Martin Marincin's hot WHL Start

Martin Marincin sends Kadri flying at the 2010 Juniors

One of the picks I was most unfamiliar with at the draft was Slovakian product Martin Marincin, who came to the Oilers 46th overall in the 2010 NHL Entry Draft.  Judging by his size and the commentary at the draft, I figured he was brought aboard to plug a defensive need and provide some grit on the back end.  A vision of someone along the lines of Matt Greene came to mind.  With hockey season a quarter of the way over, a different aspect of Martin is starting to get attention.

Remember the first Oil Change, where a certain prospect was highly coveted and we hoped to trade up to get him in the first round?  Ryan Johansen has been all but confirmed as that prospect, and he sits in a 4-way tie for 29th in WHL scoring - with Oilers prospect defenceman Marincin being one of the other three players there. Among defencemen, Marincin is second overall in league scoring, and is also second overall in scoring among rookies.

The jump from junior to the NHL may not be a chasm like the Grand Canyon, but far more players fall into the pit than make the transition.  That said, Marincin's combination of size - he's 6'4 and almost 190lbs - and scoring (8G, 17A in 23GP) - is impressive.  He's also adapted well to the North American game, a key challenge for many European players.  Marincin's desire to come over and play our rougher style, even though it meant being out on the far end of the earth in Prince George is a statement of character.  He's ambitious, he's smart enough to understand the transition, he knows he's going to play more games in the Dub than he will at home, and he's willing to suffer that brutal travel schedule to do it.  It's 7 hours from Prince George to Kamloops, kids.  That's the shortest bus ride they get.

As for the Cougars, they are a decent team but Marincin is clearly not riding on the backs of any great talent.  The up-and-down season is a product of being stuck in the tough western conference of the WHL, where they reside in 8th place despite being over .500.  Marincin's 33 PIMs suggest that he's no shrinking violet, and his +2 is second-best among defencemen on a team that is facing the best the WHL has to offer more often than not.  He's second in scoring, behind the much-vaunted Brett Connolly, trailing him by only three points.

Here are some comparisons of final junior seasons for current top NHL defencemen of comparable size:

• Dustin Byfuglien (6'4): 64GP, 22G, 36A.
• Brent Seabrook (6'3): 63GP, 12G, 42A.
• Jay Bouwmeester (6'4): 61GP, 11G, 50A.
• Shea Weber (6'4): 55GP, 12G, 29A.
• Alexander Edler (6'3): 62GP, 13G, 40A.
• Marc Staal (6'3): 53GP, 5G, 29A. (in his draft year, Staal went 57GP, 11G, 38A)
• Dion Phaneuf (6'3): 55GP, 24G, 32A.
• Keith Yandle (6'2): 66GP, 25G, 59A.

That's some pretty impressive company, isn't it?  What does it mean?

Not much, really.  Jeff Woywitka, a 6'3 journeyman of median abilities, had 16G and 36A in 57GP for Red Deer, a year after he was drafted 27th overall by Philly in 2001.  Comparable stats can be found to show just about anything someone likes.

I am excited by Marincin, however.  I doubt he'll be an explosive offensive force in the NHL, but his maturity and attitude in coming over shows me that he's dedicated to his craft.  With his size and ability, he could make a top pairing defenceman eventually.

Bad Losses, Continued

Maybe we can convince Kevin Lowe to suit up

There's really not much to say about the Oilers' 5-0 loss to Chicago tonight that I didn't say just a few days ago. Losses in a rebuild are understandable.  As are occasional blow-outs.  However, in the past 5 games we have been outscored 30-8.

7-1, 6-2, 4-3, 8-2, 5-0.  These aren't baseball scores from the World Series, ladies and gentlemen.  You might expect the average hockey team to experience blowouts like those (other than the New Jersey 4-3 loss) maybe 5-6 times per season, not almost 5 games in a row.

For some perspective, Bulin allowed two goals in the first period and still had a .900 save percentage at first intermission.  How many goalies can say that?  A team that is outshot 20-4 in the first period and 47-18 in the game cannot even begin to pin the blame on the goalie.

Terrible beatings like this are what starts to really mess with team and fan morale.  There will always be a few die-hard grumblers (les grognards) who will find something to complain about, who will not accept the realities of a rebuild.  These people are to be expected and treated accordingly; acknowledged and dismissed.  However, the realistic and even the optimistic fans will see significant cause for concern in a situation like this, with constant losses that are only getting worse.  This was supposed to be a fun season, one full of ups and downs.  Nobody went in expecting a winning record, and few expected to be out of the bottom 5 in the league.  However, we did hope to see some offence, to see the kids play and create and show sparks of brilliance like they did early on this season.

