Jim Nill, Assistant General Manager, Detroit Red Wings, agrees that predicting how a player will develop, and if he will at all, is one of the toughest parts of amateur scouting.  The varying development cycles of prospects, not only physically but mentally and emotionally, too, all make amateur scouting a head spinner.

-The Art of Scouting, Shane Malloy: John Wiley & Sons (2011), p. 17.

Many of my difficulties with Shane Malloy’s The Art of Scouting are in evidence in the passage from the book quoted above.  These criticisms relate to matters of both style and substance.  Malloy’s effort is stricken by so many technical issues, for example, that one might seriously question whether anyone at Wiley & Sons was tasked with editing the manuscript.  Proper names are – maddeningly and inexplicably – italicized throughout the book.   I know of no other work of literature in the English language that observes this convention.  Don’t even get me started on the haphazard manner in which punctuation is deployed; commas in the above-noted passage, typical of the work on the whole, appear to have been applied with the degree of care and precision that one generally associates with the use of a potato gun.  Content-wise, did I really just read a (tortured) sentence that struggled to relate to me a piece of un-information, namely that one of the hardest parts of amateur scouting is predicting whether an amateur player will be any good in the future?

Whatever, right?  Nobody reads a hockey book for the writing.  It’s ultimately about the hockey content, isn’t it?  For the record, I disagree.  I can think of at least three hockey books off the top of my head that I consider to be enjoyable primarily on account of the writers’ craft.   The writing need not play a starring role, perhaps, but without skilfull storytelling and clarity of expression the reader’s immersion in any subject material is inhibited.   The importance of a certain amount of technical merit is underscored by its absence, when (as in this book) that is the case.  Frequently awkward and almost juvenile, Malloy’s  text is from an aesthetic perspective frankly something to be endured rather than enjoyed.

Obviously, though, the marquee feature of a book about scouting, especially one that is subtitled “How the Hockey Experts Really Watch the Game and Decide Who Makes It”, is the promise that a light will be shone on the obscure habits and arcane methods of the (mostly anonymous) bird dogs in scouting circles.  In this regard, it must be said that – as perhaps the passage quoted above might suggest – Malloy’s book fails almost as spectacularly and almost as completely.

The concept of the book is, in my opinion, a strong one;  it is in the execution of that concept that this book falters.  Malloy is, according to the jacket on the book, a columnist and broadcaster who has been covering hockey prospects “for the past decade.”  He is apparently a co-host of Hockey Prospect Radio on Sirius Satellite Radio, though I have never heard of either the show or the author.  I gather that he has been involved in scouting for some time.  His concept was to take what he had learned about hockey scouting and complement it with the wisdom of others;  as a member of the scouting fraternity, Malloy was able to interview his peers and hoped to get them to talk about what exactly it is that they do for a living.  I was very excited by the notes on the book jacket  (a work of “tremendous substance” according to Doug Wilson; an inside look at what scouts do, per Bob McKenzie); I thought that I might enhance my ability to watch hockey critically by reading about what exactly it is that the scouts look for when evaluating talent.

Sadly, the book mostly fails to deliver any specific technical information in that regard.  For the most part, the information conveyed is either insultingly obvious (do I really need a flowchart to explain that typically, a team’s Assistant Director of Amateur Scouting reports to the Director of Amateur Scouting and “assists [him] with all of his duties”?) to the only slightly less obvious (scouts apparently look to see if a prospect can skate fast with the puck) to the  maddeningly uninformative (a section comes to mind in which readers are told that scouts are always on the lookout for prospects whose hands are “too high” or “too low”  on the stick – without giving any real guidance as to what parameters are preferable.)   In truth, what Malloy accomplishes is merely to set out a laundry list of issues or concerns that scouts typically look for – quickness, puck sense, decision-making, skating ability, physicality, etc. – without really delving into how physically the scouts watch for these things.  My complaint about the book is that as a former (rec league) player and follower of the sport, given half an hour and a pencil, I probably could have come up with at least 95% of these issues or concerns on my own, and you could too;  what I wanted was some insight into how the scouts identify those who possess the desired qualities while watching underdeveloped prospects compete against inferior opposition.  Not much of that was forthcoming.

Consider the section Malloy devotes to skating.  Like most of the specific attributes singled out for discussion in this book, skating is first said to be “one of the hardest” qualities for scouts to assess (page 113).  The general proposition that Malloy seems to advance is that few players in the cohort scoured by the scouts are possessed of a “perfect”, mechanically sound skating motion, and that the problem facing scouts evaluating young players, therefore, is identifying which players’ skating motion will be good enough, or successfully improved, to permit the prospect to achieve success in the NHL?  Malloy then says (at p. 118):

Most scouts and fans can see the players who don’t bend their knees or who are knock-kneed, but it’s the other little aspects that are harder to figure out.  When Jay Heinbeck is watching a player’s stride, he’s looking for a hint that the flaws aren’t going to be an issue moving forward.

“I often try to look at the the stride itself and the mechanics of it.  Is it the type of stride that strength and practice can improve? Or is that stride always going to hinder him, with little window for improvement?”

This passage begs the question:  what “flaws”, specifically, in the stride will be “an issue” moving forward?  What “type” of stride is susceptible to improvement through practice and the addition of strength?  What “type” of stride is not a candidate for this improvement?  These questions scream out for an answer, but questions such as these slip by unanswered in rapid fire succession throughout the book.   Ultimately, this passage collapses into an assertion of evaluation through unarticulated criteria – a reliance upon those with experience alone as judges.  If it is impossible to articulate precisely what components of the stride scouts look to for the answer to this question, it amounts to an assertion that they simply rely upon comparisons spontaneously brought to mind from patterns previously imprinted in their memories.  If that’s really all there is to scouting, it is no wonder that athletic scouts struggle so mightily to identify the talented among us in every sport.

