As you are no doubt aware, if you follow the sport of hockey at all, last night marked the first inductions to the Hockey Hall of Fame of female players, namely Angela James and Cammi Granato. This has prompted a mild outbreak of hooting and feces-throwing in comments sections around the interwebs, but most people that I've read seem to recognize the inductions of James and Granato for what they are: thoroughly deserved and completely unimpeachable.
The question now, I think, revolves around who the next women inducted to the Hall as players will be. Hayley Wickenheiser, whenever she decided to call it a day, is probably automatic, and I've heard Manon Rhéaume's name out there as well. Angela Ruggiero deserves some consideration, I would think, and I'm sure I've left some out.
I would like to make a humble suggestion on this subject, however. In the photograph above, sitting in the front row at the viewer's far left, is a woman named Hilda Ranscombe, star of the Preston Rivulettes. The Rivulettes were basically the Edmonton Grads of womens' ice hockey, dominating the game during its first heyday in the 1930s. I will at this point cede the floor to this superb article on the topic of the Rivulettes and womens' hockey between the wars.
Let me close by saying merely that Hilda Ranscombe, among several other female players from that era, would be an admirable addition to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
And so another hockey season is upon us, and for those of us in Oiler land, it couldn't come fast enough given the debacle that was last season. And what's that wafting through the air? Could it be the sweet sweet smell of optimism drifting down this way from RX1?
Well, probably not, actually, at least not in the short term. I've seen the phrase "exciting last-place hockey" being bandied around the Oilogosphere, and it's not entirely tongue-in-cheek. Yes, there are going to be some long, long nights this season. The nights when the three musketeers (pictured above) are looking every bit as young as they actually are. The nights when whichever one of our 523 goaltenders is in goal is doing his best impersonation of a menhir. The nights when it is painfully obvious just how little depth we have on defense. The playoffs are almost certain to remain a phenomenon that happens to other teams.
Oh, but there will be other nights. The nights when the sheer amount of latent skill on this team shines through, and it feels like the kids can score at will. The nights when the breakout passes are hitting guys in stride. The nights when it's the Oilers taking liberties, and not, as has been so often the case in the past, the other team. The nights when it is obvious that Shawn Horcoff was the right choice for captain, thank you very much. The nights when we can see the first germinations of playoff runs yet to come.
So sit back and enjoy - these are the humble beginnings of something pretty special!
On a side note, various sibling units are taking part in the pre-game singing of "O Fortuna," from the Carmina Burana. If that's not an awesome way to kick off a hockey season, I don't know what is! May it inspire the lads to roll over the Flame-like things from Calgary.
Oh, and the Stanley Cup? Pittsburgh over Vancouver. Book it, done.
It's once again time to hand out the Scalies - the De Koboldorum Rebus awards given to our beloved Edmonton Oilers for services rendered during the hockey season just past! I tell ya, one of these years they're going to make the playoffs, and then it's going to be really hard to pick these. In the meantime, not so much.
Team MVP: I have, over the course of the last couple of months, heard and read a number of people performing variations on the theme of "if you had told me in September that the Oilers would finish dead last by a mile but nobody would be mad at Dustin Penner (pictured above), I would have laughed." The man's eerie similarities to Frank Mahovlich have been noted elsewhere, and this year we got to see the "thunderous power-forward" side of that equation, as opposed to the "guy in the coach's doghouse" side of previous years. Despite a mid-season slump, Penner became the second Oiler, after Wayne Gretzky, to lead the team in goals, assists, points, and +/- over a season, and although it must be said that he didn't have much competition, that's still pretty impressive. So yeah, this one's Penner's.
Best Rookie: , I think. While Dubnyk, in the way that rookie goaltenders do, probably contributed more than his share to the graying of his coach, there were nonetheless very promising signs towards the end of the season. He even managed to get himself an admittedly odd call-up to Team Canada for the World Championships, although he didn't see any action. The Oilers will probably have to decide between him and Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers this summer at some point, and the general consensus that I'm seeing is that they'll go with Dubnyk. The fact that he's 6'6" doesn't hurt him at all.
Most Under-Rated Player: It was Shawn Horcoff, my goodness. Yes, he had a terrible year. Yes, his +/- was one of the worst in the entire league. Yes, he's overpaid. But he was likely playing hurt, he's one of the few guys on the Oil who can reliably take a faceoff, he's by all accounts a classy guy, and his work ethic is legendary (this last is an important consideration given the large number of young guys likely to be kicking around training camp this fall). In a just world, Horcoff would be a shoo-in as the next Oilers' Captain. However, this is not a just world; this is a world where Shawn Horcoff was booed this past season by his own fans after picking up assists.
