor game for the indoor one?</p><p>Robert McLeman, associate professor of geography and environmental studies of Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., compares the precarious nature of the outdoor rink to polar bears. &ldquo;Scientists will say, &lsquo;Well, polar bears are going to disappear,&rsquo; but people won&rsquo;t see polar bears unless they go to a zoo, so there&rsquo;s no personal connection to the impacts,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But when you say, &lsquo;Well, you won&rsquo;t be able to build a rink in about 20 years time,&rsquo; they&rsquo;ll say, &lsquo;What? Hold on a second. We love skating!&rsquo; And so suddenly there&rsquo;s this personal connection with what&rsquo;s going on.&rdquo;</p><p>McLeman is working on an upcoming study showing that by 2090 the number of skating days in Toronto will fall by a third. That means those dream teams created in neighborhood rinks will only have 40 days of outdoor ice time. The same goes for those in Montreal, which will experience the same sharp 33 percent decrease, and Calgary, which will lose 20 percent of skateable days.</p><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-0127/83640-1-eng-US/f0030-012.jpg" title="f0030-01" width="1056" height="470"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>LEADING THE WAY</b></p><p>Richter, second left, has praised Bettman, second right, for taking on climate change.</p><span class="photo-credit">(RICHTER: GRANT LAMOS IV/GETTY IMAGES FOR BEYOND SPORT)</span></figcaption></div><p>Consensus among the scientific community is that climate change is affecting backyards all along the Canadian-American border. To prove this, McLeman helped launch a data collection survey, RinkWatch, which allows backyard flooders to pinpoint their homemade rink&rsquo;s location on a map and report their skating conditions throughout the winter. The webbased citizen-science program allows McLeman and his team to chart winter weather across North America, determine temperature thresholds that yield the best ice conditions and predict the number of skating days in the future. Recorded data on RinkWatch guarantees a skateable rink at temperatures lower than 14 degrees Fahrenheit, but a few degrees warmer and the quality of the ice rapidly declines. At 23 degrees Fahrenheit, there&rsquo;s only a 50 percent chance of the ice being skateable, according to McLeman.</p><p>To put it into perspective, a typical year in Boston yields 36 days colder than 23 degrees, allowing for a 50-percent chance of good skating. But a onedegree warming in the average temperature in Boston &ndash; which McLeman believes can be expected in the coming decade &ndash; will shrink those days down to 17. &ldquo;There comes a point where you ask yourself, is it even worthwhile building an outdoor rink?&rdquo; he said.</p><p>The paradox between performance and sustainability is becoming increasingly important, and few understand this better than three-time U.S. Olympian and former New York Rangers goaltender Mike Richter.</p><p>Since retiring in 2003, Richter has received a degree in ethics, politics and economics from Yale University and serves on many environmental committees, including the Sierra Club. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard for years, &lsquo;This&rsquo;ll be an issue for our grandchildren,&rsquo; &rdquo; he said. &ldquo;No, it&rsquo;s an issue now. It will be a profoundly disturbing issue for them unless we address it now.&rdquo;</p><p>Richter, who in 2011 founded Healthy Planet Partners, a company that retrofits commercial buildings with a clean energy supply, believes there&rsquo;s a natural alliance between athletes and the environment and that athletes are in a privileged position to raise awareness concerning sustainability. &ldquo;Every method that you can use to address the issue of these environmental effects needs to be used,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And by that I mean you need charity, volunteers, NGOs, capital markets &ndash; everything &ndash; because these problems are so big. They&rsquo;re so difficult to handle.&rdquo;</p><p>In this way, the NHL has been a leader. In 2008, the league partnered with the National Resource Defense Council to provide each team with a &ldquo;greening advisor&rdquo; who serves as a guide to promote ecological practices in their hometown arenas. In 2011, at the Winter Classic held at Boston&rsquo;s Fenway Park, commissioner Gary Bettman unveiled NHL Green, the league&rsquo;s environmentally conscious and socially progressive program that united individual teams&rsquo; efforts under the power of the official seal. According to the league&rsquo;s website, NHL Green has five goals: track impacts; reduce energy, waste and water; offset impacts; support environmental programs; and inspire environmental progress. Examples are initiatives like Gallons for Goals and Rock and Wrap It Up, programs that recycle water and food waste created on game days.</p><p>In 2014, NHL Green did something no pro sports organization in North America had done yet. It published a sustainability report upon collecting its own data, coming clean of its 530,000-metric-ton carbon footprint and all the ways it was striving toward more environmentally friendly operations. In 2015, it became the first pro sports league to achieve a spot on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency&rsquo;s National Top 100 list of the largest users of green power.</p><p>According to the sustainability report, nearly all league facilities have adopted more efficient lighting, which has proved a significant return on investment. From there, individual venues have addressed specific needs, ranging from revamped humidity control, the elimination of harmful refrigerants and retrofitting cooling technology to make ice and arena maintenance more environmentally sustainable.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-0217/83633-1-eng-US/f0030-022.jpg" title="f0030-02" width="928" height="524"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>GREEN MONSTER</b></p><p>In 2011, the NHL unveiled its green initiative at the Winter Classic in Fenway Park.</p><span class="photo-credit">(FENWAY: JIM MCISAAC/GETTY IMAGES; FERENCE: ANDY DEVLIN/NH LI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>For Richter, the key to reducing our environmental impact has everything to do with efficiency. He said that when you&rsquo;re producing a lot of waste, it means your operations are working more than they need to be. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the lens with which we need to start viewing these environmental problems,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Is there a more efficient transportation of the public or private? Can you put solar on the roof instead of using electricity from a coal plant? There are a lot of technologies that work &ndash; that&rsquo;s what I do in my job right now &ndash; but to have a forum like the league is increasingly creating a very powerful thing, because the technology&rsquo;s out there, the money&rsquo;s out there, but I think the awareness of it is the one thing that&rsquo;s lacking.&rdquo;</p><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;THE MONEY IS OUT THERE, BUT AWARENESS OF THE ISSUE IS THE ONE THING LACKING &ndash; MIke Richter&rdquo;</blockquote><p>Richter lauds current NHLers involved with NHL Green initiatives who can find the time to play and preserve. Edmonton Oilers veteran defenseman Andrew Ference, who is currently enrolled at Harvard working toward a certificate in sustainability and innovation, is a popular spokesman. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s definitely been a bit of a revolution over the last few years with the big venues, the venues that have capital to make the investments in the more sustainable technology and the more efficient technology,&rdquo; Ference said. &ldquo;Rinks are becoming more and more energy efficient every single year. But you still see all of these community rinks &ndash; the one that I skate at over the summer &ndash; they&rsquo;re very inefficient.&rdquo;</p><p>There are 2,631 indoor hockey rinks in Canada, the majority of which are probably closer to Ference&rsquo;s summer slab than Rexall Place. While engineering companies are beginning to understand that many of these family owned and operated rinks don&rsquo;t have the kind of capital to retrofit, there are smaller, more fiscally responsible technologies beginning to develop.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-0123/83626-1-eng-US/f0031-012.jpg" title="f0031-01" width="407" height="396"><figcaption class="caption-body">ANDREW <b>FERENCE</b></figcaption></div><p><b>530k</b></p><p>NHL&rsquo;s carbon footprint in metric tons according to a report released by the league in 2014.</p><p>For example, RealIce, a Vancouver-based company, manufactures an easy-install device akin to a pipe, 100-percent maintenance free and with no other energy sources necessary. Water flows through the device at such speed that a vortex is created, removing majority of the micro-air bubbles. The water &ndash; which is never heated, saving energy &ndash; is then used to resurface the ice. The de-aeration process makes for a smoother, harder ice that has a positive ripple effect on the other processes in the arena, such as lowering the draw on compressors and boilers, the amount of water used and wasted and overall energy consumed. The company&rsquo;s return on investment is two to three years for a single pad rink, and one to two years for a twin pad.</p><p>The NHL has become a familiar face with technological innovations that lower utility costs and help the environment. The league has utilized RealIce in the construction of its outdoor rinks for the Winter Classic, Heritage Classic and Stadium Series games since 2010. The NHL has also caught wind of RinkWatch and advertises the program on the NHL Green&rsquo;s website. &ldquo;They recognize that part of hockey is the shinny experience, the backyard skating experience, and when &ndash; or if &ndash; that were to disappear, it sort of goes right to the roots, the tradition of hockey,&rdquo; McLeman said. &ldquo;Wayne Gretzky in his dad&rsquo;s backyard, Bobby Hull playing on a frozen pond out in the prairies when he was a kid. You take that away and suddenly the mystique of hockey starts to erode.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0028-01

