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NHL Week in Review

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NHL Week in Review
by Chris Kober
Hockeytalk.biz

DECEMBER 21, 2009

The Great Outdoors

The rink is built, the teams are set and the city is abuzz; with just under two weeks left in 2009 the excitement is building in Boston for the 2010 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic on January 1.

Players from both teams got an advance look at the site early in the week, the Flyers on Sunday and Bruins Monday, as construction was ongoing.

Bruins left wing Shawn Thornton captured the excitement after the visit, telling bostonbruins.com that the once in a lifetime experience of skating at Fenway is going to be “Really, really, really cool.”

The teams were also in the Classic spirit on Monday night as they donned knit caps in warm-ups prior to clashing at TD Garden. Philadelphia trailed by one after Vladimir Sobotka’s late second period strike, but rookie James Van Riemsdyk tied the game up early in the third and Kimmo Timonen gave the struggling Flyers the win with two goals, including an empty netter hoisted from his own zone that could have cleared The Green Monster.

“This really is an event,” said NBC’s host for the game, Bob Costas in a media conference call, “It attracts a lot of people who don't necessarily follow hockey closely throughout the course of the year."

Indeed the game has come to transcend hockey to an extent in becoming a spectacle for the entire sports world to behold, but on Tuesday it was the engineering and building of the rink that was in the spotlight. The crew of PBS’ iconic home improvement series, This Old House paid a visit to the historic venue as the boards went up and the coolant coils went down.

By Friday morning the ice had frozen, and it was time for the Bruins greats hit the ice for the “First Skate at Fenway.” A group of local youth players joined the currently injured Milan Lucic and multiple generations of Boston legends including Raymond Bourque, Cam Neely, Terry O’Reilly, Bobby Orr and even 91-year-old Milt Schmidt participated, though he did not skate.

Orr, who just became a grandfather a few weeks ago, fit right in with the kids of eight and ten as he described the scene to NHL.com.

“This is kind of surreal.” He said, “You look around and you're in a baseball park, Fenway Park! Then you look down and you're on ice. Really unique, that's for sure."

Finally, on Saturday Mother Nature put the finishing touch on the landscape with a blanket of snow making the park perfectly picturesque for the New Year’s Day spectacular.

Board of Governors

While a festive atmosphere was in the air in Boston, the NHL’s Board of Governors convened in sunny Pebble Beach and discussed, among other things, a second outdoor game to be played in Canada in addition to next year’s Winter Classic.

Proponents of a Canadian Classic argue that due to the power NBC wields in the selection of venues and participants it is unlikely that a Canadian team would be featured in the current annual event, while Critics of the move claim that a second game may dilute the impact of the occasion.

According to TSN’s Darren Dreger, Calgary would be the frontrunner to host a Canadian outdoor game, should one be held.

Other topics of discussion at the meetings included the Phoenix Coyotes’ situation, the League’s ongoing study of headshots and concussions, and announcing the regular season schedule possibly as early as the NHL Entry Draft in late June.

Stranger Than Fiction

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, ten days after the New York Islanders’ Brendan Witt was hit by an SUV on his way to get his morning coffee and went on to play over 17 minutes in Philadelphia that night; the Minnesota Wild equipment truck caught fire while parked at Scotiabank Place in Ottawa Friday afternoon.

No one was injured in the blaze, and a source has yet to be announced as of Monday morning, but a majority of the equipment in the truck was damaged and 12 Wild players lost their full sets of equipment.

Three members of the Wild equipment staff flew back to Minnesota to gather replacement gear and arrived back in Ottawa in time for the team’s pre-game skate, Saturday.

The team also flew in Goaltender Anton Khudobin from the Houston Aeros, the team’s AHL affiliate, in case Niklas Backstrom and Josh Harding were unable to adjust to their new pads by game time. The emergency call-up proved unnecessary however, as Backstrom stopped 20 of 24 shots in Minnesota’s 4-1 loss.

Injury Report

Injuries continue to pile up in Detroit as Jonathan Ericsson and Henrik Zetterberg will be out of commission for some time. Ericsson is likely to be out until early January with a deep bone bruise on his knee that he sustained in Monday night’s win over Phoenix. Zetterberg will miss 2-4 weeks with a separated shoulder resulting from a devastating, yet clean, hit by Mattias Ohlund on Thursday.

Ericsson and Zetterberg join Johan Franzen, Valtteri Filppula, Niklas Kronwall, Jason Williams, Andreas Lilja and Dan Cleary on the Detroit IR who will all be out until at least the end of the month.

On the other hand the Wings did get Darren Helm back into the lineup Saturday against Dallas, after he missed only two games with a sprained wrist.

Saturday also marked the return of Montreal defenseman Andrei Markov who had been out of the lineup since having been cut by the skate of his own goaltender in the Habs’ opening game.

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