MELTZER'S MUSINGS: JUNE 25, 2015
1) On Wednesday, the National Hockey League announced the 2015-16 home openers for every NHL team. The Philadelphia Flyers will open the season in the state of Florida, playing the Lightning in Tampa Bay on Oct. 8 and then head to Sunrise to play to Panthers on Oct. 10. The Flyers' opener at the Wells Fargo Center on Oct. 12 is the return match of a home-and-home with the Panthers.
The Flyers' annual road trip through the Sunshine State has often not been kind to the team. At least the Flyers get the trip out of the way quickly. Sometimes the best time to catch a top team, especially one like Tampa Bay that will be raising its 2014-15 Eastern Conference Championship banner, is very early the next season. There can be a hangover effect on the opponent.
The NHL will announce the remainder of the 2015-16 schedule on Thursday.
2) As a compromise measure to appease the National Hockey Players Associations wish that regular season overtimes not be lengthened from five to seven minutes, the NHL will go straight to 3-on-3 overtime for a maximum five minutes rather than adopting the American Hockey League's format of four minutes of 4-on-4 play, followed by three minutes of 3-on-3.
Three-on-three play is hell on goaltenders but tends to bring about all-out-sprints from one end of the ice to the other. At the AHL level in 2014-15, adding a 3-on-3 segment assisted in reducing the number of games that went to a shootout.
Speaking to NHL.com, Flyers general manager Ron Hextall spoke out in favor of the new format.
"There's obviously a lot of space and I think once there is one scoring chance at one end, typically if you don't score it goes back the other way," he said. "It ends up being exciting, fast-paced and, obviously, the skill level of the players comes out. It's just really risky hockey and it makes it very exciting. I saw some of it at the American League level and it's very exciting."
For the Flyers, who habitually struggle in shootouts, any change that reduces the number of tie games with a bonus point awarded via the skills competition can only help. There was no way the NHL was going to entirely ditch the shootout. Last season, the AHL had roughly three out of four post-regulation games decided during overtime.
The NHL percentage of games that ended in OT (44 percent in 2014-15, according to NHL.com) under the 4-on-4 format will no doubt increase under 3-on-3 rule. However, it will be interesting to see if adding two extra minutes of 3-on-3 play compared to the AHL but deleting two minutes off the maximum time of OT has a canceling-out effect in comparing NHL to AHL games that end in OT or if the lengthier 3-on-3 segment pushes the NHL percentage above what the AHL experienced.
In the ordinary course of a hockey game in regulation, it is pretty rare for a 3-on-3 to arise at all much less for a prolonged stretch of time. Thus, there are some who call 3-on-3 a gimmick, even if it is a more team-oriented one than the strictly individual nature of shootouts.
That may be true, but it's hard to deny that 3-on-3 is usually pretty action packed. The shootout is more about anticipation and momentary bursts of action. 3) On an NHL Awards night dominated by Carey Price collecting the Hart Trophy, Vezina Trophy, Ted Lindsay Award and Jennings Trophy, Minnesota Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk was awarded the Masterton Trophy.
Kimmo Timonen should have been a landslide winner of the award but fell through the cracks of the voting process. Each chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers Association (PHWA) votes for a nominee from the team they cover. Timonen had already been traded to Chicago by the time the Philadelphia chapter voted on its nominee, and he was not nominated by the Chicago chapter.
Flyers defenseman Nick Schultz was the Philadelphia nominee. Blackhawks backup goaltender Scott Darling was the Chicago nominee.
It would have been a fitting honor for the retiring Timonen to be recognized for his return to the ice from potentially life-threatening blood clots. At various points, the comeback seemed like a longshot but Timonen was, in his own words, driven to retire with his skates on rather than his shoes.
However, given the choice between the final moment of his career being that of lifting the Stanley Cup with his family on hand or accepting an individual award, it would have been a no-brainer of a choice for a consummate team player like Timonen.
"Kimmo added much inspiration to our group," Blackhawks assistant coach Kevin Dineen wrote via email. "Good to see him play his last game and walk with the Cup."
4) The NHL's Central Scouting bureau announced the creation of a new award named in honor of the late E.J. McGuire. The first E.J. McGuire Award of Excellence will be presented on Saturday, prior to the start of the second round of the 2015 NHL Draft. The award will go to one draft-eligible prospect who best represents "commitment to excellence through strength of character, competitiveness and athleticism."