SKATING ON THIN ICE

<div class="byline">BY KEN CAMPBELL</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0032-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-0128/83725-1-eng-US/f0032-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(LEN REDKOLES/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>G</span>eorge Orwell once said that if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever. He also said those who control the past control the future. And those who control the present control the past.</p><p>Remind us to leave him off our dinner party list. What a downer. Luckily, the future is not as dire for the game at the NHL, grassroots or international levels. At least when we look into our crystal ball to see what lies in the next decade, we don&rsquo;t see all doom and gloom.</p><p>Here are 10 of the key issues facing the game over the next 10 years and how they might unfold:</p><h2><b>1. CONCUSSIONS/SAFETY</b></h2><p>Talk to any expert in the concussion field, and he or she will tell you science is just scratching the surface when it comes to understanding the concussion phenomenon. We&rsquo;re still at a point where experts can&rsquo;t even agree on how to define a concussion.</p><p>One of the problems with concussions is chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is believed to be caused by repeated concussions, can only be detected after death. There are reasons to believe that might change in the next decade, as researchers gain more insights into diagnosing the disease in living brains.</p><p>There is a concussion lawsuit launched by about 200 former NHL players against the league, and even though legal steps have been taken, there&rsquo;s no guarantee this will end up being decided by the courts. The NFL settled its concussion lawsuit with former players out of court in April.</p><p>NHL commissioner Gary Bettman still publicly challenges the link between concussions and CTE, and that is the biggest question that needs to be answered. The only way to curb concussions in the NHL is to make any blow to the head, deliberate or accidental, a suspendable offense. And at this point, the league has no plans to go in that direction, believing it will take too much of the physical element out of the game.</p><h2><b>2. FIGHTING</b></h2><p>According to <a href="http://hockeyfights.com">hockeyfights.com</a>, the fighting numbers continued their steady decline across the board in 2014-15. There were just 391 fights last season, which is the lowest number since the website began tracking fights in 2000-01, and the 0.32 fights per game was by far the lowest number recorded. Just a little more than one quarter (26.91 percent) of games had at least one fight, and only 45 games had more than one fight.</p><p>There seems to be no appetite at the GM or board of governors level to take any further measures in the rulebook as it pertains to fighting. The league has watched as one-dimensional enforc- ers have been organically weeded out, largely because the speed of the game has dictated they can no longer use up valuable ice time. So the argument that fighting has become less and less a factor in the game has some credence. There are still some rare exceptions &ndash; John Scott continues to defy logic by finding work &ndash; but the days of the goon appear to be gone for the foreseeable future.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-0123/83718-1-eng-US/f0033-012.jpg" title="f0033-01" width="403" height="417"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>JUST ABOUT GONE</b></p><p>Scott is the exception to the norm of goons going extinct from the game.</p><span class="photo-credit">(SCOTT: LEN REDKOLES/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; VEGAS: MGM RESORTS INTERNATIONAL; QUEBEC: THE CANAD IAN PRESS /HO)</span></figcaption></div><h2><b>3. CBA/REVENUES</b></h2><p>When Derek Stepan negotiated a $3-million signing bonus for the 2020-21 season in his recent six-year deal, it set off speculation the New York Ranger was getting lockout protection in his deal. Even though the current collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2021-22 season, either side can opt for early termination. If the NHL wants to terminate following the 2019-20 season, it must inform the NHL Players&rsquo; Association in writing by Sept. 1, 2019. If the NHLPA would like to terminate, it must make that decision by Sept. 15, 2019. The players will most certainly not opt out early and, if history is any indication, the league likely won&rsquo;t, either. It has had that option in the past and has chosen not to use it.</p><p>League revenues have been rising, and next year&rsquo;s NHL/NHLPA-run World Cup of Hockey should provide a boost. But the giant X-factor is the state of the Canadian dollar. The loonie has been tanking recently and hasn&rsquo;t shown signs of imminent recovery. The U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates in the fall, and crude oil prices are flat, which will lead to the Canadian dollar continuing to take a beating in the short term. Randall Bartlett, a senior economist with TD Bank, said the Canadian dollar will likely drop to about 73 cents by the middle of 2016, then should rebound and settle somewhere between 80 and 85 cents. Considering how much money the Canadian teams generate, this could serve as a considerable drag on overall NHL revenues.</p><h2><b>4. EXPANSION/RELOCATION</b></h2><p>When the NHL invited 16 people to its expansion party and only two showed up, it was a telling sign. And that is because if you want to be a part of the NHL club, you&rsquo;d better come with lots and lots of money. Las Vegas and Quebec City appear ready to do that, and there are those who think the league has little choice but to award both cities expansion teams in time for the 2017-18 season. Las Vegas has a rink that will be ready next year and Quebec City has a new, publicly funded arena set to go.</p><p>As far as relocation, the Arizona Coyotes have two years remaining on their renegotiated deal with the City of Glendale before they have the option to move, so that&rsquo;s a real possibility. So is Carolina. But another spot to watch with interest over the next couple years is Ottawa. The only Canadian market that doesn&rsquo;t sell out its arena regularly has plans for a downtown rink, but the mayor of Ottawa has gone on the record saying he opposes any public money being made available for an arena for the Senators. He is just one vote on council but has a lot of sway. With owner Eugene Melnyk&rsquo;s health issues and uncertainty surrounding a rink, the Senators could be a darkhorse to relocate within a decade.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-0217/83711-1-eng-US/f0033-022.jpg" title="f0033-02" width="623" height="387"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>ON THE CUSP</b></p><p>Las Vegas and Quebec could start seeing NHL hockey within two years.</p></figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-039/83704-1-eng-US/f0033-032.jpg" title="f0033-03" width="621" height="385"></div><h2><b>5. WOMEN&rsquo;S GAME</b></h2><p>Despite former International Olympic Committee Jacques Rogge putting women&rsquo;s hockey on doublesecret probation in 2010, the sport at the women&rsquo;s level has a backer in current IOC president Thomas Bach and doesn&rsquo;t appear to be in any imminent danger. The game in Canada and USA is robust and getting better, which does nothing to address the gap in talent between the two superpowers and other countries, but there are encouraging signs. Switzerland won the bronze medal in the 2012 World Championship and followed that up two years later at the Olympics in Sochi. Russia is beginning to produce better results, while Finland and Sweden remain in the mix.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-0128/83697-1-eng-US/f0034-012.jpg" title="f0034-01" width="621" height="437"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p>HAYLEY WICKENHEISER & <b>KELLY STACK</b></p><p><b>CLOSING THE GAP</b></p><p>Canada and the U.S. still rule the women&rsquo;s game, but other nations are catching up.</p></figcaption></div><p>The birth of the National Women&rsquo;s Hockey League, which begins play with four teams this fall, is a positive sign because, for the first time, women will be paid professionals. The league has also tapped into the global game, with the New York Riveters signing Austrian forward Janine Weber, Russian winger Lyudmila Belyakova and Japanese goalie Nana Fujimoto. With the 2022 Winter Olympics awarded to Beijing, China will undoubtedly build its women&rsquo;s program to compete at that level in seven years.</p><h2><b>6. OLYMPICS/INTERNATIONAL GAME</b></h2><p>The 2022 Games being awarded to Beijing means the next two tournaments (2018 are to be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea) will be in time zones that are 13 or more hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone. That is not good news for those hoping for the NHL&rsquo;s long-term participation in the Games.</p><p>The NHL has skirted the issue so far and has put most of its focus on next fall&rsquo;s World Cup, an event that will bring in a projected $100 million in revenue but will not grow the game much on a global scale. After seemingly not getting much bang for its buck and watching players such as John Tavares get hurt in Sochi, the league seems sour on the idea of continuing to break up its schedule every four years. The players continue to want to compete in the Games, but that could be blunted by the World Cup experience. The sense is the players want to play but won&rsquo;t die on a hill to continue Olympic participation. It was probably 50-50 before the Beijing announcement, and those odds could go down.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-0213/83690-1-eng-US/f0034-022.jpg" title="f0034-02" width="401" height="479"><figcaption class="caption-body">AUS TON <b>MATTHEWS</b><span class="photo-credit">(WICKE NHEISER: MARTIN ROSE/GETTY IMAGES; MATTHEWS: MINAS PANAGIOTAKIS/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-037/83683-1-eng-US/f0034-032.jpg" title="f0034-03" width="1149" height="529"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>TIME TROUBLE</b></p><p>NHL participation in the Olympics is looking less likely with the next two Games in Asia.</p></figcaption></div><h2><b>7. GRASSROOTS PARTICIPATION</b></h2><p>The participation numbers for minor hockey among Canadians are somewhat dependent upon birthrates, and the good news for Canada is there is something of a baby boom going on north of the 49th parallel these days.</p><p>In 2000, there were just 327,882 births in the Great White North, which was the lowest number since 1946. That had Hockey Canada officials nervous about participation rates. The good news is the trend has reversed. There were 385,937 births in 2014, and that number has been rising over the past few years. Hockey Canada has done a better job of making hockey more accessible to kids in all parts of the country, launching pilot projects that parse the season into four mini-seasons, thereby reducing the winter-long commitment to one sport.</p><p>In the U.S., the numbers depend more on hockey attracting the best athletes, and that has been happening. There are more players hailing from far-flung hockey places such as California and Florida than ever and, despite growing up in Arizona, Auston Matthews chose hockey as his sport and is the favorite to go first overall in the 2016 NHL draft <i>(see pg. 16 for more)</i>.</p><h2><b>8. RULE CHANGES</b></h2><p>The NFL is the most popular professional sport in North America, and it tinkers with its rules all the time, so the template is there for hockey to continue to fine-tune things to make the game better. When the NHL remodelled itself in 2005, it was all about injecting more speed and excitement into the game. Now, when it comes to rules, much of the concern surrounds whether the game has become too fast.</p><p>The league took an enormous step forward with 3-on-3 overtime, which will come into effect this season. The new overtime format should reduce the number of shootouts that so many hockey people loathe, but there is virtually no chance the shootout will ever be eliminated entirely. The trapezoid behind the net always seems to be an issue, with those who have safety concerns arguing that removing it might cut down on the wear-and-tear on defensemen going back for the puck.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-0124/83676-1-eng-US/f0035-012.jpg" title="f0035-01" width="627" height="451"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>YANKING TANKING</b></p><p>The NHL has again revamped its lottery rules to deter teams from tanking for top talent, like McDavid.</p><span class="photo-credit">(CROSBY: DAVID E. KLUTHO /SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /GETTY IMAGES; MCDAVID: DAVID COOPER/TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><h2><b>9. LOTTERY/TANKING</b></h2><p>When you get two once-in-a-generation talents (yes, we know how ridiculous that sounds), the issue of tanking comes up, as it did last season with Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel available. In fact, when the Arizona Coyotes visited the Buffalo Sabres late in the season, Sabres fans openly cheered for the Coyotes all game and unleashed their happiness when the Coyotes won in overtime.</p><p>That kind of bounty at Nos. 1 and 2 won&rsquo;t happen for a while, but beginning with the 2016 draft, the NHL has changed the lottery format to conduct separate lotteries for the first, second and third picks. The team finishing last overall still has the best odds &ndash; at 20 percent &ndash; of getting the No. 1 overall pick &ndash; but it is no longer guaranteed the No. 2 if it loses the lottery. In fact, if the No. 30 teams misses out on all three lotteries, it would drop to fourth overall. So unless you want to guarantee yourself a top-four pick instead of a top-two, there&rsquo;s much less incentive to tank the season.</p><h2><b>10. TEAM DROUGHTS</b></h2><p>Thanks to an impressive run of first-time winners about a decade ago, the NHL now has just 12 teams that have never won a Stanley Cup. (That includes the current incarnation of the Ottawa Senators.) The two teams most poised to do it in the short term are the St. Louis Blues and Washington Capitals. In the long-term, well, we have already gone on the record as saying the Winnipeg Jets will win the Cup in 2019 and the Buffalo Sabres in 2020. The Arizona Coyotes, wherever they&rsquo;ll be playing in three or four years, are positioning themselves for a strong run as well.</p><p>The 2016-17 season should be an interesting, and awkward, one for the Toronto Maple Leafs, who share with the Blues the longest Stanley Cup drought. That season will be the Leafs&rsquo; 100th in the NHL and will likely include an outdoor game, the All-Star Game and all sorts of celebrations. But it will also be the 50th of their current Stanley Cup drought, unless, of course, they defy all the odds and win the Cup next season.</p><p><b>100</b></p><p>Estimated revenue in millions the World Cup of Hockey is expected to generate in 2016.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0032-01

10 QUESTIONS

<div class="byline">BY JARED CLINTON</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0036-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-0126/83775-1-eng-US/f0036-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(SPORTLOGIQ)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>T</span>HE EARLIEST REVOLUTIONS IN HOCKEY happened because of the players. The Bobby Orrs changed the way we looked at position players, the Russian five-man unit altered coaching strategies and equipment technology spawned faster skaters and harder shots. But the next big changes are happening away from the rink, in offices crammed full with whirring and buzzing computer towers and servers.</p><p>With the ability to track stats in a more specific manner, the league has already seen changes in terminology and how we value and analyze players. It is impacting arbitration and the way teams scout and has added numerous jobs in NHL front offices. The NHL&rsquo;s partnership with business software company SAP repackaged and delivered many of the numbers that had become popular with statheads, but new technologies, like player tracking that companies such as Quebec startup Sportlogiq are developing, could transform the way coaches do their jobs and change the outcomes of games in real time. &ldquo;There are some things you could show (with our technology) right now to a smart coach and he could take what, say, P.K. Subban&rsquo;s decision-making is like in the defensive, neutral and offensive zones,&rdquo; said Andrew Berkshire, Sportlogiq&rsquo;s manager of editorial content. &ldquo;And if a coach gets a report during the first intermission that says these are the decisions Subban&rsquo;s making, you could say to him, &lsquo;P.K., when you&rsquo;ve got the puck here, you&rsquo;ve got to make that pass more because that&rsquo;s what you&rsquo;re better at and what generates more offense.&rsquo; &rdquo;</p><p>With player tracking, a technological advancement already in place in pro leagues like the NBA and the English Premier League, coaches could integrate their feel for the game and gut reactions with hard numbers. But how, exactly, does this work?</p><p>Sportlogiq&rsquo;s platform was developed from what was originally surveillance technology and works by mapping skaters&rsquo; movements &ndash; from head to toe &ndash; roughly 2,500 times per game, producing an annotated database that creates a breadth of data, the likes of which has never been seen in the NHL. Instead of using chips in pucks or jerseys, which are technologies more difficult to implement, Sportlogiq works off standard game footage, be it from broadcast cameras or film taken by a coaching staff. &ldquo;The way that it tracks the players is by detecting parts of their body so we can find their feet, their hands, their stick and their head,&rdquo; Berkshire said. &ldquo;Using that, we start to determine not only where they are, but what they&rsquo;re doing. Was it a shot or a stick check or a body check?&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-0121/83768-1-eng-US/f0037-012.jpg" title="f0037-01" width="402" height="270"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(FOXTRAX: JOHN GIAMUNDO/GETTY IMAGES; PLAYER TEDENCY UI: SPORTLOGIQ)</span></figcaption></div><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;COACHES CAN BLEND GUT FEEL WITH HARD NUMBERS&rdquo;</blockquote><p>But with so many events covered by the system, the trouble can be data getting lost in the shuffle. Cofounder-CEO Craig Buntin said that, right now, some teams don&rsquo;t know what to do with the data they&rsquo;re receiving. Ben Alamar, the current ESPN director of analytics who previously worked with the Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers during the NBA&rsquo;s big technological, statistical and player-tracking boom, said the amount of data can pose a potential problem. That problem, however, could give rise to a shift in the landscape of the NHL front offices. &ldquo;The data that comes out of (the NBA&rsquo;s SportVU technology) is really complex and you can do amazing things with it and really creative things,&rdquo; Alamar said. &ldquo;But it does change the scope of what an analyst is in most sports. In the NBA, when I started, if you had good Microsoft Excel skills, you could do valuable stuff with just that. To do really creative, innovative stuff with the new data, you&rsquo;re talking about people who have degrees in computer science and statistics.&rdquo;</p><p>Beyond a team-to-team basis, player tracking has potential implications for the NHL&rsquo;s department of player safety. If the speed, trajectory and path of an offending player can be measured on a hit being considered for supplemental discipline, it could impact how the league proceeds with fines and suspensions.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-0216/83761-1-eng-US/f0037-022.jpg" title="f0037-02" width="619" height="438"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>AFTER GLOW</b></p><p>Fox&rsquo;s glow puck got mixed reviews, but goal-line technology figures to be more sophisticated.</p></figcaption></div><p>It&rsquo;s not just player tracking that will make its way onto NHL ice, though. Advanced goal-line technology is on its way, too. In Game 3 of the 2015 Pacific Division final between Calgary Flames and Anaheim Ducks, a Sam Bennett shot from the goalmouth looked to have crossed the line from several angles, but the goal was ruled inconclusive on video replay. That moment, and others like it, has given way to those who want to see goal-line technology used in the NHL.</p><p>In the U.K., Hawk-Eye Innovations has created goal-line technology for soccer that is used by every single team in the English Premier League. The system works by directing seven cameras at each goal which track the ball in the goal area. With millimeter accuracy, the system can instantly send a report to the referee whether the ball has crossed the line. Similar Hawk-Eye systems have already been implemented in tennis and cricket, as well. A Hawk-Eye system implemented in the NHL would have made the subsequent video replay of Bennett&rsquo;s goal obsolete.</p><p>Increasingly, fans, players, coaches and teams want to remove the human-element of error, which is what the Hawk-Eye system aims to accomplish. It&rsquo;s not beyond reason to believe one catch-all system could also remove the need for the once-a-week questionable call regarding the puck-over-glass penalty. Everyone, from GMs to fans, wants the right calls to be made. Technology like Hawk-Eye can ensure that.</p><p>What it will all come back to &ndash; goals, penalties, discipline, et al. &ndash; is how the game is coached and played. That&rsquo;s again where player tracking will be what makes the biggest changes, and they might not be as far away as we think. And, once perfected, it won&rsquo;t be long before we&rsquo;re seeing coaches make splitsecond decisions based on analytics. &ldquo;Honestly, when this data is real-time and perfect and we know everything we need to know about this data, the coach of every NHL team is going to have an iPad (behind the bench),&rdquo; Berkshire said. &ldquo;And they&rsquo;ll be able to look at what their players are doing and what they should be doing more efficiently shift to shift.&rdquo;</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-039/83754-1-eng-US/f0037-032.jpg" title="f0037-03" width="183" height="236"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>INSTANT ANALYSIS</b></p><p>Advances in player tracking mean coaches will some day carry tablets behind the bench.</p></figcaption></div><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span>

