While watching the Islanders game the other night (I’m a Rangers fan and thus anti-Isles, but a game is a game), one of the announcers offhandedly proposed nicknaming the trio of Sean Bergenheim, Kyle Okposo, and Josh Bailey the “First Round Line”, owing to each player’s status as a first-round draft pick.

Nice moniker, if you disregard that most of the Isles forwards seem to be former first-rounders. But beyond that, that quip reminded me that it’s been a long time since I’d heard a noteworthy nickname for a National Hockey League forward line.

Bestowing a colorful label on an established line combination used to be a regular exercise in the NHL. As this lovingly-compiled list shows, there have been several over the years, with the wordplay for some coming off better than others. The “Production Line” during the Red Wings’ Gordie Howe era, for instance, jibed perfectly with the popular imagery of Detroit’s then-dominant industrial output in the auto industry. Buffalo’s “French Connection” from the early ’70s was a clever play on both those players’ Quebecois backgrounds, with reference to the popular box-office fare of the day. Line nicknames also served to spotlight another aspect of the sport, something between the individual star players and the whole team, to capture the fans’ imagination.

But nowadays, you just don’t hear these catchy line nicknames taking hold anymore. Maybe they do locally, but they never make it to a league-wide level. To me, the last nickname that caught on in hockey-media and fan circles across the NHL was Philadelphia’s “Legion of Doom” line of Eric Lindros, John LeClair, and Mikael Renberg. And that was some 15 years ago! Since then, nada.

The common reason cited for this is the lack of stability in modern-day line combos. Coaches seem quicker to mix and match players whenever goal production dips for more than a couple of games, thus making it hard for three players to form a recognizably cohesive unit. If anything, it seems like a two-player rapport develops on the top lines, with the left-wing slot usually being a revolving door for a plugger. Longer-term, free agency makes it harder to keep line partners together (although trades and minor-league demotions in the past probably created just as much player movement, so I doubt that’s much of an impediment).

It’s a shame to see this unique hockey contribution to the greater sports lexicon fall into disuse. I don’t know what can be done to revive it — the emergence of a hotshot offensive line? Grassroots marketing from the league/media/fans? — but whatever it takes, I’d like to start hearing those clever nicknames again.

Theoren Fleury is not playing in the National Hockey League this season, and he really thinks he should be:

The report says that Fleury believed that his performance at Calgary’s training camp last fall during his comeback attempt should have been enough for him to make the squad.

“At one hundred and eighty pounds, I finished 11th out of 56 guys at camp in the fitness test and scored a historic shootout goal in an exhibition game after being out of hockey for six years,” Fleury reportedly wrote. “What does that say about the talent level in the NHL? 4 points and a plus 4 rating in four exhibition games and I get cut. What a joke! Craig Conroy goes the first 37 games of the season with zero goals. I wonder how many I would have had?”

That rant came from Fleury’s blog, on a post that’s since been removed. In addition to the media report, the original lives on on various hockey forums. Looks like typical publish-first-think-later blogging.

The thing is, I’m somewhat in accord with Fleury on his getting a bum rap during training camp. In fact, I used it as a test case for how inefficient pro sports training camps are:

On something of a flip-side, 41-year-old Theoren Fleury’s comeback attempt was snuffed by the Calgary Flames. Even with the odds against him — age and six years out of the NHL — he posted four points in the preseason, and certainly didn’t look out of place. Still, Flames brass deemed him not good enough to crack the team’s top six forwards. What more he’d have to do is undetermined.

I’m hoping I didn’t inspire Fleury to post his legacy-threatening comments. Although if I did, the least he could have done was sent me a trackback link…

Along with catching a corker of a Winter Classic today — a thriller in which the Bruins rallied with two sweet tic-tac-toe passes to beat Philadelphia 2-1 in OT at Fenway Park — I noticed a distinct improvement in the quality of the game’s televised commercials this year. Instead of endless replays of generic national ads, sponsors like GEICO and Verizon Wireless created customized hockey-themed spots that actually looked good. A couple of those spots even feature star players like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, thus highlighting the league’s most marketable assets.

