Andy Charles's NHL Hockey fan blog

Of all of the impressive performances at the Winter Olympics, Switzerland goalie Jonas Hiller proved just how good a player he is going to be for the Anaheim Ducks as he came ever so close to guiding the minnows to an unlikely semi-final place.

Hiller stood on his head in making 42 saves in their quarter-final defeat at the hands of the United States, conceding just one goal to Zach Parise early in the third period as the Swiss, one of the outsiders for the tournament, eventually only succumbed 2-0 to a late empty-netter.

The Ducks netminder came into the season in competition with Jean-Sebastien Giguere for playing time in Anaheim, and despite some poor results for the team he soon saw off his competitor, who was eventually traded to Toronto.

Indeed the only problem he may have over the rest of the season is tiredness, since he has already matched his career high in playing 46 games in the NHL this season, and with only Vesa Toskala as his backup now, you can expect him to play the vast majority of their remaining games as they seek a playoff place.

Continue reading "Hiller gives Ducks something to hang on to"

 Well, we’ve made it to the halfway point of the season, so it is time to hand out a few awards to the deserving, the hopeless and the sensational.

Team of the season: I’m going to take the New Jersey Devils here since they are the one team to impress me more than I had expected. I thought Chicago and San Jose might be the quality of the West and so it has proved. The Devils; well I saw them as a decent playoff team but not the halfway top seed.

Martin Brodeur has been predictably brilliant, but the Devils continue to get offense from a team that lacks star quality after Zach Parise. And the biggest surprise among them? Has to be Andy Greene with 23 points in 37 games, already doubling any output he has managed in four NHL seasons.

Continue reading "And the winner is…"

You do just have to wonder how long a career Alex Ovechkin is going to have in the NHL if he carries on behaving the way he has over the last few weeks.

Ovechkin is about to return this week after a knee-on-knee clash with Carolina defenseman Tim Gleason in an incident that earned him a game misconduct, a two-game suspension and a knee injury at the same time.

The game’s most exciting player says the ban could only act to make him even angrier, and while that might be a worry for his opponents who fear him scoring at a quicker pace than he already does, it could be a bigger worry for his coach Bruce Boudreau and fans in the capital.

Boudreau has already had his say on Ovechkin’s style of play, claiming him to be reckless, and it’s hard not to agree with the veteran coach who continually has to worry about him being available on a nightly basis.

Continue reading "Ovechkin won’t change his ways"

Allen Iverson’s sometime glittering career in the NBA could just be over after he left the Memphis Grizzlies early into his tenure with the franchise.

Although Iverson was given permission ‘to leave to attend to personal business’ late last week, his time in Memphis had already started to become a sideshow with more talk about him being asked to come off the bench than anything else.

Iverson had only played three times for the Grizzlies before leaving ahead of Saturday’s clash with the Los Angeles Clippers, and had not played badly in averaging 12.3 points and 3.7 assists despite his displeasure at not being in the starting line-up as Memphis preferred to start Mike Conley and O.J. Mayo in the backcourt.

The 34-year-old also complained at a lack of communication with coach Lionel Hollins, as he revealed: “It’s probably going to always be hard for me and him to see eye-to-eye, because we’ve never even talked to each other. Obviously that’s what you do if you’re trying to accomplish the same goal.”

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One week down in the NHL schedule and already every team in the league has at least one overtime loss on their card with no 100% record showing just how wide open things could be in the race for the Stanley Cup this season.

Only Buffalo, Dallas and the Islanders have yet to taste a defeat in 60 minutes, the latter two of those teams both going down to three overtime/shootout losses in what should really be seen as positive starts to the season for franchises that endured tough times in 2008-9.

The Islanders have been one of the surprise packages of the opening seven days despite failing three times to convert excellent normal time performances into victories against tough foes in Stanley Cup champions Pittsburgh, Ottawa and Boston.

Ahead of their Columbus Day showdown with free-scoring Los Angeles, though, it was the star play of rookie John Tavares that had Islanders fans licking their lips in anticipation of just what they had drafted earlier in the year.