f0036-01

GAME CHANGER

<div class="byline">BY RYAN KENNEDY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0038-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-0128/83818-1-eng-US/f0038-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>SHOWTIME</b></p><p>The Predators are on the cutting edge of digital technology to enhance the ingame experience.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(BRIDG ESTONE: JOHN RUSSELL/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>W</span>hen Terry Kalna thinks about the hockey game of the future, he envisions a fan who never has to worry about finding a parking spot or waiting in line. In fact, the Pittsburgh Penguins&rsquo; senior vice-president of sales and broadcasting just wants you to stroll in the door, mobile phone in hand. There&rsquo;s already a parking spot reserved for you and, at 8:05, four hot dogs will be ready and waiting at a certain concession stand. &ldquo;No lines, none of that hassle,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Completely automated, barrier-free. We want to take all the anxiety out of the experience.&rdquo;</p><p>Mobile apps and beacon technology are at the forefront of the fan experience that is just now being realized by sports franchises. Beacon technology allows fans to &ldquo;check in&rdquo; to the arena using their phone, which means no more tickets &ndash; you just walk past electronic markers that would identify you (a security guard would be present for those who try to slip through on the sly). From there, it&rsquo;s all about value-added experiences. &ldquo;If I&rsquo;m a vegetarian, maybe there&rsquo;s a special offer on concessions,&rdquo; said Susan Kohig, the NHL&rsquo;s senior vice-president of business affairs. &ldquo;Or if I&rsquo;m a Jonathan Quick fan, there may be a deal on merchandise.&rdquo;</p><p>In Nashville, the Predators make it a point to constantly renovate Bridgestone Arena. One reason is to keep fans impressed (right now, doors are being ripped out and seats replaced), while also reinforcing the entertainment side through murals of a Shea Weber hit or Pekka Rinne save. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re a sport of memories,&rdquo; said president and chief operating officer Sean Henry. &ldquo;We want those memories in your face.&rdquo;</p><p>Perhaps more importantly, however, is the Wifisystem put in place two years ago. Since so much of the future will be dependent on signal, Bridgestone Arena is now wired to handle 35,000 fans. That&rsquo;s better than arena big. That&rsquo;s stadium big. Fans who download the Smashville app on their mobile devices will reap the benefits. With that same beacon technology, fans can get rewards when they pass different parts of the arena or be privy to special media features. For example, the Preds have a series called <i>Beneath the Ice</i>, which is similar to HBO&rsquo;s <i>24/7</i> series. During a pre-game skate, fans can be prompted to watch Filip Forsberg carpooling with fellow Swedish teammate Mattias Ekholm, or James Neal cooking for Rich Clune, on their phone.</p><p>Back in Pittsburgh, Kalna is musing about how Pens fans can get even more out of their Consol Energy Center experience. Could heat maps be used to determine how long the bathroom lines are and when an optimal time to go would be? And what kind of traffic algorithms are out there so fans don&rsquo;t feel the need to leave as soon as an empty-net goal goes in? What really excites him is access. Kalna comes from a NASCAR background and wants to translate that in-car experience to hockey. &ldquo;Everybody wonders what&rsquo;s going on in that dressing room,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re five, 10 years away from there not being a secret in the room.&rdquo;</p><p>That sort of behind-the-scenes 24/7 access is the next frontier, where audio and video are everywhere, and it&rsquo;s up to the fans on their phones &ndash; or perhaps some sort of Google Glass headset &ndash; to determine what they can access during the game. &ldquo;Do I want the Sidney Crosby iso-cam tonight?&rdquo; Kalna said. &ldquo;Do I want home team bench audio? You pick your experience and adjust as you go.&rdquo;</p><p>Yinzcam is a Pittsburgh-based company that already works in this custom media field. Used in Pittsburgh and other NHL markets such as Calgary, Detroit and Colorado, it enables fans to view instant replays on their phones and also traffics in beacon technology.</p><p>In Nashville, Henry wants &ldquo;driveway to driveway engagement.&rdquo; The Preds have a downtown arena in a fun stretch of the city packed with restaurants, bars and live music venues. In the future, beacon technology starts well before game time, engaging fans en route to the arena. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a high-energy walk,&rdquo; Henry said. &ldquo;In past years, we haven&rsquo;t taken advantage of that.&rdquo;</p><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;WE&rsquo;RE FIVE, 10 YEARS AWAY FROM THERE NOT BEING A SECRET IN THE DRESSING ROOM &ndash; Terry Kalna&rdquo;</blockquote><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-0122/83811-1-eng-US/f0039-012.jpg" title="f0039-01" width="622" height="313"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(MOBILE PHONES: YINZCAM, INC.; MASK: DAVE SANDFORD/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-0216/83804-1-eng-US/f0039-022.jpg" title="f0039-02" width="621" height="353"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>CLOSE CALLS</b></p><p>Whether on your phone or via unique cameras, soon you&rsquo;ll be inside the game like never before.</p></figcaption></div><p>Some of the best ideas for the future are still being incubated. The Penguins have teamed up with the Pittsburgh Technology Council to create a competition for inventors, business folks and engineers to come up with new stuff, and the contenders were being reviewed and whittled down this summer. Ironically, some other improvements being suggested by season ticket holders are decidedly low-tech: more food and beverage options, more clocks to show when the period is about to start and a reinforcement of fan etiquette standards. Even this gets rolled in to the bigger picture of where the game is headed. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about giving ownership to the fans,&rdquo; Henry said. &ldquo;Whether it&rsquo;s giving them information or just answering questions.&rdquo;</p><p>And having Shea Weber welcome you to the building via your phone would be pretty neat, too.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0038-01

BACKSTAGE PASSES

<div class="byline">BY MATT LARKIN</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0040-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-0127/83882-1-eng-US/f0040-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(EA SPORTS)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>T</span>HE JETSONS AND BACK TO THE FUTURE II sure missed the mark depicting our future. Sassy robots don&rsquo;t serve us breakfast, skateboards still have wheels and, for the love of God, cars do not fly. Standing on the ice at Toronto&rsquo;s MasterCard Centre last summer, however, could almost trick the mind into believing we&rsquo;d realized popular fiction&rsquo;s utopian future. Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly and Montreal Canadiens sniper Max Pacioretty darted around the ice clad in black suits, covered in reflective balls. As the players deked, shot and play-fought, cameras surrounding the rink bounced light off the balls, triangulating the visual information. Instantaneously, on a TV screen just behind the boards, video game avatars mimicked each player&rsquo;s movement in real time. Voila, motion-capture technology, the lifeblood of EA Sports&rsquo; insanely realistic hockey video game series. &ldquo;It looks a lot more restrictive than it actually was,&rdquo; Pacioretty said after removing his high-tech gear. &ldquo;I was expecting to go out there and feel like I wasn&rsquo;t a hockey player, but we felt pretty comfortable. The technology was amazing.&rdquo;</p><p>Other video game genres, such as action or horror, have actors perform all the movements and dialogue in similar MoCap suits, creating a smooth, cinematic experience. Sean Ramjagsingh, producer of EA Sports&rsquo; NHL series, told THN a few years back the company&rsquo;s goal was photorealism. He envisioned a console presentation virtually impossible to distinguish from a real-life broadcast on TV, so that people would have to stop and stare to realize it was a video game.</p><p>We&rsquo;ve more or less achieved that feat today. Graphics will inch forward a bit each year, especially given the power of eighth-generation consoles PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but it&rsquo;s the law of diminishing returns now. These games look amazing already. What then, will the future bring in hockey gaming &ndash; and all sports gaming for that matter &ndash; in 10, 20 or 50 years? How can we possibly advance any further?</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0041-0120/83875-1-eng-US/f0041-012.jpg" title="f0041-01" width="843" height="480"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>CARBON COPY</b></p><p>Hockey video game graphics are almost to the point where they resemble TV broadcasts.</p><span class="photo-credit">(NHL 16: EA SPORTS; E3: KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0041-0216/83868-1-eng-US/f0041-022.jpg" title="f0041-02" width="619" height="457"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>SIGHTLINES</b></p><p>The next step in gaming is replacing the bird&rsquo;s eye view with the user&rsquo;s own point of view.</p></figcaption></div><p>One logical step that would constitute progress: virtual reality. That doesn&rsquo;t mean the rudimentary, migraine-inducing headsets of 20 years ago like <i>Virtual Boy</i>. The next paradigm shift should be fully immersive sensory environments like the Holodeck in <i>Star Trek</i>. Big news for layman gamers out there &ndash; it&rsquo;s already happening. Virtual reality gaming systems Project Morpheus and Oculus Rift debuted to rave reviews at 2015&rsquo;s E3, a.k.a. Electronic Entertainment Expo, the world&rsquo;s most famous video game trade fair. Chief among their offerings is <i>EVE: Valkyrie</i>, a first-person space shooter that immerses players in aerial dogfights from their very own panoramic cockpits. Colin Moriarty, former IGN senior editor, video game journalist and co-founder of the YouTube channel Kinda Funny, is one of the conference&rsquo;s most famous and esteemed voices. He was so blown away by the virtual reality that he did something he&rsquo;d never done before: ask to try a demo a second time. He called playing the game a religious experience. &ldquo;It is absurdly good,&rdquo; Moriarty said. &ldquo;You are flying and using a controller, but if you look left, you see the ship to your left. You look right, you see it to your right. You look down, you see your own body. You look up and you see the cockpit. It is amazing how you play this game.&rdquo;</p><p>You know the next question: can this technology work for sports games, more specifically hockey? The biggest obstacle is movement. As Moriarty notes, a sports game is far different from an experience that keeps you static in a virtual cockpit. Few sports involve as much fast, furious movement as hockey does. A virtual reality hockey setup would endanger every coffee table and vase in a one-meter radius. In-game fights would punch holes in plenty of drywall. And while there&rsquo;s no actual space battle frontier tempting the average Joe from his couch, every pond and arena still threaten to top whatever virtual experience a hockey game might offer. &ldquo;The question you need to ask yourself is, do you really want to put on pads and helmets and sticks, and stand on the fake ice, or do you just want to go out with your buddies and play on the actual ice itself?&rdquo; Ramjagsingh said.</p><p>He also added that small gaming space with limited range of movement would make it difficult to trick gamers&rsquo; brains into feeling the speed of hockey. That said, the sport has one element falling somewhere between the full sport experience and that space pilot stationed in his cockpit: the blue ice. Moriarty and Ramjagsingh each mention goaltending as a strong possibility for virtual reality. Unless he&rsquo;s Ben Bishop, an NHL goalie doesn&rsquo;t stray too much throughout a game. A VR system might work, with the goalie&rsquo;s cage standing in for the spaceship&rsquo;s windows and opposing slapshots subbing for enemy missile attacks. &ldquo;Because you only need the crease, you could come all the way out to the slot or go behind the net,&rdquo; Moriarty said. &ldquo;In other words, you would only need five feet in every direction around you, maybe.&rdquo;</p><p>The VR experience isn&rsquo;t part of EA&rsquo;s short-term plans. It&rsquo;s a long way off. Ramjagsingh predicts we&rsquo;re more likely to see virtual reality transporting fans to live sporting events before the technology permeates the sports gaming world. And Moriarty mentions a &ldquo;projected&rdquo; version of virtual reality as a possibility. That would involve seeing a game in front of you and manipulating the image with your hands. Think Tom Cruise shuffling through case files in <i>Minority Report</i>.</p><p>Virtual reality, though, isn&rsquo;t the only way to envision hockey gaming in the future. The next phase may not be about how we&rsquo;re playing, but who we&rsquo;re watching. Fantasy games like League of Legends or fighting games like Street Fighter draw tens of thousands to watch professional players compete. People fill not just arenas but stadiums to watch in countries like South Korea, Moriarty says. Search &ldquo;League of Legends competition&rdquo; on YouTube and you&rsquo;ll see presentations highly similar to sports broadcasts, complete with pre-game analyst panels and play-by-play announcers. The top pros make six figures a year and are now flirting with seven figures. They even have performance-enhancing drug scandals, with &ldquo;athletes&rdquo; being busted for focus-boosters like Adderall.</p><p>So will sports gamers eventually permeate the bustling professional scene? On one hand, other genres have the same key advantage they do in virtual reality. A gamer who slays dragons and casts spells better than anyone else on the planet has no real-life competition. Wizards and dragons don&rsquo;t actually exist unless you count Game of Thrones. Will fans still turn out in droves to watch hockey video gamers compete for money when NHLers still play the real thing? There&rsquo;s a reason why the celebrity gamer culture hasn&rsquo;t blown up in sports yet.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0042-0127/83861-1-eng-US/f0042-012.jpg" title="f0042-01" width="328" height="248"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>HEAD GAMES</b></p><p>Virtual reality video game systems like Project Morpheus could eventually replace consoles for users.</p><span class="photo-credit">(PROJECT MORPHEUS: SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT; EVE VALKYRIE: CCP GAMES)</span></figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0042-0219/83854-1-eng-US/f0042-022.jpg" title="f0042-02" width="619" height="354"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0042-0313/83847-1-eng-US/f0042-032.jpg" title="f0042-03" width="619" height="351"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>POINT OF VIEW</b></p><p>Hockey gamers could one day play as a goalie, much like users do as a pilot in <i>EVE: Valkyrie</i>.</p></figcaption></div><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;DID YOU EVER IMAGINE YOUTUBERS WOULD BECOME CELEBRITIES?&rdquo;</blockquote><p>Ramjagsingh still sees signs of it happening someday, however. He notes the popularity of the EA Sports Hockey League feature in his NHL series, in which users create their own characters and compete in leagues with all-human, 6-on-6 action. Gamers had already been asking EA for ways to tune in as spectators and watch their friends play. Ramjagsingh believes it&rsquo;s only a matter of time before gamers&rsquo; profiles really start to blow up, especially because they use social media to self-promote. &ldquo;Games and sports games in general are ways for people to push that vehicle and build their brand to become the best in the world at it and then show off that they are the best in the world at it,&rdquo; Ramjagsingh said. &ldquo;It is not that far away, especially in relation to social media. Did you ever imagine YouTubers would become celebrities with their great following? I don&rsquo;t think anyone would have imagined that.&rdquo;</p><p>One key obstacle remains in the way of sports gamers and professional status, and it&rsquo;s one only an expert like Moriarty can explain. A defining characteristic of the games that yield pro competition, such as StarCraft: they don&rsquo;t change. They operate under the same engine year after year, with only patches and upgrades tweaking the gameplay, and wait many years before redesigns. StarCraft came out in 1998. StarCraft II? 2010. This system keeps games in circulation for years &ndash; and that creates true experts. Sports games are different. <i>NHL 16</i> releases this September, and EA has already started building NHL 17 for next September. Constantly redesigning a game prevents players from becoming &ldquo;pro-level&rdquo; talented, as every new release renders the old one obsolete, with players forced to learn the new version&rsquo;s physics.</p><p>The near future of hockey gaming looks similar to the existing landscape but with more power in users&rsquo; hands to shape the content. Ramjagsingh explained that EA used more fan input than ever to design <i>NHL 16</i>. The company commissioned a group of high-profile gamers and had them on site making recommendations during the design process. He believes the next wave will let the public leverage its own experience more, perhaps via special upgrade websites or even apps.</p><p>The more grandiose visions, from virtual reality to professional hockey gaming, will have to wait a few more years, maybe even decades. Just like those damn flying cars.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0040-01

