Posts by Jon J P Press at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Last Friday night, the Montreal Canadiens -- excuse me, les Canadiens de Montréal -- used their first pick in the NHL's annual Entry Draft to select Edina, Minnesota's Danny Kristo. It was a largely unremarkable pick, except for the fact that it was the third consecutive year in which the Habs drafted a Minnesotan with their initial selection (last year they nabbed St. Paul's Ryan McDonagh 12th overall and in 2006 they snagged Minneapolis-born David Fischer with the 20th pick).

"Just a coincidence," according to director of player personnel Trevor Timmins.

It's probably also a coincidence that the Kristo pick marked the sixth time this decade that Montreal has called an American-born player's name as their first pick (Ron Hainsey, Mike Komisarek and Christopher Higgins, drafted between 2000 and 2002, round out the Yankee half-dozen), and that the Habs took Americans with three of their five picks in this year's draft and with five of their nine picks last year (including first-rounders McDonagh and Max Pacioretty).

Coincidences aside, it's clear that the Habs aren't afraid to go south of the border for help of late (much to the chagrin of some of their fans and members of the local media). Upon being drafted last year, Pacioretty noted that it "seems like the Canadiens have a lot of confidence in U.S.-born players." Apparently so -- the "Bleu, Blanc et Rouge" has hardly (if ever) looked as red, white and blue as it might in the near future.

But, as U.S. College Hockey Online notes, "It would be surprising to see this trend continue in 2009, as the Canadiens will play host to next year's Draft. One can only imagine how the Bell Centre crowd would react should the blue, blanc et rouge turn to another Yankee."

And yet, I'm not so sure. The last time the draft was held in Montreal, the Habs picked an American in the first round, and who wouldn't want another David Wilkie on their squad? Zut alors!

For many hockey fans (read: Americans), the NHL Entry Draft is little more than the collection and dispersal of teenagers they've never heard of who have spent the last few years playing in cities they could never find on a map. To remedy this ignorance, some of the more inquisitive among them spend a couple of days brushing up on the top prospects and figuring out who might be available when their favorite team picks. At the end of the day, more than anything, these fans want a bottom line, and there's no better reference point for something like this than a familiar "comparable."

Sure, it's great to know that Nikita Filatov is the top-rated European skater according to Central Scouting... but the average fan is probably more interested to know that his game is similar to Daniel Alfredsson's. Draft geeks love to argue over whether McKeen's is right to favor Zach Bogosian and Alex Pietrangelo over Drew Doughty... but the rest of us probably get more out of reading that the trio is comparable to Rob Blake, Sergei Zubov and Ray Bourque, respectively. Red Line Report may gush over Chet Pickard's tendency to "challenge shooters and cut down angles"... but knowing that he's comparable to Olaf Kolzig says even more in fewer words to Joe Fan.

As TSN puts it, they list "a 'Comparable' so fans have a reference for the style of game each prospect plays. Comparing, for example, Stamkos to Yzerman is not to suggest the former will score 1755 points. It's just to suggest that Stamkos plays the game a lot like Yzerman did." [From TSN.ca's servers to god's monitor, say Bolts fans.]

There are few words that better describe a Syracuse, NY winter than "nasty" (and I should know, having spent four years up there learning how to drink read pass enough classes to get a degree). Granted, the fall hasn't been all that enjoyable of late either, but chin-up, Central New Yorkers -- you'll have something to look forward to as the leaves change and the snow begins to pile up (in mid-October): the return of Jon "Nasty" Mirasty to the Syracuse Crunch.

If you're not familiar with the mohawked Mirasty, he's a 5'10", 220 pound winger who has been in 107 (on-ice) fights since the start of the 2005-06 season, including 39 in 41 regular season games in the Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey (LNAH), a low-level French-Canadian pro league that "has the unofficial reputation as the world's roughest hockey league" (their reigning heavyweight champion, I suppose, is former Buffalo draft pick Sean McMorrow, who lead the League with 527 PIMs and 61 regular season fights in just 48 games). In 55 games for AHL Syracuse last year, Mirasty had a goal, two assists, 18 fights and 181 PIMs.

You can read much more about Mirasty in ESPN.com's epic "Men Who Love Goons" online tome, but as you might have guessed, Mirasty is quite the fan favorite (check out the clip below of Nasty and Binghampton's Jeremy Yablonski trading haymakers and you can see why), making his re-signing perhaps the best news to hit the 'Cuse since Dinosaur Bar-B-Que re-opened its doors back in 2006.

Last Friday the NHL had a public relations fiasco on its hands when it likely accidentally revealed Alexander Ovechkin as the Hart Trophy winner as the League's Most Valuable Player through its online store nearly a week before the award was to be handed out. Is it possible that they've made an even bigger gaffe less than a week later on the eve of its big award show?

SI.com's FanNation thinks they may have. Sarah Kwak asks (warning: potential spoiler alert in that link):

[C]ould the NHL have inadvertantly spilled the beans on ALL of their award winners on their website? I have a sneaking feeling that they have. On the Trophies page, they show all finalists for all trophies (Hart, Norris, Vezina, Calder, Byng, Selke, Adams, Pearson, Masterton) with nice little headshots and what the award is all about.

Now, take note of the order in which they are listed.

They're not in alphabetical order. They're not in reverse alphabetical order by the city name of each player's team. They're not in order from youngest to oldest. They're not in any real order at all, EXCEPT that all of the award front-runners are named first. Coincidence? No. I think somebody didn't think it through when they were pasting these up on the site and left them in the order of votes, thus making the first person the actual winner.