As a fan, this isn't fun.  I can't imagine being a player and enjoying myself in this situation, and this is where guys start getting in each other's faces in unhealthy ways.  Steve Tambellini might not have made all the right moves this off-season, but he did his best to get rid of the dressing room cancers.  Another four or five losses like this, however, the cancer will not only have come back it will have spread.

We went over 50% on the dot, however.  Everyone knows how important face-offs are for puck possession.

Colin Campbell's Biases

By now you've doubtless read about the scandal surrounding NHL disciplinarian Colin Campbell.  To most fans, Colin has been an inconsistent and frustrating figure in the NHL head office.  One minute he's giving out five game suspensions for an action, the other he's writing off a repeat offender's action as "legal", though you'd be hard pressed to find a difference in video review.

We've known for a long time that Colin Campbell is inconsistent and arguably incompetent.  Now we have a clue as to why.  The story originally broke on MC79, a blog I linked here from the very beginning.  Tyler Dellow, author of MC79, is nothing if not thorough and meticulous.  As you read the TSN article, it becomes clear that Colin has clear biases and blatantly oversteps his bounds by peddling his influence in favor of his son, Greg Campbell, and the teams Greg plays on.  This is just flat out against the rules of the NHL.

When you reach the bottom of the TSN article, you find the NHL's and Colin Campbell's official responses:

Contacted by TSN for its reaction to Dellow's piece, deputy commissioner Bill Daly said: "Any suggestion that Colin Campbell performs his job with any less than 100% integrity at all times and in every decision he makes is way off base and just factually wrong.  Because of the potential for a conflict of interest, or more importantly a perceived conflict of interest,  the League has implemented various structural protections that prohibit Colie from having any oversight or disciplinary authority relating to any game in which his son, Gregory, plays.  Its always fair to question and criticize League decisions as being wrong, but not on the basis that they aren't justly and fairly arrived at."


Contacted by TSN for his reaction, Campbell said: "For me, it's much ado about nothing. Stephen and I would have banter back and forth and Stephen knows I'm a (hockey) dad venting and both of us knowing it wouldn't go any further than that. Stephen would laugh at me. The game in question (when Gregory Campbell was penalized late in the Atlanta-Florida game) wasn't on TV and I was asking Stephen to find out for me if it was a soft call. That's all there ever was to it. The (refs) working that game are still in the league, aren't they? Stephen handled the officials, just like Terry Gregson does now, and I've got a lot of emails to those guys asking about this soft call or that soft call and that's in a lot of games. I'm not ultimately responsible for the (on-ice) officials, that's Terry Gregson's responsibility, but I have to answer to GMs on these calls."


And that's the end of the story as far as the mass media is concerned.  Even though Bill Daly and Campbell are flat out lying about the situation, completely contradicting what we now know is fact and is on the legal record, TSN doesn't comment, doesn't respond.

In my first-ever blog post I mentioned I had worked in the media prior to this and I specifically mentioned that the one thing I felt I could bring to the blogging community is commentary on the incestuous relationship between genre media and the genre it covers.  You'll notice that car magazines are never very critical of car companies - even in the 80s, when the Big Three from Detroit were making ugly, underpowered, uncomfortable steel boxes on wheels, Road & Track and Car & Driver had good things to say about them.  You can see the same thing in gaming media (glowing previews of games that turn out to be crap), and of course sports media.

TSN will report the story.  They will do their duty by getting an official response from the NHL, and then they'll drop it.  No matter how blatant and obvious the lies, they will leave it there and hope that most fans don't care.  Why?  Because TSN, like ESPN, like the CBC, all depend on the NHL for inside access.  They will not jeopardize this.  It is up to us, the bloggers, the fans on the forums, to make ourselves heard.

The NHL and NBA are the Mickey Mouse outfits of the pro sporting world.  Neither can shake decades of refereeing or front office controversy.  The NBA has Tim Donaghy and the 1998 Finals Game 6 in Utah.  The NHL has Alan Eagleson and now Colin Campbell.

For a league with as sordid a history as the NHL has, going back to quashing the original NHLPA in '57-'58, and then abusing the players in the Alan Eagleson era, the last thing the NHL needs right now is another scandal.  They need to be open, up front, acknowledge their mistakes, and hire an actual, competent outsider to hand out discipline.  Someone connected to franchises, teams, players, and his own son in the league, is not qualified.  This is not a surprise to anyone who's followed Colin Campbell's examples of "discipline" over the years.

Bad Losses

It's one thing to beat yourself up to your own benefit.

I doubt that the educated and well-meaning Oiler fan will get too upset over a losing season during an acknowledged rebuild year, a rear right after we drafted first overall.  That's fine, we can live with that.  It's not pretty, and it's not what we want to see, but it's something we can live with because we understand the NHL system and we know this will make us better in the long run.

