Off Wing Opinion

Major kudos to Jes Golbez for picking up reports from Europe that Russian phenom Alexander Ovechkin has decided to play the 2005-06 season for Dynamo Moscow. This shouldn't exactly be a surprise.

If the reports are accurate, this is a disaster for Washington. As many of you might recall, the Caps shipped just about every recognizable name in the lineup out of town once the wheels came off of the 2003-04 season -- not that they had any choice. And with Ovechkin taking a powder, there simply won't be anything for the Caps to build a marketing campaign around.

Toss in the fact that the Caps will have to compete for the attention of the casual fan with the newly-arrived Washngton Nationals and a resurgent Washington Wizards, and things are looking awfully grim for ice hockey in Washington.

You'd think there were more important things to worry about in the State of New Jersey:

What chance do the New Jersey Devils give a proposal that would give the NHL team a less demonic name?

Think hell freezing over.

"I can assure you the Devils name will never change, and I think there are more important things to be thinking about than something that will never happen," chief executive officer Lou Lamoriello said. "It's who we are and what we want to be."

State Assemblyman Craig Stanley is taking issue with a satanic symbol representing the team, which has won three Stanley Cup championships.

"This is an age where symbolism is very important," said Stanley, a Baptist deacon whose resolution to rename the team is to be introduced in the Assembly next month. A new name would be chosen in a statewide competition.

In most cases, I don't like seeing folks who profess deep religious beliefs get mocked in public, so I'll just say this: Here's hoping the good assemblyman reconsiders introducing the resolution. Especially now that it's had it's intended effect, right?

Thanks to Joe Tasca for the pointer. And Joe, let me join the chorus in saying "welcome back."

From TSN.ca:

The National Hockey League's pocket book has taken another hit.

Sources tell TSN that American cable sports giant ESPN will decline their option to retain their NHL broadcast rights for next season. The option to retain their national cable rights was for $60 million US.

ESPN has declined to comment on the matter, but the decision is expected to be officially announced next week.

This doesn't necessarily mean ESPN won't air NHL games next season, as they still can negotiate a new contract -- presumably at a lower rate. And when replacement programming is getting higher ratings than the NHL, their logic seems impeccable.

Both Bird and HDH at Hockeybird say sources are telling them a deal to end the NHL lockout could be announced in the next few days.

See if you can find the encouraging sign in the following statement from the NHLPA:

At the conclusion of today's meeting in Chicago, National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) Senior Director Ted Saskin released the following statement:

Tom Benjamin has some thoughts on the rise of Eklund. Be sure to check out the comments, complete with the interesting observation that the anonymous one has apparently erased his archives from before February 2004 in an attempt to cover his tracks.

So I decided to check in with The Wayback Machine to see if we could find a cached copy of his earlier predictions. And when I pumped in the URL for his blog, here's the answer I got:

Robots.txt Query Exclusion.

We're sorry, access to

http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=4&q=http://hockeyrumors.blogspot.com

has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt.

No, he's got nothing to hide. For the Off Wing Eklund archive, click here. And for the most comprehensive takedown, check out Dubi -- complete with a number of pre-February excerpts.

The Rodent has posted an extended rant that posits a line of thinking that I really hadn't considered: if the folks at Bain Capital and GamePlan are willing to pay more than $4 billion for the NHL, why wouldn't they consider starting a competing league -- especially if the NHL remains in deep freeze?

The question is how will this play on the mind of Union Chief Bob Goodenow.

He's no dummy. Particularly if he has been chatting with Game Plan all the while and realized that alternatives exist for most of his constituency, even if not with Game Plan.

Let me rephrase that.

What if Goodenow was working in concert with Game Plan to make life so frustrating to NHL owners that those owners would be more pliable towards accepting Game Plan's offer?

Follow me, here...

It's an interesting theory, and as far as I'm concerned, just as credible as any other that's been floated about GamePlan and Bain Capital over the past few months.

Meanwhile, we're actually beginning to hear some encouraging noises from reputable sources who don't mind being identified.

This would seem to be an odd time to be considering a career with the NHL, but Orlando Magic GM John Weisbrod doesn't seem to think so:

Orlando Magic general manager John Weisbrod has resigned to pursue an opportunity in hockey, the club announced Monday.

"We wish John all the best in making a return to the sport of his passion," said Magic President Bob Vander Weide. "We thank him for his leadership and vision over the past eight years. He will be missed."

Weisbrod, who was named Magic general manager and chief operating officer 14 months ago, leaves the club without a head coach.

