A few days into the NHL season, I’ve got a couple of questions that I’d like answered.

Who turned the central division standings upside-down?

Who’s been wearing Roberto Luongo’s jersey?

I’m sure things will average out over the course of the season, Luongo will put up all-star numbers, the Red Wings will content for the conference title, and Jarome Iginla will score a truck load of goals. But for now it’s fun to look at the early-season anomalies.

Just a few quick hitters after tonight’s game:

• Looks like Kipper and Phaneuf are back on form. Two of the three Canuck goals off of deflections and the other after a bad clearing attempt. 39 saves in the winning effort is a promising start. Phaneuf seems to be playing with that edge he was lacking last season.
• Coach Sutter said he likes to keep shots against to around 25. We’ve got a ways to go to get that. The guys need to be stronger on the clearing attempts, better at clearing rebounds, and more effective at getting into shooting lanes. I’m seeing a lot of guys going to block shots, but most of the chances still getting through.
• At 2-for-3, the powerplay is showing big improvements.
• Already getting good value from the depth guys. Bourque, Dawes, Prust, Sjostrom, Nystrom, Pardy, and Giordano all found the scoresheet tonight.
• Still can’t believe we picked Dawes off of waivers. I think this guy’s underrated and could do this year what Bourque did last year.

Hopefully we can see more of the hockey that was played in those first 20 minutes consistently this season. If we play like that against the Oil on Sunday, it’ll be a whitewash. Make it so, boys.

Prominent Flames blogger D’Arcy McGrath has summed up Theo Fleury’s return hopes nicely in a piece today over at CalgaryPuck.com. Since I’ve been following the Fleury storyline so closely, I was interested in D’Arcy’s thoughts, and I think he hits the nail on the head:

The Theo Story captured Calgary, and the little bugger’s shoot out goal and then two point performance did nothing to make the tale go away. However, don’t count on Sutter over looking his struggles defensively or his inability to keep up with the play. He’ll be cut sometime next week and start off his return in Abbotsford, but has shown enough that we may see him again. In the end the whole thing was a win win for Fleury and the Flames. He went a long way through this story in mitigating some of those old wounds from his departure and struggles off the ice in other NHL centers.

Beyond that, it’s done wonders for getting Flames fans fired up even in the pre-season. The seventh man is warmed up and ready to go for the regular season as well. It’s likely that Theo will be a big draw in Abbotsford as well, so there is still a benefit to keeping him in the organization. I do sincerely hope we see Fleury play in some regular season games this season, but not at the cost of icing a competitive team. That boils down to: I hope Fleury can bring his game up to the level required of the NHL.

McGrath has some other good thoughts regarding Backlund and some of the other prospects. Of course, if you’re reading my writing, you’ve probably already been to CalgaryPuck, but if you haven’t, today’s a good day to start.

Training camps are now open in the NHL, and the pre-season gets underway in just a couple of days. Now seems like a good time to do a little re-cap of what has been a rather eventful NHL off-season.

Let’s start with the news our Flames made:

• Signings - Obviously a move towards a stronger team defence this summer, adding Jay Bouwmeester and the likes of a solid 2-way forward in Sjostrom. Generally speaking, I think the forwards should be a pretty good bang for the buck, which will be necessary with what’s being spent on blue-liners. Nigel Dawes seems the type of player who will fit in well with this organization.
• Coaching change - Brent Sutter could make this team immensely successful with his intense and seemingly hands-on coaching style. No doubt that he will shift the focus of team play to the defence and make good use of some of the new player acquisitions.
• The vintage jersey and 30th anniversary crest - Thumbs up to the jersey and down to the crest. Not that the crest is so terrible, but it looks out of place on the jerseys that are otherwise absent of black. I’d have preferred the white vintage jersey, but the red is good, too. And is it just me, or does a 30 year anniversary crest seem like we’re just trying way too hard? The 25th year crest was elegant and fit nicely on the uniforms of the day, but that was only 5 years ago. Let’s give it a rest with the anniversaries already.
• Fleury’s comeback bid - For a guy that was the face of the franchise through most of my childhood, I don’t like the thought of his parting memory being assaulting a mascot and being suspended for substance abuse. It’s good to see Theo clean, and I hope he’s got the ability to crack the lineup in Calgary this year. How awesome would it be to see #14 in those vintage reds again? Maybe not quite this good as this, but still something to bring fans to their feet. And in case you’re wondering, yes #14 is currently unclaimed.