Why the sudden boost in dedicated advertising for a hockey game? Because, improbably enough, the WC really has become the NHL’s showcase event:

In the past three years, the league’s corporate advertising revenue has jumped 66 percent and the Winter Classic is at the heart of that leap. Sports Business Daily recently reported that sports business executives ranked the Winter Classic fifth among major sporting events they were looking forward to in 2010, ahead of sporting staples like the BCS National Championship, the World Series, the Masters and the Daytona 500. The survey was taken in December and included reports from more than 1,100 senior-level sports professionals.

That’s the money people talking, which explains why extra marketing dollars went into today’s TV ads. Doubtless they’ve noticed the rising viewership:

The Classic has become a surprise TV hit, occupying the 1 p.m. Eastern time slot against three college bowl games (the Outback at 11 a.m. and the Gator and the Capital One at 1 p.m.). In 2008, an average of 3.75 million viewers watched on NBC, which was exceeded last New Year’s Day with a 17 percent jump to 4.4 million, the most-viewed regular-season N.H.L. game in 34 years. Nearly 1.3 million more watched it in Canada.

Pucks beating out baseball, college football, and NASCAR? I’m an unabashed hockey fan, and even I can’t believe it. A lot of this is due to the novelty of the New Year’s Day game, which is only in its third year; will the mindshare still be there ten years from now? Still, the success of the Winter Classic rightly stands out as a rare marketing homerun for a league that traditionally can’t promote its way out of a paper bag.

This afternoon’s weather in Boston looks snowfall-free, so today’s 2010 NHL Winter Classic should go off without a hitch. But just in case, the league has a contingency plan:

A league source confirmed to ESPN.com on Thursday that it is possible the Winter Classic could only go two periods if the weather doesn’t cooperate and the game would still be deemed official. But that’s only if all else fails.

That beats watching the players slosh through on-ice snowdrifts. Still, I wonder if there isn’t a better way to guard against inclement weather. Maybe a tarp high, high above the rink? Somehow positioned so it doesn’t block out the sightlines for the nosebleed seats? It would negate the open-air hockey motif, but at least the game would proceed uninterrupted.

Islanders defenseman Brendan Witt knows how to brace himself for an on-ice hit. Presumably, that professional National Hockey League training helped him literally walk away from being hit by an SUV:

Witt was crossing Arch Street [in Philadelphia] to get a cup of coffee when a gold Yukon truck made an illegal turn and hit the 34-year-old. Newsday says Witt tried to jump on the hood of the vehicle before being thrown to the ground as he was struck.

“I’m okay,” Witt told the crowd as he dusted himself off, according to Newsday. “I’ve got to go play some hockey. I’m a hockey player. I’m okay. No big deal.”

And indeed, Witt played tonight, despite his automotive run-in. Unfortunately, he and his New York teammates got thumped 6-2 by the Flyers.

Witt did come out of the game relatively unscathed: Two hits and an even plus/minus. So no ill effects. Still, I can’t believe the team didn’t insist on giving him a check-up to ensure no damage. Maybe if he has a future encounter with a tractor-trailer, Witt will take the night off…

It was bound to happen: Days after I took my first-ever skate on the Rockefeller Center ice rink, I’ve got the itch to buy a new pair of blades.

Which I need like a hole in the head. I’ve got little enough time as it is for eating and breathing, practically — scheduling ice time is a laughable notion at this point. New ice skates would end up in the back of a closet, along with the all the other clutter I accumulate. And while the expense isn’t an issue, the inevitable new hockey-gear add-ons will start looking like rational purchases to go along with shiny new footwear, and before you know it, several hundred dollars disappear.

So I really should disabuse myself of this budding impulse-purchase impulse.

Except that, bad ice and all, it felt so good gliding around out there. Damn it.

Maybe the key is to long after ice-skating equipment that doesn’t actually exist. To wit: High-quality hockey skates with specialized titanium-adamantium alloy metal blades. If I settle for nothing but this imaginary best, it’ll keep athletic-consumer urges at bay.