GET IN THE GAME

<div class="byline">By RACHEL VILLARI</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-0122/83911-1-eng-US/f0043-012.jpg" title="f0043-01" width="826" height="871"><figcaption class="caption-body"><b>KRIS RUSSELL, CALGARY FLAMES</b> <span class="photo-credit">(Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><b><span>T</span></b>he art blocking shots depends on many different factors, but when the time comes to go down and make the sacrifice, Kris Russell implores one thing is a constant: a sense of fearlessness.</p><p>Russell, 28, has risen from a surplus D-man to a second-pairing bat out of hell since he was traded from the Blues in 2013. In two years with the Flames, he has potted 11 goals and 63 points and blocked 484 shots. Of those, 283 came in 2014-15, a new league record. On average last season, he laid out to prevent 3.58 shots a night.</p><p>Maybe ignoring the &ldquo;flight&rdquo; half of the fight-or-flight instinct is in his blood: Russell&rsquo;s father, Doug, was a national rodeo bullfighter in his day. Or maybe his unwavering disposition is a contagion that, instead of wiping out the dressing room, invigorates it. &ldquo;A lot of guys are willing and sacrificing for blocked shots,&rdquo; Russell said. &ldquo;That was part of the reason that we were more successful than a lot of people imagined we would be last year. We had guys laying down and blocking shots, guys like Lance Bouma. He&rsquo;ll lay in front of anything. That&rsquo;s the fearlessness that&rsquo;s contagious.&rdquo;</p><p>Like many hockey players, Russell is quick to deflect attention, much like he is to jump in a lane and deflect a puck. The humble defenseman says there&rsquo;s an art to shot blocking, but it&rsquo;s hard to pinpoint. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s tough to describe because there are so many situations where you&rsquo;d block a shot,&rdquo; he says.</p><p>Things to keep in mind include: &ldquo;how far the player&rsquo;s away from you, if you can use your stick or not, and where you&rsquo;re positioned. But at the same time, it&rsquo;s just a read because there&rsquo;s a lot of good players that if you go down too early they&rsquo;ll go right around you. You kind of want to force them into a shot and then take the lane away as quick as you can.&rdquo;</p><p>Oh, and only block shots &ndash; not your goalie&rsquo;s point of view. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the one thing you don&rsquo;t want to do, is sacrifice and then not block that shot and your goalie can&rsquo;t see it and it&rsquo;s in the back of your net,&rdquo; Russell cautioned. &ldquo;Our goalies do a good job of letting us know if they want to see the shot or if they can&rsquo;t see it. The more vocal they are the easier it is for us defensemen.&rdquo;</p><p>Shot blocking as a tactic ranges between offense and defense, too. While the D-men might have to block those big blueline shots from the Shea Webers and the P.K. Subbans of the league, the fearless Russell contends that it&rsquo;s not as bad as it may look. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot of guys in the league you don&rsquo;t want to take shots from,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But those big shots &ndash; especially the ones on the point &ndash; you&rsquo;ve typically got a little more time to react.&rdquo;</p><p>Despite wearing gear that resembles suits of armor, Russell says he&rsquo;ll still turn a bit black and blue. &ldquo;If you get hit right where it&rsquo;s protected you&rsquo;re pretty good. But some of the guys shoot so heavy you&rsquo;re going to have little bumps and bruises through your padding.&rdquo;</p><p>The worst &ndash; we won&rsquo;t say scariest &ndash; shot he remembers blocking was an infamous Weber one-timer a few years back. &ldquo;It just blew my kneepad into two pieces,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But that one was lucky because it was a new shin pad. If it had been an older one it might&rsquo;ve stung, but thankfully it was new enough that it still had some stability and it broke. He&rsquo;s got a heavy shot, those are tough ones to block.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0043-01

Selfless Sacrifice

<div class="byline">BY BOB DUFF</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0046-0221/83997-1-eng-US/f0046-022.jpg" title="f0046-02" width="787" height="437"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>NO. 2 BECOMES NO. 1</b></p><p>Richards will step up to be the top-line center while Datsyuk is on the shelf until likely November.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>F</span><b>OR THE FIRST TIME IN A</b> decade, the Detroit Red Wings will answer to a new coach, as Jeff Blashill takes over for the departed Mike Babcock. And a lengthy search for a skilled, right-handshot defenseman ended when Detroit signed Mike Green via free agency. You could make a case either will prove the key addition as the Wings seek to extend their playoff streak to a quarter-century. Based on more recent developments, however, Detroit&rsquo;s other free agent acquisition, center Brad Richards, might be the most important newcomer.</p><p>Pavel Datsyuk announced that the ankle surgery he underwent in June, which was supposed to sideline him only four to six weeks, will leave him out four to five months. Suddenly, at least to start the season, Richards has been thrust into the role as Detroit&rsquo;s No. 1 center.</p><p>Wings GM Ken Holland acknowledged the signing of Richards was partially driven by Datsyuk&rsquo;s status. &ldquo;We were looking for a No. 2 center iceman and maybe even a No. 1 center, not being sure how long Datsyuk will be out to start the season with his ankle injury,&rdquo; Holland said. &ldquo;So in Richards we added a guy that&rsquo;s a winner with two Stanley Cups.&rdquo;</p><p>Even after Datsyuk is healthy, the Wings see Richards playing a vital role. &ldquo;When we&rsquo;re all healthy the thinking is it&rsquo;s going to be &lsquo;Z&rsquo; (Henrik Zetterberg) and &lsquo;Pav&rsquo; together on one line, and Brad centering another line,&rdquo; Holland said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got lots of different wingers here.</p><p>&ldquo;With Riley Sheahan in the three hole, we&rsquo;re hoping &ndash; believing &ndash; that when everybody&rsquo;s healthy we&rsquo;re going to be able to roll four lines and three lines that can really provide offense on any given night.&rdquo;</p><p>Green isn&rsquo;t the same guy who scored 31 goals and 73 points for Washington in 2008-09, but, at 29, he still has lots of hockey left in him and brings a skill element to Detroit&rsquo;s back end that&rsquo;s been absent since Nicklas Lidstrom retired in 2012. &ldquo;We were really fortunate to have guys like Lidstrom and Brian Rafalski and Chris Chelios and Larry Murphy going back,&rdquo; Holland said. &ldquo;We always wanted to have defensemen who could join the rush and get the puck moving. That&rsquo;s part of how we&rsquo;ve been able to accomplish what we&rsquo;ve accomplished.&rdquo;</p><p>Green&rsquo;s 45 points last season would have led the Detroit defense. Niklas Kronwall (44 points) was the only Red Wing to finish among the top 40 blueliners in scoring. Green also provides the right-handed point shot the Wings have sought for their power play.</p><p>As for Blashill, Detroit always viewed him as Babcock&rsquo;s successor, doubling his salary as Grand Rapids coach to $400,000 last summer instead of giving him the freedom to pursue offers from other NHL teams. Blashill has coached almost every player on the Wings roster, so the transition should be smooth. He shepherded Grand Rapids to a Calder Cup crown as AHL champ in 2012-13, and that club&rsquo;s key contributors included current Wings Sheahan, Tomas Tatar, Gustav Nyquist, Tomas Jurco, Luke Glendening and Petr Mrazek.</p><p>While Blashill subscribes to many of the same philosophies as Babcock, he shouldn&rsquo;t be viewed as a Babcock clone. &ldquo;I coach similar in a lot of ways to how &lsquo;Babs&rsquo; has coached here and in a lot of the same approaches as to who we play,&rdquo; Blashill said. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m my own person in how I deal with players and how I deal with things on a daily basis. I&rsquo;ll have my own approach, and with my own approach will come change.&rdquo;</p><p>One thing that won&rsquo;t change? Expect the Wings to be playoff participants again in 2015-16. It&rsquo;s one of the reasons Richards chose Detroit. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been in the Stanley Cup final two years in a row, and it gets addicting when you get a taste of winning,&rdquo; Richards said. &ldquo;I feel this team has a great chance.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0046-02

STARING DOWN THE STREAK

<div class="byline">BY RYAN KENNEDY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0047-0126/84033-1-eng-US/f0047-012.jpg" title="f0047-01" width="512" height="624"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>A TOUCH OF GREY</b></p><p>Oduya brings veteran savvy and a winning pedigree to what will be a very green blueline in Dallas.</p><span class="photo-credit">(ODUYA: DAVE SANDFORD/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; SHARP: LANCE THOMSON/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>G</span><b>IVE CREDIT TO DALLAS</b> Stars GM Jim Nill. He always makes the summer interesting. His tenure in Texas kicked off with a bang in 2013 when he swiped Tyler Seguin in a summer deal with Boston, and he followed that up by prying Jason Spezza from Ottawa one off-season later. So what did the erstwhile Red Wings executive do for a second encore? He snagged Patrick Sharp from the Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks, who happened to be in a perilous cap situation. The trade, which also saw blueline prospect Stephen Johns come to the Stars in exchange for veteran D-man Trevor Daley and agitator Ryan Garbutt, had been in the works for more than a month before the two sides came to a conclusion, and Nill was open in his admiration for trade partner Stan Bowman. &ldquo;I have so much respect for Chicago,&rdquo; Nill said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s where we want to get to.&rdquo;</p><p>But the Sharp deal was curious in that the Stars improved on a strength while weakening a need: Dallas had top NHL scorers Seguin and Jamie Benn (the reigning Art Ross Trophy winner) already in the lineup, while the defense was a middling unit even with Daley. Now the team&rsquo;s most experienced defenseman was gone, but Nill didn&rsquo;t seem too concerned. &ldquo;We have lots of options,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got a good young core that will be in Dallas. I&rsquo;m very comfortable starting the season the way we are.&rdquo;</p><p>Nill hedged the statement by noting that the team did still have a lot of cap space, just in case a veteran came on the radar. Sure enough, just days later the Stars plucked another former Blackhawk, defenseman Johnny Oduya, off the free agency board. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a very fast team,&rdquo; Oduya said. &ldquo;They want to have the puck and create things. It&rsquo;s very similar to Chicago.&rdquo;</p><p>Sharp echoed that in his praise of the Stars, a team he knew well as a division rival before he became a member of the Victory Green posse. It&rsquo;s not hard to see the three-time Cup winner and Canadian Olympian (who won gold on the same 2014 team as Benn) as the finisher Spezza needs on his line, giving Dallas two incredibly dangerous scoring combinations. But Nill also praised Sharp&rsquo;s leadership skills &ndash; and, given the social media trouble captain Benn had in the dog days of summer &ndash; that&rsquo;s not a bad add.</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0047-0219/84026-1-eng-US/f0047-022.jpg" title="f0047-02" width="513" height="337"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>STRONG GET STRONGER</b></p><p>Sharp adds to what was already one of the most potent offenses in the league.</p></figcaption></div><p>Almost lost in the Sharp and Oduya pickups was the early free agency signing of netminder Antti Niemi &ndash; a move that seemed curious since Dallas already had a No. 1 in Kari Lehtonen. Once again, this was an example of Nill getting creative, as he noted the Stars do quite a bit of travelling (only San Jose and Edmonton will cover more miles next season, according to bloggers Dirk Hoag and Jonathan Garcia of <a href="http://OnTheForeCheck.com">ontheforecheck.com</a> fame) and have many back-to-backs. &ldquo;I know Kari went into a lot of games (this year) where he was tired or hurt, but he had to go in,&rdquo; Nill said. &ldquo;We had no other option.&rdquo;</p><p>Niemi, of course, also has a Blackhawks background, and one of his new/old teammates was quick to point out the value he had not long ago, before he became adrift in San Jose. &ldquo;I look back to 2010, and he was a huge part of that first Stanley Cup,&rdquo; Sharp said. &ldquo;He got overlooked because of all the other stars on that team.&rdquo;</p><p>Now, all the Stars have to do is navigate their way back into the playoffs with an unorthodox goalie tandem, some big-time scoring up front and a D-corps with some experience that will also have to get work from a youngster such as Patrik Nemeth or Jamie Oleksiak. Sounds daunting in a division where Chicago didn&rsquo;t even finish with home-ice advantage en route to the Cup, but the new guys are prepared. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a new challenge and a new chapter,&rdquo; Oduya said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be fun.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0047-01

PUTTING DEFENSE BACK INTO ‘BIG D’