And in case you hadn’t heard, there was some other big news in the NHL this summer:

• Dany Heatley became my new hero - Honestly, I thought that maybe this whole trade request was just an elaborate scheme to punk the Edmonton Oilers. You know, make them think that they’re going to get an elite goal scorer and dump Dustin Penner’s contract in the same deal and then pull the rug out from under them. I don’t know why Heatley was booed during the Olympic orientation camp, because I would’ve gone down for his autograph after that one. End result is that Heatley goes to San Jose today for Michalek, Cheechoo, and a second round pick (in my opinion, a better deal than Smid, Penner, and Cogliano).
• The Phoenix Coyotes - This storyline is best described as a soap opera, and it hasn’t done much for the image of the league. I’d rather see this team in Hamilton (or Winnipeg, for that matter) as much as the next Canadian, but I still don’t like the way Balsillie’s gone about this. The NHL is a collection of franchises with a set of by-laws governing their operations. If you don’t want to play by those rules, you’re going to have a tough time getting into the game. I don’t [entirely] blame the NHL for this one.
• Misappropriated funds - Boots gets eight years for the financial shenanigans he pulled to become an NHL owner, and Len Barrie may be in hot water, too. Apparently, as long as you follow the league’s by-laws you can become an owner, regardless of whether or not you choose to abide by the criminal code.
• Hudler bails for the KHL - And the loophole that caused the IIHF to allow it was that his agent signed his arbitration request, not Hudler personally. Not that he’ll really be missed.
• Habs sold back to Molson family - Good to see local hockey-passionate owners taking the reigns again. Also, glad it’s not Celine Dion.

Now comes the fun part: playing some hockey. Bring on the season, and Go Flames Go!

It seems fashionable among hockey bloggers to take shots at Eklund these days, and I don’t want to pass up an opportunity like this.

Prior to free agency opening on Canada Day, Eklund provided a list of predictions over at Hockey Buzz. Let’s dissect what Ek saw as he was looking into his crystal ball a few short days ago.

* There will be less than 15 signings on the first day due to cap restrictions, but there will be several trade rumors and at least 3 trades that make signings happen…

According to TSN, 49 players signed contracts on July 1, and 33 of those are players changing teams. Eight of the players signed July 1 will earn an average of in excess of $5 million per season over the course of their contract (and that doesn’t count Bouwmeester, who signed on June 30). Cap restrictions be damned.

* Beauchemin to either Montreal or Tampa

He hasn’t signed yet, so Ek could still be right on this one.

* Ohlund to LA, NJ, or Anaheim (or maybe a real surprise)

Ohlund was the first free agent to move, and using “maybe a real surprise” to say “or any of the other 27 teams in the NHL” is cheating. Ohlund signed in Tampa.

* Saku Koivu to Anaheim

Nothing to report here. I’d be surprised if he ends up there.

* Knuble will re-sign with Philly

Signed with Washington.

* Hossa will be a domino after Heatley decides if he wants to go to Edmonton or NY

No waiting on Heatley. Hossa signs long-term in Chicago.

* Martin Biron will sign with Avalanche or Oilers

Nothing yet. Likely to be with the Avs, though.

* Cammalleri will sign with Buffalo, Nashville or Toronto

No, no, and no. The sniper goes to Montreal.

* The Sedins will sign in Montreal

The twins decide not to test free agency and opt to stay in Vancouver.

* Komisarek will sign in NJ or the New York Islanders, but don’t rule out a return to the Habs.

Toronto’s first big move was acquiring Komisarek.

* The Hawks will attempt to move Huet and bring back Bulin

Edmonton loses Roloson and doesn’t give Chicago a chance at Khabibulin.

* Havlat will not be signed today, but will likely end up back in Chicago

He was, and he didn’t. Headed to Minnesota on the first day of free agency.

* The Rangers will attempt to spend their money. Although I dont see it happening, expect Vinny rumors if Heatley goes to Edmonton.

They did spend a big chunk of cash on Gaborik.

* The Thrashers will make a few really solid signings, that no one will expect.

I’m not sure if I consider Antropov to be a “solid” signing, but we’ll give Ek the benefit of the doubt here.

* The Wild will get in on Hossa and make another play for Heatley (and possibly Vinny)

Not sure if they took a run at Heatley, but they did get Hossa.

* The Islanders will make a play for a major player as well. if not Komisarek, maybe Ohlund

No, Roloson doesn’t count as “a major player”.