The format of Malloy’s work is grating: peppered liberally with direct quotes from his sources, the text often reads as though these quotes are mere restatements of the general propositions with which Malloy has introduced them.  It would have been preferable for Malloy to vastly reduce the number of direct-quote passages and instead to write more analytically, synthesizing the information obtained from his sources into a more comprehensive and intelligible whole.  The continuous statement and restatement of more or less obvious observations – introduced first in a sentence or two by Malloy, then reiterated in a quoted passage from his industry source -  leaves the reader with the impression that far too many platitudes have been relied upon.  Consider the following pasage, from page 186 in the section on Goaltenders:

Corey Hirsch believes that the ability of prospects to play through minor injuries is a must in today’s NHL.  He points out that the larger goalies have an advantage in absorbing physical punishment.  The susceptibility of the smaller goaltender to injury is a serious consideration for scouts.

“The ability to play through injury is an aspect that we look at, and it seems the bigger goaltenders tend to be more durable these days with the crease crashing.  Although, as a scout you never want to completely rule out a smaller goaltender with ability.”

It is not surprising to me that scouts (and, by extension, their NHL organizations) want goaltenders who are durable, and that larger goaltenders might be believed to be more likely to survive the rigours of the pro game.  I certainly didn’t need to be told about this twice in consecutive paragraphs, particularly where the quoted passage is, in actual fact, much more ambivalent about the necessity of size for a goaltender than Malloy’s introductory statement would have you believe.

The general impression left by the book is that Malloy’s insiders only tell you that things like skating, passing, physicality, hockey sense and will are all important to them, that all of these are difficult or challenging to assess, and that nothing of value can be said about any of them that would assist someone  to reliably identify what observations of an individual might be made to identify those possessing the requisite level of skill and those without.  The overall effect is that writing about scouting seems – with apologies to Martin Mull – to be a little bit like dancing about architecture.

That general impression is unfortunate, first because it is difficult to believe that the proposition is accurate – it must be possible to articulate with some precision the desirable aspects of skills that are, in fact taught through verbal instruction by coaches in rinks across the country.  Second, it is unfortunate  because there are some informative specifics in this book, but these sections appear sporadically and tend to be obscured by the format of the text and the surfeit of generalities.  Through reading this book, for example, I learned that scouts look at whether a prospect alters the distance from his body at which he carries the puck (closely in traffic, further away and more out front of the body when on the rush).

My overall assessment of the book is that it represents a decent first draft of the book that should’ve been written on this subject, organizing the structure of the information to be imparted, but a first draft that represents nothing more than a statement of the problem to be tackled by the text, and in dire need of aggressive editing and a significant re-write at that.  I believe that an editor would wholly excise the chapter devoted to the “memorable” pranks played by scouts on one another – spoiler alert: they are not memorable at all.  What they are is thematically unrelated to the rest of the book; awkward and unentertaining, they ought to go.  An editor would drastically reduce the number of directly quoted passages, and would demand that Malloy provide some specific and concrete details in the areas of interest identified by scouts.  To be expanded would be sections on the steps pro clubs are taking to enhance their institutional efforts to assist players in their development and a tantalizing but all too brief segment about the use and development of some software called RinkNet – a scouting information database apparently used by 29 out of 30 NHL teams¹ (page 52).   Without these efforts, the book for the most part disappoints the reader hoping for help in revolutionizing the way he or she watches the game.

———————

¹How the hell could Malloy include this sentence in the book without going on to identify the lone technological holdout among the big league clubs?  How glaringly obvious is the fans’ desire to know which of the 30 teams is too cheap to shell out for a tool that every other club has found invaluable?

A Ninja, doing the hokey pokey

You may have noticed that this blog has fallen dormant over the last little while.  I am a ninja, and I am here to tell you about that.  Why has a ninja been sent to explain these things?  Fool! It is not the right time for you to ask questions.  When will that time be?  Sometime shortly after the next Atlanta Thrashers Stanley Cup parade will do fine.

The Junior, Lord and Master of the Juniorvanian Realm, has been a busy Lord and Master.  Not just “I need to fix the trailer tire” busy – as you have seen, he can find time to write while being that kind of busy – but Very Busy In A Work Related Way busy.  Also, you may have heard that there has come a child to Juniorvania.  So, Very Busy In A Work Related Way has also been augmented by Very Busy In An Emptying Diapers Way.  All of which is very busy indeed.

I would think it’s fairly obvious now why a ninja has been sent to speak to you.  Yes, that’s right, because of global warming.

I, the Ninja, will now bring the message to you.  It is in several parts, which I have not bothered to count yet, because I have been busy sneaking around instead.  You may not know this, but sneaking around is a major part of pretty much any ninja’s day.  I didn’t know, before I went to ninja school.  For some reason, I thought there would be a lot more singing and dancing, but I suppose I was mixed up and thinking of Broadway actors by mistake.

One thing James Reimer can't stop: the momentum of the Maple Leafs Annual

Anyway, here is the message:

1. There has NOT been an unfortunate tire repair-related explosion;  The Junior is alive and well;
2. The Junior does plan to return to regular – or what passes for “regular”around here, anyway – blogging, probably sometime in September;
3. In the meantime, The Junior has written a something, once again, for Maple Street Press’ Maple Leafs Annual.  The book is available for pre-order online now ($9.99 plus shipping).  It will appear on newsstands throughout the GTA and in Chapters bookstores across Canada beginning August 30th.

It doesn’t take a Ninja to figure out that 112 pages of content  with no ads, for less than ten bucks, is a pretty good deal.  As Alec Brownscombe (esteemed editor of the mag and Resident Padishah of Maple Leafs Hot Stove) pointed out, you were probably going to spend that ten bucks on a crappy calendar anyway.

Anyway, I gotta get back to skulking around invisibly, or I’ll have to answer to my boss.  Ever had your work environment supervised by a Master Ninja?  Let me tell you, it’s no day at the beach;  you can’t get away with anything.   You can’t ever tell when he’s in the room.  At least I think my boss is a male.  Not sure, now come to think of it.