Most Improved Player: After some pondering, I think this one has to go to Gilbert Brule. The Blue-Jackets made him the poster boy for guys brought into the league too young, and this was past year was his first chance to really turn things around. He took advantage of it, with goal and point totals that were by far career bests. There's some question, of course, as to the role of luck in this renaissance (Brule's shooting percentage was suspiciously high), and thus as to whether he can keep it up, but in the meantime it was a nice job by the young man.
And thus another year of Scalies comes to a close. And now, we wish to take you back to a brighter time, the time of "a few games into the 2009-2010 NHL season," when the Oilers were more-or-less healthy, and did not despair even when down 4-1 in the second period. Watch, and enjoy (you can especially enjoy Penner's drive to the net at the 2:00 mark of the video. Remind yourself that that's an NHL defenceman trying to stop him. Even though Penner didn't score on the play, it's still impressive - truly Mahovlichian, in fact).
And to think we said we'd never make a sequel... Anyway, since we last blogged on this topic, there's been a change in the awards, so there's a new entry in the list! That, and we forgot one.
First, to the change. Sadly, this season we bid "adieu" to the Lester B. Pearson Award, about which we blogged here, and which has been retired and replaced. You may recall that this was the award handed out, on behalf of the NHL Players' Association, to the player voted "most outstanding" by his peers. Now, we are generally against the replacing of the NHL awards, and we're against this one. Nonetheless, we can have no objections to the man chosen to be honoured by the replacement award, especially given that it's handed out by the NHLPA.
The Ted Lindsay Award: Ted Lindsay (pictured above bothering Jacques Plante) was a hell of a hockey player. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he made up one third of the "Production Line" in Detroit, alongside Gordie Howe and Sid Abel. How good was the line? Well, in the 49-50 season, Howe finished third in the NHL in scoring... behind Lindsay and Abel.
Despite his on-ice prowess, however, Lindsay is better-known for something he did away from the rink. In the mid-50s, he and Doug Harvey of the Canadiens launched an attempt to form first an association, and then a union, for NHL players. Lindsay's career suffered for it; the Norris family, who owned the Red Wings, ended up trading him to the then-moribund Chicago Black Hawks. However, the players duly got their union, and the men who today pull down millions to play the game, and actually have some say in where they play it, can thank Ted Lindsay for that.
The Ted Lindsay Award will be given, as the Pearson Award was, to the league's most outstanding player, as voted upon by the membership of Ted Lindsay's NHLPA.
The Roger Crozier Saving Grace Award: This is the one we forgot. The Roger Crozier Saving Grace Award is awarded by MBNA America (a bank, in case you didn't know) to the goalie who records the best save percentage over the course of the season.
Roger Crozier was a capable goalie for the Red Wings for most of the 1960s, when he twice led the league in shutouts. In 1970, he moved to the expansion Buffalo Sabres, and became their first ever starting goalie. Crozier played the rest of his career in Buffalo, apart from a very short (3 game) stint with the Capitals, and retired in 1977. After his retirement, he went to work for MBNA America, and the award that bears his name was donated by his employers after Crozier's death in 1996.
No Oiler has ever won the Roger Crozier Saving Grace Award.
I should point out here that there are a couple of other NHL awards; however, they're not named for figures from hockey's distant past, and I don't see much point in discussing them at any length. They are the NHL Lifetime Achievement Award (Current Holder: Jean Beliveau) and the ScotiaBank Fan Fave Award (Current Holder: Roberto Luongo).
And thus endeth The Season In Which Everything That Could Go Wrong Did. Embarassing off-season shenanigans? Check. First game lost to big rivals thanks to comedy goaltanding moment? Check. Big-shooting defenseman injured early? Check. Most skilled player injured early? Check. Starting goalie injured early? Check. Just about everybody else injured? Or sick? Or both? Check. Big-shooting defenceman injured again? Check. Starting goalie injured and in jail? Check. Big shooting defenceman in hospital with life-threatening condition? Check. Promising new acquisition injured within about 0.000003 milliseconds of joining the team? Check. And so it went - trust me, we're barely scratching the surface of the awfulness here.
We'll get around to handing out Scalies a bit later, along with some less ranty discussion of what needs to be done. In the meantime, here's a sneak preview of two things that were NOT at fault for what happened to the Oil this season: A) The coaching. B) Dustin Penner. More, as I said, on that later.
In the meantime, at least we Oilers fans can relax a bit, knowing that, at least for the next few weeks, all eyes will be on the playoffs, and that we are relatively free from the danger of facepalm moments. Or not.
UPDATE! Oilers to big-shooting defenceman: "STFU." Quinn to big-shooting defenceman: "GTFO." And that last is actually just about verbatim.
First of all, if you ever want to have a productive day at work again, you probably shouldn't read any further. We here at De Koboldorum Rebus will accept no liability, etc. etc.
So, anyway, Sporcle. If you have not yet encountered Sporcle, it is a site given over to a very large number of user-created quizzes, on just about any subject imaginable. The best bit is that, once you have finished the quiz, you can take a pick at which answers were most commonly missed, and how your quiz score fits in with the rest of the world.
