I’ve been avoiding making any comment on the whole Ilya Kovalchuk contract controversy, mainly because I’d like to see the situation finally resolved before I weigh in.

The resolution is now is sight, as the New Jersey Devils submitted a reworked, and presumably salary-cap-compliant, deal to the NHL yesterday. Hopefully the league will approve this pact, if for no other reason than the franchise-appropriate way that the numbers average out:

Terms of the potential contract have yet to be released but it is believed to be a 15-year deal worth approximately $100 million, which in an amusing twist would make the cap hit $6.66 million a season.

Apparently, neither the Devils nor Kovalchuk suffer from hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia. And this hurts the team’s persistent insistence that its name isn’t inspired by Satan, but rather the legendary Jersey Devil. (Although, if they were truly up on their Christian theology, they’d have gone for a cap hit of $6.16-mil, which would represent the more accurate mark of the Beast.)

This numerological chicanery is nothing new for the Devils, of course. This is the same franchise that used to fudge their arena capacity just to keep the old anti-Rangers “19-40″ chant alive. It’s hockey marketing via calculator…

Given the record 11-hour match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut in this year’s Wimbledon tournament, and the status of host England as the home of the days-long game of cricket, I think this joke fits:

“I went to a tennis match, and a cricket game broke out.”

A play on the old Rodney Dangerfield one-liner about going to the fights, and a hockey game breaking out. Always on the lookout for cross-germination in the sporting world.

After 49 years, Chicago gets a return visit by the Stanley Cup.

So ends the city’s drought, so ends Marian Hossa’s personal Finals drought, and so ends one of the most entertaining National Hockey League championship rounds in recent years. The Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers couldn’t be more evenly matched, and it showed brilliantly on the ice. Right up until what had to be the most awkward game-winning goal I’ve ever seen:

Patrick Kane sneaked the puck past Michael Leighton 4:10 into overtime and stunned Philadelphia to lift the Blackhawks to a 4-3 overtime win in Game 6 on Wednesday night for their first championship since 1961.

No one but the Blackhawks appeared to know what was going on for a few frozen moments. Kane and his linemates seemed the only players on the ice who knew the puck found the side of the net. The goal light never went on, but that didn’t stop most of the Blackhawks from storming the ice and mobbing each other in celebration.

This series had to end, and it’s just as well it did so on such a corker.

Now that 1961 has been exorcised (notably, that last Chicago Cup was the only time during the Original Six era that a team other than Montreal, Toronto, or Detroit had won the league title), we can move onto Toronto. Namely, to antagonize the Maple Leafs with an extra edge since they’re lugging the NHL’s now-longest championship drought. I can hear the “Nineteen-sixty-sev-en!” chants now…

Both the National Hockey League and National Basketball Association are enjoying double-digit percentage-point increases in ratings this month, and there’s an interesting contributing factor:

Ratings for major sports events have been strong this year, including the record set for the most-watched Super Bowl. TV executives think it’s no coincidence the increases coincide with Americans’ rapid adoption of high definition television, which is very popular with sports fans.

An estimated 52 percent of American homes had HDTVs and were actively using them, according to a Nielsen study done in April. That compares with 33 percent a year earlier and 17 percent in 2008, Nielsen said.

A sharper picture yields a more engaged sports-fan audience, I guess. My own experience bears this out: I’d be watching sports anyway, but the HD coverage encourages me to watch more. And in instances where, for instance, there are multiple NHL games being broadcast in my area, I’ll opt for the HD broadcasts over the ones that are in standard-definition.

HD video is available online, so that alone doesn’t insulate television providers from Web competition. But it does reinforce sports programming as a key hook for customer retention.

If you ask me, Yahoo! Sports’ Eric Adelson builds a convincing case for awarding this year’s Conn Smythe Trophy to none other than Chris Pronger:

The new NHL rules would seem to hurt someone like Pronger, who plods and roams. Not so. The rules help Pronger, because they allow him to rip headman passes farther, when everyone is watching him and no one is watching the play develop down the ice. Notice all three of Pronger’s visits to the Stanley Cup Finals have come after the lockout – Edmonton in ’06, Anaheim in ’07 and now Philadelphia. Not bad for a 35-year-old in the new era of wide-open hockey. Truth is, playoff hockey is only wide open for Pronger, who stretches the ice with his size, with his reputation, with his smarts and with his passing. Pronger is both a throwback and a visionary.

