Lindros : "Take your ceremony and shove it"

Over at TSN, I saw this innocuous looking article about the Flyers paying tribute to the old Spectrum with a special ceremony on September 27th.

Two things jumped out at me. First, Eric Lindros is still pretty upset about the way things ended in Philly. The Flyers are throwing a party and a pre-season game against the Hurricanes in the Spectrum. They have invited all 15 former Captains to the ceremony. It sounds like most are going to be there, while Lindros has said that he has a "previous commitment".

One other thing about this article is that it's very poorly typed, and not edited at all. In addition to a couple of typographical and punctuation errors, the writer referred to Keith Primeau as "Kevin". I cut and pasted this quote as is:

While Clarke, Lou Angotti, Mel Bridgman, Dave Poulin, Ed Van Impe, Bill Barber, Ron Sutter and Kevin Primeau have confirmed their attendance, Lindros has declined because of a previous commitment according to senior vice president of business operations Shawn Tilger.

That's good for at least one laugh.

While I'm on the topic of Lindros, I beg you to revisit an article about him from The Onion in November of 2007.

In case you've forgotten just how monstrous the 1992 Lindros-to-Philly trade was, I'll rehash it. Quebec sent Eric Lindros to the Flyers in what has to be one of the most ridiculous trades ever. In return, the Nordiques got:

the rights to Foppa, who was still in Swedish Junior Hockey

Steve Duchesne, who put up 82 (20/62) points in 1992-93

defenseman Kerry Huffman

Mike Ricci, who put up 78 (27/51) points in 92-93

Ron Hextall, who won 29 games in nets in 92-93

Chris Simon

a first round pick which became Jocelyn Thibault

a first round pick which became Nolan Baumgartner
and here's the kicker....

$15M in cash.

There is no doubt that Lindros had a brilliant career with the Flyers. There is also no doubt that the Nordiques/Avs got the better end.

That monstrous trade came just after an arbitrator had invalidated a huge trade with the Rangers that would have been:

Doug Weight

Tony Amonte

Alexei Kovalev

John Vanbiesbrouck

1993 first round pick (Niklas Sundstrom)

1994 first round pick (Dan Cloutier)

1995 first round pick

$12M cash

When Lindros was finally traded away from Philly after he missed the entire 2000-01 season due to concussions, the return wasn't quite so fantastic. Two bums who would later become Hurricanes (Jan Hlavac, Pavel Brendl) plus Kim Johnsson and a third round pick (Stefan Ruzcika).

Seven years after the trade, Lindros is still sore about the way team doctors treated him in Philly. He's still sore about Bobby Clarke calling him "soft" in the papers. He's still sore about not getting a trade to Toronto. He's still sore about getting stripped of his captaincy.

What Eric Lindros needs to understand is that this isn't about Bobby Clarke. This isn't about some team doctor. This is about the city of Philadelphia, the fans, the building. This is ...

What would Kate Smith do?

Another retirement

The Onion scores another goal with its parody story about Eric Lindros retiring from a "78 year career" with Citibank.
This is right up there with some of their best hockey comedy.

My all-time favorite is If Al-Qaeda Had a Hockey Team, We'd Kick Its Ass!. I swear I burst into hysterical, cant-breathe, tears-streaming-down-my-face laughter every time I read that one. Unless you hate comedy, I strongly urge you to click and read. Here's a snippet:

President Bush'd be there to fire up our skaters by looking right at the al-Qaeda bench and repeating his warning to all terrorists: "Bring it on!" The crowd would go nuts! Everyone would be going so crazy, they'd hardly hear Ted Nugent sing the national anthem! The camera would cut to the al-Qaeda bench, and they'd all be sitting in their towel helmets thinking, "Oh, shit, what the fuck did we get ourselves into?"

Here are links to some of my other favorite hockey parody stories with little previews:

• NHL Admits Slam-Dunk Contest Portion of All-Star Skills Competition a Mistake ("Marian Hossa may have ended his career when he tried, and failed, to dunk from the blue line.")
  
• TeemuSelanne Practices Kissing Stanley Cup on Hand (Giguere said his offer to loan Selanne his homemade aluminum-foil kissing-practice cup was rebuffed by Selanne as "just sad.")
  
• Carolina Residents Confused, Terrified as Victorious Hurricane Players Riot in Streets("Following their leader—a man Canadian officials have identified as one Rod Brind'Amour—a group of between 26 and 30 heavily bearded Caucasians drove onto the Raleigh Chapel Hill Expressway at speeds exceeding 120 mph, causing several traffic accidents and overturning one 16-wheeler, which eventually exploded," Perlov said. "The members of the gang we're calling 'The Hurricanes' then exited their vehicles and descended on Hillsborough Street, where they entered the storied Velvet Cloak Inn, woke up guests by throwing alarm clocks, chairs, and mattresses out the windows, and then promptly burned them.")