See ya!  You won’t see me, though…

Round and round and round they go, where they stop, nobody knows except that everybody knows it's not here.

Noted fishwrapper/parakeet cage liner the Toronto Star has news today that is guaranteed to fan the already raging nationalistic fire that burns so brightly among many about the state of professional hockey.  According to the Star, a report published today by the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation at the University of Toronto argues that the league “should focus on bolstering the game in Canada where demand is greatest”.

Canada’s six teams account for nearly one-third of league revenue. Most of those loonies end up in the United States, which has 24 teams, through revenue sharing.

The report, titled “The New Economics of the NHL,” uses potential gate revenue as a measure of economic success. It looks at 10 Canadian cities and ranks each as a potential host for an NHL team, based on size, wealth, geographic location and other factors.

There are six Canadian markets where a new NHL team would thrive, the report found, citing Greater Toronto as the best one.

In fact, with 9 million people, the larger Golden Horseshoe could successfully support as many as three NHL teams. The study found that another team would be successful in Hamilton, London or Kitchener-Waterloo.

Montreal and Vancouver also have enough demand, as do Winnipeg and Quebec City. Teams in any of those cities would generate higher gate revenues than the average U.S. Sun Belt team.

DISCLAIMER: I haven’t read the report.  It follows, then, that in reacting to this news, I am relying heavily upon the Star to have accurately summarized the content of the report in question.  I am well aware that there is little compelling evidence to suggest that such reliance is warranted.

It seems to me, though, that two important points need to be kept in mind about these findings when this report is inevitably brandished by those who favour repatriation of the Coyotes Jets, or the importation of the Atlanta Thrashers (or whatever the troubled franchise du jour happens to be):

1. The study seems to rely upon potential gate revenue (tickets sold) as the key metric of success for an NHL team.  Though I don’t have the time at the moment to Google up the relevant data, I believe that it is true that the NHL, when compared to other professional sports leagues, relies disproportionately upon ticket sales to drive revenue.   The key business problem facing the league as a result of that fact is that it limits the growth potential of the business.  If income is almost entirely dependent upon tickets sold, you can only increase income by selling more tickets; if you can only sell more tickets by either (a) adding more capacity (through expansion of the league or physically increasing the size of the buildings in which the game is played) or (b) ensuring that you sell more of the currently available tickets (increasing efficiency by reducing unsold inventory).   Whichever of these growth strategies are employed (and they’re not mutually exclusive), the fact remains that there are real limits to the currently unexploited potential.   How many teams are too many?   Some would argue that the current complement of 30 is excessive; does anyone believe the NHL would be viable with 36 teams?  Forty?  Similarly, it would be ludicrous to plan for expanding gate revenue by simply doubling the size of the buildings.   The point is that if the NHL is to have its eyes on real sustainable growth of its business over the long-term, it needs to develop additional revenue streams.  By now, everybody should know that “additional revenue streams” means either getting paid for a national television rights in the U.S., or finding another way (Internet, PPV) to deliver the content to consumers willing to pay for it.  At the end of the day, this study – at least according to the Star article – says nothing about the effect upon that growth strategy that an increased concentration of teams in Canada would have.
2. The study assesses the suitability of ten Canadian markets for an NHL team and concludes that six would perform (again, concentrating on gate revenues) better than current “Sun Belt” teams.  Keeping in mind the limitations of the gate-revenue focus discussed above in point #1, all that can really be said is that if the NHL decides it can and should put another team in Canada, that the GTA is the best available option from that perspective, with Hamilton, Montreal, Vancouver, Kitchener-Waterloo and London all ahead of Winnipeg and Quebec City in the estimation of the reports’ authors.  In other words, because of the limitations of the reports’ focus, it should probably only be used as a tool to select among Canadian candidate cities, rather than as evidence of the superiority of the Canadian option on the whole.

One last thought:  it was interesting to me how far down the list of suitable candidates Winnipeg and Quebec City were ranked.  Much of the media coverage of the Coyotes and Thrashers recent problems, at least since the death of Mr. Balsillie’s proposal to bring the Coyotes to Hamilton, has been premised on the unstated assumption that Winnipeg and Quebec City are the leading candidates.  This may very well be so, in that these cities are favoured by the League for reasons of its own.  What is made clear as a result of this report is that if the NHL does have such a preference, it must be premised upon considerations that are much more far-ranging than merely potential gate revenue.

Somebody at this Brantford Garden Centre has a brand new Leaf fan in the family (Click image for larger version).

I was rushing home from the office with a hot meal for a sickly Spouse (I cook only the best take out dishes), late for an appointment at the bank to clean up the latest of my absurd little financial disasters.

It was Tuesday night.  The Leafs were set to face off at 7:30 (ed. showing my age here) 7:00 that night against the Capitals, needing to claim all the points left on the table, and further needing the Sabres to go oh-fer, in order to have a shot at the playoffs.  On April 5th, with three games left on the schedule, the Leafs were – for a change – playing a game that mattered.

I was excited, I was tired, I was harried.  I was charging along possessed by that momentous urgency that develops, seemingly of its own accord, out of the need to get too many things done in too short a period of time.  In addition to my pending nutritional errand and the dollars and cents issues, my mind was idly grappling with any number of a series of problems I’ve been trying to solve in this enormous and rapidly approaching assignment at work.

As I sped along Park Rd. north of Brantford, having relegated tasks concerning the operation of a motor vehicle to the hypothalmus, I was jolted from my near automatic state by a glimpse – just out of the corner of my otherwise occupied eye, mind you – of the sign pictured at left.

The car charged further north along the road, and I found myself glancing in the rear view mirror trying to make sense of the incomplete image of the letters left in my mind.