Apparently, recent goal-line injuries in the National Hockey League have created a groundswell of sentiment for a rule change that allows goaltenders to handle the puck outside the crease. Thankfully, the league’s general managers don’t agree:

The merits of potentially eliminating it were discussed, but didn’t gain much momentum. The trapezoid rule was introduced as part of a package of changes coming out of the NHL lockout and San Jose Sharks GM Doug Wilson thought it was time to take a closer look at it. However, he wasn’t upset that his colleagues chose to leave it in the rulebook.

I’m not sure why the focus has been exclusively on the goalie’s role in working the puck. Why hasn’t no-touch, or automatic, icing been considered in this latest debate? If the concern is over reducing serious injury risk from the mad scramble into the endboards, no-touch practically eliminates the possibility. And it won’t burn game-clock — and thus, more potential goal-scoring time — like the goalie’s puck-handling does.

There’s a long-standing aversion in the NHL to the no-touch rule, with complaints that it would take some juice out of the North American game’s tempo. But if player safety is now overriding that concern, then why isn’t no-touch being recognized as a more obvious solution than goalie intervention? It’s like that option has been so discredited as a possibility that it doesn’t even enter a rules-change conversation anymore.

Today is a big day in hockey history: The 50th anniversary of the late Montreal great Jacques Plante being the first goaltender to wear a protective facemask during a National Hockey League game. Thus changing the face of the NHL, literally and figuratively.

It’s worth noting that this golden anniversary falls during a November that, in a couple of weeks, will also produce a Friday the 13th. The connection? In pop-cultural terms, the old-style hockey mask that Plante debuted in 1959 really hit the limelight 23 years later, when Jason first donned his in Friday the 13th Part III. Thus turning a highly-visible piece of athletic equipment into an even more recognizable horror-movie icon.

I’ll let you decide if November the 1st or Friday the 13th is the more significant date for hockey-heads. I just like the juxtapositional occurrence of the two dates on this particular anniversary, the 50th commemoration of Plante’s debut.

Times have changed, of course. Plante’s first mask, and the flat-plated ones that became standard netminder equipment during the ’60s and ’70s, morphed into today’s ornately-decorated catcher’s-mask models, with little resemblance to the original designs. Even though Jason Voorhees stuck with the old-school look in his 2009 remake (how could he not?), the on-ice product goes for less scare and more flare.

Greg “Puck Daddy” Wyshynski saw fit to link back and expand upon my little post on what might have been had the Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs swapped cities/arenas in the early 1980s, the proposal of which recently has been alleged by former Oilers owner Peter Pocklington. Much thanks to Wysh for the added exposure in the hockey blogosphere.

I was inspired to comment on the Puck Daddy blog on some of the further ramifications from this what-if-ing. Included in that is Wysh’s point about the New York Rangers’ Stanley Cup drought possibly having extended well past 1994, since they wouldn’t have had a cash-poor Oilers franchise from which to import Cup-winning ringers that year (in which case, the New Jersey Devils’ new Prudential Center arena might have a seat count representing the year 1940). Another commenter pointed out that the Calgary Flames would also have been affected in this scenario; since they arrived in the province in 1980 (from Atlanta), I’d speculate that they, not a relocated Leafs team, would have become Alberta’s favored team.

Anyway, since I went a little long in my commenting on Puck Daddy, I figured I should bring that verbiage back to this blog, for personal posterity’s sake. So here it is, and if it doesn’t speak for itself, at least it’ll leave some cryptic puckery for future pondering:

As for team mergers, it’s the NHL’s distinction to have fostered the last one among the 4 big leagues: 1977, when the Minnesota North Stars basically swallowed the Cleveland Barons (formerly the Golden State/Oakland Seals, answering the question, “Whatever happened to the now-extinct 6th team from the 1967 expansion?”). The major consequence of that deal is that it brought the Gund brothers into the league, who later moved on to the expansion franchise in San Jose.

Minor quibble: The league was already set on Sunbelt expansion before Bettman, under President-For-Life John Ziegler. If anything, to further the never-was scenario, I’d think they’d have started planting flags in Florida and Texas earlier, in the late ’80s — and maybe achieve a favored-nation-status with ESPN that extends to present day? (Hah!)