I’ll admit, Pronger is putting on a clinic on the blueline in this Stanley Cup Final, to the point where he’s almost single-handedly making the Flyers competitive versus the Blackhawks. Not to mention that Philly probably wouldn’t even have made it this far in the postseason without him.

For all that, I still don’t think the Flyers will ultimately prevail in this series. And despite that, I still think Pronger should get the nod as playoff MVP. He’d join that select group of Conn Smythe winners without a matching Cup (Roger Crozier, Glenn Hall, Reggie Leach, Ron Hextall, and Jean-Sebastien Giguere are the others), and that’d be fine by me.

What could derail Pronger’s MVP worthiness? Possibly injury, or his late gamepuck-stealing penchant. Otherwise, I say give him the Conn-job.

My previous concern over this past weekend’s Stanley Cup Final schedule on NBC seemed unfounded. By the numbers, Game 1 and Game 2 turned in great ratings, with a 2.8 and 4.1 share respectively.

So I guess back-to-back Saturday-Sunday championship games aren’t essential for National Hockey League viewership. Then again, it’s important to remember the context:

We’re talking about the No. 3 and No. 4 TV markets in the U.S. facing off in this series. The local viewership is fueling these ratings, much like it did for the last two finals between the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins, and much like it does for the NHL’s regular-season games on NBC.

It’s a dangerous game for the NHL: It’s impressive how hockey can dominate big media markets during special events (Stanley Cup Finals, Winter Classic), but what happens when a Canadian team sneaks back into the championship round? Or an American team that isn’t from the Original Six or a strong Northern market?

Not that I think it’s worth worrying about non-marquee teams making it to Cup contention. Excepting the Super Bowl, every sport plays that “dangerous game” of the potential ratings hit from the championship round suffering smaller-market teams. That’s where the marketing (particularly player-focused marketing) should kick in.

Still, that 4.1 is impressive enough. It’s still on the low end of comparable NBA or MLB final-round coverage, but at least it shows that prime-time televised hockey has a pulse.

It’s customary for the winning team in each Stanley Cup Final game to come away with the final on-ice puck. But Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Chris Pronger is establishing a different, more antagonistic custom this year:

“He’s been picking up pucks after the game and I just told him he can keep it,” [Chicago Blackhawks forward Ben] Eager said minutes earlier, before Pronger spoke.

Where’s the puck, Pronger was asked.

“It’s in the garbage,” Pronger replied. “Where it belongs.”

You shot a towel at Eager when he complained?

“So what,” Pronger replied.

You’re collecting pucks now?

“Why not? What’s wrong? It’s sitting there. What else is gonna happen to it? It’s sitting there. Sure, why not. You got a problem with that?”

Gotta admit, of all the National Hockey League rituals I’ve seen, this one ranks up there amongst the most unique. There’s a touch of superstition and psychological warfare at play here, which makes Pronger something of a Svengali. As well as a cunning strategist.

What it all comes down to, of course, is wins. Given that Philly is down 2-0 in the series, I’m thinking that the Blackhawks are okay with Pronger keeping the pucks, as long as they get to keep the Cup. (Or, following this established pattern, will Pronger make a grab for that series-winning Cup, and try to toss it in the trash? That’d be the ultimate method of exising a Flyers loss…)

When we combine Starbucks with the National Hockey League, the word-mashup of “StarPucks” is an inevitable outcome.

Two possibilities come to my mind for using this puckishly-cute StarPucks label:

- As a cross-promotional campaign. Both entities like to position themselves as higher-end pursuits for discerning consumer bases (versus going after mass-market appeal, ala McDonalds or the NFL), so they’d find common ground in their audiences. Some sort of rewards program tied to city/team territories would strike marketing synergy.

- A potential name for a Seattle NHL franchise, perhaps the first blatant corporate branding of a franchise identity in North American major-pro team sports history. But only if an on-ice resurrection of the Seattle SuperSonics doesn’t work out.

This is apropos of absolutely nothing currently going on, but it’s occasionally rattled through my mind ever since I first read it a couple of months ago, and has yet to fail to make me smile. From Puck Daddy’s coverage of this past Winter Olympics:

Puck Buddy Comment of the Day: Jerk Store responding to Wysh’s mother-in-law thinking the name of [Team] Canada’s goaltender was Roberto “Ulongo”:

“its actually oberto ulongo. hes half samoan, half beef jerky.”

Somebody check Roberto Luongo’s locker at GM Place for packets of dried meat. It might explain the secret of his National Hockey League success (and shortcomings, to boot).