“I’m sure,” I told myself, “that the sign contained a message addressed to Brian Burke.”  And I was pretty sure that part of the message was something to the effect that our “prayers have been answered.”  I had to fight the urge to turn the car around and go back for a second look.  “I am a grown up person,” I told myself, “late for a meeting and with a starving and sick wife at home.”   This last bit, staring at myself sternly in the rear-view mirror, as I very determinedly did not slow down.   Willing myself to let maturity prevail over juvenile excitement and curiosity.

I am as shocked as you are to report that my car did not slow down that night;  I really wasn’t sure I had that in me.

The following morning, however, it was amazing how easy it was to talk myself into the naturalness, the reasonableness – no, the necessity of taking a slightly adjusted path to work.  One that took me past the sign, with my cell phone camera armed and ready.

Of course, most anyone who’s reading this is well aware by now that the jerkstore Tampa Bay Lightning were unable to conquer the Sabres that night and the Maple Leaf playoff dream died with about two minutes remaining in the Leafs/Caps 3rd period.  The game was tied, the issue between those two teams not yet sorted, but the conclusion of another season foregone and unhappy.  Still, with the play of James Reimer leading the way, there is much to be hopeful about among Leafs fans.  It is possible to believe that the team may have turned a very important corner since the All-Star break.

We’re not in the playoffs again this year, but I am happy that this team has instilled in me a sort of hope and excitement that feels youthful.  My love for the team has been re-invigorated over the last two and a half months.  There is a freshness for me about the idea of being a Leafs fan again; I’d say I’m not alone, judging by the sign pictured above.

Attention Mr. Cole: Eight birds might not actually be able to lift a whale out of the ocean.

Cam Cole wrote a ridiculous article today about social media and the National Hockey League trade deadline.

Cole mentions that during the intense discussions surrounding today’s NHL trade deadline, many people availed themselves of the opportunity to have a little fun;  some folk decided to create Twitter accounts that appeared to emanate from real hockey media personalities.  Down Goes Brown decided to spice up a dull morning by using the new media to organize the 21st century (ahem) grownup equivalent of a class clown prank.  Following the lead of an old high school classic, the  “co-ordinated, math-class-derailing pre-arranged 11:45 coughing fit”, DGB suggested that at 12:50, everyone should send the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Joffrey Lupul (@JLupul) a tweet that appeared to refer to his “trade” to Long Island (that trade being, of course, an entirely fictitious event which had not occurred).  The tweets were sent en masse.  Lupul appears to have played along with the gag, tweeting shortly afterwards that he was “Long Island bound. So I hear…”

I didn’t see it, but apparently the “Lupul trade” was, for a time, being reported by some as an actual event.  I saw some Tweets indicating that it was briefly posted on the Philadelphia Flyers’ website, and – according to Cole’s article – Gord Miller and TSN briefly fell for it too, relaying the information to unsuspecting viewers watching their Trade Deadline Special.

At first, Cole’s article reads like a more or less good-natured look at these virtual hijinks in the social context within which they occurred.  The first two thirds of the article, at times, read a bit like a barely concealed admiration for the inherent hunour in the Lupul prank in particular:

Fake Twitter accounts impersonating hockey reporters moved April Fool’s Day ahead by a month and pranked the National Hockey League’s massively over-hyped trade deadline, briefly duping both those trying so feverishly to be first with the news and those hungering to get it — and, in the process, greatly enlivening a day of sparse activity and mostly minor deals.

Got it?  The Twitterers “pranked” the NHL and lampooned the “over-hyped” deadline, “greatly enlivening” the day.  Pretty good stuff, huh?

In the end, though, Cole ends up clucking his tongue at those involved like a disapproving schoolmaster:

The actual Bob McKenzie (TSNBobMcKenzie) has 114,000 followers. BMcKenzieTSN and TSN—BobMcKenzie? They have fooled 957 and 549 gullible followers, respectively, by attaching McKenzie’s photo to their Twitter accounts, and yes, there ought to be a law against that.

But there isn’t. So they are free to live in their parents’ basements, plotting to bring the world to its knees with their cleverness, nibbling away at the social network’s credibility — as if it cared — one little white lie at a time.

Now, I’m not here to tell you that I understand why some people would get their jollies concocting fake trades to whirl around the Internet, and I’m not suggesting that DGB’s little prank is the comic equivalent of Newton’s contribution to calculus;  I can tell you, however, that people discussing things amongst each other, having fun, and taking the piss out of one another is probably nothing to be terribly alarmed about.  It’s been happening wherever people have gathered socially for thousands of years.  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that somewhere, deep in an unexplored cave in northern Europe, there is a cave painting that is now difficult to comprehend, but which – back on the day it was first splattered on the rock – was the functional equivalent of a Star Wars Kid mashup.

My point is not that I think “fake Twitter accounts” are desirable and necessary, but rather that social media platforms represent a meeting place, not just another broadcast medium.  Twitter is a conversation;  the content may be partly based in the news, but it is wholly about entertainment.  Journalists who choose to rely on it and rebroadcast it unfiltered and without any value (such as fact-checking) added – in my opinion – do their readers or viewers a disservice.

Lastly, the final point about “nibbling away at the social network’s credibility” is so astonishing I honestly don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.  It’s Twitter; it HAS NO CREDIBILITY in the first place.

The logic is so confused in this article, it’s honestly difficult to follow Cole’s reasoning as to why he feels that the legislative process needs to be invoked.  It’s very hard, however, to escape the general feeling that the Cam Cole No Pissing Around on Twitter Law is necessary solely to protect lazy journalists who are in such a breakneck rush to report the news that they’re basically just reading their Twitter feed directly into the camera without doing some basic fact-checking first.

Evidently, the Damien Cox example didn’t take. You remember the Toronto Star (now also Sportsnet) columnist who broke news of former coach Pat Burns’s death in September, two months before it happened, because of an honest mistake? Oh, the copycats who leaped on the story that day and spread it without making sure it was true were duly apologetic at the time, and a little cautious for a while afterward, but that was more than five months ago.