Sporcle, we are proud to announce, has now been infiltrated by kobolds. Yes, you can take, for example, your new-found expertise in the esoterica of NHL awards over to Sporcle and put it to use! And there are other res koboldorumto be found as well, not to mention a couple coming up the pipe...
Apologies for the long delay, and general lack of blogging! Well, when we last delved into the dark world of NHL trophies, we finished up the major individual awards. So that leaves us with only a small collection of oddities: retired trophies, non-NHL trophies, and the like. Let us begin!
The O'Brien Cup: The O'Brien Cup was the championship trophy of the National Hockey Association, the NHL's immediate predecessor as an eastern Canadian professional league. It thus became the NHL's first championship mug, before being replaced by the Prince of Wales Trophy. The O'Brien Cup subsequently saw a number of different incarnations, including bizarrely, as the trophy awarded to the Stanley Cup final losers.
The O'Brien Cup is named for John Ambrose O'Brien, son of Senator Michael O'Brien, who was one of the founders of the town of Renfrew, and who actually donated the trophy. The younger O'Brien helped create the NHA, and owned several of its teams, including the awesomely named Renfrew Creamery Kings as pictured above (sadly, and despite O'Brien's best monetary efforts, the Creamery Kings never won the cup named after him). His most famous and lasting contribution to hockey was made in 1909, when, having noticed that there was no hockey team in Montreal specifically designed to capture the loyalty of the French-Canadian population, he and the owner of the Montreal Wanderers created the Canadiens.
The Lester Patrick Trophy: I've included this one in the "oddities" section because it's not really an NHL trophy, for all that it was donated by the New York Rangers. It's awarded to four people or groups annually to honour contributions to hockey in the United States, and is the only trophy of all of those discussed here to ever have been won by women; the U.S. women's Olympic team won it in 1998, and Cammi Granato won it individually in 2006.
Lester Patrick was a member of one of ice hockey's great family dynasties. The Patrick clan in fact boasts four members of the Hall of Fame, and name has appeared on a number of different trophies, divisions, &c. Lester Patrick had a distinguished playing career in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, which he and his brother Frank had founded, during the first quarter of the twentieth century (I should point at this juncture, however, that Lester Patrick also spent a season with the Renfrew Creamery Kings). His association with American hockey came after his playing days were done, when he became coach of the New York Rangers and led them to the Stanley Cup in 1928 and 1933. Famously, when his goalie Lorne Chabot went down injured against the Montreal Maroons during the '28 finals, the 43-year-old Patrick put himself in net for the rest of the game, which the Rangers duly won in overtime.
The Mark Messier Leadership Award: This somewhat self-explanatory trophy only entered service in 2006, and was awarded monthly for the first season of its existance. It is named, of course, after the former Oiler, Ranger, and Canuck star, the only man to have captained two teams to the Stanley Cup. In addition to having been donated by and named after Mark Messier, it has its recipients selected by Mark Messier. So far, none of those winners have been Oilers.
The Bud Light Plus-Minus Award: Formerly known as the Bud Ice Plus-Minus Award. Also formerly known as the Alka Seltzer Plus Award. Yeesh. Anyway, this one is awarded annually to the player who accumulates the best plus-minus over the course of the season. It has been named after bad beer and tummyache pills and at least one other corporate phenomenon.
Two Oilers have actually won the +/- award. You probably guessed that one of them was Wayne Gretzky, but if you figured out that the other one was Charlie Huddy, then good for you! And, just to bring us full circle, I wouldn't have a big problem if this one got renamed.
Now, where were we, in our march through the origins of the names of NHL trophies? About halfway through the individual awards, you say? Well then, let us continue...
The Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy: This one is awarded to the player "who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to hockey." It generally ends up awarded to someone who has come back from, or made a sterling attempt to come back from, serious illness or injury. The trophy was donated by the Hockey Writers' Association in 1968, and is named after Minnesota North Stars forward Bill Masterton, who died of head injuries suffered in January of that year during a game against the Oakland Seals. Masterton, who scored Minnesota's first goal ever, remains the only NHL player to have died as a direct result of on-ice injuries (knock on wood, toca ferro, &c.).
No Oiler has ever won the Masterton trophy, but if Fernando Pisani, poised to come back from ulcerative colitis for the second time, doesn't win it this year, an injustice will have been done.
The Lester B. Pearson Award: In the last post in this series, I mentioned an award won by a Nobel laureate, and, well, it's this one. The Pearson award is given to the NHL's outstanding player, as chosen by the players themselves, and was donated by the NHL Players' Association in 1971. It is named, of course, after the former Canadian Prime Minister, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for his handling of the Suez crisis. Pearson was an active sportsman; in addition to playing for Oxford, with whom he won the Spengler Cup* in 1923, he played semi-pro baseball, coached the University of Toronto men's hockey team from 1926-28, and had a number of other athletic pursuits as well. In addition to, you know, winning the Nobel Peace Prize and being Prime Minister of Canada.