This year’s National Hockey League Stanley Cup Final will have the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers. What it won’t have is a repeat of last year’s Saturday-Sunday scheduling of Games 1 and 2 on NBC. Instead, this Saturday’s Game 1 will be followed by Game 2 on Monday, setting the pattern for an every-other-day series.

I’m not sure why the Peacock Network is forgoing 2009’s Stanley Cup Weekend format. After all, it was a solid ratings success last year, and I thought it keyed viewership for that entire series:

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).

So much for “remaining in place”. There’s nothing on NBC this Sunday in primetime that would prevent a hockey game from breaking out on network air. The only thing I can figure: Game 7 of the NBA Eastern Conference Final is scheduled on another network. Perhaps the TV folks still aren’t confident that the NHL can top the hoopsters when going head-to-head.

Still, a Saturday night Game 1 between two of the more iconic American hockey cities should provide something of a boost. And Monday will still be part of the Memorial Day extended holiday weekend. So who knows? Maybe a ratings boost will fall into the league’s lap this year without the back-to-back backing.

Emblematic of the upside-down train wreck that the Eastern Conference bracket has become in this year’s National Hockey League playoffs, the Philadelphia Flyers roared back from an 0-3 series deficit to eliminate the Boston Bruins in their series.

That’s an impressive enough feat, given that it’s happened so rarely in major-pro sports (this is the third time in the NHL, and somewhat ironically, the Boston Red Sox did it in 2004 for MLB comeback marker). What’s even more impressive, and adds a touch of symmetrical destiny to the Flyers’ accomplishment: They had to come back from an 3-0 goal deficit in Game 7 last night to complete the deed.

So it was a double-downer of oh-and-threes that Philadelphia had to overcome, in microcosmic game-time and macrocosmic series grind. And on the flip side, Boston experienced the overcoming. One for the ages.

Since we’ve already established that arts-and-crafts online bazaar Etsy derives its name from the Greek word for “thus so”, parody site Regretsy can be construed as “thus, uh-oh”.

Among the cheesy hand-crafted crap in the snarky spotlight is this “custom simple Grecian style one-shoulder tunic”:

Oh look, a bed sheet tied in a knot. That is simple and sweet! And when you’re done wearing it, you can throw it out the window and lower yourself to freedom.

Off on a tangent: I’m sorely tempted to add a “k” to the name, and come up with “ReGretsky” — a site dedicated to a running critique of Wayne Gretzky.

The next time that a big-league sports franchise owner bleats about how much money he’s supposedly losing, keep in mind this statement from Ted Leonsis, the soon-to-be king of the Washington-Baltimore sports market:

“Obviously when you control two major-league teams in a four-team market, and both winter teams, you’re thinking about bringing all that together.” And [sport-business executive Steve Greenberg] was mindful of the way sports franchises have performed as investments; barring mismanagement, they only go up. To which Leonsis, who was among the largest private owners of AOL stock before its ill-advised merger with Time Warner, can attest: “I don’t have a single investment that performed as well or better in the last 10 years than my sports teams,” he says.

Bingo. The two teams in question are the NBA Washington Wizards and NHL Washington Capitals. And the dollar value only goes up in baseball and football. So much for the perpetual poverty claims of the sports moguls.

I believe it was me who made the following “safe” National Hockey League first-round playoff prediction:

No upsets in the Eastern Conference first round this year. The only series that I think might — might — even be close is the New Jersey-Philadelphia one, and that’s only because of the individual matchups and regular-season dominance by the Flyers. But in the end, it’ll be Washington, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and the Devils clearing into the second round.

The West, at least, holds a little more promise for the customary lower-seed surprise. Los Angeles and Detroit are the prime candidates to take down their higher-seeded opponents.

Good thing I’m not a betting man, because my powers of prognostication stink. Two weeks later, all three Eastern division champions are sitting at home, the victims of the upset special. Only the Penguins survived to end up, at No. 4, as the highest remaining seed in the East. Meanwhile, despite moments of drama, the Western Conference wound up playing to form, with the top three seeds pushing through — including the perennially-underperforming San Jose Sharks. Only Phoenix failed to join the rest of their upper-half brethren, and considering that that series was a 4-5 matchup, it’s not much of an upset that Detroit prevailed.

So, once again, I prove my suckitude at anticipating sporting results. I’ll refrain from further calls for the duration of the playoffs. I only hope to see the Chicago Blackhawks make it to the Cup Final.