Good stuff. Good stuff.

Eric Staal on cover of EA's NHL '08

This week, EA Sports announced that Carolina Hurricanes center Eric Staal will be on the cover of NHL 2008, which will be released in September. People quickly started talking about the "EA Curse". I see no reason to be alarmed. It doesn't work with hockey games. This applies mainly to the Madden football games. The cover star of that game almost always goes on to have a horrible season or suffer a terrible injury that season. Or go to jail.
Mike Chen once wrote something about the EA Hockey curse, but I'm not buying it. Neither is "Stormbringer". In her words:

My personal take on a good chunk of the above is that a lot of it is *really* a stretch. To me, a "curse" would be solidified by the bad things happening to the cover boys in the season that their respective EA game is supposed to represent, NOT a few seasons later.

A few years ago, on the other blog, I wrote this piece to debunk the Sports Illustrated Superbowl Jinx. You can read about that here and also here.

For now, I'll just go over the EA NHL games since 1997, which was the first year that they used a "cover boy"

1997 -- John Vanbiesbrouck
After helping the Panthers reach the Stanley Cup Final in 1996, goalie John Vanbiesbrouck had a slightly better season while he was featured on the game box.
His record went from 26-20-7 in '96 to 27-19-10 in '97. His GAA went from 2.68 to 2.29 and his save % went from .904 to .919. He had a few more decent seasons after.

1998 -- Peter Forsberg
Foppa's game was also slightly better while he was the cover boy. In 1997, he had 86 points (28/58) in 65 games. While he was on the game box, he had 91 points (25/66) in 72 games. The points per game production was down by a hair, but he was healthier, and being on the box wasn't anything like a "curse" that season.

1999 -- Eric Lindros
Big E's numbers went up pretty significantly after being on the box. In 1998, he had 71 (30/41) points in 63 games. After starring on the box, he had 93 (40/53) points in 71 games. It would be his last "great" season


2000 -- Chrissy Pronger
The former Whaler had his career best season while he was on the game box. He had 62 points on 14 goals and 48 assists. All of these were -- and still are -- career high marks. He also won the Bud Light Plus/Minus award for the second time that year, finishing the season with an amazing +52 rating. Also a career best.

2001 -- Owen Nolan
This guy had a bad season while on the box. He had a career best (playing over ability) 84 point (44/40) season the previous year, but was riddled with injuries and only mustered 49 (24/25) points in 57 games for the Sharks in 2001. Although his points were down, they were back on the "normal" level after the extraordinary season in 2000. Not so much a "curse" as a return to normalcy.

2002 -- SuperMario
Mario Lemieux played half a season in 2001, but still managed to put up awesome numbers with 76 (35/41) points in just 43 games. He beat cancer and came back with a great half-season, and it was an obvious thing to put him on the box. He suffered injuries in 2002, and was limited to 24 games. However, he tallied 31 points (6/25), which would be equal to having 106 points over 82 games. Not bad at all. He rebounded the following year some outstanding numbers, but his health caused him to be a shadow of the player he once was.

2003 -- Jarome Iginla
Iggy had a bit of a letdown after winning the Rocket Richard trophy in 2002. He went from 96 (52/44) points in '02 to a paltry 67 (35/32) points in '03. Like Owen Nolan, though, his big season was a flash in the pan, and the "letdown" was really just a return to normalcy. He did, however reach the 90 point plateau again this past season.

2004 (a) -- Dany Heatley
We don't need to discuss what happened there. Actually, he put up pretty decent numbers after returning from the massive injury, and while he was battling inner demons the whole time.
2004 (b) -- Joe Sakic
Sakic had a big season for the Avs, maintaining his career average of slightly better than a point a night. He totaled 87 (33/54) points in 81 games.

2005 -- Markus Naslund
There was no season, due to the lockout, so we can't really comment there.

2006 -- Vincent LaCavalier
Before the lockout, the Horseman had a "fair" 66 (32/34) point season, but led his team to the Stanley Cup Championship. In '06, he put up 75 (35/40) points, but his best was yet to come. In '07, he tallied 108 (52/56) points and won the Rocket Richard.

2007 -- Alexander Ovechkin

AO's career has been too short to talk about things like "career averages" and things of that nature, so we'll just say that there was a slight decline in points production during his sophomore season. He put up 106 (52/54) points in his rookie campaign, then "dropped" to "just" 92 (46/46) points last year. Not enough of a drop to be worthy of note, and not enough data to make any other judgement.




2008 -- Eric Staal
Staalsy blew up in his sophomore season, hitting the 100 point (45/55) mark, but fell considerably to just 70 (30/40)points last season. We're looking forward to a return to the 100 point club next year.

No reason to sweat it. There's no curse.