Adding fuel to Kwak's theory is the fact that when the finalists were announced on NHL.com, they were listed in alphabetical order.

Take this all with a grain of salt, but if Kwak is right, the egg that was on the League's face last week may be a pretty big omelet real soon.

Long before Messrs. Ovechkin and Semin appeared on the hockey landscape in Washington, the Capitals had another Russian Alex whose offensive prowess was supposed to lead the team to greatness. Needless to say, things didn't exactly work out as planned.

Taken fourth overall in the relatively talent-deficient 1996 Entry Draft, Alexandre Volchkov played in only three NHL games (the fewest of any top five pick since Ray Martyniuk was taken fifth by the Habs in 1970 but never made it to the NHL) thanks to an attitude and work ethic that would have made Alexandre Daigle blush. The Caps finally gave up on him in the middle of the 1999-2000 season, sending him west for a fourth round pick, and Volchkov finished that season with Edmonton's AHL affiliate in Hamilton before heading back to Europe at the end of the campaign.

Aaron Downey played 56 regular season games this past season. He was healthy-scratched 24 times, scored nary a goal all year, and didn't see a single minute of action in the playoffs. None of that matters much, though -- Aaron Downey will get his name etched onto the holiest of sports grails as a member of the Stanley Cup Champion Red Wings.

You see, "[a] player must have at least 41 games played with the club or one game played in the Stanley Cup Finals" to have his name engraved on the ultimate in beer mugs, so Downey fits the bill. But he's no Jiri Slegr (who played eight regular season games and one playoff game -- which happened to come during the Finals -- for the 2002 Cup Champ Wings); Downey may be a Black Ace, but he's been a key contributor throughout Detroit's dream season, including the playoff run.

After all, someone has to drive the forklift, both literally and figuratively.

Ken Campbell of The Hockey News is one of the better-respected members of his profession (well, maybe not in all circles), and when he raises an eyebrow about the way Canadian junior hockey leagues are treating their players, it usually makes for a compelling read.

Last week, Campbell noted that "the OHL is turning a blind eye to a couple of rather shady transactions" involving "high-profile goalies who were among the best stoppers in the league this season."

Now, the story isn't quite as interesting as you might hope (in fact, if you forget that you're reading about amateur teenagers, you might find yourself asking what the big deal is), but Campbell's bottom line is important. In his words, these Leagues "talk about nurturing young men and how they treat them so well on one hand, then treat them like nothing more than chattel with the other."

Back in early April, Montreal Canadiens head coach Guy Carbonneau was voted outstanding coach of the year by his peers (27 of the NHL's 30 bench bosses). Interestingly enough, a smaller group of NHL head coaches (18) voted that same honor to the Detroit Red Wings' Mike Babcock, as he was recently named Sporting News' 2008 Coach of the Year.

Both Carbonneau and Babcock (along with Washington's Bruce Boudreau) are Jack Adams Award finalists (the coach of the year recognition that actually matters, if any do). So who's going to win the hardware when the NHL hands it out in June? I'll tell you who it won't be... Babcock.

So the European flavor of the day is future Red Wing Ville Leino, who's the greatest thing since Dallas signee Fabian Brunnstrom (who was the greatest thing since who, Jiri Dopita?). And actually, Leino is apparently better than Brunnstrom, despite being the less-hyped of the Scandanavians (I guess the Wings are kicking the Stars' butts there, too).

Leino is also further proof of the sheer genius of Ken Holland and the Red Wings' European scouting brain-trust (apparently they have a "new Finnish scout" to add to the group that not only knew how good Henrik Zetterberg was going to be, but also had the insight to know that everyone else was so friggin' clueless that they could waste picks on guys like Andrei Maximenko and wait until the seventh round to snag Hank). I mean, here's a guy (Leino) who finished second in Finland's top league in scoring and was the League MVP -- the only way he ends up on a team's radar is if that team has an internet connection boots on the ground in Finland, right? Either that or a copy of EA Sports' NHL 08.

Now, to make a point, I'm willing to admit that I'm a total roster geek when it comes to my video games. So when I went to see if Leino was in the game (he is), I noticed that he's got a very good rating. How good? His 83 rating is the best rating of any player in the SM-Liiga under the age of 28 who wasn't drafted by an NHL team (and only Kim Hirschovits, a 2002 Rangers pick, is rated higher than Leino).

Which leaves us with two questions: First, is the Red Wings' system of European scouts really as impressive as that of EA Sports we're led to believe, and second, how long before Ville Viitaluoma is the next big thing? He is, after all, rated at 84.

One day, you're worth a second-round pick in the 2009 Entry Draft. Two months and change later, you're likely worth upwards of $5 million per year.

Such is life for former Canadiens backup netminder Cristobal Huet, who was stolen acquired by the Washington Capitals at the trade deadline and is now on the verge of perhaps testing his value on the open market as an unrestricted free agent (to be fair, Huet wasn't in the Habs' long-term plans with Carey Price having taken over the number one job, so moving him for a pick made some sense... until they had to start Jaroslav Halak in the playoffs).

How good (and under-rated) was Huet's season? Consider that only one goalie in the entire NHL (Jean-Sebastien Giguere) had both a better GAA and SV% than Huet in 2007-08. And that Huet won the highest percentage of games played of any goalie in the League with more than 43 appearances (and only the two Detroit goalies had a better percentage if you lowered the games played requirement to two). And that he ended the regular season on a 9-0-0 run during which he posted a 1.52 GAA, a .941 save percentage and allowed only seven even strength goals as he snuck the Caps into the playoffs by a single win.