The few times I’ve caught Vancouver Canucks games on television this season, I’ve scratched my head over scenes like this one:

Who are those green-spandexed freaks? And since when did a National Hockey League game become a fair setting for plexiglass-pressing performance art?

It turns out that the Canucks Green Men are a new feature at General Motors Place. They’re not sanctioned by the arena nor the hockey team — which I’d wondered about, since they seemed so synchronized in their acrobatic penalty-box taunting. As for further details:

For the uninitiated, the Green Men were revealed by the Vancouver Sun as British Columbia Institute of Technology students Ryan Sullivan and Adam Forsythe, whose Green Men alter-egos go by Sully and Force. They initially wanted to use the “Green Man” gimmick at a Seattle Seahawks game, but the bodysuits they ordered arrived too late for the game. The NFL’s loss was the NHL’s gain.

Not that these schoolboys are being wholly original: Their Green Men inspiration came from an identical character from the television show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. American cultural hegemony strikes again!

Today is the start of the National Hockey League playoffs. The general absence of hockey-related posts around here lately shouldn’t be interpreted as disinterest by me — fact is, I’m super-excited for this year’s dance. That’s despite a decidedly deflating postseason elimination by my hometown New York Rangers.

But that letdown was, in a sense, appropriate for the Eastern Conference lead-in to the playoffs. Despite some last-minute feats — notably Boston’s league-record three shorthanded goals on the same Carolina power-play to secure a berth — the teams in the bottom half of the East practically backed their way into the Stanley Cup tourney. I can’t remember the last time the 4 through 8 seeds looked quite this underwhelming.

Therefore, as trite as playoff predictions are, I’m going to venture one, and a safe one at that: No upsets in the Eastern Conference first round this year. The only series that I think might — might — even be close is the New Jersey-Philadelphia one, and that’s only because of the individual matchups and regular-season dominance by the Flyers. But in the end, it’ll be Washington, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and the Devils clearing into the second round.

The West, at least, holds a little more promise for the customary lower-seed surprise. Los Angeles and Detroit are the prime candidates to take down their higher-seeded opponents. San Jose, of course, has the biggest bulls-eye on them, by virtue of their long-established playoff flops, and they could play to that form yet again. But the Sharks have fortified their third line and defense, and thus have built a team designed to — if nothing else — win a playoff round. In the end, I’ll be surprised if Chicago doesn’t advance to the Cup round.

As my luck would have it, I’m just about to get busy again as the NHL playoffs start. I’m hoping I’ll find some time to take in a good chunk of the extensive televised action. After that, I’ll have the summer to work and play.

Much ado over “the most-watched hockey game in 30 years”, with an estimated 27.6 million Americans watching the U.S.-Canada gold medal game. The context:

To put the numbers in perspective, Sunday’s game drew a higher overnight rating than every World Series game since 2004 (including every game of Yankees/Phillies last year), every NBA Finals telecast since 1998, and every NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four game since at least ‘98.

Excluding the NFL, the 17.6 overnight for the game is the second-highest of the year for any sporting event, behind only the Texas/Alabama BCS National Championship Game in January (18.2).

That kind of televised turnout sparks discussion on how, or if, it’ll transfer over to the National Hockey League.

The short answer: It won’t.

Certainly, hockey proved itself worthy of the showcase-event placement it garnered as the closing act of the Games (especially impressive considering that standard Olympics presentations tend to emphasize individual athletic personalities). And certainly, the fervor created by Vancouver will net the NHL a few extra followers for the stretch run of the 2009-10 season. But let’s face it: People tuned in because this was a once-every-four-years happening, and the grand finale happened to feature a storybook North American rivalry. The echoes of 1980 (strained as they were) helped build the momentum for the U.S., as well (the Canadians, of course, didn’t need any such priming of the pump).

But, for all the enthusiasm that was generated, I don’t see it carrying past the extinguished Olympic torches. It was indeed a self-contained moment, part of what made it special. There’s no sense of re-living that experience by catching the next NHL game on Versus or NBC, let alone on a regional sports network.

It is amusing to think how the league could attempt to capitalize on the concept, though. Maybe continue to ride Ryan Miller as Team USA’s golden boy, and make the Buffalo Sabres “America’s team” for the NHL playoffs? They could do worse.

After falling short of a pre-Games boast to dominate the medal podiums, Olympic host Canada compensated with a record-breaking haul of 14 Golds.

And really, it’s that 14th Gold that counts the most:

Canada is the Olympic champion in men’s hockey, and the whole country can finally celebrate its Winter Games.

