jeff@dciem.UUCP (Jeff Richardson) (10/05/84)
"Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland..." Our computer's been down or off the network for about two weeks, but I'm back now with a short discussion on the new NHL season. It's short because there's nothing really happening. It looks to me like the only team that's making any effort to improve is Montreal. They picked up Lucien Deblois in exchange for Perry Turnbull -- a steal when you consider the way Turnbull had been playing and how much Deblois meant to the Jets. The fact that he's French will help too. There are too many Anglos on the Canadiens, who at one point were only allowed, by a league rule, to sign French-Canadian players. (Not that I think that French-Canadian players are better, it's just that most of the Canadiens' fans are French-Canadian and they have a greater tendency to make heroes out of French-Canadian players. There's also the French media to consider. It's not the same when you watch an interview done through an interpreter. It's for these reasons mainly that I thought the Canadiens were stupid drafting Doug Wickenheiser a few years ago instead of Denis Savard. I didn't even know that Savard would turn out to be a much better player. Team managements sometimes forget that it's the fans who pay the bills.) They've also picked up another highly rated Swede (Mats Naslund is certainly working out well for them.) and a Czech. The late season additions from last year like Rick Green (He was injured most of the year.), Chris Chelios, and Steve Penney, plus the improved play of aging Larry Robinson should make their previously weak defence much better, and the newcomers plus a couple of youngsters shooting for first-string jobs should make their well-balanced but unspectacular offence better too. Goaltending could be a bit of a problem, though. Rick Wamsley was traded to Hartford and Richard Sevigny was claimed by Quebec when he was accidentally left unprotected, so the load will fall entirely on the young shoulders of Steve Penney. He was great in last year's playoffs, but it remains to be seen whether he can handle the load of a full season in the NHL. Of course, the same could have been said about Ken Dryden before his first full season. I still think it would help Penney's development to have an experienced goalie on the team with him, even if the experienced goalie never played. All things considered, I think they'll be the most improved team in the league this season. On the other end of the spectrum is the Toronto Maple Leafs. As a Torontonian, I've sat through a lot of bad performances from the Leafs in the last 17 years, but I've always stuck with them because I always (mistakenly) thought that they were on the right track and were making a good effort to improve, until now. They're biggest problem is that they don't realise that they have a big problem. They blame last season's failure on injuries instead of lack of talent and/or effort, but I believe that there's a certain type of player who gets injured a lot, and they're not the type of players around whom you build a team. They continue to collect excellent young defence prospects, but without good two-way veterans on the team they'll ruin the young guys because they can't bring them along slowly. (They have veteran defensemen, but their not very good except for Salming, and he doesn't strike me as the type of guy that could bring the young defensemen along. Even if he was, one is not enough.) They have some extra forwards that they might be able to trade for defensemen, but instead they cut Dale McCourt, one of their hardest workers last season before he was inexplicably benched, and sat tight with the rest of them. Maybe their best bet would be to trade one of their defence prospects for a good veteran, sort of sacrificing one so that the others can develop better. I guess this wasn't so short after all, but normally I'd talk about every team instead of just two, but there's nothing to say about the others. Oh well, the regular season doesn't mean anything anyway, and it'll be tough to get excited about it after the Canada Cup. -- Jeff Richardson, DCIEM, Toronto (416) 635-2073 {linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd}!utcsrgv!dciem!jeff {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!dciem!jeff