So when someone argues that we should trade Penner for Chris Phillips, I argue no, because Penner is an asset and could still be useful 3-5 years from now, when this team is competitive.  Chris Phillips is 30 and it's very likely he will not be good at the time when we actually need him to be good.  Inherent in this argument is the knowledge that losing, painful as it may be, is all part of the plan.

This kind of sanguine and generous viewpoint is hard to maintain in light of an 8-2 beatdown by the middling New York Rangers.  Yet when this loss comes on the heels of a 7-1 defeat to the equally mediocre Carolina Hurricanes and a 6-2 thrashing at the hands of the admittedly mighty Red Wings, topped off by a 4-3 defeat by the supposedly-just-as-bad-as-we-are Devils in which the Oilers were outshot 39-24, a sanguine attitude is hard to maintain.

Something must be done!  The feeling builds within our hearts.  Even the happy-to-lose crowd with dreams of a second consecutive first overall pick, think that at least for the sake of the kids, we should make some upgrades.  We allegedly got rid of the cancers in the dressing room over the summer.  For the continued health of the team it would behoove us to not roll around in toxic waste dumps, the kind created by losing by 17 goals in 4 games, if we expect there to be a proper atmosphere in the locker room.  Yes, we can lose, we expect to.  But be competitive.  Score.  Defend.  Make other teams pay to play us.  If need be, get occasionally blown out, after all, we're a bad team.  Just don't lose by 17 goals over 4 games.

Adam Larsson Hype

Adam Larsson and Teemu Hartikainen tangle along the boards - a preview of a future Oilers practice?

Since even before the draft, I've been hearing about Adam Larsson.  Oiler fans, anticipating another season potentially scrubbing the NHL's basement, became excited about having a top 3 draft pick in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft.  The 2011 preliminary rankings have the top 3 listed, in order, as Sean Couturier, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Larsson.  After the preliminary rankings, which NHL teams use to set targets for their scouting teams, the ISS is mostly disregarded by the pros and only serves as something to talk about for the fans.

Larsson has drawn the most attention of the three because of the incredible wording used to describe him, such as "potentially the best player to come out of Sweden".  Most of this talk is on the basis of his 2010 performance in the Swedish Elite League, where he scored 17 points (5G, 12A) as a 17-year-old, matching a 30-year-old record.

Thus, the preliminary rankings, as well as all draft lists compiled by news media, bloggers, and forum posters, are based on the efforts of the previous season.  The entire summer, for the rabid fans that talk hockey even in the middle of August, was just a giant echo chamber for what Larsson had done the year before.  Much of the hype and expectations he's carrying now are the result of that summer.

The 3 assists in 17 games so far this season do not suggest that Larsson will be able to maintain his top-3 ranking, never mind become "the best player out of Sweden".  For comparison, as a 17 year old, Victor Hedman had 2G and 2A in 39 games for MODO.  In his draft year, he improved to 7G and 14A in 43 games, and still went second overall behind Tavares.

Larsson is getting almost 18 minutes per game of ice time, so he's at least getting a decent shot at proving himself worthy of getting more.  His team is second overall in standings, so it's hard to argue that he has poor support to finish the plays he makes.  It could be that he's injured, but we haven't heard anything on this side of the pond.  An injury, while an excuse for poor performance, is also going to his his draft ranking - just ask Brett Connolly.  Injured players don't develop as well, and there's always the fear that the player could be fragile.

We'll have a better idea of Larsson's potential later in the season, especially once Bob McKenzie compiles his draft rankings.  Until then, Oiler fans may be better served by taking a more critical look at Larsson and instead imagining Couturier or Nugent-Hopkins up the middle, or perhaps Ryan Murphy.  31 points in 18 games, including 10 goals, is nothing to sneeze at in the OHL.  And he's a defenceman!

Introductions

I've been wanting to write a hockey blog for about a year now, but after reading a comment by Lowetide that somebody should have something to offer the reader before writing it.  The blog has to be interesting to the fans rather than the blogger himself, otherwise it's purely a vanity project and, due to lack of readership, will be an unsatisfying vanity project at that.

I then asked myself what I have to offer any potential audience.  This took some time and eventually I came down to two conclusions:

1.  I am a former member of the media.  Not the mainstream media, or sports media, but a form of media just as incestuous and just as dependent on its host for scraps as the sports media.

2.  I am somewhat of a contrarian.  Whenever opinion swings wildly to one side or another, I suspect it is because of emotional reasoning rather than any deep mental process, and I start picking apart arguments.  I think this is useful to a community, because it forces that community to re-examine its logic.  Sometimes I can make good points, other times I only pick away at the weak edges of the consensus.

I hope that this blog has the value and energy necessary to contribute for years to come, rather than merely becoming a vehicle for vainglory.