<div class="byline">&#x2013; ERIC STEPHENS</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-0220/84104-1-eng-US/f0048-022.jpg" title="f0048-02" width="464" height="84"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-0125/84097-1-eng-US/f0048-012.jpg" title="f0048-01" width="628" height="442"><figcaption class="caption-body">KEVIN <b>BIEKSA</b><span class="photo-credit">(BIEKSA: RICH LAM/GETTY IMAGES; MACLEAN: ANDRE RINGUETTE/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; GORMLEY: NORM HALL/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; PASTRNAK: MADDIE MEYER/GETTY IMAGES; LAMBERT: MARISSA BAECKER/GETTY IMAGES; WIDEMAN: GERRY THOMAS/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>B</span><b>EING ONE WIN AWAY FROM PLAYING</b> for the Stanley Cup isn&rsquo;t enough for Bob Murray to stick with the status quo. So there will be an altered look to the Anaheim Ducks this fall. &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t win,&rdquo; Murray said. &ldquo;The object is to win, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p><p>Free agency saw left winger Matt Beleskey and defenseman Francois Beauchemin push aside contract offers from the Ducks and depart to Boston and Colorado, respectively. Knowing he could lose Beauchemin, Murray traded for Kevin Bieksa as a replacement, reuniting him with former Canucks roommate Ryan Kesler. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m looking forward to playing with &lsquo;Kes&rsquo; again,&rdquo; Bieksa said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s funny, when he left last year I still felt like we had a couple years left. I felt like we&rsquo;d cross paths again at some point.&rdquo;</p><p>Murray wasn&rsquo;t just in reactive mode, though. There was also proactive mixing and matching. He signed rugged Chris Stewart in a low-risk, potential high-reward move to fill Beleskey&rsquo;s role, while inconsistent right winger Kyle Palmieri was moved to New Jersey to create salary flexibility that allowed Murray to sign Kesler to a six-year extension. Palmieri&rsquo;s removal will also give Jiri Sekac an expanded role.</p><p>His boldest move, though, was sending young left winger Emerson Etem to the Rangers for a more proven entity in Carl Hagelin. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m definitely ready for a challenge,&rdquo; Hagelin said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m just going to work hard this summer. I haven&rsquo;t spoken much to the management as far as what they want from me, but I always go in with the same mindset every year. I&rsquo;m ready to do whatever it takes. I&rsquo;m always trying to improve.&rdquo;</p><p>Veteran center Shawn Horcoff was also brought in to help absorb the loss of injured center Nate Thompson (out until December). And Murray even added to his goaltending depth by bringing in Anton Khudobin. He also moved the big salary of spare-part defenseman James Wisniewski.</p><p>Change occurs on every NHL team, and Murray embraces it, even with a team that&rsquo;s won three straight Pacific Division titles and moved one step closer to the Stanley Cup in each of the past three post-seasons.</p><p>Will all the retooling work? If it does, Murray could be hoisting the Stanley Cup next June. If it doesn&rsquo;t, you can count on him doing some more shuffling before then.</p><h2><b>ONE TO WATCH</b></h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-0316/84090-1-eng-US/f0048-032.jpg" title="f0048-03" width="149" height="228"></div><p>The NHL&rsquo;s top coach from 2012-13 is in Anaheim to provide a spark. Popular <b>Paul MacLean</b> was let go last year by Ottawa but signed on this summer to work with 2007-08 coach of the year Bruce Boudreau. Among other tasks, the Ducks will get MacLean to focus on ramping up the power play, which was a disappointing 28th last season.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-0412/84083-1-eng-US/f0048-042.jpg" title="f0048-04" width="149" height="230"></div><p>Quite a few players from the 2010 draft are entering their fourth, fifth, even sixth season in the NHL. So there&rsquo;s pressure on <b>Brandon Gormley</b> to finally break through and win a job on the blueline. The 13th overall selection from 2010 has managed just 32 big-league games &ndash; 27 last season. An opening is there with Keith Yandle long gone.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-0510/84076-1-eng-US/f0048-052.jpg" title="f0048-05" width="149" height="230"></div><p>Last season, <b>David Pastrnak</b> was the youngest player in the NHL. That did not prevent him from having a profound effect on the Bruins. Although he wasn&rsquo;t able to get them into the playoffs, he provided an offensive and dynamic spark to a team that desperately needed it down the stretch. He&rsquo;ll be a fixture in the Bruins&rsquo; top six forwards.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-068/84069-1-eng-US/f0048-062.jpg" title="f0048-06" width="149" height="229"></div><p>If <b>Dan Lambert</b> knew he&rsquo;d get to the NHL this quickly as a coach, perhaps he&rsquo;d have quit playing sooner. Dan Bylsma&rsquo;s new assistant spent one season as a WHL coach, guiding Kelowna to the Memorial Cup final. He was an assistant for the three years prior. He played nine seasons but appeared in only 29 NHL games.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-077/84062-1-eng-US/f0048-072.jpg" title="f0048-07" width="148" height="230"></div><p>In one of the strangest oddities going into the season, the league&rsquo;s fourth-highest scoring D-man ranks no higher than fifth on Calgary&rsquo;s blueline depth chart. <b>Dennis Wideman</b> is an offensive specialist who slips down the D-corps with the acquisition of Dougie Hamilton and the return of Mark Giordano. That makes him trade bait.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p></div>

f0048-02

NOT WILLING TO WAIT AROUND

<div class="byline">&#x2013; MIKE CHAMBERS</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0049-0222/84175-1-eng-US/f0049-022.jpg" title="f0049-02" width="464" height="84"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0049-0124/84168-1-eng-US/f0049-012.jpg" title="f0049-01" width="627" height="433"><figcaption class="caption-body">NIKITA <b>ZADOROV</b><span class="photo-credit">(ZADOROV+LACK: RICH LAM/GETTY IMAGES; PANARIN: MATEJ DIVIZNA/GETTY IMAGES; ROY: JONATHAN KOZUB/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; SAAD: DAVE SANDFORD/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; NICHUSHKIN: GLENN JAMES/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>B</span><b>UILDING THROUGH THE DRAFT WAS</b> coach Patrick Roy&rsquo;s message at the end of the 2014-15 season, and he and Avalanche GM Joe Sakic did just that by acquiring some of the Buffalo Sabres&rsquo; top picks from their 2012 and 2013 classes, plus their 31st selection from 2015.</p><p>That&rsquo;s one way of doing it.</p><p>In the June 26 first-round, draft-day trade that sent Ryan O&rsquo;Reilly and Jamie McGinn to Buffalo for four players, including 6-foot-5, 220-pound defenseman Nikita Zadorov, Colorado built for the now and the future. How quickly Zadorov fits in with the team will dictate how soon the Avalanche can officially celebrate a trade that made them substantially younger and deeper throughout the system.</p><p>Zadorov, 20, might be the key in reshaping Colorado&rsquo;s troublesome blueline, which prevented the Avalanche&rsquo;s formidable forwards from getting valuable offensive-zone time last season. That was the biggest reason why a season after finishing first in the Central, they plummeted to last in 2014-15. &ldquo;We really like the potential of Zadorov,&rdquo; Sakic said on draft day. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s capable of being a solid, solid &lsquo;D&rsquo; for us here for the next 10 years.&rdquo;</p><p>Zadorov, who was Buffalo&rsquo;s 2013 No. 16 overall selection, came to Colorado along with 21-year-old center Mikhail Grigorenko (drafted 12th in 2012), University of Michigan captain J.T. Compher (35th in 2013) and the 31st pick in 2015, which the Avalanche traded to San Jose for No. 39 (winger A.J. Greer) and two future picks.</p><p>So in all, Colorado received six young players for O&rsquo;Reilly and McGinn, who both were both 2016 pending UFAs.</p><p>The Avalanche were so pleased to get Zadorov, the move downgraded their need to sign a marquee free agent defenseman July 1. They ended up getting Francois Beauchemin, 35, on a three-year deal. Colorado hopes Zadorov and 2013-drafted prospects Chris Bigras and Mason Geertsen will eventually eat big minutes together.</p><p>Among the three, Zadorov is the first to reach the NHL. He played in 60 games for the Sabres last season, plus seven in 2013-14 after ending a twoyear junior career with the OHL&rsquo;s London Knights. Bigras, who was the 32nd pick in 2013, ended a four-year OHL career with the Owen Sound Attack in March.</p><h2><b>ONE TO WATCH</b></h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0049-0315/84161-1-eng-US/f0049-032.jpg" title="f0049-03" width="149" height="230"></div><p><b>Eddie Lack</b> has a habit of creating goaltending controversies. The personable Swede put pressure on Ryan Miller in Vancouver and filled in admirably when Miller got hurt. It&rsquo;s hard not to see Lack as the starter of the very near future in Carolina with incumbent Cam Ward on the last year of his contract and the vet&rsquo;s numbers waning recently.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0049-0413/84154-1-eng-US/f0049-042.jpg" title="f0049-04" width="149" height="230"></div><p>Who will fill the void left by Brandon Saad, Patrick Sharp, Brad Richards and Antoine Vermette up front in Chicago? Relatively unknown Russian <b>Artemi Panarin</b> has boom-bust potential. He tied for fourth in KHL scoring last season and led his team to the Gagarin Cup. His nifty skill set has been compared to Patrick Kane&rsquo;s.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0049-059/84147-1-eng-US/f0049-052.jpg" title="f0049-05" width="149" height="230"></div><p><b>Patrick Roy&rsquo;s</b> first season as an NHL coach was a dream come true. His Avalanche won the Central, and he captured the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year. The analytics crowd called his team a fluke, though, and Colorado tumbled out of the playoffs last season. If the Avs miss again, will GM Joe Sakic consider firing his friend?</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0049-068/84140-1-eng-US/f0049-062.jpg" title="f0049-06" width="149" height="231"></div><p>Columbus is a homecoming of sorts for <b>Brandon Saad</b>, 22, who played some junior in Ohio before joining the U.S. NTDP. Now with two Cups and a huge career opportunity, he begins a new chapter after great success in Chicago. With Saad&rsquo;s size and sick hands, the Jackets have a great potential wingman for No. 1 center Ryan Johansen.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0049-076/84133-1-eng-US/f0049-072.jpg" title="f0049-07" width="149" height="230"></div><p>Russian power forward <b>Valeri Nichushkin</b> went straight to the NHL as a teenager and impressed with 34 points in 79 games. He was slated to break out on Dallas&rsquo; top line last year, but hip surgery limited him to eight games. Don&rsquo;t forget about him. He&rsquo;s only 20 and slated to play the right wing with Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p></div>

f0049-02

REBUILDING THE MOUNTAIN

<div class="byline">&#x2013; ROB TYCHKOWSKI</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0050-0224/84246-1-eng-US/f0050-022.jpg" title="f0050-02" width="464" height="84"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0050-0126/84239-1-eng-US/f0050-012.jpg" title="f0050-01" width="624" height="428"><figcaption class="caption-body">CAM <b>TALBOT</b><span class="photo-credit">(TALBOT+PEARSON: GRAIG ABEL/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; ANDERSSON: DAVE SANDFORD/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; DRAISAITL: ANDY DEVLIN/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; CROUSE: JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; DUMBA: CLAUS ANDERSEN/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>I</span><b>T&rsquo;S A VIRTUAL GUARANTEE THE</b> Edmonton Oilers will be better defensively and in goal. First, they&rsquo;ve made significant improvements to their blueline and in net. Second, when a team&rsquo;s goals-against average is 30th, it&rsquo;s impossible to get any worse.</p><p>So therein lies the optimism heading into the Year 10 of the Oilers&rsquo; rebuild. Only this time there is a reason for it.</p><p>New GM Peter Chiarelli hit the trouble spots hard this off-season, with free agent Andrej Sekera and trade acquisitions Griffin Reinhart, Eric Gryba and Cam Talbot. For a team that allowed 3.27 goals per game, those are important moves, because no matter how much young firepower the Oilers have had up front, their defensive shortcomings have been impossible to overcome. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m happy to get the goalie,&rdquo; Chiarelli said. &ldquo;He has a good upside, and he did a lot for the Rangers this year when (Henrik) Lundqvist was out. That really swayed my decision.&rdquo;</p><p>The Rangers didn&rsquo;t miss a beat when Lundqvist went down last season, thanks to Talbot&rsquo;s 21-9-4 record, 2.21 GAA and .926 save percentage. But as Ben Scrivens, Viktor Fasth and Devan Dubnyk each discovered, there&rsquo;s a big difference between playing goal for a good team and playing goal for the Edmonton Oilers.</p><p>But the moves on defense, not to mention the addition of Connor McDavid, have Talbot believing Edmonton&rsquo;s fortunes are about to change for good. He said there will be an adjustment period at first, as he and the rest of the new players settle into their roles, but he&rsquo;s confident the team is on the right track and that he&rsquo;s ready to be a No. 1 goalie. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re heading in the right direction, and they&rsquo;ve made some moves to focus on (the back end),&rdquo; Talbot said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be a challenge at first, getting to know a different system and a different group of guys, how the defense plays&hellip;and it&rsquo;s also a challenge to come in and prove that I can handle a starting role.&rdquo;</p><p>One thing that will make Talbot&rsquo;s transition a little easier is the comfort of having so many big guns up front. &ldquo;Mr. Chiarelli called me after the trade and said it was an exciting time to be an Oiler, and that&rsquo;s how I see it myself,&rdquo; Talbot said. &ldquo;Connor McDavid, Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle &ndash; I&rsquo;m excited to be on a team with so much firepower and skill.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>ONE TO WATCH</b></h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0050-0314/84232-1-eng-US/f0050-032.jpg" title="f0050-03" width="149" height="230"></div><p>How does Detroit find Swedish gold in every draft? <b>Hakan Andersson</b>, the ex-fishing guide has been with the Wings as a European scout since 1990 and was pivotal in drafting Tomas Holmstrom, Henrik Zetterberg, Johan Franzen, Niklas Kronwall, Jonathan Ericsson and Gustav Nyquist. Only Kronwall and Franzen went in the top 100.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0050-0414/84225-1-eng-US/f0050-042.jpg" title="f0050-04" width="149" height="230"></div><p>With Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins the focus of attention as the 1-2 centers and Anton Lander and Mark Letestu good support pivots with solid faceoff numbers, it&rsquo;ll be interesting to see where 2014 third pick <b>Leon Draisaitl</b> factors into the equation. The natural center needs a regular shift to have his first-rate skills blossom.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0050-0511/84218-1-eng-US/f0050-052.jpg" title="f0050-05" width="149" height="228"></div><p>The most NHL-ready player aside from Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel in the 2015 draft class is <b>Lawson Crouse</b>. That Florida quickly signed him to an entry-level deal indicates he&rsquo;ll have a chance to make the team out of training camp. He was Canada&rsquo;s youngest player at the 2015 world juniors and plays a robust physical game.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0050-068/84211-1-eng-US/f0050-062.jpg" title="f0050-06" width="149" height="231"></div><p>The hope is <b>Tanner Pearson</b> can pick up where he left off in the 2014 playoffs. Yes, 2014, not 2015. Pearson had his coming-out party during the Kings&rsquo; Cup run a year ago, scoring 12 points in 24 games. As a regular last season, Pearson was inconsistent and limited to 42 games due to injury. But he scored at a 24-goal clip.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0050-077/84204-1-eng-US/f0050-072.jpg" title="f0050-07" width="149" height="230"></div><p>Minnesota believes it can improve from within with youngsters like D-man <b>Mathew Dumba</b> developing. Dumba&rsquo;s booming shot found twine six times in 35 games after the All-Star Game, pro-rating to 14 goals in a full season. His ice time jumped from 12:26 to 16:36 post-break. The Wild need him to be a top-four guy this season.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p></div>

