Off Wing Opinion

Through James Mirtle, I found new General Manager Garth Snow's open letter to New York Islanders fans where he pleads for patience and lays out some of his plans at the 50,000 foot level:

I understand that I need to earn your confidence and respect over time. Over the next few weeks, I want to hear from Islander fans. I've asked the team to set up an email address where you can send questions and I'll answer as many as I can on the site. (Don't worry; my days are long enough to manage the team and address your questions). Comments are encouraged, too. Let's communicate and let's get behind the Orange and Blue.

I'll see you around Islanders Country.

Send your questions to askgarth-at-newyorkislanders.com. The Islanders are also promising that Snow will be answering questions on the team's Web site once a week through August -- and that's more often than Alan Hahn, the team's beat writer at Newsday, answers his own mailbag. Looks like he'll have to get cracking.

With Snow, that makes on GM and one owner -- Ted Leonsis of the Washington Capitals -- who are willing to answer questions from fans and answer them. I think it's great, and leads me to hope that others in the league might finally follow their lead and start interacting with fans on a daily basis.

UPDATE: Snow, in fact, has already gotten 1,000 emails, which he answers here. Bravo, Garth.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This is telling: I just did a quick Google News search, and nobody in the MSM -- other than Mirtle -- has picked up on this story yet. Very interesting.

And Ben Wright dropped off a comment below that Thrashers GM Don Waddell has been answering email for some time now, though he hasn't been publishing the answers. Thanks for the note, Ben.

That's right, Dominik Hasek is returning to Detroit after signing a one-year contract with the Red Wings.

I'm guessing Ken Holland didn't like the asking price for any of the goalies reportedly on the market, and opted for a short-term solution.

No word yet on salary, though it looks like the Wings are about $4 million and change under the cap. With somebody like Belfour getting $1.5 million from the Panthers, you'd have to guess that Hasek is in that sort of range, perhaps lower with performance bonuses.

More later.

We've all been there before: You get home from work and the light is flashing on your answering machine. You pick up and listen to a recording of your regular goalie telling you he has to have dinner with his girlfriend's parents and he can't get out of it.

You've got three hours or less till the puck drops. What will you do? What will you do?

Call Goalie 911, that's what you do:

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Whenever you hear someone express shock and suprise at the language players throw at each other in the heat of battle, you might want to share this video with them of a couple of Pittsburgh Penguins giving Brian Bellows the business (NSFW). It's from sometime in the early 1990s.

I'm pretty sure that's Bryan Trottier with the coup de grace. I can't imagine what it must have been like to play against Trottier. Sure, everybody remembers the points he piled up, but what most folks forget is that he was solid as a rock, and physically punished anyone he played against without ever having to drop the gloves.

I guess that "NHL on HBO" idea looks all the more intriguing now, doesn't it?

UPDATE: Sometimes we need to be reminded why you'll never see stuff like this on broadcast television. Thanks to Radley Balko for the link.

Sports Illustrated wanted to test its online NHL scoring system early this morning, and they made sure to use a happy memory for New York Rangers fans in order to get it done. Near as I can tell, the boxscore is from Game Two of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals.

Liek Steve Ovadia, I'm not liking the way the 2006-07 version of the Vancouver Canucucks is shaping up:

All in all, I'm kind of bummed. I spent many a night watching the Canucks because their hockey was so much fun to watch. True, it wasn't always successful hockey, but it was almost always entertaining. Even when Bertuzzi was Berbrooding and when Jovocop was out, there was still something about the culture of the team. All they wanted to do was skate fast. Defense? Not so much.

But that's all going to change. I'm not sure who my new late-night Western Conference team will be.

One of the great joys of NHL Center Ice is coming home after Midnight on the East Coast knowing that you still had at least a period of hockey to watch before bedtime -- and for as long as I've had Center Ice, the Canucks were the one team out West more fun to watch than any other. I'll miss them too.

Over at What's Goin' On, a blog at chicagosports.com, one reader asked if interest in the NHL is down since the league returned from the lockout. Here's how George Knue answered the question:

It doesn

Caps Nut is wondering why in the world a couple of clowns think the Caps need to make a deal with the Devils in order to reach the salary floor. He's right to, because as I've noted before, the Caps are already well on their way to exceeding the floor, despite folks who would like to make stuff up out of whole cloth to indicate differently.

Here's another one that's compiling salaries and cap commitments.

God bless people like these who do this work for free.

For those of you who might have missed one or two of his goals, here are all 52 of Alexander Ovechkin's goals from last season:

Which is your favorite?

I guess it's all in the way you look at it. Here's Steve Simmons in the Ottawa Sun:

Mike York is, at best, an average player. He doesn't make teams better. He isn't coveted by many. He's just a guy who puts a little dash on a roster.

Last year, he earned $2 million, which some might consider overpaid when compared with a Darcy Tucker, for example. The other day, an independent arbitrator awarded York a salary of $2.85 million.

He took a 24% hit last season, gained 40% for the coming year and didn't do anything important in between.

This is the new math of what is starting to look like the old NHL. Only the vehicle for escalation has been altered.

In a piece I linked to yesterday, Larry Brooks sees things a little differently:

York was awared an $800,000 raise yesterday through arbitration.

It's true, [Former Islanders GM Mike] Milbury remained mute throughout the session at which hired-gun attorney Larry Bertuzzi argued for management that York should take a $1.05M pay cut from the $2.05M he earned last season while finishing fourth on the team in scoring (13-39-52, minus-9), but still, where was anyone from the crack Board of Directors and what does this say about the fired GM's ongoing influence with the owner and what does this tell us about the owner's judgment?

I'd guess you'd have to conclude it's a little bit of both. Indeed, the Islanders could probably get along without York, and get the same sort of production with a player on their roster with less experience and at a price far less than $2.85 million per year. Then again, expecting a veteran like York who does nothing but work hard and chip in the occasional big goal to take a 50% salary cut is more than just a bit batty.

In turn, Simmons doesn't recognize one last thing: If the Isles think $2.85 million for York is too high, they can walk away with no regrets.

And for those of you wondering about Scott Gomez, his decision has been delayed due to a full docket of arbitration cases.

UPDATE: It's $5 million for Gomez in New Jersey. I'm interested in seeing what Lamoriello does next. Does he move Gomez? Does he ship out a defenseman packaged with a dead contract from Vlad Malakhov or Alex Mogilny? Stay tuned.

Thanks to Sportsmaven for the heads up.

From today's Globe and Mail:

Former hockey enforcer Andrei Nazarov has told the Russian sports newspaper Sport-Express that steroid use is universal among the National Hockey League's tough guys and that a majority of players are using some kind of drugs to help them hang on to lucrative jobs.

To NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly, Nazarov sounds like a loose cannon.

But anti-doping czar Richard Pound hopes that loose cannon is the start of a fusillade.

Nazarov spent parts of 12 seasons as an enforcer on seven NHL clubs. In 517 games, he scored 53 goals and accumulated 1,409 penalty minutes. He told Sport-Express in an interview published last week that there is significant drug use in the NHL and scoffed at the league's record of no positive findings in 1,406 drug tests, saying it was easy for players to find out the testing dates and stay off drugs long enough to have them clear the body.

So Bill Daly thinks Nazarov is a "loose cannon"? Major League Baseball didn't think much of Jose Canseco either once he went public. Of course, once the dust settled on the steroids in baseball story, the only one left with more than a shred of credibility was Canseco. Stay tuned for more throughout the day.

UPDATE: Credit to David Vest of the Arizona Republic who picked up this story more than a full week ago.