Gretzky and Messier are the two Oilers to have won the Pearson award.
The Jack Adams Award: First handed out in 1974, the Jack Adams Award goes to the league's best coach, as determined by NHL broadcasters. Jack Adams was a good player in the early days of the NHL (he was also a star in the rival Pacific Coast Hockey Association), but is best known for having coached Detroit for 20 straight seasons between 1927 and 1947, during which tenure his teams won three Stanley Cups. He stayed with the Red Wings as General Manager after his coaching career ended, and built the system through which Detroit acquired young guns such as Gordie Howe and Alex Delvecchio, to name but two. On a less positive note, he was involved, in the late '50s and early '60s, in a number of fairly shady attempts to bust the newly-created players' union.
Glen Sather is the only Oiler coach to have won the Adams Trophy, but if Quinn manages to haul that lot into the playoffs this season, that could change...
The Frank J. Selke Trophy: Awarded annually to the NHL's best defensive forward. The Selke trophy was donated by the league's Board of Governors in 1977, and pretty much belonged to Bob Gainey in the early years. Frank Selke was the long-time general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens, and he probably deserves much of the credit for building the Habs team that won five straight Stanley Cups in the late 1950s; for one thing, he acquired Jean Beliveau (and Dickie Moore, and Henri Richard, among others). In all, he was an NHL general manager for about 35 years, during which his teams won the Stanley Cup nine times.
Unsurprisingly, no Oiler has ever won the Selke Trophy.
The William M. Jennings Trophy: The Jennings trophy is awarded to "the goalkeeper(s) having played a minimum of 25 games for the team with the fewest goals scored against it." Another trophy donated by the Board of Governors, it took over the Vezina trophy's earlier function in 1982 (the Vezina thereafter was awarded to the league's most outstanding goalie, as determined by vote). Jennings himself was the owner of the New York Rangers in the 1960s and 1970s. Although the Rangers never won the Stanley Cup during his tenure, he probably deserves quite a lot of credit for rescuing that team from the depths of awfulness it occupied during the 1950s. He was also an active booster of hockey in the United States.
No Oiler goalie, or goalie tandem, has ever won the Jennings trophy.
The King Clancy Memorial Trophy: The NHL's Board of Governors also donated the Clancy trophy, in 1987, and it is awarded to a player adjudged to have demonstrated leadership on and off the ice and to have made significant humanitarian contributions to his community. It is named after Francis M. "King" Clancy, one of the NHL's great early characters. Clancy did it all: he played, coached, refereed, and served as a team executive during his 65 years of involvement with the NHL. He is also, to the best of my knowledge, the only man ever to have played all six positions, including goalie, during the same game, which feat he pulled off during the 1923 Stanley Cup finals while playing for the Senators against the Edmonton Eskimos.
Oilers' captain Ethan Moreau is actually the current holder of the Clancy award, and Kevin Lowe also won it while playing for Edmonton.
The Maurice Richard Trophy: And we have arrived at the youngest of the major NHL awards! The Richard Trophy was donated in 1998 by the Montreal Canadiens, and is awarded to the NHL's top goalscorer each season. It is named, of course, after the rather good Canadiens player, cultural icon, and bane of Clarence Campbell's existence, but I'm guessing that you knew that. Anyway, here's his playing record, and below is a reminder, from the last game ever played at Le Forum, of just how popular Richard was.
No Oiler has ever won the Richard Trophy.
Stayed tuned for the final post in the trophies series, when we'll discuss retired awards and other oddities!
Oh, and Happy New Year!
*The Spengler Cup, by the way, is one of the great under-appreciated bits of ice hockey. Nowadays it is contested between a number of European club teams and a Team Canada comprised of Europe-based Canadian players. It produces lots of great "Oh, so that's what happened to Player X" moments (I was watching Canada vs. Adler Mannheim on Tuesday, and was interested to see that the Mannheim goalie was Freddy Brathwaite, who played for the Oilers in the mid-'90s. Sadly, this year's Spengler just wrapped up (hats off to Dynamo Minsk), so you'll have to wait 'til next December to see it again, but I'd highly recommend watching it if you get the chance.
Well, this thing is certainly taking on a life of its own! I had originally thought to do the major individual awards in one go, but there are just too many of them, so I'm breaking them into two parts. I've decided to discuss the awards in chronological order of inception, and, just because I can, I'll be mentioning any members of the Oilies who have held these awards.