Continue reading "Time for the minnows to grow"

While most of the hockey world was reading about Dany Heatley’s monster move to the San Jose Sharks last week, it became clear that a former NHL favorite was about to try his luck at an unlikely comeback.

No, it’s not Jeremy Roenick a month after his retirement, and it’s not Claude Lemieux at the age of about 80, but the man most opponents loved to hate and his fans loved to love, Theo Fleury.

Fleury is back at training camp with the Calgary Flames, apparently determined to have at least one more season back in the NHL to end his career on his own terms, not in the way it had previously looked like ending back in 2003 before the work stoppage.

His path back to the league was cleared last week when he was granted reinstatement after a meeting with Commissioner Gary Bettman, as he was still under indefinite suspension over substance abuse issues that dogged the years towards what had been assumed to be the end of his career.

Continue reading "A most unexpected return…"

 

 

The National Hockey League lost one of its greatest recent players last week when Jeremy Roenick finally announced his retirement after a glorious 20-year career at the highest level.

Roenick is widely regarded as one of, if not the, best players to come out of the United States and should be a shoo-in for the Hockey Hall of Fame when his name appears on the ballot in a few years time.

The 39-year-old was not just a fine player, but one full of passion for the sport and he should have a job to walk into in some lucky organisation in the near future – most likely the Chicago Blackhawks where Roenick began his career.

Roenick recently admitted his one regret in hockey was leaving the Windy City in the first place, the move coming in a trade with the Phoenix Coyotes for Alexei Zhamnov and Craig Mills, and he is widely expected, according to hockey betting, to take on an ambassadorial role with the franchise fairly soon.

Continue reading "A fond farewell to Roenick (mostly!)"

The Chicago Blackhawks were probably the busiest team when NHL free agency opened and made the biggest splash when they signed Marian Hossa to an incredible 12-year $62.8m deal.

Hossa will be on his third team in three seasons and the Blackhawks have to hope he brings the best of his game from Detroit to the table this coming season or they could have just paid a lot of money for not a lot of product.

And they also have to pray that he does not complete an unwanted hat-trick having been on the losing sides in both of the last two Stanley Cup finals series, first after being traded to Pittsburgh in 2008 and then after signing with the Red Wings, losing to his former club a couple of months ago.

Hossa has been called a renegade in recent years, and the Penguins found it particularly sweet when they took him down in their Stanley Cup success, but this time Hossa finds himself in a different role – an old guy on a really young team.

Continue reading "Hossa wants bad luck to come to an end"

If, as expected, he is taken with the first pick of the NHL draft on Friday in Montreal, John Tavares will have the weight of Long Island on him.

The New York Islanders are a franchise coming out of two of the toughest seasons in their history and they need a face – a real star in the making – to be the answer towards finally helping them out of what has been a very dark hockey basement.

But are the expectations of the junior star, probably the biggest name to come into the sport since Sidney Crosby, too high assuming he beats off late competition from Victor Hedman and Matt Duchene to become the No 1 pick.

Although Tavares has put up gaudy numbers on his way to finally entering the draft (a year later than he wanted to) and managed to draw quite ludicrous comparisons to Wayne Gretzky, the transition to the professional ranks is going to be tough, most likely on a team that has forgotten how to win.

Continue reading "Pressure on John Tavares"

As the hockey-watching world concentrates on the final two rounds of the NHL play-offs, the people of Orange County are again on retirement watch as questions about Scott Niedermayer and Teemu Selanne’s future again rear their ugly head.

For the third season running, the Ducks go into the summer trading and draft season not knowing if two of their prized veterans are going to be around at the Honda Center again next season, and it’s becoming more and more of a worry as the years tick on and the veterans get older.

Niedermayer is coming off a great season, adding 10 play-off points to a 59-point regular campaign and as usual showing the grit and heart that should be expected of a captain.

Likewise Selanne showed few signs of slowing down, apart from one spell out injured, although his chemistry with the Ducks rookies wasn’t quite as strong in the post-season and his best performance came in the sickening game seven defeat by Detroit, when he intriguingly had less ice-time than grinders like Drew Miller and Todd Marchant.

Continue reading "Retirement questions return for Ducks"