Harvard grad Weisbrod kicked around the minor leagues for a stretch, and is the former GM of the defunct Orlando Solar Bears. He'd been rumored to be under consideration for the GM post with the Ducks.

The years pass quickly, don't they. That's the first thought I had while reading Larry Brooks' column from Sunday's New York Post on the 25th anniversary of the New York Islanders first Stanley Cup title:

There's never ever been a better hockey team than the one constructed by Bill Torrey and coached by Al Arbour that won four straight Stanley Cups beginning in 1980 and a major-league sports record 19 straight playoff rounds until their drive for five ended amid exhaustion and injury in the 1984 Finals in Edmonton. There's never been a more perfect union of toughness and finesse; of speed and strength; of smarts and size; of leading men - plenty of those, with egos bumping up against each other in all four corners of their room, you'd better believe it - and character actors.

No team since has won more than two straight Cups, not the Oilers, not the Penguins, not the Red Wings; no team since has won more than nine straight playoff rounds, not even half as many as that team [19] that captured its first Cup 25 years ago this coming Tuesday - May 24, 1980 - when Bobby Nystrom scored at the supremely memorable 7:11 of overtime.

As much of a hockey fan as I was, I nearly missed the big moment when Nystrom scored to send Long Island into a frenzy. During the Finals that year, my father had some business in Los Angeles, and after about a week, my mother took me and my two siblings to join him there.

For some reason that I can't quite remember, I asked out of an evening activity with the family to sit quietly in the hotel room and watch some television. That year, Game Six of the Finals was on CBS, and suddenly in the midst of another program I was watching, the scene shifted to Long Island just long enough for me to see Nystrom score under Tim Ryan's play-by-play call.

Then, as quickly as the image appeared, it was gone. It didn't matter, I got the message anyway. And soon enough, a trip deep into the playoffs (and the requisite demolition of the Rangers) became just another rite of Spring on Long Island.

There were other moments just as delicious: like Clark Gillies showing Terry O'Reilly who was really boss during one playoff game in Boston; Bobby Bourne skating the length of the ice to score against the Rangers at home (does anybody skate the length of the ice to score anymore?); or how about Mike Bossy putting the puck past Richard Brodeur of the Canucks, with only the blade of his stick on the ice?

But it isn't just the superstars you remember. There was Gord Lane and Dave Langevin. Anders Kallur and Stefan Persson. Wayne Merrick and Lorne Henning. How about Billy Carroll, who left Long Island after the 1984 season, only to turn up as a fierce penalty killer on that Edmonton team that took the Cup in 1985?

I was just tripping into my teenage years, so I couldn't completely appreciate that I was getting the chance to watch one of the greatest sports dynasties of all time up close.

Then came 1984 and the rise of the Oilers. Expecting that Islanders team to actually win five in a row seems grossly unfair right now, as if four cups and 19 straight playoff series victories didn't provide enough enjoyment to last a lifetime.

Soon enough, the annual rite of Spring was suspended (with the exception of the run to the 1993 Conference Finals), and replaced with an annual trip to the draft lottery. Drafts that ultimately yielded picks that would rise to stardom elsewhere.

But now is not the time to be bitter. Rather, just savour the memory Islanders fans, secure in the knowledge that the nexus of the hockey universe once was settled in Uniondale, New York.

Thanks to Steve Ovadia for the pointer and the memories.

From the Bloomberg wire:

Bain Capital LLC, the buyout firm whose managing director owns a stake in basketball's Boston Celtics, increased its bid for the National Hockey League by at least $500 million to more than $4 billion, people familiar with the proposal said.

Bain and Game Plan LLC, a Boston-based firm that arranges the sale of professional sports teams, in March made a $3.5 billion offer for the league, which still hasn't resolved a labor dispute with players that forced it to cancel its season. The new offer, which topped $4 billion, was made yesterday, said the people, who asked not to be identified.

``We haven't given up, that's for sure,'' Bob Caporale, Game Plan's chairman, said in a telephone interview. He declined to confirm that a revised offer was submitted to the league.

Back in March, I said I thought that the Bain story was just another negotiating tactic in Gary Bettman's bag of tricks, and it may still turn out to be that way. Then again, it's been three months, and these guys are still hanging around -- which lends some credence to Chris Lynch's view that Bain is simply tryng to peel off a majority of the owners in a hostile takeover of the NHL.

For more from Lynch, click here.

Interestingly enough, it was only a few days ago that Strategy Today, a blog run by a group of business students at the University of Chicago, wrote a detailed analysis of just how advantageous a Bain takeover of the NHL could be:

While the NHL