The Hart Memorial Trophy: Awarded to the NHL's Most Valuable Player, the Hart Memorial trophy is not, in fact, the oldest individual trophy in the league, as it was first awarded in 1960. However, I've decided to count it as such since it represents a continuation of the original Hart trophy, which was donated way back in 1923 by Dr. David A. Hart. Dr. Hart was the father of Cecil Hart, who coached the Montreal Canadiens for 9 seasons between 1926 and 1939, winning 2 Stanley Cups in the process, and is one of a smallish number of Canadians to be inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. There's a small measure of historical irony in the fact that Cecil Hart was a direct descendant of Aaron Moses Hart, an officer in the British army that took Montreal from the French in 1760.
Wayne Gretzky (8 times) and Mark Messier have won the Hart while members of the Edmonton Oilers.
The Lady Byng Memorial Trophy: Awarded to "the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability." I believe that the NHL is unique among major North American professional sports leagues in having an annual award for sportsmanship. Anyway, the trophy was donated to the league in 1925 by Marie Evelyn Moreton, aka Lady Byng, the Viceregal Consort of Canada (i.e the spouse of the Governor General) between 1921 and 1926 (the "Memorial" bit was added after her death). She was married to Julian Byng, 1st Viscount Byng of Vimy, who had commanded the Canadian Corps for a time during the First World War, most famously at Vimy Ridge. During his subsequent Governor Generalship, the Byngs were frequently to be spotted at Ottawa Senators games, and the donation of the trophy followed from that. After Viscount Byng's death in 1935, Lady Byng returned to Canada, and lived the rest of the her life in Ottawa. Sadly, by the time she returned, the Senators had folded.
The Oilers have had two winners of the Lady Byng Trophy, namely Wayne Gretzky and Jari Kurri.
The Vezina Trophy: This trophy is now awarded to the league's best goaltender, as voted upon by NHL general managers (it used to be awarded to the goalie or goalies whose team allowed the fewest goals in the season). It is named, of course, after the legendary Georges Vezina, nicknamed "le Concombre de Chicoutimi" for his coolness in net, who tended goal for the Montreal Canadiens from 1910 until November of 1925, when he was forced to retire by the tuberculosis which would kill him a mere four months later. In the wake of his death, the Canadiens donated the Vezina trophy in his honour, and it was first awarded after the 1926-27 season (the first winner of the trophy was, in fact, George Hainsworth, Vezina's successor in the Canadiens' goal). There are a number of myths out there about Vezina, including that he didn't learn to skate until he was in his late teens (true), and that he fathered 24 children, 22 of whom died in infancy (false - Vezina had two sons).
Grant Fuhr is the only Oiler to have won the Vezina.
The Calder Memorial Trophy: The wording for this one is quite elegant as well; it is awarded to "the player selected as the most proficient in his first year of competition in the National Hockey League." The trophy is named after Frank Calder, who never played hockey but was instrumental in the creation of the NHL and was the league's first president. He presided, ruthlessly, over the league's early growth and expansion to the U.S., and its subsequent emergence as the top professional hockey league on the continent. Calder also, in 1933, initiated the practise of rewarding each season's top rookie, although the trophy itself was formally inaugurated until after his death in 1943. As a final historical note, Calder was staunchly opposed to segregation in sports. He is reported to have said, at one point in the late '20s, "[p]ro hockey has no ruling against the colored man, nor is it likely to ever draw the line."
No Oiler has ever won the Calder trophy. However, Oiler fans will swear up and down that Wayne Gretzky was unjustly denied the award in 1979-80, when the NHL decided that Gretzky's brief pro experience in the WHA rendered him ineligible. Of course, that didn't prevent Sergei Makarov, who had a mere 13 seasons' experience in the top Soviet league, winning it in 1990. To its credit, the league has since closed that loophole.
The Art Ross Trophy: Awarded to the league's top point-scorer in each season. The trophy was donated to the NHL in 1947 by its namesake himself. Ross, who ironically was a defenceman during a hall-of-fame playing career in the pre-NHL days (Ross may have been hockey's original offensive d-man, a sort of early version of Bobby Orr), is probably best known as the long-time coach of the Boston Bruins, a position he occupied for 16 seasons between 1924 and 1945. He is actually credited with having chosen the name "Bruins." He also managed the Boston club from 1924 until 1954. Ross had reputation, throughout his involvement in hockey, for belligerence; while playing for the Ottawa Senators in 1915, he got into a fight with Toronto's Minnie McGiffin that ended with both players spending the night in jail.
Seven of Wayne Gretzky's ten Art Ross Trophy wins occurred while he was a member of Oilers. No other Oiler has ever won it.
The James Norris Memorial Trophy: Awarded to the league's top defenceman. the trophy is named after James Norris Sr., and was donated to the league by his children in 1953. The Norris dynasty, which accumulated vast wealth in grain and cattle in the 19th and early 20th centuries (it is hard not to imagine the word "baron" in connection with the Norrises) owned the Detroit Red Wings from the early '30s until Bruce Norris sold the team in 1982. James Sr. also had significant ownership stakes in the Rangers and Black Hawks at the same time as he owned the Red Wings, which you probably wouldn't be able to get away with today. And, as you can see from the picture above, he has a ship named after him!