Anyway, Gretzky would be the central figure here. Reminds me of similar speculation from some AP writer 10-15 years ago, who wondered what would have happened had Bobby Hull never signed with the Winnipeg Jets, thus strangling the WHA as a stillborn. Ultimate upshot: Gretz enters the Draft in the late ’70s, gets picked by the Leafs in the 2nd round (due to size concerns), and goes on to lead his hometown team to glory. (If anyone can track down that anonymous wire article, I’d be a happy camper.)

To adapt a current-day political statement for hockey purposes, call this “Buds for Oil“: A long-ago proposal to simultaneously relocate two Canadian-based NHL teams.

The biography of one-time Oilers owner Peter Pocklington says the scheme called for the entire team to move to Toronto to play in Maple Leaf Gardens. The Leafs, in turn, would have found a home in Edmonton’s new arena, which at that time was called the Coliseum.

In the book “I’d Trade Him Again,” Pocklington says Leafs owner Harold Ballard was having financial troubles and made the proposal in 1980. Ballard also wanted Pocklington to pay him $50 million in cash.

Pocklington, who was vilified in Edmonton when he traded Wayne Gretzky in 1988, says he was all for the market swap, but Ballard backed out in the end.

To find an equivalent, you could look to the 1972 NFL ownership swap between the Los Angeles Rams and Baltimore Colts. That deal actually went down, although the team colors and players remained in their established locations (until both teams left their towns years later), with only Robert Irsay and Carroll Rosenbloom swapping deeds. The Oilers-Leafs exchange would have taken things a step further, with an Original Six franchise leaving Canada’s largest city, and being replaced by a squad from the just-vanquished upstart World Hockey Association.

Had this somehow happened, the obvious result would have been the transfer of the Ontario-born and bred Wayne Gretzky from the western hinterlands to the heart of hockey country. Presumably, these Toronto Oilers would have hauled in a clutch of Stanley Cups in the ’80s. What’s more, it would have been extremely unlikely that Pocklington would have felt the financial pressure to trade away Gretzky by the end of that decade. So the Great One might have stayed with one team for his whole career, and the NHL’s Sunbelt expansion would have needed a different catalyst than the LA Kings’ acquisition of Gretzky (although it still would have happened).

As for the prospects of the Edmonton Maple Leafs, I’d have to believe they would have fared much worse. The city of Edmonton showed during the lean ’90s that it didn’t care much for supporting a foundering organization, and the Ballard-led Leafs were exactly that. Without a wildly successful team to root for, chances are that NHL hockey would have withered in Oil Town, to the point where a relocated Leafs franchise might have had to relocate yet again — leaving Edmonton without an NHL team in the end.

No telling just how much meat there was to this. Ballard could have just been feeling out possibilities for raising the cash he wanted (which he ultimately got from bringing in Molson Brewery as a partner). Likewise, Pocklington could be trumping up what was only informal talks, just to generate interest in his book. But it’s an intriguing alternate-history scenario.

I was in hockey heaven yesterday, with National Hockey League games on television pretty much continuously from noon until the wee post-midnight hours of Sunday morning.

I was able to watch all that Saturday extended ice-time thanks to the annual season-opening NHL Center Ice free preview, which is running to nearly the end of October this year. And yet, I’m feeling inexplicably short-changed. Because today, only three days after the first regular-season puck was dropped, the league is inexplicably taking today off, with no games on the schedule.

What gives? Usually some especially compelling competing event, sports or non-sports, would make the NHL clear out for the day/night. But I don’t see anything on the TV schedule that’s prompting this move. Major League Baseball closes out their 2009 season today, but big deal. No awards shows to draw away eyeballs either. It’s not exactly a disaster, but I can’t figure why a major-pro league would break the continuity of a season’s start with an early hole in the league-wide schedule.

What’s more, they’re going to pull this Sunday no-show again this month: October 18th is also NHL-free.

I really don’t get it. Considering the Olympic two-week hiatus for player participation in the Vancouver Games this February, you’d think the resulting compressed schedule would eliminate any empty dates. Whatever magic the schedulemakers cast to put this all together, I can’t work it out.

I wonder how the bottoms of my dress shoes manage to get smoother with wear-and-tear? It would make more sense to me that they get coarser.