* Kaberle to Boston for Kessel will be revisited.

I’ve got nothing to confirm or refute this.

So, out of 17 predictions, Eklund scores correctly on 3 (the Rangers attempting to spend their money, the Thrashers making a big signing, and the Wild getting Hossa). Four are still up in the air, and the remaining 10 are flat-out wrong.

I don’t want to be too critical; making predictions is tough business, and in the end, all it really does is fuel smart asses like myself in writing posts like this. But that’s the business Eklund is in, so of course I’m going to keep the scorecard on it. Maybe next year I’ll make some picks too, and we’ll see how “insider information” does against my random guesses and SportCenter education.

Ethan Moreau is the latest victim.

Call me crazy, but I can’t really see the argument against wearing a visor.

ESPN’s NHL player survey results have been released for 2008/09, and Jarome Iginla came out of it looking pretty good this year.

ESPN contacted every team in the NHL and got responses from over 20% of the players in the league for this survey.

Iggy was named both the best leader, as well as the player who would make the best president/prime minister. He also garnered votes as a player that his colleagues would like to trade lives with. None of this comes as a surprise to Flames fans, but it’s good to see that he’s getting that recognition from his colleagues league-wide.

Other notable Calgary inclusions:

• Todd Bertuzzi is considered one of the worst complainers in the NHL, although he trails far behind Sidney Crosby
• We Flames fans are considered among the “most disruptive” in the league
• Kerry Fraser was selected as the best referee in the league. This would suggest that votership was low from the Flames roster

So I’ve given you some time to think about your ideal NHL without clouding your thoughts with my own. Now it’s time to let you know how I think it should be. Let’s go!

Player safety

The NHL has been crowing a lot lately about how they will make decisions that are in the best interest of protecting their players. I’m going to call them on this one, simply because there is still an insistence on keeping touch icing.

Ask Marco Sturm or Kurtis Foster what they think of touch icing. We’ve seen Iginla and Regehr both have scary falls into the boards as a result of this rule as well. Broken legs and sprained ankles are easy to shrug off as a result of a fast and physical game, but it’s only a matter of time before we see a more serious head or neck injury as a result of this rule. The NHL is the only hockey I ever see that maintains this rule (although I realize there are still others); if the IIHF and the CHL can manage with no-touch icing, why is the NHL so adamant on keeping this rule?

With regard to player safety, I would also:

• grandfather mandatory visors into the league
• adopt the OHL’s helmet rule for fighting
• crack-down on players not tightening their chinstraps (if you can fit more than two fingers between your chin and the strap, it isn’t tight enough)

Gameplay

I’m of the belief that the NHL has improved immensely under the new standard of officiating that has been enforced since the lock-out. I think this could be further improved upon by increasing the size of the rink to the International standard. We’ve got an extra referee on the ice now, and bigger, faster players than we used to have. Opening up more space for them to move around out there would make the game more free-flowing, and, in my opinion, more exciting. Opening up that extra space makes it that much more difficult to successfully employ a stymying defensive strategy.

On that note, I’d also like to see more 4-on-4. I’m not a real lover of the shoot-out anyways, so why not play a longer overtime at 4-on-4? Especially on a larger ice surface, I doubt we’d see many games go beyond 10 minutes of overtime anyways. I’d even like to see 4-on-4 overtime adopted for playoff games.

Standings

I’ve made my thoughts on this one known here before: I hate 3-point games! Every game should have the same impact on the standings. That’s why I would endorse a 3-point regulation win and only 2 points for an overtime/shootout win, while the loser still earns a single point. It doesn’t make sense to me that all wins are created equal while all losses are not.

Uniforms

Don’t let the Canucks design their own uniforms anymore. Seriously, they’ve subjected us to enough already.

The Draft

This is the selfish WHL fan in me talking, but bump the draft to 19 year olds. Let the kids play another year in junior hockey. For the most part, I think we’ll see better developed players, and less guesswork for the scouts and GMs on draft day.

Playoffs

Let’s go back to playing out of your division in the playoffs. Remember the 80’s where the Flames were always playing the Oilers, Kings, and Canucks in the playoffs? That’s how real rivalries are built. There’d need to be a bit of divisional re-alignment to facilitate that, or perhaps some type of wild card system like the NFL uses, but I think the fans would appreciate those match-ups, and it would inject that much more excitement into the post-season.