…

All kinds of highly respected, earnest reporters were duped, if only for a matter of minutes, and a lot of effort was wasted trying to chase down the truth, revealing the mean-spirited side of the pranks, which all had one thing in common: none originated with mainstream media, but rather with those trying to make the MSM chase its own tail.

Do you follow that?  Damien Cox made an “honest mistake” when he wrongly reported Pat Burns’ death, but “highly respected” and “earnest reporters” were “duped” when they failed to do the minimal checks necessary to make sure @ForREELZESPN_LeBrun – the account reporting the trade of a puck moving defenceman for a bag of doughnuts – is actually related to the hockey journalist in question.  To review: Damien Cox makes an honest mistake, those engaged in that line of work fail to learn from it, and – by breathlessly reporting gossip overheard in a virtual barroom as fact – are victims of  “mean-spirited” and socially destructive users of the Internet.  Heads I win, tails you lose.

The part I have a very difficult time understanding is how Cole misses the point.  He actually points out, in the middle portion of the article, how easy it is in most cases to spot a fake Gord Miller Twitter account merely by reading the contents of the page on which the tweets appear (Gord Miller’s Twitter account has probably been around for more than two hours, likely contains more than eight tweets, and it’s highly likely the real Gord Miller has more than 52 followers).  In other words, Cole identifies the ease with which these “frauds” can be discovered, but swerves right past the legitimate target – so-called reporters relying on random stuff posted on the Internet for Christ’s sake as accurate – and instead delivers a confusing, poorly reasoned and somewhat startling conclusion generally indicting humans for just fucking around.

Good luck putting a stop to that.

(a) a one goal third-period lead vs. Pittsburgh on Saturday; OR

(b) a two goal lead vs. Atlanta this afternoon.

…but I’m really more worried about James Reimer.  He’s looking more and more like the future of our team between the pipes.

Couldn’t help noticing that all those whose tongues were loudly clucking at the end of the recent Boston game (the one where Grabovski played after taking a couple hard hits and wobbled coming off the ice) were nowhere to be found tonight;  no one was applauding the Leafs’ apparent cautious regard for Reimer’s health.  Despite desperately trying to climb into a playoff spot, and with the young Leaf netminder nursing a shutout through most of two periods,  Reimer was replaced by J.S. Giguere after taking an apparent knee to the side of his noggin from Evander Kane.

One other thing that went mostly un-noticed (though, to be fair, the Sportsnet crew was on it) was this: Dustin Byfuglien is a jerkstore.  With time expired at the end of the third period, he skated up behind Freddie Sjostrom and speared him in the back of the knee.  Every hockey player knows that’s a dick move that risks injuring the  opponent.  This particularly spear behind the knee was a cowardly attack from behind after the period had ended.

Here’s the video evidence:

As an aside, I noted that Boston is expected to give tonight’s start in goal to Tim Thomas;  no doubt the insertion of the burly and aggressive backstop is Claude Julien’s attempt to defend against the Leafs’ offensive plan.  You know, the one where Colton Orr bowls the opposing goalie over and Tim Brent shoots the puck off him and into the net.

Sweet Jesus, I hope Kessel gets a goal tonight.  Just out of curiosity, I wonder what it would take to actually shut the media up on the “Kessel can’t score against Boston” front?  A hattie?  A five-spot?  A Sittler-esque ten point night?

I am prepared to decree that we have a team.  We have a team that skates hard and forces turnovers.  We have a team that plays together.  We have a team that is able to play reasonably competent team defence.  We have a team that can play a smart road game – ignore the fact the zebras are screwing you, play with urgency but also discipline, pounce on the chances you get, take an early lead to get the crowd out of it and above all, stick to the plan.

We’ve got a team.

Think of this: the team effort and systematic forecheck that the Leafs have managed to consistently rely on has tonight masked relatively weak efforts by Kessel and Bozak.  Kessel has been mostly a non-factor in this game so far, but it hasn’t mattered because guys like Mike Brown, Clarke MacArthur, Mike Zigomanis, Colby Armstrong and Tim Brent have been busting their butts, causing havoc (and lots of turnovers).

Our team dominated the first half of the first period so thoroughly, the Penguins didn’t have a shot on net until the fourth minute of a Luke Schenn high-sticking double minor.  Poor fortune saw the shot go in, and worse fortune saw the Penguins (who seemed to briefly come out of a coma following that goal) add another late in the period.  Refusing to surrender, the Leafs stormed back out in the second period and once again imposed their will on the Penguins with speed and determination.  They regained the lead and The Monster came up with an enormous post-to-post save on Max Talbot (UPDATE: right, except that the save was on Pascal Dupuis, as NHLCheapshot points out in the comments below) to preserve a one goal margin at the time.  Shortly thereafter the Leafs counterpunched again and built the lead to 4-2 on a bang bang pass from Grabovski to MacArthur in front of the Pittsburgh net.

The Penguins turned up the heat late in the second and for the last four minutes or so of the period, carried the play.  Gustavsson came up with another huge save on Malkin on a play that saw Malkin awarded a try from the penalty spot – that the enigmatic Russian promptly fired wide.  A late marker from Crosby (on which the Monster could not be faulted) raised the possibility of a third period collapse and a mere moral victory.

It could still happen.  As I type this, there are 14:00 left in the third period, and it has to be said that the Penguins look more desperate and a bit more organized.  Orr has left the game after getting clobbered by Engellard (who?) and Grabovski has taken a shot off the foot, leaving the Leafs possibly undermanned.  Clarke MacArthur has just deposited the puck in the stands to give the Pens a power play.

But I don’t think it’s going to happen.  I believe in this team.  I believe in them so much, I’ve switched seats in my living room.  They can overcome any jinx that would ordinarily prevail.  The Leafs will win this game and go 3-0.

Questions Will Become Answers: Tim Brent Edition ('shop lifted from a comment by loserdomi on PPP)

Who the fuck is Tim Brent?  It’s a question that has circulated in the Barilkosphere – sometimes semi-seriously, mostly in jest – since some time after he signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs organization as a free agent on July 6, 2009.