I guess that’s why, when I’m on the sidewalk, I try to walk around with slight scuffing motions, in an effort to gain more traction. This, despite knowing that it produces exactly the opposite effect. I attribute this irrational behavior to my being a hockey fan, and thus attempting to emulate the traditional goaltender prepping of the crease (known as the “goalie dance” or “building a nest”). Even this is the wrong approach on my part, since the goalie is using his skate blades to rough up the surface beneath him, and my intent is the opposite. Although the end result — a friction-based mooring — is our shared goal.

None of this would have anything to do with tomorrow’s opening night of the 2009-10 National Hockey League season. If anything, it just means I need a new pair of shoes. And maybe some pads.

This is new to me: TSN is tagging the National Hockey League games currently being played as “NHL-X”, like like in this headline.

That “X” stands for “exhibition”, of course, given that regular season doesn’t start until October (as usual). I suppose they could have gone for “NHL-PRE”, to signify the preseason (that sounds more French, which should have been apropos). I don’t know what’s preferred in Canada, but I recall a long-ago debate at the Sports Desk I used to work at over the correct terminology for games that don’t count, in any team sport. Personally, I prefer “preseason”, although not strongly so; I guess it gives the glorified intersquad scrimmages a veneer of organized legitimacy. “Exhibition”, to me, sounds more like some kind of showcased skills competition, less sport than spectacle.

Along with its compactness for easier headline-writing, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “X” was chosen as an echo of all things “extreme”, including the X-Games. Which would make the labeling even more laughable. But if it perks up interest in the upcoming season that much more, then game on…

What do I think of Chicago Blackhawks star forward Patrick Kane’s court-ordered penalty for assaulting a taxi driver in Buffalo?

The 20-year-old player and his 21-year-old cousin, James Kane, were given conditional discharges, meaning they will avoid any penalties if they stay out of trouble for a year and write apologies to cabbie Jan Radecki.

That written apology condition, oddly enough, reminds me of my long-ago critique on how writing is regarded by authority figures:

As someone who does a lot of writing for a living, it still blows my mind when I encounter so many people who have a built-in aversion to doing any real writing (i.e., non-email/IM sentence fragments). And it’s really easy to figure out the root of that aversion: Teachers who inflict, rather than instruct, writing on their students. When you frame the act of writing as the consequence of doing something wrong, naturally the student is going to develop a distaste for that communication skill, and it’ll probably stay distasteful for their entire lives.

And that distasteful feeling now extends into the criminal justice system. I realize this is probably standard procedure, and hardly as punishing as jail time. Still, nothing reinforces the idea of writing as a negative exercise like making it a criminal reparation. Small wonder most people avoid it at all costs, even in a Digital Age that relies on the written word more than ever.

Once again, I must cite Bill Simmons’ bold prediction on the future of sports journalism, as published by ESPN The Magazine:

…I see a day when the following sequence will be routine: Player demands trade on blog; team obliges and announces deal on Twitter; player thanks old fans, takes shots at old team and gushes about new team on Facebook. We will not need anyone to report this, just someone to recap it. Preferably with links.

Only three months after writing that, Simmons is seeing his vision come true. At least a healthy chunk of it. Because today, the Tampa Bay Lightning followed that social-media script by teasing, and then formally announcing, a player trade via Twitter.

Granted, the deal was hardly earth-shaking: Underachieving forward Evgeny Artyukin to the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for winger Drew Miller and a third-round draft pick in 2010. It’s certainly nowhere near the magnitude of tonight’s NFL news about Michael Vick signing with Philadelphia (which was delivered through traditional media). But it does demonstrate a willingness by a National Hockey League club to bypass the established channels with high-level news that’s especially relevant for fans. And it’s significant that this was an announcement directly from an NHL front office, versus the roundabout way in which the NBA’s Shaquille O’Neal learned about his trade, through his tweetstream.

Suddenly, social media outlets are official major-pro sports communication organs. The players are likewise utilizing online media. The future’s now. And while sports reporters aren’t out of a job (and won’t be, given that there’ll always be dirt to dig up that will never be tweeted or permalinked by the primaries), they increasingly will be competing to be heard, and will have to refine their message accordingly.