The Schedule

Hack it down to 70 games. Each game means a little bit more, and we can finish the playoffs before the CFL season starts.

Salaries

My economics classes tell me there’s nothing wrong with NHL salaries, since they are what the market will bear; however, I love Bob McCown’s suggestion that rather than earning a dollar value salary, each player earns a percentage of his team’s salary. Teams would then be rewarded financially for each win, thereby increasing each player’s pay incrementally over a reasonable base salary. Check out McCown’s Law for the full description of how this system would work.

This is my great fantasy. I doubt we’ll ever see any of it happen, but if we do, I’ll be happy to take credit for it.

The amount of debate in the NHL right now on a variety of potential rule changes has gotten me thinking: what would the ideal NHL look like?

Obviously there are going to be wide and differing opinions on this question if it is presented to different people, so, I’m presenting it here to different people. Bring me your wide and differing opinions!

I’d like to invite my fellow CalgaryFlames.net bloggers to post their own thoughts here. If you aren’t a CalgaryFlames.net blogger, you can email me at schrojo@gmail.com and I’ll post the insightful comments in another post in a week or so.

So, have at it? Want to change the rules or equipment? Maybe the buildings. Even the culture of the sport is fair game. I’ll post my own here soon!

If you follow the Flames, I probably don’t need to tell you that Dion Phaneuf’s numbers have been disappointing this season.

In 41 games, Dion has put up 3 goals, 23 assists, 26 points, and a -8 +/-. Let’s extrapolate that over 82 games so that we can compare it against the first three seasons of his career.

A good thing to note here are that Phaneuf doesn’t miss many games. So far he’s missed a grand total of three regular season games over three and a half NHL seasons. Pretty impressive for a guy who plays as physical as Dion. We also see a positive trend in terms of the assist and point totals; however, the goals and plus-minus totals show a shocking drop-off through the first half of this season.

At his current pace, Phaneuf’s goal total would be a third of his previous worst total. Worse than that, though, is a +/- that is 21 goals worse than his career-worst. And this is on a team that is currently winning their division and performing as one of the better teams in the NHL.

I’ve spent some time trying to explain the reason for these numbers. It was late Friday evening when I fired up NHL 09 on the Xbox and realized what Dion’s affliction is: it’s the “EA Curse” (known to football fans as the “Madden Curse“).

Who else has been afflicted by the NHL version of the curse?

Owen Nolan (NHL ‘01) - Nolan’s went from playing 78 games in 1999/2000 to only 57 games in 2000/01. He also saw his goals-assists-points totals drop from 44-40-84 to 24-25-49.

Mario Lemieux (NHL ‘02) - After his comeback to the Penguins in 2000/01 that saw him score 76 points in only 43 games, Lemieux was hampered by injury through much of the 2001/02 season, only playing 24 games (although he did tally an additional 31 points in that time). Maybe leading Canada to an Olympic gold medal could overshadow the curse here, but it was the beginning of a decline that saw Lemieux only score 36 goals in the parts of the coming three seasons that he participated in before retiring for good.

Jarome Iginla (NHL ‘03) - Phaneuf’s teammate was coming off of a 52 goal season in 20001/02 where he was a Hart Trophy finalist and an integral part of Canada’s Olympic gold medal win. Expectations were high, and Iginla’s numbers dropped off: 35 goals and 32 assists in 75 games, 29 points fewer than the previous season. It took a few seasons, but by 2006/07 Iginla found his way back into the 90+ point range and has kept on that pace ever since.

Dany Heatley (NHL ‘04) - 41 goals and 48 assists in 2002/03 had expectations high for Heatley in 03/04 until the car crash that took the life of teammate Dan Snyder. After recovering from the injuries he sustained, Heatley managed to play in 31 games, scoring 13 goals. He never played for the Thrashers again after that, heading to Ottawa for a change of scenery.

Markus Naslund (NHL ‘05) - Averaging 93 points in he prior three seasons, Naslund played only 13 games in 2004/05, all with Swedish club MODO, during the NHL’s lockout season.

Who wasn’t hit by it?
Vincent Lecavalier (NHL ‘06), Alexander Ovechkin (NHL ‘07), and Eric Staal (NHL ‘08) - No curse for these guys, unless you call Ovechkin’s drop from 106 points to 92 points a huge slide. His +2 to -19 slide is worth noting.

As the Flames continue to win night in and night out, we can hope that Phaneuf overcomes the effects of the EA Curse to better help the team to continue that roll.