f0050-02

BACKING UP THE BIG GUNS

<div class="byline">&#x2013; STEVE ZIPAY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0051-0122/84317-1-eng-US/f0051-012.jpg" title="f0051-01" width="464" height="84"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0051-0219/84310-1-eng-US/f0051-022.jpg" title="f0051-02" width="624" height="429"><figcaption class="caption-body">EMERSON <b>ETEM</b><span class="photo-credit">(ETEM: FRANCOIS LACASSE/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; BOZON: GREGORY SHAMUS/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; POILE: DAVE SANDFORD/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; HYNES+MAYFIELD+GORTON: BRUCE BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>E<b>MERSON ETEM IS GOING COAST-TO</b>coast. Literally.</p><p>The 23-year-old from Long Beach, Calif., can officially store away those days when, as a teenager, he would travel hours on rollerblades, light rail and buses to train in Venice Beach. This fall, he can take a subway or grab a taxi to Madison Square Garden.</p><p>Etem came to New York from Anaheim when the Rangers acquired the right winger at the draft in a surprising swap of Carl Hagelin and assorted picks. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the biggest stage you can get,&rdquo; said Etem, who found out about the trade while working out on the beach. &ldquo;I was doing lunges and didn&rsquo;t have my phone. My agent called my trainer (T.R. Goodman). I was pretty overwhelmed.&rdquo;</p><p>Etem, who was drafted 29th overall in 2010, had 10 points in 45 games and three goals in 12 playoff games with the Ducks. He didn&rsquo;t expect to be moved, but he conceded his play had plateaued. Both the Blueshirts and Etem, who signed an $850,500 qualifying offer, hope there&rsquo;s more than just cameo appearances on Broadway. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m looking to fill (Hagelin&rsquo;s) role,&rdquo; Etem said. &ldquo;I feel like I can play the physical game, get in on the forecheck. I haven&rsquo;t had the opportunity to break out offensively&hellip; I&rsquo;m looking to have a big year.&rdquo;</p><p>After the trade, Rangers GM Jeff Gorton said the team will miss Hagelin, a restricted free agent who was seeking more money than the Rangers could offer. But Gorton likes the potential in Etem. &ldquo;He has a lot of different attributes that Carl has, as far as his skating and being explosive,&rdquo; Gorton said. &ldquo;He backs up the &lsquo;D&rsquo; really well. He has a history of scoring and can shoot the puck. He has a physical aspect to his game and is pretty strong and fit. We think he has a chance to be a top-nine forward for us right away.&rdquo;</p><p>Etem wants to model his game after Rangers left winger Chris Kreider, a former teammate in the U.S. National Team Development Program. &ldquo;I know his work ethic is top of the line,&rdquo; Etem said. &ldquo;And we play a similar game.&rdquo;</p><p>Despite the trade, there&rsquo;s still a lot of SoCal in Etem, who felt a sense of hometown pride when he was drafted. &ldquo;At the same time, New York believes in me now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just different scenery. I&rsquo;ve got to work hard, be ready to show them in camp and let my play do the talking.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>ONE TO WATCH</b></h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0051-0314/84303-1-eng-US/f0051-032.jpg" title="f0051-03" width="149" height="230"></div><p>It&rsquo;s easy to forget <b>Tim Bozon</b>, 21, is just starting his pro career, but the Canadiens haven&rsquo;t forgotten. He played as an overage junior last season, months after a near-fatal case of meningitis left him unable to speak or walk without assistance. Bozon was a point-per-game player in the WHL and could provide some spark at the AHL level.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0051-0412/84296-1-eng-US/f0051-042.jpg" title="f0051-04" width="149" height="230"></div><p>Nashville&rsquo;s off-season was modest, with aging Barret Jackman and reclamation project Cody Hodgson the main editions. GM <b>David Poile</b> wove straw into gold last year, when the Preds posted 104 points. Will his faith in his team pay off again? Or will he have to act quickly on the trade front to keep pace in the ultra-competitive Central?</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0051-058/84289-1-eng-US/f0051-052.jpg" title="f0051-05" width="149" height="228"></div><p><b>John Hynes</b> will need steeltoed boots as he sorts through the rubble in New Jersey. Fortunately, he comes from a development background (he coached the NTDP before AHL Wilkes-Barre) and is known as a meticulous planner. The Devils have some young talent he can shepherd, but wringing goals out of the lineup will be tough.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0051-066/84282-1-eng-US/f0051-062.jpg" title="f0051-06" width="149" height="231"></div><p>The Isles didn&rsquo;t need to do much in the off-season. They were a Travis Hamonic injury away from a deeper playoff run. Change will be incremental and come from below. <b>Scott Mayfield</b>, who played in the AHL last season, is one option on the blueline, bringing a 6-foot-5 frame and shutdown mentality to a Dcorps suddenly flush with talent.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0051-075/84275-1-eng-US/f0051-072.jpg" title="f0051-07" width="149" height="230"></div><p>He and Glen Sather have already worked together for years, but <b>Jeff Gorton</b> is now officially in charge. The new GM managed to ford a troublesome river this summer, steering the Rangers through a cap crunch and getting Derek Stepan&rsquo;s name on a long-term deal. And he didn&rsquo;t have to sacrifice anyone from his vaunted defense.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p></div>

f0051-01

FROM BEACH TO BROADWAY

<div class="byline">&#x2013; RYAN KENNEDY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0052-0124/84388-1-eng-US/f0052-012.jpg" title="f0052-01" width="464" height="84"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0052-0215/84381-1-eng-US/f0052-022.jpg" title="f0052-02" width="622" height="428"><figcaption class="caption-body">MICHAEL <b>DEL ZOTTO</b><span class="photo-credit">(DEL ZOTTO: GRAIG ABEL/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; RICHARDSON: JUSTSPORTS PHOTOGRAPHY; MEDVEDEV: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/GETTYIMAGES; POULIOT: DEREK LEUNG/GETTY IMAGES; LINDBOHM+JONES: JONATHAN KOZUB/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p>T<b>HE FLY ERS BOASTED TWO TOP-10</b> scorers last season, yet missed the playoffs due to shaky defense. Essentially, they were &lsquo;Dallas East.&rsquo;</p><p>Over the summer, the personnel didn&rsquo;t get much of a bump on the back end, other than Russian free agent Evgeny Medvedev and Radko Gudas returning to health, though Ivan Provorov, the seventh-overall pick this year, will be given a chance to make the team. But Philadelphia does have a new coach in former University of North Dakota taskmaster Dave Hakstol, and his NHL charges have hope in the man. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard nothing but good things,&rdquo; said Michael Del Zotto. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard he&rsquo;s an intense guy, likes to play an uptempo style and likes his &lsquo;D&rsquo; to join the rush, which suits my style.&rdquo;</p><p>Del Zotto was a rare bright spot on the blueline last season, pulling his career out of the ashes and posting his best offensive numbers since 2011-12 when he was a member of the Rangers. &lsquo;MDZ&rsquo; also accomplished that while starting fewer shifts in the offensive zone than he had in previous campaigns. &ldquo;I was really happy with how the year went, especially in the second half,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It was a bit of a different role for me, playing first-defense minutes against the other teams&rsquo; top lines and first penalty kill. It was an opportunity I really thrived on, and I think I proved a lot of people wrong, that I can play on the defensive side of the puck.&rdquo;</p><p>While individual redemption stories are nice, they won&rsquo;t mean a whole lot if the Flyers miss the playoffs again, especially with Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek in the prime of their careers. Philadelphia will be in tough, however, since the Metropolitan Division is stacked. Pittsburgh added Phil Kessel, Washington landed T.J. Oshie and Justin Williams and the two New York squads were already excellent. Plus, Columbus &ndash; a team that finished redhot &ndash; won&rsquo;t have 500 man-games lost to injury again.</p><p>That&rsquo;s five playoff teams already, so Philly&rsquo;s chances already look grim. But Del Zotto looked at how the squad won and lost last season and how that could be remedied. &ldquo;For us, it&rsquo;s just consistency,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You see our games against some of the top teams and we played a great well-rounded game &ndash; we just weren&rsquo;t able to keep it consistent against some of the teams that were lower in the standings.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>ONE TO WATCH</b></h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0052-0310/84374-1-eng-US/f0052-032.jpg" title="f0052-03" width="149" height="229"></div><p>Much of the credit for the Sens&rsquo; resurgence goes to ex-NHL D-man <b>Luke Richardson</b>, who coaches their Binghamton farm team. He took over three years ago, and the results have been impressive. Mark Stone, Mike Hoffman and Andrew Hammond apprenticed under Richardson, who inked a one-year extension in the summer.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0052-048/84367-1-eng-US/f0052-042.jpg" title="f0052-04" width="149" height="230"></div><p>The Flyers need answers on &lsquo;D,&rsquo; and GM Ron Hextall has cast a wide net. <b>Evgeni Medvedev</b>, a 6-foot-3, 198-pound KHL vet, is the biggest wild card. He&rsquo;s 32 and doesn&rsquo;t play very physically, but he has won two KHL titles and two golds at the worlds. He has NHL mobility but must adjust quickly to a North American game he has never played.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0052-057/84360-1-eng-US/f0052-052.jpg" title="f0052-05" width="149" height="230"></div><p>It seems <b>Derrick Pouliot</b> has been around forever, but the offensively gifted defenseman is only 21. He split last year between the AHL and NHL and is ready to be a full-timer. He has the skating, the shot and the vision, plus the Pens need a skilled blueliner who can step up if anything happens to Kris Letang and/or Olli Maatta again.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0052-065/84353-1-eng-US/f0052-062.jpg" title="f0052-06" width="149" height="231"></div><p>St. Louis&rsquo; defense is uncharacteristically obscure after its stellar top four. Coach Ken Hitchcock will ice Robert Bortuzzo and <b>Petteri Lindbohm</b> as the third pairing. Lindbohm is a sixth-round pick and hardly a household name, but he&rsquo;s 6-foot-3, 209 pounds and only 21. The Blues like his aggressiveness and physicality</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0052-074/84346-1-eng-US/f0052-072.jpg" title="f0052-07" width="149" height="230"></div><p><b>Martin Jones</b> moves up the California coast after a cup of tea in Boston. Stuck playing every fifth game or so behind Jonathan Quick in L.A. the past two years, Jones, 25, was barely tested in 34 career games. The Sharks are banking on Jones having the pedigree to embrace the No. 1 job and be a star in a regimen of 50-plus games.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p></div>