Canada survived one of the greatest games in Olympic history to beat the Americans 3-2 in overtime and cap the host country’s record gold rush in Vancouver.

Luckily for me, my cable TV was restored from a weekend-long blackout just minutes before the puck-drop. So I got to see all the action. I’d have been sorely disappointed if I had missed this one. It’s certainly disappointing to see Team USA settle for second place — there’s something perverse about having to, in effect, back into a Silver medal. But it was an eminently entertaining game, well worthy of the build-up. It was also a fitting showcase for the Winter Games, a role that hockey was granted as the final sign-off event for the Vancouver Olympiad.

And now, of course, it’s game-on again for the NHL, starting tomorrow. It’ll be a good momentum-carryover from Canada’s triumph into the Stanley Cup playoff run.

In the immediate afterglow of Team USA’s 5-3 win over Canada in men’s hockey, the comparisons are already being made between tonight’s impressive upset and the 1980 Miracle On Ice win over the Soviets.

Not to detract from this win, but I don’t see it. The Americans might have been an underdog coming into these games, but they’re hardly Davids going up against Canadian/Russian/Swedish Goliaths. Like most of the rest of the Olympics squads, the U.S. is stocked with National Hockey League players, which already puts them on more of a par than the all-amateur 1980 team that bested professional/military players from Europe.

I’m sure the impending 30th anniversary of the Miracle team tomorrow is fueling the hype. Take this win for what it is: A thrilling victory over a stacked Canadian team that had the home-crowd advantage going for it. It might turn out to be one of the ages, but for now, it’s enough that it’s of the moment.

For all the years I’ve been watching hockey, I’m stunned that I’ve never noticed this fundamental divergence in North American stick-curve predilections:

According to sales figures from stick manufacturers, a majority of Canadian hockey players shoot left-handed, and a majority of American players shoot right-handed. No reason is known for this disparity, which cuts across all age groups and has persisted for decades.

Most Canadians, like most Americans, are naturally right-handed, so the discrepancy has nothing to do with national brain-wiring. And how you hold a pencil, say, has little or no bearing on how you hold a stick. A left-handed shooter puts his right hand on top; a right-hander puts the left hand there.

Seriously? I can’t say I’ve noticed this on the ice, from NHL level on down. In fact, I’m downright skeptical, despite all the stats that seemingly back this up. As for theories for why this is (supposedly) so:

The Canadian journalist and author Bruce Dowbiggin noted the Canadian-American handedness split in his 2001 book, “The Stick: A History, a Celebration, an Elegy.” On Dowbiggin’s Web site, a reader named Kent Mayhew suggested the difference may have to do with how old a player is when he first picks up a hockey stick.

“The top hand on a hockey stick has to be able to handle the torques of a stick while the bottom hand just has to handle the weight with no torques,” he wrote. He theorized that American children, who tend to take up hockey when they are older and bigger, can afford to put the stronger hand, generally the right, on the lower part of the shaft for more precision.

Personally, having picked up the sport late in life, it’s no surprise that I’m a righty, both in stick-handling and firing the puck. Then again, neither my wrister nor my slapshot are exactly blistering; so maybe I should start practicing a southpaw-shooting style, like my Canuck brethren…

I’ve thought about it, and I’ve come to this conclusion: Using a forward to man the point on a power play is nothing short of a travesty.

This isn’t the first time I’ve considered this. But of late, the news of the New Jersey Devils using newly-acquired Ilya Kovalchuk up high during the man-advantage has crystallized my thinking. Of all the teams in the National Hockey League to opt for a pure offensive player in that role, the unlikeliest of all would be a Jacques Lemaire-coached squad. You’d think the overarching defense-first (and -second, and -third) philosophy would disqualify a sniper left wing during that critical gametime situation. And yet, the Devils are doing it.

I mean, what do you gain? A booming slapshot? Efficient puck distribution? A quality offensive defenseman should deliver that, and keep the puck relatively safe in a vulnerable spot.

Blame it on my own blueline bias, but I think the point is strictly the defenseman’s domain. Even the most loosey-goosey offensive d-man has more defensive responsibility than a comparably-equipped forward. When a penalty-killer pinches in, it’s a cinch that a forward is going to feel like he’s on an island, and make an ill-advised play with the puck — more than likely turning it over in the process. In my mind, resorting to a center or wing at the PP point is a sign of an incomplete roster, practically a desperation move.