McGuire, a Flyers assistant coach from 1984 to 1988 and 2001-02, headed Central Scouting for seven years until he lost his battle with a rare form of cancer and passed away at age 58 on April 7, 2011. During his lifetime, McGuire became a beloved figure throughout the hockey world for his keen eye for talent, devotion to player development, his own competitive drive balanced off by a gentle spirit and soft-spoken demeanor, and a keen intellect. McGuire held a Ph.D. in kinesiology and sports psychology.
It wasn't simply winning that drove McGuire. it was the notion of team-building, hard-earned achievement and pushing through setbacks to emerge a better athlete and person that fueled his passion for coaching and scouting. He took particular delight in watching prospects mature both on and off the ice.
During McGuire's assistant coaching days, he was hand-picked by Mike Keenan both for his intellect and because it came naturally to him to be the "good cop" assistant who bonded with players through positive-focused motivation and soothed hurt feelings. McGuire used to joke that his job under Keenan was to symbolically "clean the blood off the dressing room walls" after Keenan laced into his players, both collectively and individually.
E.J. McGuire was one of the nicest and most generous human beings that anyone could hope to meet. It was fascinating to hear his insights into the nature of various aspects of the game. He was so knowledgeable and had an accessible eloquence and wisdom about him that he willingly shared at the asking.
Flyers Alumni defenseman and former HockeyBuzz columnist Brad Marsh recalled a conversation with McGuire about playoff pressure.
I remember speaking one night with my old friend, the late EJ McGuire, about Game Sevens. E.J. was a great hockey coach, a great hockey guy and a great guy in general. I had E.J. as an assistant coach both in Philadelphia and in Ottawa.Anyway, to get to the point, E.J. would tape every Game 7 or single-game elimination. The sport did not even matter. Apart, from hockey, it might be baseball, basketball or football. The reason why he recorded them: he watched to analyze any type of common characteristics he could find both in the winning teams and losing teams as well.
E.J. put that information to use whenever he was coaching a team in that scenario. As a scout, he also learned a lot by studying prospects in their team's most important games. EJ was uncanny in predicting who would be the winners. It wasn't luck and it wasn't science. It was art and intuition.
Back in 2007, when I was freelancing for NHL.com and working on a series of Draft-related articles assigned to me by then-editor Phil Coffey, it was suggested that I call the head of Central Scouting for his input. Although he was extremely busy, Mr. McGuire juggled his agenda and devoted more than hour to speaking to me not only about the various players but about his philosophy on scouting and player development.
After the first article ran, he emailed me to say he enjoyed reading it. That meant a lot to me. In numerous blogs I have subsequently written for HockeyBuzz on the topic of player development, I have written that the NHL Draft is a weigh station on a long journey and a player's draft position is not necessarily an indication of his potential in the long-term. That came almost verbatim from my conversation with E.J. McGuire.
"We are compelled to rank players and there is a finite number of players who get selected in the Draft," McGuire said. "That's part of the nature of what we do. It's unfortunate, but it can also help to motivate. You don't have to look too hard to find young men who transcend that part of the process."
5) If you have never read the periodic blogs that former Flyers goaltender Phil Myre posts on his PhilMyreTalksHockey.com website, it is worth checking out although the site has been updated quite infrequently in recent years. The site contains goaltending tips, evaluation methods, a variety of stories from his own playing days, thoughts on subjects such as the increasing role of technology in scouting, his dislike of the three-point game in today's NHL and other topics.
One of Myre's best entries was a tribute to E.J. McGuire written shortly after McGuire's passing. In particular, Myre talks about attempting to train with fitness fanatic McGuire. "We ran a 1/4 mile track and both finished at the same time. He ran around the track twice while I ran it once," wrote Myre.
The site also has a two-part blog on Myre's recollections of being part of the Flyers team in 1979-80 that set a North American professional sports record with a 35-game unbeaten streak. Perhaps the most memorable story stems from the 34th game of the streak, in which Myre had to replace starter Pete Peeters after the ailing rookie vomited all over the crease and felt too ill to continue in the game.