f0052-01

CHANGE IN PHILOSOPHY

<div class="byline">&#x2013; MIKE BROPHY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-0126/84459-1-eng-US/f0053-012.jpg" title="f0053-01" width="464" height="84"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-0218/84452-1-eng-US/f0053-022.jpg" title="f0053-02" width="624" height="429"><figcaption class="caption-body">BRENDAN SHANAHAN & <b>KYLE DUBAS</b><span class="photo-credit">(DUBAS+BENNING: BRUCE BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES; DROUIN: GRAIG ABEL/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; KEEFE: CARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES; KUZNETSOV: RICHARD WOLOWICZ/GETTY IMAGES; EHLERS: FRANCOIS LAPLANTE/FREESTYLE PHOTO/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>T</span><b>HE DOORS TO THE COUNTRY CLUB</b> are locked shut. After years of rewarding failure and mediocrity, the Toronto Maple Leafs are taking a more serious approach to building a Stanley Cup contender.</p><p>This off-season, the Maple Leafs signed Mike Babcock to an eight-year deal, hired new assistant coaches, a new goalie coach and a new video coach, revamped their scouting staff, and then topped it all off by bringing in Lou Lamoriello as GM to organize it all. &ldquo;Everyone uses the term &lsquo;rebuilding,&rsquo; but we prefer to think of it as &lsquo;building,&rsquo; &rdquo; said assistant GM Kyle Dubas. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not rebuilding anything that was here.&rdquo;</p><p>Dubas said the management team of himself, Lamoriello, president Brendan Shanahan, director of player personnel Mark Hunter and capologist Brandon Pridham is comfortable with the organization&rsquo;s prospects. The plan is to bring in more players and give them the opportunity to show how good they can be. &ldquo;We have a very defined type of player we are looking for,&rdquo; Dubas said. &ldquo;We know the types of players that we need after a month of communication with coach Babcock. We know the type of players management likes and that will fit into his system and the way we want to play.&rdquo;</p><p>Everything the Leafs have done this off-season has been to maximize the potential of all the people in the organization. That includes starting a new sports science and performance program to optimize the performances of all the players. The team will even monitor how executives and coaches are eating and sleeping.</p><p>With that comes very high expectations. With regard to how the Leafs will handle contracts, players will have to earn lucrative deals. &ldquo;We want to become a team that does not just dole out long-term deals to players that aren&rsquo;t necessarily deserving of them,&rdquo; Dubas said. &ldquo;We want the players to show us they are deserving before we do longterm deals.&rdquo;</p><p>Management hopes the approach will create internal competition. If players aren&rsquo;t performing to expectations, they won&rsquo;t remain in the organization. &ldquo;We are trying to do everything great, and it&rsquo;s going to be a while before we are defined as a good, very good and then hopefully great team,&rdquo; Dubas said. &ldquo;We have to start at the bottom and build it up.&rdquo;</p><h2><b>ONE TO WATCH</b></h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-0313/84445-1-eng-US/f0053-032.jpg" title="f0053-03" width="146" height="227"></div><p><b>Jonathan Drouin&rsquo;s</b> first two seasons have not gone as expected. Drafted third overall in 2013, he was expected to make the Lightning at 18. That didn&rsquo;t happen, and his rookie season of 2014-15 was marked by fits and starts and healthy scratches. He&rsquo;s already said he&rsquo;s coming into camp with a chip on his shoulder.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-0411/84438-1-eng-US/f0053-042.jpg" title="f0053-04" width="149" height="230"></div><p><b>Sheldon Keefe</b>, former OHL bad boy player, became a prodigy as a coach and will continue his ascension with the Toronto Marlies. The former Tampa Bay Lightning coached Pembroke to five straight Central Canada titles and a national title and the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds to a league-best 54-12-2 record last season.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-058/84431-1-eng-US/f0053-052.jpg" title="f0053-05" width="148" height="228"></div><p>The seat is getting hot for GM <b>Jim Benning</b>. Some of his offseason moves didn&rsquo;t go over well in Vancouver, where fans are torn between staying competitive with their best players in their twilight playing years and doing an on-the-fly re-tool. Benning&rsquo;s attempt to do both is admirable if it works, but will stir critics on both sides if it fails.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-066/84424-1-eng-US/f0053-062.jpg" title="f0053-06" width="149" height="231"></div><p><b>Evgeny Kuznetsov</b> had a great first full season with the Caps. Time to kick things up. He&rsquo;s entering his prime, and his speed and creativity peg him for big numbers. While &lsquo;Kuzya,&rsquo; 23, will anchor the second line, he&rsquo;ll have decent wingers and can really provide matchup problems for teams too focused on Alex Ovechkin and the top line.</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-074/84417-1-eng-US/f0053-072.jpg" title="f0053-07" width="149" height="230"></div><p>The hour of <b>Nikolaj Ehlers</b> is upon us. The lightning-quick Dane was the QMJHL&rsquo;s best player last season. He&rsquo;s too young for the AHL and too good for junior. The NHL is his next stop. The Jets have room in their top 12 forwards, and he&rsquo;ll step in as a Calder Trophy sleeper. His offensive skill set adds a new element to Winnipeg&rsquo;s lineup.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p></div>

f0053-01

NO MORE MR. NICE GUYS

<div class="byline">BY RYAN KENNEDY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0054-0125/84495-1-eng-US/f0054-012.jpg" title="f0054-01" width="448" height="548"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>ANOTHER HURDLE</b></p><p>After a stint of three years in the USHL, Connor needs to test himself at the college level.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(YOUNGSTOWN PHANTOMS)</span></figcaption></div><p class="dropcap"><span>T</span><b>HE WINNIPEG JETS SHOULD</b> probably send Don Sweeney a fruit basket. When the rookie Bruins GM made three straight picks in the middle of the first round of the draft, he and his scouting crew somehow left centers Matt Barzal and Kyle Connor on the board, reaching instead for Jake De-Brusk and Zach Senyshyn (although taking Jakub Zboril at No. 12 was solid, as he was the best D-man still on the board).</p><p>The New York Islanders immediately traded up to grab Barzal, meaning the Jets had the opportunity to snap up the leading scorer in the United States League.</p><p>Connor, who was in his third season (he&rsquo;s a December, 1996 birthday, so he was drafted with the 1997s) with the Youngstown Phantoms, absolutely wrecked the American junior circuit with 34 goals and 80 points in 56 games, putting him nine points clear of the next-highest scorer. In the process, he helped Youngstown set a USHL record with a 17-game win streak and was named the league&rsquo;s player of the year. Evolution was a big part of his appeal. &ldquo;Fast hands, first-shot goal-scorer,&rdquo; said one scout. &ldquo;He used to be an off-the-rush scorer, now he can wheel off checks down low, too. It&rsquo;s hard not to see him in the lineup somewhere.&rdquo;</p><p>Connor first jumped onto the radar with a star turn for Team USA at the 2014 world under-18s. Playing for a squad made up almost entirely of National Team Development Program kids, Connor tallied a point per game on a depth line to help the Americans win yet another gold medal at the event. Not bad for a kid who had to find instant chemistry on a squad already thick as thieves.</p><p>Before he takes his shot in Winnipeg, Connor will head to the University of Michigan at a time when the Wolverines sorely need him. Detroit first-rounder Dylan Larkin signed a pro deal with the Red Wings, meaning his college days in Ann Arbor are done after just one fantastic freshman campaign. &ldquo;Obviously it sucks for the team, losing such a great player,&rdquo; Connor said. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m really looking forward to going in there and getting Michigan back in the tournament.&rdquo;</p><p><b>KYLE CONNOR</b></p><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0054-0216/84488-1-eng-US/f0054-022.jpg" title="f0054-02" width="105" height="107"></div><p>POSITIO<b>N</b></p><p>Center</p><p><b>AGE</b> 18</p><p><b>HEIGHT</b> 6-1</p><p><b>WEIGHT</b> 183 lbs</p><p><b>DRAFTED</b></p><p>Winnipeg, 17th in 2015</p><p>With Winnipeg signing Andrew Copp before that, the Wolverines are looking unexpectedly thin down the middle for next year, so Connor will be thrust into a major scoring role. The incoming frosh class he&rsquo;s a part of is pretty impressive, however, so Connor won&rsquo;t be alone: other NHL picks include left winger Brendan Warren (Arizona) and right winger Cooper Marody (Philadelphia), plus defensemen Joseph Cecconi (Dallas) and Nick Boka (Minnesota). They will all need to contribute if the Wolverines hope to get back to the national tournament after an uncharacteristic three-year absence (which was preceded by two straight decades of berths).</p><p>Since Connor is from Michigan, choosing the school was far from a labored decision. &ldquo;I was a Michigan fan of football, basketball&hellip;all their sports,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And Red Berenson has such a good resume there; he&rsquo;s a legendary coach. I think I can learn a lot from him.&rdquo;</p><p>A big fan of Colorado&rsquo;s Matt Duchene, Connor has been described as having &ldquo;jersey-flapping speed,&rdquo; and the ability to control a game is something he prides himself on. &ldquo;I like to play with a lot of speed and high pace,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I also have the ability to slow the game down.&rdquo;</p><p>His emphasis last season was on fine-tuning his stride and getting stronger &ndash; and with 183 pounds on a 6-foot-1 frame, he can easily pack a few more pounds on those ribs before he turns pro.</p><p>Which brings us back to Winnipeg, a team that didn&rsquo;t need any help drafting gems (the Jets were No. 1 in THN&rsquo;s Future Watch 2015) but that seems to have gotten some anyway. With the Jets already counting blazing left winger Nikolaj Ehlers as one of their own, it&rsquo;s downright terrifying to think what a speedy Connor-Ehlers line will look like in five years.</p><p><b>15</b></p><p>Kyle Connor&rsquo;s age when he made his USHL debut with Youngstown in 2012-13, scoring 17 goals and 41 points in 62 games that season. He followed that up with 31 goals and 74 points in 56 games as a 16-year-old.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p></div>

f0054-01

PHANTOM GOES TO SCHOOL

<div class="byline">WITH RYAN KENNEDY</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0055-0123/84524-1-eng-US/f0055-012.jpg" title="f0055-01" width="644" height="480"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>FLYER UNDER THE RADAR</b></p><p>Matej Tomek&rsquo;s impressive play with Topeka in the lesser-known NAHL got him drafted 90th by Philadelphia.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(JEFF VINNICK/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/f0055-0217/84531-1-eng-US/f0055-022.jpg" title="f0055-02" width="93" height="107"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><p>READ FEATURES FROM RYAN KENNEDY EVERY DAY AT <b><a href="http://thehockeynews.com">THEHOCKEYNEWS.COM</a></b></p><p>H<b>ERE&rsquo;S A STAT TO GET YOUR MIND</b> whirring in the middle of summer: at the 2015 draft, NHL teams selected 24 goalies &ndash; and only four of those kids hail from Canada. We are now approaching the third season of CHL hockey since the powers that be banned European netminders from major junior, and it&rsquo;s hard to see the intended result.</p><p>At the time, the protectionist decree came with the idea there&rsquo;s only so much crease out there and Canadian kids should get a chance to use it during those development years. But in the short term, that hasn&rsquo;t trickled up into more Canadian goalies getting drafted. What it has done instead is push some of the best up-and-coming netminders in the world a little farther south.</p><p>Daniel Vladar was the fourth goalie (third European stopper) selected in 2015 when Boston got him in the third round. The 6-foot-5 tower has played against men for Kladno in the Czech Republic, so his NCAA eligibility is pooched. But his European passport meant no major junior, so instead he&rsquo;ll be suiting up for the United States League&rsquo;s Chicago Steel.</p><p>It&rsquo;s great news for the Steel, a team that missed the playoffs. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re lucky,&rdquo; said Chicago assistant GM Matt Moran. &ldquo;The import ban really helped us.&rdquo;</p><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;IT HAS PUSHED SOME OF THE BEST UP-AND-COMING NETMINDERS IN THE WORLD A LITTLE FARTHER SOUTH</blockquote><p>The same can be said for at least two other USHL squads: Czech Ales Stezka (Minnesota) will be in Sioux Falls, while Adam Huska of Slovakia (Rangers) returns to Green Bay. But the USHL isn&rsquo;t the only development league benefitting from the CHL goalie ban. The North American League is a Tier II circuit that has become a boutique league for netminders. Four NAHL goalies were drafted in 2015, equalling Canada&rsquo;s total. The best is Philadelphia third-rounder Matej Tomek of Slovakia, who put up some mean stats for Topeka.</p><p>Education was important to Tomek, so he&rsquo;ll be heading to the University of North Dakota. But if major junior teams had been allowed to draft him, a savvy outfit would have attempted to convince him a CHL education package would suffice (whether you believe that or not).</p><p>So if the Canadians aren&rsquo;t getting drafted more frequently and there&rsquo;s no Euros to take their spots, who&rsquo;s filling the gap? Americans. The OHL&rsquo;s Kitchener Rangers convinced St. Louis pick Luke Opilka to spurn Wisconsin, while WHL Tri-City&rsquo;s Evan Sarthou (an in-state product from Black Diamond, Wash.) was the only non-NTDP player on USA&rsquo;s gold-medal under-18 team. Sarthou is up for the draft in 2016, as is OHL London&rsquo;s Tyler Parsons, another St. Louis product.</p><p>Canada is not bereft of talent for the upcoming draft. On Central Scouting&rsquo;s initial 2015-16 watch list, six of the 11 netminders named were from up north. How many of these eventually make the grade is anyone&rsquo;s guess, though, especially since 11 Canadian netminders from the 2014-15 September list didn&rsquo;t get drafted nine months later.</p><p>Prior to the Euro goalie ban, a lot of future NHLers used the CHL as a proving ground. Foreign stoppers still active include Ondrej Pavelec (Cape Breton), Petr Mrazek (Ottawa), Philipp Grubauer (Belleville), Michal Neuvirth (Plymouth) and Peter Budaj (St. Michael&rsquo;s). With the ban, there won&rsquo;t be another wave on the way. Whether that improves the chances of more Canadian goalies becoming NHLers is impossible to tell. The best Canadian goalies were going to play in the CHL anyway. Now they&rsquo;re just doing it without European goalies in their midst. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?</p><p>Would the presence of a couple topend Euros make the situation worse, or are CHL teams just putting lower-end local goalies in their place? As far as the USHL or NAHL are concerned, the uncertainty is only making their leagues stronger in the meantime.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0055-01