Yesterday was the commencement of the formal free-agency signing period in the National Hockey League, and it went off with a bang: A record number of players switched teams, with the usual long-term dollars committed with an eye toward salary-cap impact.

The detailed rundown is available from here to ESPN.com. Here are a few of the more notable player- and team-based developments from the first day of “Free Agent Frenzy”:

- Perhaps reflecting their state government’s fiscal paralysis, all three California clubs were unusually quiet. Not counting the Ducks and Sharks re-signing a couple of their own restricted and unrestricted free agents (notably Scott Niedermayer for Anaheim, along with their previous Draft-day trading of Chris Pronger to Philadelphia), those teams and the Kings made no moves at all. The inactivity was especially puzzling for LA and San Jose, who were both expected to revamp their rosters after disappointing 2008-09 seasons. Both teams are rumored trade-partner possibilities for disguntled Ottawa winger Dany Heatley, but otherwise, it looks like they’ll be picking from the second-wave UFA crop.

- The Habs made waves with their signings and trades, basically foregoing size for skill. This has set up Montreal for considerable ridicule for assembling a forward corps that averages something like 5′9″/170lbs (exaggeration, but not by much). I’d like to take an early stab at nicknaming this shrimpy group of Scott Gomez, Mike Cammalleri, and Brian Gionta: The Smurfs, hearkening to the common term for short-but-steady NFL receivers.

- Based on recent performance, it seems like the Oilers have upgraded in goal with Nik Khabibulin. However, his history indicates that he doesn’t elevate his game unless he’s got serious competition from his backup: That was the case last season in Chicago with Cristobal Huet, and similarly during his Tampa Bay tenure when John Grahame pushed him. Will youngster Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers be able to challenge for the starter’s role enough to keep Khabi on his toes? For four years? Doubtful.

- And speaking of the goaltenders… I’m really surprised that Scott Clemmensen couldn’t capitalize on his stellar substitute stint with New Jersey this year — to me, it validated his starter status. In fact, I was expecting Colorado to nab him and slide him into their vacant No. 1 slot. Instead, the Avs picked up journeyman Craig Anderson, and Clemmensen ended up replacing Anderson as Florida’s new backup behind Tomas Vokoun.

- There was a lot of grousing over several injury-prone players landing multi-year contract. In particular, Minnesota got flack for replacing one fragile winger — Marian Gaborik — with another in Martin Havlat. I would add that the nature of those long-term deals means that many of these players are going to become injury-prone if they’re not already. In addition, the Lightning seemed to get a free pass on this issue when they picked up Mattias Ohlund, who’s spent significant time on the IR during his career.

- On the local NHL front: The Rangers obviously made the most noise, with the preliminary salary-shedding of Scott Gomez to Montreal setting them up for the $37.5-million landing of Gaborik. Adding brawler Donald Brashear will also amp the excitement level at MSG. Comparatively, the Devils and Islanders laid low, notwithstanding New Jersey’s significant re-signing of their incumbent d-men Johnny Oduya and Andy Greene.

- Finally, I’m a little irked over the loose talk about the “cap hit” for each announced signing. In most cases, the dollar figures cited by TSN, Puck Daddy, et al are nothing but the simple per-year average of a contract, arrived at by simple arithmetic. Problem is, most of these big-money deals are either front-loaded or back-loaded, so the true cap hit in any given year is far away from the per-year average.

For instance, Marian Hossa’s trumpeted 12-year, $62.8-million contract with Chicago averages out to $5.23 million — except that it doesn’t. The reported front-loaded deal pays Hossa $7.9 million each season from 2009 through 2016, with declining annual salaries after that (making the older Hossa easier to trade or buy out by that point). Obviously, the Blackhawks carry a significantly higher salary cap figure for the winger in the immediate term than if the total sixty-two mil were more equitably spread out over the contract term. That’s sports biz!

So much for Day 1. From here until October, it’s fill-in-the-blanks time with the remnant free agents, a process interesting in its own right.