Now, there’s “Ilya Kovalchuk free agency”, and then there’s “Tim Brent free agency.”  This past summer’s production of Waiting for Kovalchuk, for example, featured (in the pre-circumvention ruling days, anyway) daily updates from multiple media sources about the complete absence of any development relating to Kovalchuk’s status.  To give you an idea of the level of media interest in Burke’s signing of Tim Brent, a Google News archive search shows that the Toronto Star has exactly one reference to Brent’s career with the Maple Leafs in 2009;  it’s an almost parenthetical reference to the fact that Brent had signed a one-year deal with the Leafs, wedged into the body of an article that is 100% about something else – the signing of Francois Beauchemin.

The Barilkosphere’s own beloved meeting place, Pension Plan Puppets, had (on the front page*) but an offhand reference to the acquisition of Tim Brent:  again, an almost throwaway mention of Brent’s contract in a larger piece devoted to the signing of Rickard Wallin, for goodness sake.   Keep in mind that PPP is a site frequented almost exclusively by highly motivated Leaf fans;  the kind of place that generated weeks of discussion and heated debate over the signing of Brett Lebda this summer.  On the day AFTER Lebda signed, PPP Princess Karina was moved to put up a post reassuring PPP users that the apocalypse had not occurred and seeking to heal rifts of geologic size that seemed to be developing among the faithful on this most contentious issue.  It generated 310 comments.

There is a reason for the differential level of interest of course;  Ilya Kovalchuk had 338 goals in 621 NHL games when his marriage with the Devils was finally given the Blessing of Gary this past September.  Tim Brent, by contrast, had exactly one goal in 18 games (over 3 separate seasons) with Anaheim, Pittsburgh and Chicago.

Brent played with the Toronto Marlies of the AHL last season – when he was playing.  He tore a pectoral muscle taking a faceoff in the preseason, missed four months (though he was scheduled to miss six) then notched 13 goals and 15 assists in the 33 games he played.  As a reward for his dedicated efforts with the Leafs’ minor league affiliate, Brent was called up to the bigs for the final game of the 2010 NHL season, played against the Canadiens in Montreal.  He logged a little more than 13 minutes of ice time for the Leafs that night, was even on the plus/minus side, and counted three shots on goal.

By that point – April 2010 – the meme was well established among Barilkosphere regulars:  “Who the fuck is Tim Brent?” had become the stock comedic response whenever his name was mentioned.  As far as I can tell, it all began with the Puck Prospectus preseason forecast about the 2009-2010 Leafs’ likely finishing position.  The article projected the Leafs to finish 29th.  Still evidently in complete denial as to the abject crapitude that was Vesa Toskala, many of us – myself included – mocked the forecast (which, it must be acknowledged, turned out to be correct) and derided the methods used to reach the conclusion.  Chemmy pointed out – fairly, I might add – that the author of that forecast seemed to assume that Tim Brent would be playing for the Leafs last season**.  Anyone who had been following the Leafs through the preseason last year knew that this wasn’t going to be the case, and thus, in relation to the Puck Prospectus projection, the question was rightly asked: “Who the fuck is Tim Brent?”  The question was also answered:

I’ll answer that question for you since I’m a Leafs blogger: Tim Brent is not someone who will be playing for Toronto on opening night and never was.  (Chemmy)

A meme was born.  Who the fuck is Tim Brent?

Much to the amusement of the PPP faithful, for example, there was a game in early March against the Flyers where John Mitchell and Fredrik Sjostrom had been injured, leading to the call-up of Brent and Jay Rosehill from the Marlies.  At last, it appeared that the question would be answered.  In the end,  though, John Mitchell was healthy enough to play, leaving only one spot for the Marlies call-ups.  The spot in the lineup went to Rosehill.  There is very little reference on the web to this turn of events, which must have been a monumental disappointment for Brent;  all I could find after a few minutes’ digging was PPP user LeafBoy’s comment that “Brent didn’t get called up after all.”  The mystery lived on.  Who the fuck is Tim Brent?

By the time this past summer rolled around, Brent’s 13 minutes of ice time in Montreal looked for all the world like they would be the sum total of his Leafs career.  When he re-signed with the Leafs on July 5,  2010, his hometown newspaper noticed.  Elsewhere, the news spread considerably less rapidly; aside from a mention by PPP Princess SkinnyFish in the comments to another post, with a link to the Capgeek.com tweet about the contract, both of which came two days later, Brent’s re-up with the Leafs seems to have gone almost entirely unnoticed.   After all, who the fuck is Tim Brent?

When September rolled around, as camp progressed, the narrative from the MSM was all about Nazem Kadri.  Anxious to sell newspapers or generate pagehits, many MSM columnists were only too happy to generate a controversy about whether Kadri – at 19 years of age, with one regular season game and a few days of his second NHL training camp under his belt – should be seen as a complete bust as a prospect.  When the dust cleared, and the opening night lineups were announced, Tim Brent – who the fuck is Tim Brent? – was the starting 3rd line centre for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Well, on opening night against the Montreal Canadiens, Tim Brent scored the first goal of the Toronto Maple Leafs 2010-2011 season.  This past Saturday night, he scored again, this time unassisted, in the course of a 5-1 romp over the Senators.    Two goals in two games, and a whole new set of jokes are of course de rigeur for Leafs fans:  “Tim Brent is on pace for an 82 goal season/will win the Rocket Richard trophy in a walk, etc.”  Along the way, the meme has – as is the way of these things on the Interwebs – gone meta and is now a joke that refers to itself.  Continuing the fiction, the Memefather himself – Chemmy – wrote:

I had never heard of Tim Brent before Thursday but I think in time I could come to remember his name. Tim Brent is a legend. Tim Brent is handsome. Tim Brent is a Toronto Maple Leaf.

