Burnside Burns: February 2022

Scott Burnside
Scott Burnside
Burnside Burns: February 2022

And so we begin the back half of this topsy turvy NHL season.

What should have been a month of celebrating the first best-on-best tournament in Beijing at the 2022 Olympics since 2014 in Sochi will now be a month of postponed games being un-postponed.Teams, at least in the Western Conference — where pretty much everyone but Arizona, Seattle and Chicago is in the hunt — figure out if they’re going to be a buyer, seller or a nervous pedestrian come the trade deadline on March 21.

So, without further ado this month’s offering.

I remember having this conversation with my pal Pierre LeBrun many times over the years when talking about struggling teams and how to affect change. It’s always easy to fire a coach and/or a GM. We’ve seen it happen in Montreal and Vancouver this season. And certainly there are many Philadelphia Flyer fans who would love to see – another – housecleaning in Philly, given the tire fire of a season that the Flyers are turning in.

Totally get it. But at the crux of all those conversations with Pierre was how much time is enough for a GM? In general, I recall the consensus being that you can’t tell in three years or less. And what do most teams who hire a new GM have in common? They are struggling. But if ownership trusts management, then it requires patience, while patience is a rare commodity in the NHL, especially when things go off the rails as they have in Philadelphia.

Still, the fact is GM Chuck Fletcher, hired on Dec. 3, 2018, made moves he thought would turn this club around. Ryan Ellis’ long-term absence due to injury has been a key factor and his absence is another reminder that the Flyers have never really replaced Matt Niskanen, when the veteran defender suddenly retired before the start of the 2020-21 season.

Kevin Hayes’s absence has also been a drag on the team’s success, as has the slow development of young players in the system. When Fletcher admitted in a midseason press briefing that the team doesn’t have enough high-end talent, he’s right.

How to find such talent is the 64-dollar question. But let’s say corporate masters decide to move on from Fletcher in the offseason, how does that make sense? The fact the team is spending more on development and scouting, the fact Daniel Briere will be more involved moving forward, all speaks to a team that is determined to address shortcomings. Will they get it right under Fletcher? Not sure. But surely he deserves a little more runway than what he’s been given now.

For us, it’s not necessarily what does Claude Giroux want to do vis a vis the trade deadline; it’s how, or where, or if at all he fits in with the Flyers moving forward, regardless of what happens on or before the March 21 trade deadline.

Tough spot for Fletcher as he noted that the 34-year-old captain has probably been the team’s best player this season. But as an unrestricted free agent this summer, what dollar and term makes sense for the Flyers if they want to keep Giroux in the fold as they try and crawl out of this hole? Isn’t this the perfect time to make the kind of clean break that is sometimes required when a team needs to move on? And what does Giroux, with a young family and closer to the end than the beginning, want to achieve in the final years of his career? The Flyers aren’t anywhere near a Cup so if that’s critical to Giroux then he has to move on. And if it is critical to him then why not get a head start on it by allowing Fletcher to explore a trade this season?

His $8.275 million cap hit is a mouthful, so unless the Flyers eat some of that, it’s hard to imagine a trade until right at the deadline, although the sooner the better when it comes to adding high-end talent.

The New York Rangers, Colorado and Minnesota are all teams that look to be adding some skill and experience for the run.

As the second most famous person to come from Hearst, Ontario, (behind my pal Pierre LeBrun, of course) Giroux deserves all the latitude he wants in making a decision. But it’s hard to imagine that we aren’t watching the final moments of Giroux’s tenure in Philly.

Happened to be in New Jersey for Sidney Crosby’s first-ever NHL game on Oct. 5, 2005. Three nights later he scored his first goal in a three-point effort against Boston.

We’ve spent a lot of time around Crosby over the years, including a memorable trip to Nova Scotia after the Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2009. We actually ended up in the Stanley Cup parade with a photographer in my rental car right behind a car carrying Crosby’s grandparents. We sat next to agent Pat Brisson at a local tennis court while Crosby and his childhood pals played a game of street hockey (or was it roller hockey?) with the Stanley Cup as a prize. Crosby was in goal. We ended up at Crosby’s summer lakefront home and watched him as he lovingly washed and shone the Cup outside the house before an evening gathering. It might have been a newborn for all of the tenderness applied to the cleaning by the Pittsburgh captain and future Hall of Famer.