I never thought I’d lament the absence of rumor-mongering and mostly-clueless talent assessment, but that’s exactly the void I’m feeling heading into the 2009 National Hockey League Entry Draft, which starts tonight.

I mean, it’s been extremely quiet all week. All that’s cropped up is an iffy Phil Kessel-for-Tomas Kaberle trade proposal from the Bruins to the Maple Leafs, and scattered speculation about the chances of the Islanders not picking John Tavares first overall. No other wheeling-and-dealing in bids to move up or down in selection order, or to tinker with rosters before free agency hits next week.

I know why I’m feeling shortchanged: Comparatively, NBA teams completed a flurry of transactions before and during their entry draft yesterday, including the trading of marquee names like Shaquille O’Neal. NHL teams are more constricted by the roster-based hard salary cap they operate under, but still, why should hoops fans have all the fun?

I suspect the hockey world will see a buzz of activity starting right about now, before the Draft begins at 7PM in Montreal. But it’s been a dull lead-up.

I was hoping my offhand quip about who the New York Islanders should select No. 1 overall in tomorrow’s 2009 NHL Entry Draft would slip past the goalie. But since some other Puck Daddy readers seemed to like it, I’ll reproduce it here, in all it’s crackpot-conspiratorial glory:

The master plan on Long Island: They draft [Matt] Duchene, knowing that the Islander faithful will respond to this anti-[John] Tavares affront by promptly burning down Nassau Coliseum. That will force Town of Hempstead’s hand on the Lighthouse Project arena, and one way or another, the Isles get a new barn!

Probably the most brilliant draft-day maneuvering in the history of the National Hockey League, actually. High time a team fully synthesize its personnel and facility development efforts into one chaos-theory strategy!

No doubt, it takes a load of chutzpah for Cash4Gold to horn in on both the National Hockey League’s and National Basketball Association’s championship seasons by:

- Appraising the Stanley Cup at a “melt value” of $7,500, based on photographic examination and an assumption that it’s made of solid silver. (Obviously, not only did the company not get a hands-on chance to examine hockey’s most hallowed hardware, but it also didn’t bother to do basic research via the Hockey Hall of Fame, which clearly specs the Cup as 34.5 pounds of silver-and-nickel alloy.)

- Similarly valuing the Tiffany-made silver-and-gold Larry O’Brien NBA Championship Trophy at $3,500 in melted form.

Probably the first time in a long while that the NBA came in second to the NHL in terms of financial valuation. At least both leagues know where they could liquefy their fancy assets for some quick cash, should the bottom ever fall out of sports entertainment…

Given these shoddy appraisal methods, I’m not sure I’d trust C4G to give me a fair price for my cast-off jewelry. Still, I’ll admit that they made a decent attempt at manufacturing a little marketing buzz, with a natural synergy between the big-league shiny prizes and the precious-metal salvage game.

Your National Hockey League is on a real roll right now: On the heels of a court victory affirming its control over franchise ownership and relocation vis-à-vis the Coyotes and Jim Balsillie, it got confirmation that the just-completed Stanley Cup playoffs this year featured some of the highest television ratings in 36 years.

NBC’s Game 7 broadcast of the Stanley Cup final between the Penguins and the Red Wings on Friday night drew an average of 8 million viewers, the biggest American television audience for any N.H.L. game since the 9.4 million who watched the Game 6 Cup finale between Montreal and Chicago in 1973…

The size of the Pens-Wings audience is even more impressive, Variety reports, because Friday is customarily the lightest viewing night of the week.

And of course, some head-to-head context with the NHL’s sister league:

Sunday night’s ABC broadcast of Game 5 of the N.B.A. finals, in which the Los Angeles Lakers won the title against the Orlando Magic, attracted an average of 14 million viewers. That means the N.H.L. telecast drew an audience 57 percent the size of the N.B.A.’s. Traditionally in the U.S., N.H.L. games draw from 25 percent to 33 percent of the audience that watches N.B.A. games.

Yup, hockey fans can take pride in the idea that their sport is half as popular as pro hoops! But good news on the TV front is rare enough that this counts as a resounding victory. The Friday night result gives a nice boost to the final average viewership of 5.6 million for the five NBC-broadcasted games.