Paul Coffey won the Norris trophy twice for the Oilers.
The Conn Smythe Trophy: This one's awarded to the most valuable player in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and was presented to the league by Maple Leaf Gardens Inc. in 1964. It is named after Constantine Falkland Cary Smythe, owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs from 1927 to 1961. Smythe was no hands-off owner - he also managed and briefly coached the Leafs, and financed the construction of Maple Leaf Gardens. He also saw action in both World Wars, winning a Military Cross and doing time as a POW during the First, and being horribly wounded during the Second. And he is of course remembered for his famous summation of his hockey philosophy: "If you can't beat 'em in the alley you can't beat 'em on the ice."
Three Oilers have won the Conn Smythe Trophy: Gretzky (twice), Messier, and Bill Ranford.
Well, that's about half of the major individual trophies. Next time up: the other half! Stay tuned to find out which is the only NHL trophy to be named after a Nobel laureate!
An interesting little discussion came up on the CBC Saturday night, during one of the period breaks in the Maple Leafs-Bruins game (Game Story: "Brian Burke haz a sad"), concerning the idea of renaming some of the NHL trophies. Apparently, there is concern in some quarters that the names attached to the trophies are just a wee bit too obscure, and thus need replacing with some more recent, well-known, monikers. And so it is proposed the the league's leading scorer each year should no longer receive the Art Ross Trophy, but rather the Wayne Gretzky Trophy, and so on. Now, honouring the game's great names is an excellent idea, but to do so by relegating other great names to the back pages of history seems very very wrong to me.
Surprisingly, however, this appalling idea actually has some support. Glen Healy was all for it during the segment I saw on TV on Saturday (video included in the link above), much to the puzzlement of Mike Milbury and Ron MacLean. And today I discovered that Elliotte Friedman had pushed the idea on his blog a full year ago. And so, we here at De Koboldorum Rebus have taken up educational arms, and are doing something about it. We hereby present a sort of " Brief Field Guide to the Trophies of the National Hockey League, Especially the People After Whom They Are Named." Sources for this are variably NHL.com, Hockey Reference, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and Wikipedia. This thing will come into being in three parts, beginning today with:
MAJOR TEAM TROPHIES:
The Stanley Cup: Awarded yearly to the champions of the NHL playoffs, which you probably knew. The Cup was donated in 1892 by Sir Frederick Arthur Stanley, who was many things but most importantly for our purposes Governor General of Canada between 1888 and 1893. Lord Stanley and his wife became hockey fans after their sons took up the amateur game in Ottawa during his tenure there. And yes, he is the Stanley who dedicated the famous park in Vancouver that bears his name (apparently, Lord Stanley had a deep affection for western Canada). As far as I know, "Lord Stanley's Mug" is the oldest still-awarded professional sports trophy in North America, and one of the three or four oldest in the world, although I'm willing to be corrected on that.
The Presidents' Trophy: Note the apostrophe. Awarded to the team with the best overall record during the regular season. The trophy was donated in 1985 by the league's Board of Governors, and I'm not dead sure to which presidents the name refers. The presidents of the NHL, presumably.
The Prince of Wales Trophy: Now awarded to the champions of the Eastern Conference playoffs. However, the trophy has had a number of roles through the years, and was originally donated to be awared to the champions of the NHL playoffs. It is named, obviously, for the Prince of Wales. Ah, but which one? Well, the trophy was donated in 1924, and is thus named for the man who would briefly become King Edward VIII before abdicating to marry Wallis Simpson. I do not know if the Prince was particularly a hockey fan, although according to his Wikipedia entry he did own a ranch in southern Alberta.
The Clarence S. Campbell Bowl: The Western Conference counterpart to the Prince of Wales Trophy. It was donated upon the NHL's expansion in 1967, although I have read (at the HHOF site and on Wikipedia) that the physical trophy was made in the 19th century. It is named, obviously, after Clarence Campbell, legendary president of the NHL from 1946 to 1977. Campbell must go down with baseball's Kennesaw Mountain Landis as one of the great, iron-fisted rulers of professional sports - fitting for a man who'd been an NHL referee in the 1930s and a war crimes prosecutor during World War II. Campbell suspended players Billy Taylor and Don Gallinger for life after allegations of gambling, but is probably best remembered for his suspension of Maurice Richard in March of 1955, and the aftermath of that. He was, generally speaking, a tough egg.
So there you have some little capsules on the major team trophies. Next up: The major individual trophies!
Beginning with a bit of a soccer story: A Croatian goalkeeper rescued a cat which wandered onto the pitch during a game. Whereupon he was given a yellow card. All-in-all, it has not been a banner week for soccer referees. However, on the plus side, this blog does now have a "Medjimurje Cakovec" label!