Commenters on the post picked up on this, and have been referring to Brent as The Legend ever since.  It’s all been in good fun, and it’s stuff  like this that keeps me coming back to the PPP community;  a creative group of folks who are as passionate as I am about my team.  Before anyone gets their tongue clucking at Leafs fans planning a parade (damn, that one NEVER gets old) or anointing Brent as the NHL superstar of the next decade on the basis of the past two games, let’s have a bit of a reality check.  The feigned complete ignorance of Tim Brent really was feigned;  similarly, no one truly believes that Tim Brent will be challenging Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin for the NHL limelight.

But if any of you doubt the reality of Tim Brent’s prodigious powers, consider the evidence of the following miracle that Tim Brent has performed:  Tim Brent caused a former Habs fan to face up to the enormity of his prior crimes against humanity, and to become one of us.

Here is how I know that this happened.  One of my fishing buddies knows Tim Brent.  My friend – let’s call him “Dewey” (not his real name) – has some peripheral involvement in the professional hockey world because of the industry in which he works.  Dewey is from Preston, a small community that has been subsumed in the larger city of Cambridge.  Dewey has known Tim Brent for about twenty years.  Dewey used to be a Habs fan.

“Used to be a Habs fan”;  bit of an understatement, that.  Again, because of the industry he works in, Dewey runs across a lot of sports memorabilia and collectibles.  His basement was full of the stuff, much of it Habs-themed.  I have a very distinct memory of a particular hat that he wore quite a bit when we were fishing, with the accursed CH logo.  We traded jibes back and forth, in the way that fans do.   Then, a few years ago, something happened to make Dewey reject the Habs.  I can’t remember what the exact incident was; maybe he just stopped drinking and sobered up.

Last summer (July 16th, 2009, to be precise) I got an email from him that read as follows:

I’ve known Tim and his family since he was a little kid…He is a great kid, character guy.  He isn’t tiny but has never been able to bulk up, so injuries have been a problem.  I think he could easily catch on as 3rd or 4th line center somewhere, but he hasn’t been in the right place at the right time yet.  He told me last summer that he wanted to try and fulfill his NHL dream for one more season but the $$ he was being offered from Russia would lead him there this season if that NHL thing didn’t work out.  I was suprised to hear he has signed with the Leafs and his dad will be thrilled.  It will make cheering for the Leafs easy if he can make the team.

It’s the second last sentence that catches my attention when I re-read this email now.  I think what it says – what it means – is that Tim Brent was being offered a lot more money to play in Russia in the summer of 2009, but that he chose to pursue his NHL dream for one more year.  It means that in April of 2010, after enduring a season either on the shelf with an injury or once again toiling away in the minors for (relatively) little money, when Tim Brent got that thirteen minutes of big league ice time, it left enough of a taste in his mouth to continue to want to succeed in the world’s most important pro league.  It left him wanting to succeed as a Maple Leaf.

Dewey wrote me again October 1st of this year.  Stories were rampant in the press that the Leafs would be starting the year with the the 26-year old Brent as their 3rd line centre.  Dewey said he was not ready yet to commit to it 100%, but that he was “on the verge of becoming a Leafs fan.”

I wrote back with some words of encouragement for him – some tips on how to be a Leafs fan:

Try not to mention the Stanley Cup.  Ever.  It makes people pouty around here;

Try not to mention Kerry Fraser, or Game 6 of the Western Conference finals in 1993.  Ever.  It makes people pouty around here;

If you find yourself crying for days on end, that probably means it’s April.  Don’t worry, the playoffs will be over soon.  So long as your definition of “soon” includes “two months”;

Dare to hope.  Hope to dare.  Never speak aloud of good things that you believe possibly maybe someday in a vague dinosaurish way  might happen, lest you irreversibly jinx them; and

GO LEAFS GO!

I also sent Dewey a copy of The Maple Leafs Song.  He wrote back and chastised me for not finding a rhyme for “Tim Brent.” In due time, Tim Brent made the team.

After opening night, Dewey wrote me again, indicating that his record as a “Leaf fan” was now 1-0;  he asked me what mine was.  I drank heavily and wrote a mostly tersely worded response, inquiring whether the transformation was official.  Dewey wrote me back:

Although I have yet to sign anything, I am prepared to.  I wasn’t sure until last night because I grew up as a Canadiens fan, but I had absolutely no mixed feelings about cheering for the Leafs for the first time against my “old” team.  I missed the first period because of a family birthday thing.  My phone began to ring right after Tim scored. First [name omitted] then [name omitted]. Weird…Leaf fans calling me.  Once I tuned in I found myself analyzing the game with comments to [name of significant other omitted] (who couldn’t give a flying #$%@*) such as, “I know it’s only the first game of the season but they look so much more confident in front of Giggy than they ever did in front of Testicular” (SP?).

Also watching someone who I have known for 20 years opening the season playing with HIS team, his DADS team and both of his GRANDAD”S team was pretty special.  He will never be a star, but I hope he is finally in the right spot at the right time.  This is a good kid who is well grounded, well mannered and has a good work ethic.  I see plenty of AAA primadonna hockey players whose parents are living through their future superstar and Tim and his family were none of that.  He is definitely the kinda person you want to see suceed.  The first time I saw him this summer I asked him how it felt to play the last game of the year with the Leafs and he talked more about how much it meant to his dad.  He was kind of in contract limbo at that point and was so happy the next time he stopped in because it was going to be announced the next day that he had resigned.

AND…….. he loves to fish!!

You can guess which portions of that email caught my attention:  first, that being a Leafs fan seems to very much run in Tim Brent’s family, and second that when he was asked about that first game – the 13 minutes of ice time in one game at the end of a difficult season – “he talked more about how much it meant to his dad.”

Is it a little dusty in the room where you’re reading this?  ‘Cause it is in the room where I’m writing it, I can tell you that.

So that’s who the fuck Tim Brent really is.  A guy whose determination to succeed turned a Habs fan into a Son of Smythe.