So how can the league and the network sustain this strong showing into next year? Some of the ingredients from this year can’t be pre-determined:

- Detroit in the Finals, which always pulls in eyeballs;
- Star-player power in the form of Sidney Crosby;
- The year-over-year rematch;
- Game 7 suspense;
- An unusually unchallenged programming night, with not only reruns on the other channels but also a night off for the NBA Finals;

But one key decision from Stanley Cup 2009 can be preserved going forward: The series-opening ratings juice that came from playing Games 1 and 2 on back-to-back weekend nights. You can debate how successful that would have been for NBC had it been, say, Columbus versus Florida. But I’m convinced that it’s the right way to kick off the showcase series of the playoffs: No opening-night pomp, followed by a day or two off for casual viewers to promptly forget about the whole thing. Saturday night served as the lead-in for a returning audience on Sunday, and the ratings momentum remained sustained from there, right through to Game 7’s breakthrough. So that two-game opener schedule will remain in place next year (and beyond).

I’d like to think that this Detroit-Pittsburgh showing will defuse the constant fretting over “large market” versus “small market” in championship TV ratings. Neither city can be truly considered “large market”, so you’d think that the raw viewer numbers wouldn’t measure up. Then again, they never do, unless you have the ideal population-intense New York-Los Angeles matchup, so it’s a pointless concern. These two cities are recognized as storied hockey towns, which probably helped sell the series; the challenge is to apply that pitch to non-traditional teams that might reach the Finals next year.

Finally, it’s refreshing to not hear about how hockey in June allegedly doesn’t work for a national audience. Summertime pucks seems to have found fans this time around.

So much for the Hamilton Coyotes. Bankruptcy court rejected Jim Balsillie’s attempt to buy the Phoenix NHL franchise and relocate it to southern Ontario:

[Judge Redfield T.] Baum shot down the claim by Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes and Balsillie that failure to allow the team, over the objection of the NHL, to move would violate antitrust law.

“This court can not find that antitrust law, as applicable nonbankruptcy law, permits the sale free and clear of the relocation rights of the NHL,” Baum wrote.

He added, “It is not an antitrust violation for professional sports leagues to have terms and conditions on relocations of its members.”

An antitrust claim requires a “bona fide dispute,” but there is none because Balsillie only sought the NHL’s permission to relocate the franchise after it was brought up in court, Baum wrote.

“This court is unconvinced that it should order that the NHL must decide the relocation application to meet the June 29 deadline,” the judge wrote.

Baum also rejected claims by Moyes and Balsillie that while assuming the contract the Coyotes have with the NHL, they can disregard the portion of the agreement that requires the games be played in Glendale.

The judge compared that claim to “a purchaser of a bankrupt franchise in a remote location asserting that it can be relocated far from its original agreed site to a highly valuable location, for example New York City’s Times Square …”

Basically, this gambit is dead, despite Balsillie’s posturing for further mediation. Frankly, I’d have been shocked had it gone the other way. The bankruptcy maneuver was an obvious attempt to circumvent league process and approval — and not just for hockey, but for the other three major-league sports as well (indeed, other team sports were primed to take advantage of what would have been a new precedent). No way was the court going to upend standard operating procedure for North American professional franchise sports, just so a BlackBerry billionaire can have a team in his backyard.

I think I pointed this out before, but it bears repeating: I don’t know why anyone would want to engage Balsillie in a National Hockey League team sale again. He’s had three chances to buy a franchise, and has not only flubbed them all, but did so in particularly hamhanded fashion. What does his inability to get into the NHL owners’ club say about his general acumen as a businessman — you’d have to think he’d be a disaster if he ever did become a team owner. Why bother dealing with him if it’s practically dead certain that he’ll never get through the approval process, thanks to his by-now transparent intent to relocate any team he’d buy to Ontario? It’s automatically time wasted.

As for the ‘Yotes, their arena situation not only locks them into the Phoenix-Glendale market, but also holds the longer-term key for their viability. Arena operations is a default condition for major-pro team sports success, and the Coyotes have that. Any new owner should be able to exploit that, and build a successful hockey show in the desert from there.