A HOMEGROWN CROSSROAD IN NET

<div class="byline">WITH STAN FISCHLER</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0056-0220/84560-1-eng-US/f0056-022.jpg" title="f0056-02" width="475" height="682"><figcaption class="caption-body"><p><b>STUNNING SWAP</b></p><p>Mahovlich was supposed to be traded from Toronto to Chicago in exchange for $1 million.</p> <span class="photo-credit">(B BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES)</span></figcaption></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0056-0124/84567-1-eng-US/f0056-012.jpg" title="f0056-01" width="93" height="111"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><p class="dropcap"><span>I</span><b>MAGINE IF THE PITTSBURGH PENGUINS ANNOUNCED THAT</b> management had sold Sidney Crosby to the Chicago Blackhawks for about $95 million in straight cash.</p><p>You say it couldn&rsquo;t happen. Think again, because a genuine Chicago-Toronto deal of similarly outrageous proportions actually was consummated 53 years ago. After a week of negotiations, it caused massive cases of lockjaw around the NHL.</p><p>The Maple Leafs&rsquo; version of Crosby at the start of 1962-63 was an oversized left winger named Frank &lsquo;The Big M&rsquo; Mahovlich. Having already helped his club in April 1962 to what would become the first of three straight Stanley Cups, Mahovlich towered above every left winger but one: Bobby Hull of Chicago. And at that they seemed equal. During an evening of drinking revelry with his Toronto counterpart Harold Ballard, Black Hawks owner James Norris proposed having Mahovlich wear a Hawks jersey, and Pal Hal liked the idea.</p><p>On that memorable night of Oct. 5, 1962, Norris agreed to write a check for $1 million &ndash; more money than ever was paid for one athlete &ndash; and promised to hand it to the Leafs high command. &ldquo;Because the main participants had been into the grape, following a shinny dinner, it was logical to shrug off the whole affair as a publicity stunt,&rdquo; wrote Toronto <i>Star</i> columnist-sports editor Milt Dunnell. &ldquo;But it wasn&rsquo;t that.&rdquo;</p><p>Ballard and Norris were as drunk as they were sincere about the exchange because each thought his club would benefit. The Leafs VP realized a million dollars was equal to almost a total season&rsquo;s take for hockey. He also knew that the millionaires&rsquo; millionaire, Norris, could write a non-bounceable check from the First National Bank of Chicago without breaking his ballpoint pen. In less than a dozen hours, Norris would do that.</p><p>However, before Norris actually delivered the dollars, stories of the astonishing trade flashed across the continent before midnight, Oct. 6. Exhibit A was <i>The Chicago Tribune,</i> which ran a banner, super-deal bulletin on its front news page. Further confirmation was supplied by Ballard&rsquo;s associate, then Leafs boss Stafford Smythe, who was in on the deal.</p><p>As Ballard&rsquo;s bad luck would have it, Jim Norris had a kid brother named Bruce who just happened to own the Detroit Red Wings. And when Bruce realized his Wings would be facing Hull and Mahovlich on the same team, he immediately &ndash; and desperately &ndash; worked to kill the deal. Bruce&rsquo;s first move was a panicky phone call to Stafford&rsquo;s father, Leafs founder and retired king of NHL power brokers, Conn Smythe,</p><p>Still mighty in league circles, Conn shared Bruce&rsquo;s feelings about toppling the trade but for a different reason; he knew the filthy-rich Leafs needed a superstar more than super-bucks. &ldquo;Find Stafford and have him call me,&rdquo; the elder Smythe demanded of Norris. Sure enough, at 3 a.m. the call was made. Dunnell, who was an insider with the Leafs general staff at the time, recalled the following in his column several years after the deal:</p><p>&ldquo;Conn said to his son no player was worth a million dollars, so they had taken advantage of the whiskey to make a sale. If the Leafs were lucky enough to have a player for whom that kind of money was offered, he belonged in Toronto, not Chicago.&rdquo;</p><p>Trouble was that Jim Norris had awakened early the next morning believing he owned The Big M. As promised, he wrote the million-dollar check, dated Oct. 6, 1962. Jim&rsquo;s GM, Tommy Ivan, then delivered it to Stafford Smythe at Maple Leaf Gardens. To Ivan&rsquo;s astonishment, Stafford respectfully declined with an altruistic explanation: &ldquo;We never rolled a drunk yet, and we don&rsquo;t have to start now.&rdquo;</p><p>This time the Gardens directors got into the zany act. Within a week, they ordered Stafford to ask Jim Norris if he still wanted Mahovlich for a million. Staff even dispatched his sidekick, King Clancy, to Chicago to gauge Norris&rsquo; feelings about reviving the exchange. &ldquo;Norris was off the hook,&rdquo; Dunnell revealed. &ldquo;This time he was in no mood to get on again.&rdquo;</p><p>Thus, hockey&rsquo;s biggest deal once and for all became hockey&rsquo;s biggest non-deal. The Big M helped the Leafs to four Cups and ranks among the foremost left wingers of all-time.</p><p>Through it all, Frank remembers a desperate phone call from his father when the elder Mahovlich originally heard about the dynamic deal. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been sold to Chicago for a million dollars,&rdquo; asserted Frank&rsquo;s dad. &ldquo;Make sure somebody pays for moving your furniture.&rdquo;<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0056-02

THE BIG UMMM…

<div class="byline">By Larry Humber</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-0413/84610-1-eng-US/f0057-042.jpg" title="f0057-04" width="457" height="457"></div><h2><b>Guess WHO!</b></h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-0121/84631-1-eng-US/f0057-012.jpg" title="f0057-01" width="239" height="293"><figcaption class="caption-body"><span class="photo-credit">(GUESS WHO: JEFF VINNICK/NHLI VIA GETTY IMAGES; MASK: DAVID GUNNARSSON/DAVEART.COM; JERSEY: SCOTT PAULUS/MILWAUKEE ADMIRALS)</span></figcaption></div><p><i> &ldquo;I beat out Brad Richards and Martin Havlat to win the Calder as 2000-01&rsquo;s top NHL rookie.&rdquo;</i></p><p><i> &ldquo;I was born in Kazakhstan but am a Russian citizen. I played for Russia in two Olympics.&rdquo;</i></p><p><i> &ldquo;The San Jose Sharks picked me 219th overall in 1994. I am their all-time wins leader.&rdquo;</i></p><h2><b>Separated AT BIRTH</b></h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-0219/84624-1-eng-US/f0057-022.jpg" title="f0057-02" width="111" height="198"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h3><b>ZDENO CHARA</b></h3><p>Graced THN Fear Issue as NHL&rsquo;s scariest player. Started 2011 playoff run, hoisted Stanley Cup 24 games later.</p><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-0315/84617-1-eng-US/f0057-032.jpg" title="f0057-03" width="110" height="197"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h3><b>CILLIAN MURPHY</b></h3><p>Spread fear toxin around Gotham as Scarecrow in <i>Batman Begins.</i> On run from zombies in <i>28 Days Later.</i></p><p>Email your suggestions to <b><a href="mailto:sab@thehockeynews.com">sab@thehockeynews.com</a></b></p><p>WHO AM I: EVGENI NABOKOV</p><h2><b>CROSSWORD</b></h2><p>ANSWERS AVAILABLE IN THE NEXT ISSUE AND AT <a href="http://THN.com/XWORD">THN.com/XWORD</a></p><h3><b>ACROSS</b></h3><p>1 Gordie Howe appeared in a record 23 ___-___ Games</p><p>4 What Cup winners wear</p><p>7 Not pre-recorded</p><p>8 Pest in hockey</p><p>10 He was GM when the Isles were champions</p><p>12 Take a series 2-0, 3-0 or 4-0</p><p>13 Falls to the ice to block a shot</p><p>14 Willie ___ is Canucks coach</p><p>18 Blanks: two words</p><p>19 Site of the 1952 Olympics</p><p>20 Replaced as Sabres coach after 2014-15</p><p>21 Beat badly</p><h3><b>DOWN</b></h3><p>1 To ___-___ is to improvise</p><p>2 Flattened</p><p>3 ___ Crozier succeeded Jean Beliveau as Smythe winner</p><p>4 He&rsquo;s now GM in Pittsburgh</p><p>5 Wayne Gretzky was with the Young ___ as a teen</p><p>6 Blocks the goalie&rsquo;s view</p><p>9 Wayne ___ was in goal when the Flyers upset Red Army in 1976</p><p>11 Hab great dubbed &lsquo;Big Bird&rsquo; (pictured)</p><p>12 Christine ___ is a veteran hockey reporter (and Craig&rsquo;s sis)</p><p>15 Stick fight</p><p>16 Trail ___ Eaters were world champs in 1961</p><p>17 &lsquo;The Golden Jet&rsquo;</p><p><b>LAST ISSUE&rsquo;S CROSSWORD SOLUTION</b></p><p><b>ACROSS</b> 1. TIMEOUT, 4. TAMPA, 7. OMNI, 8. BUILDERS, 10. ZETTERBERG, 12. SHREK, 13. NAILS, 14. ARTIFICIAL, 18. McDONAGH, 19. FINN, 20. NURSE, 21. SEVENTY</p><p><b>DOWN</b> 1. TROTZ, 2. MONSTERS, 3. THUMB, 4. TYLER ENNIS, 5. MOEN, 6. ASSISTS, 9. PEKKA RINNE, 11. DIVISION, 12. SHERMAN, 15. INGES, 16. LINDY, 17. EDUR</p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-0510/84603-1-eng-US/f0057-052.jpg" title="f0057-05" width="395" height="392"></div><h2><b>Behind THE MASK</b></h2><p><b>FREDERIK ANDERSEN</b> | ANAHEIM DUCKS</p><p>Where to begin with Andersen&rsquo;s awesome new mask? Lego Batman: check. Duck bill wearing Batman mask: check. Lego goalie stick: check. A Dane giving props to Lego, which originated in Denmark: check. Artist Dave Gunnarsson has outdone himself. <b>&ndash; MATT LARKIN</b></p><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-066/84596-1-eng-US/f0057-062.jpg" title="f0057-06" width="307" height="385"><figcaption class="caption-body">JONATHAN <b>DIABY</b></figcaption></div><p><b>MILWAUKEE ADMIRALS</b> | 2015-16</p><h2><b>Jersey HOUND</b></h2><p>Milwaukee&rsquo;s first skull admiral gave the AHL squad an excellent logo and jersey, but the new &lsquo;Deadmiral&rsquo; takes it up a notch into a near untouchable realm.</p><p>Blessed with a great double-blue color scheme, the Admirals have unleashed a wicked new logo that brings more detail to the mascot in a crest that is more pro than some NHL teams. Coupled with the fact the already-cool bone anchor shoulder patch was replaced by a sick intertwined bone &ldquo;MW&rdquo; crest on the sleeve and you have some serious design goodness going on here. <b>&ndash; RYAN KENNEDY</b><span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

f0057-04

LAST MINUTE OF PLAY

<div class="byline">WITH KEN CAMPBELL</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0058-0221/84660-1-eng-US/f0058-022.jpg" title="f0058-02" width="498" height="471"><figcaption class="caption-body">SIDNEY <b>CROSBY</b> <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/f0058-0124/84667-1-eng-US/f0058-012.jpg" title="f0058-01" width="85" height="104"></div><p><b>CAN&rsquo;T GET ENOUGH CAMPBELL?</b> GO TO <b><a href="http://thehockeynews.com">THEHOCKEYNEWS.COM</a></b> FOR DAILY UPDATES</p></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><p>Y<b>OU STILL HAVE MORE THAN A YEAR TO</b> prepare for the World Cup of Hockey and that might seem like plenty of time, but there&rsquo;s so much to do. I mean, we haven&rsquo;t even started debating whether Andrew Ladd or Jaden Schwartz should be Canada&rsquo;s fourth-line left winger or who would be the best fit on Connor McDavid&rsquo;s line for the North American YoungStars. Securing that second mortgage to buy tickets will take a while. And if you can&rsquo;t do that, the NHL and NHLPA want to make sure you&rsquo;re aware you&rsquo;ll be able to watch it on computers, smartphones, tablets, Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, so you still have time to pick up one of those. If you figure out what those things are.</p><p>And for the Luddites among us, there&rsquo;s always Sportsnet in most of Canada, ESPN in the U.S. and TVA Sports (which also owns The Hockey News) in Quebec. It promises to be a two-week hockeypalooza featuring the best best-on-best competition in the history of best-onbest competitions, highlighting the best players from the best countries, the best young players and the best players from other countries that aren&rsquo;t the best.</p><p>And it&rsquo;s an event that&rsquo;s expected to generate more than $100 million for the league and players, an amount that gets split 50/50. With all that money on the line, no wonder there&rsquo;s a chance we&rsquo;ll see advertising on sweaters. It&rsquo;s a concept that is verboten in the NHL, but if slapping an ad for McDonald&rsquo;s or Coca-Cola on Mother Russia&rsquo;s sweater will add a few million to the pot, then the league and players are for it.</p><p>And that&rsquo;s not the only place where the World Cup gets caught in a web of contradiction. This is not, repeat, not, a vehicle whose primary intention is to grow the game, either in North America or globally. The World Cup is not about raising hockey&rsquo;s profile any more than Winter Classics are about returning the game to its outdoor roots. These things are first and foremost about money. Generating revenues is the No. 1 objective.</p><p>And that&rsquo;s fine. The league belongs to the NHL and its players and they have every right to conduct business the way they see fit. I just wish they&rsquo;d be transparent about it. I wish they&rsquo;d be like John Collins, the chief operating officer of the NHL, who said of the World Cup of Hockey back in January, &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve grown into a $4 billion business. The question is, where does the next billion come from?&rdquo;</p><p>Any criticism or mocking of this event will be duly revoked the moment the NHL and NHLPA announce they will continue to play in the Olympics. If that happens, they can hold a World Cup every six months and fill it with niche teams like red-haired guys from Saskatchewan if it wants. Because the World Cup is basically a meaningless exhibition event that will have no lasting impact. It will be a nice summer diversion and the moment it ends, we&rsquo;ll all begin preparing for the NHL season. If your country wins, hey, great. If not, it will be how long before the Penguins and Flyers play? There will be no lasting residue, likely a limited legacy and no more interest in the game than there was prior to the event. The only World/Canada Cup that has had any type of legacy was 1987 and that&rsquo;s because the level of hockey was as high as it&rsquo;s ever been and Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux were at the apex of their talents. Even then, that legacy only exists in the country that won the tournament, a place that hardly needs bolstering when it comes to hockey interest.</p><blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;THE WORLD CUP IS BASICALLY AN EXHIBITION EVENT THAT WILL HAVE NO LASTING IMPACT</blockquote><p>No, if the NHL were truly interested in growing the game outside Canada, it would stay on board with playing in the Olympics every four years. But there are no real low-hanging dollars for the NHL in the Olympics, only the possibility of growth that can&rsquo;t be easily measured. The Olympics, more importantly, draw enormous amounts of interest from around the world, including peripheral hockey countries. Those places won&rsquo;t be the least bit interested in a World Cup.</p><p>How many Americans will be interested? Well, NBC Sports was not interested enough in securing the rights because there were too many &ldquo;conflicts with existing programming.&rdquo; Perhaps the hype machine surrounding ESPN will help, but there&rsquo;s no way any World Cup game, even with the U.S. in the final, would approach the 27.6 million who watched the 2010 gold-medal game between Canada and Team USA in Vancouver. Just so you know, that game drew better ratings than the Masters, Daytona 500, NBA final, NCAA basketball final, World Series and Rose Bowl. In Canada, 16.6 million, or about half the entire country, watched the game. In 1980, 34.2 million Americans tuned in to USA&rsquo;s Miracle on Ice game against the Soviet Union and another 32.8 million watched as the Americans secured the gold against Finland.</p><p>It&rsquo;s clear the Olympics grow the game. A World Cup will grow only one thing, and that&rsquo;s profits.<span class="end-marker"> &#9632;</span></p>

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September 14, 2015

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