I think Nefertiti is going to be an indoors cat indefinitely and probably for good. I am basing this on two things: first of all, although she loves to look out the window, she shows no interest in actually going outside. Secondly, when I stepped outside last night, there were what I would guess to be about four coyotes singing to each other in the ravine a whole two blocks away. I am all in favour of urban wildlife (indeed, I stood there for a time and listened to the coyotes), but I'd rather it didn't eat Nefertiti.
Last week saw the first meeting of a little Latin reading group that a former student of mine has set up. Although I was only able to be there for the first part of this session, I think it has great potential to be good fun! It's mostly former students of mine, with some friends and family along as well. We're reading Propertius, at least for starters.
Those of us who follow the Oilers may remember the whole Dany Heatley nastiness from this summer. Well, a couple of local businesses have got together to commemorate the trade-that-wasn't, and have found a way to make it into a charity event as well! It's actually quite a cool idea, and for a very good cause. And I think we are all happy that the Heatley deal, didn't actually happyen, in the end...
Speaking of the end, I think we have reached it for this post!
Some years ago, when Theo Fleury first started getting himself into trouble, I remember having a conversation about it with a friend of mine. We noted Theo's difficulties, and the fact that he'd played for Moose Jaw under Graham James, and we did wonder a bit if those two things weren't connected. Well, we wonder no more.
Oh, and if you're having warm and fuzzy thoughts about humanity today, a saunter through the comments section of the above-linked story should fix that right up for you! Why do I read those things, anyway?
Open House at the U this past Saturday, which is always good for my fitness, since the Department and the Open House booth are in opposite corners of the campus. The most encouraging sign, on a day that went really well anyway, was the number of high-school students who came up to our booth asking not "So what is History & Classics, anyway, and what kind of job can it get me?", but rather things like "this is where I come to learn about the ancient world, right?" Good stuff.
On a related note, I had coffee this morning with the husband of the Director for the archaeological site in Tuscany upon which I have worked. We discussed many things, including which bits of the upcoming site publication I should expect to find myself writing, and the general state of the preservation/conservation business. It was extremely productive...
On a completely unrelated note, I went, along with brother and nephew, to see the Major Junior team in action on Friday night. The local boys won 3-2, despite a hairy finish, and afterwards we got to and clamber around on the catwalks up above the arena. Fun!
Speaking of hairy finishes, that was not how the Oilies wished to commence their season, I believe. Sigh. On the bright side, overall, the team looked pretty decent.
I believe that I saw a beaver swimming in the river last week - spotted him, in fact, from the bus as we were crossing a bridge. Alternatively, might have been muskrat, but it was a little big for that, I think.
And a neat little piece dealing with light pollution, accompanied by an absolutely stunning video, is located here. Go watch!
And hockey is now back, or at least will be in a couple of hours, and questions and storylines abound! How about that Tavares kid? Who's going to be worse: Phoenix or Colorado? Will the goonification of the Toronto Maple Leafs bear fruit? Will Chicago take the next step, or be undone by bad goaltending and off-season unpleasantness? Who is this season's Great Canadian Hope (it's Vancouver, BTW)? And, most importantly, who's going to be skating around next June waving an enormous silver flowerpot over their heads? And the answer to that last is... wait for it...
The Pittsburgh Penguins.
Yes, we're going with the repeat winner. They've got top-drawer talent, obviously, and now they've got the experience to match it. The WKS brigade foresees them knocking off the San Jose Sharks in the final, simply on the grounds that one of these years the Sharks are going to have stop sucking in the playoffs, and it might as well be this one. However, any of Detroit, Vancouver, Washington, Chicago, Boston, or even Philadelphia could decide to have their say as well.
As for the Oilers, who get things underway on Saturday night, well, expectations are a bit subdued, despite the arrival of highly experienced coaching.* The general consensus out there is that the Oilers had a pretty good draft, and then spent too much of the summer swooning around after Dany Heatley, resulting in them going into training camp with too many big holes in the lineup. Although the defence is world-class, especially when attacking, there are questions about the size of the forward corps. The return of Mike Comrie, and his solid play, have been positives, but the Oilers are going to need it continue, and then some, if they're going to go anywhere this season. In net, the Oil acquired Mr. Khabibulin, and that's excellent just as long as he doesn't go off form or get hurt. In short, it's going to be a tough, tough year, especially with a deadly schedule right out of the gate.
The following four numbers, however, give some slight cause for optimism, however: 21, 23, 31, 27. Those are the numbers of points by which Quinn-coached teams have improved in his first full season in charge. Now, it is probably a stretch to expect that sort of thing from this year's Oiler team, but those are still very impressive figures, and can't all be due to roster changes. So maybe, just maybe, and with some additions somewhere along the line, the boys can find their way into the second season. And if they can't, well, at least we've got Jordan Eberle and Magnus Pääjärvi-Svensson to look forward to.