We talk a lot at Pension Plan Puppets about advanced statistics.  We talk about things that we can measure, things that we can prove with evidence.  Any conversation about the relative merits of this player over that one that drifts toward a discussion of “intangibles”, things like “character”, or “leadership in the dressing room” and so on, is likely to provoke a bit of a heated response from someone because we the fans have few facts upon which to judge our heroes in this regard.  No doubt some players are simply more committed to being a professional and winning hockey games than others, but it is generally impossible for us as outsiders to express an informed opinion on such things, and information about the relationships between the players and their real personalities is tightly controlled and unlikely to emerge in the carefully scripted and cliched sound bites that we get from them during intermission interviews on Hockey Night in Canada.

Sometimes though, in the process of trying to ensure we aren’t justifying our opinions by reference to “intangibles”, we forget that character matters.   Brian Burke has mentioned many times – most recently in his discussions with Paul Hunter of the Star – that he looks for players with good character.  Dave Poulin has also observed that this is a big part of Burke’s process (see Vinay Menon’s September 21 article in the Star for Poulin’s quote).    Talent is important.  As Leafs fans, we know all too well that bad players give you bad teams.  But character does matter;  anyone who has played hockey will tell you that when a team comes together, when the players on the bench are prepared to skate through a wall for one another, that’s when the magic happens;  that’s when a team performs above its talent level;  in a league where there’s any kind of competitive parity, that’s where a team wins championships.  The character of the individual players is the single most important factor in that bonding process.

In Kevin McGran’s article in The Star the other day, he quoted a retired scout by the name of Jack Ferguson:

He’s probably got more character than ability,” Ferguson says. “In this day and age, character is almost as important as playing ability.”

Ferguson happens to be the guy who urged the St. Mike’s Majors to draft Brent some years ago.  Reading McGran’s article, it’s clear that Ferguson thinks Brent has something by way of determination or desire that many other players do not.

None of the above is meant to suggest that Tim Brent is an untalented clod who was able to tip the puck in net past Carey Price because he respects his family, loves the Maple Leafs and is an all-around-good-guy who would very much like to score a goal.   Clearly, it takes talent to play in the NHL.  Tim Brent is proficient at playing hockey.

Nevertheless, in order to score goals in the NHL, you have to make it on to the ice, and it would seem that the answer to the question, “Who the fuck is Tim Brent?” goes a long way to explaining how Tim Brent found himself being given the opportunity to do so this past Thursday evening while wearing #37 for the Blue and White.

——-

*There was also a fanshot linking users to an article announcing the signing.

**To be fair to the Iain Fyffe, the author of the article, there is also a passage in the forecast that doubts Brent’s inclusion on the team, based on Burke’s proclivity for players exhibiting pugnacity, belligerence, testosterone and truculence.

From scanning the Interwebs earlier today, there seems to be a lot of angst out there about the opening ceremonies before last night’s game.  Whatever, I zoomed over most of the malarkey before the game.  Was happy to see the 48th Highlanders still a part of opening night tradition, and I stopped fast forwarding (that’s a verb, right?) when I got to the part with the water from all the ponds being collected and used to make the Leafs’ ice.

Say what you will; yes, it’s corny and cheesy, but I liked it.  I liked that the whole ice surface got turned into water by the lighting effect.  I liked it (among other reasons) because Spouse pointed out that water douses fire, and the Habs do that thing where Brian Gionta a much larger child skates around with the torch before a game, then touches it down at centre ice and sets the ice “aflame”.  Water douses fire, as sure as paper beats rock.  Eat it, Habs.

Thoughts about the game:  Gunnarsson was bad.  Schenn looked shaky at times, as did Beauchemin in the early going (though I thought Francois turned it around later in the game, with one notable exception I’ll talk about in a minute).  Komisarek was awful.  Kaberle was excellent, showing on a couple of smooth solo forays up the ice the apparently effortless way he can dart somehow calmly up ice past all (or at least most) defenders in a flash.  Terrific.  Phaneuf had a solid first game as Captain, I thought.

At forward, there was less that was remarkable.  Nice to see Tim Brent notch a goal to start this season;  it would be nice if that were some sort of omen about this mostly under-talented team adopting a lunchpail mentality and chipping in with a concerted effort to score by committee as and where it becomes necessary.  Kessel looked very good and sincerely happy to be back playing games that count.  Versteeg had some nice moments on the Power Play.  Kulemin played a solid two-way game and continues to get better.  Nice goal from Clark MacArthur; more worrisome was the somewhat underwhelming performance down the middle from Bozak and Grabovski, though neither made enormous glaring mistakes of any consequence.

More than anything, the story of that game was the steadiness of J.S. Giguere.  The Leafs were up to their old tricks, taking a late penalty and then brutally brain-cramping in the closing minute of the game.  Our defensive coverage for the final eighty or ninety seconds of that game looked as though it was planned as an homage to everybody’s carnival favourite,  the Tilt-a-Whirl, with Leaf players orbiting one another, spinning and lurching around unevenly and generally making one feel nauseous.  Francois Beauchemin in particular looked bad during this final sequence, weakly attempting to clear the puck at one point on a backhand to the right point that instead made the shallow carom off the boards and failed to clear the zone, setting the scene for one final frenetic scramble in front of Jiggy and a game-saving stop that mercifully prevented yet another Habs OT game.  That stop – it had a reassuring and cathartic quality to it, as Bruce Arthur noted in his column today.  Begone, ghost of Vesa Toskala.

One game, and one game only.  Two points under the W column, and cue the chorus of clucking MSM journalists who take time out from their shrill blizzard of sage columns pedantically warning Leaf fans (unspecified, figurative, mostly non-existent outside of talk radio) not to obsess, despair and overreact about the future of Nazem Kadri, to write a shrill blizzard of sage columns pedantically warning Leaf fans (unspecified, figurative, mostly non-existent outside of talke radio) not to obsess, celebrate and overreact about a single win in an 82-game season.

Only one game, but I’m glad hockey is back.