Goil!
*The official De Koboldorum Rebus opinion on the hirings of Pat Quinn and Tom Renney is as follows: it was a very very very very good thing to do. There are enormous hockey brains in those two men, and I am very much looking forward to what they do with the team. Furthermore, adherents (and there is a distressingly large number of them) to the "Pat Quinn has won nothing in his career" school of thought need to be slapped upsides the head and reminded that, for a coach, an Olympic gold medal, World Cup, U18 World Championship, World Junior Championship, and 657 FLIPPIN' NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE GAMES pretty much amount to "something." To put it another way, the only men who've won more as NHL coaches are named Scotty Bowman, Al Arbour, Dick Irvin, and Mike Keenan, and Quinn will catch Keenan this season, having coached five fewer seasons than Keenan to boot. There's a solid possibility that he'll catch Irvin this year as well, in seven fewer seasons. In short, I think it was a good hire.
Well, we're less than an hour from the opening faceoff of what will be, one way or the other, the last NHL game of the season. Of course, it's Pittsburgh at Detroit, and it's always rather fun to see one of the Old Six in the finals, and most of my acquaintances (me too, for that matter), are leaning towards pulling for the Red Wings.
There's a certain amount of irony there, for NHL hockey was played in Pittsburgh before its arrival in Detroit. The first NHL game played in Pittsburgh took place on December 2nd, 1925, between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Americans (New York won, 2-1, in overime). Notable players for the Pirates that season included defenceman Lionel Conacher, starting goalie Roy Worters, and coach/forward/backup goalie Odie Cleghorn. The Pirates were actually decent (i.e. a regular playoff team) for their first three seasons, before tailing off. Their final season in Pittsburgh, 1929-1930, was abysmal; the team won only 5 of 44 games. They moved to Philadelphia for the next season, and were worse (4 wins). After that season, the Great Depression put an end to NHL hockey in Pennsylvania until 1967. If you're interested, there's much much more about the Pirates, and Pittsburgh hockey generally, here.
The first NHL game in Detroit took place on November 22, 1927, between the hometown Cougars (later the Falcons, and subsequently the Red Wings) and the Ottawa Senators. Ottawa won 2-0. The Cougars, who got their name from the fact that most of their players had been purchased from the defunct Victoria Cougars of the Western Hockey League, had actually been formed the previous season, but had played all their home games in Windsor. Unlike the Pirates, of course, they survived the Depression, and began winning Stanley Cups in 1936.
So, in fact, it's a very old-school matchup tonight!
...for the Second Annual De Koboldorum Rebus Awards To Members Of The Edmonton Oilers For Their Performances During The Recently Concluded NHL Hockey Season!! Hereafter, these will be referred to as "The Scalies." Last year's edition is here.
Well, that was depressing, wasn't it? The Oilers hurtled into this season abrim with optimism, and ended up pretty much where they did last year, only without much of the fun. In the end, poor old Craig MacTavish walked the plank, and not even the most devout MacT fan (and I'm a fairly devout MacT fan) could claim that it wasn't time. And so we look ahead to next year with, well, optimism, or at least interest. There will be a new coach! New players! A refreshing new attitude! Etc. And now on to the awards:
Team MVP: It's a bit of a cop-out to pick the team's starting goalie, but let's face facts here. Dwayne Roloson became the oldest goalie ever to start 60 NHL games in a season, and stole more than a handful of points for the Oil. He was looking worn out by the end of the year, but without him the Oilers would have been done by about the beginning of March.
Best Rookie: This year's freshman class lacked the flash of last year's, with nary a Gagner nor a Cogliano to be seen. So... Well, Theo Peckham is a more promising prospect, and Steve MacIntyre was a better story (in addition to producing the best photo of the season, see above), but Liam Reddox got himself into 46 games, and, even though he didn't do much in them, that's enough to earn him the Scaly.
Most Under-Rated Player: Ooh, a repeat winner! To put it bluntly, when Dustin Penner was on the ice, the Oilers had a significantly better chance to score than did the other team (and you can go here and play with the stats if you don't believe me). And yet, once again, all we heard was that Penner is fat, lazy, stupid, a communist, and so on. Bizarrely, his coach joined in on that theme this year, which was one of the first signs that things had to gone pear-shaped with reference to MacT's tenure. Anyway, Penner's a good player, and I hope he stays in Edmonton.
Most Improved Player: After a nice rookie year, Sam Gagner's offence went away at the beginning of this season. However, his defensive play had improved dramatically, and the fact that he was playing on a wonky ankle probably had something to do with his inability to score. By the end of the season he was quite possibly the team's best player.
The Oilers' 09-10 season summed up in one thrilling image