More recently we talked with Crosby for a Father’s Day piece about the bond with his father, Troy, and the lessons he learned on the way to and from the local rink, long before he started on his Hall of Fame career.

Thought of those moments this week as Crosby sits at 498 goals and will get a chance to hit the magic 500 plateau on Tuesday against arch foes Washington, which would be kind of fitting. He won’t likely be among the top three for most Hart Trophy ballot casters, but Crosby has been on fire with 36 points in 26 games since Nov. 26 and the Penguins, considered by many a bubble team this season, are comfortably in third place in the compact Metropolitan Division, one point behind the second-place Rangers.

As our good friend Craig Morgan first reported, the Arizona Coyotes’ saga takes yet another curious turn, as the Yotes are making plans to play for three (or four?) years in what is a step above a community rink.

If plans proceed along this track, the raggedy, little desert franchise will play as interlopers in Arizona State University’s new multi-use facility with a capacity of around 5,000 starting in the fall.

Junior hockey teams play in front of more fans. And the Coyotes would have to spend millions of dollars to create their own team space in the facility.

I’ll admit my first response was to hammer the team, almost as a kind of reflex action, like swatting a fly. Certainly moving into an albeit brand-new facility — but one that is a million miles from a proper NHL facility — is a definite step backwards or at least sideways after the City of Glendale reversed the narrative by punting the ‘Yotes out of Gila River Arena at the end of June, after years of acrimony.

But let’s take the long view here. Right or wrong, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has had a blind spot when it comes to the Coyotes. After losing Atlanta, a top media and corporate market, in 2011, Bettman has been determined to keep the Coyotes afloat, in spite of a numbing series of missteps and mistakes involving the franchise.

Still, with the team working to finalize a deal to get a long-awaited arena in Tempe not far from the ASU location, why not gut it out for three more years to find out once and for all what this market is about?

It will continue to be ugly in Arizona on the ice, we know that much. And it’s fair to ask how the NHLPA and the NHL’s board of governors, who have propped up this franchise in one way or another for years, will respond to this newest blight on the franchise record. But the short answer is they’ll respond as the Commissioner tells them to respond.

In spite of the tough questions and more jokes at the ‘Yotes expense, isn’t the league committed to this last bid to make it work in Arizona? I, for one, am all aboard. Let’s find out once and for all. And reserve my seat on one of the folding tables that will no doubt stand for the media room at ASU.

Speaking of Gary Bettman, wouldn’t it be great if the Commissioner began his All Star Weekend address in Vegas later this week with an announcement that the league was going retire Willie O’Ree’s No. 22, a jersey recently retired by the Boston Bruins, league-wide? What a great statement that would be and especially after some more troubling racist events in the ECHL and AHL in the days that followed O’Ree’s jersey retirement. Wouldn’t that be great?

First let’s start with some thoughts on Emilie Castonguay’s groundbreaking hire by the Vancouver Canucks as an assistant GM. We spent time with Castonguay in the Montreal area for a story about her a couple of years back. She was candid and funny about making her way in the male-dominated NHL player agent business.

At one of her first agents’ meetings, she knew almost all the other agents assumed she was someone’s secretary or assistant when she walked in with her notebooks. Didn’t bother her and she noted she might have been the only person not wearing a sweater vest. Ha. Great point (at which point I looked down to see I, too, was wearing the ubiquitous sweater vest).

During that visit, I also chatted with Castonguay’s top client, Alexis Lafreniere and his family. They were unequivocal about why the family decided that Castonguay, who was working for a smaller boutique agency in Montreal, was the right fit – trust. Plain and simple.

In fact, that trust was on display during that first visit as Lafreniere shot a video for sponsor Bauer, but in his native French because that was important to the Lafreniere family. Castonguay was instrumental in making that happen. Later we met up with Castonguay and Lafreniere before Lafreniere’s first training camp with the New York Rangers, who took him first overall in the 2020 NHL Draft.

Over lunch, Castonguay described how other agents or agencies regularly approached Lafreniere or his family trying to poach the high-profile young player. Did they do so because she was a woman or because she was with a smaller agency? Maybe both.

Regardless, I told her it would make me crazy if that happened, but Castonguay seemed nonplussed. It was a part of the business and she was determined to focus on the task at hand, giving proper representation to her clients.

No doubt, her new bosses in Vancouver, President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford and new GM Patrik Allvin, will find those qualities a welcome part of their work relationship with Castonguay.

So, let’s ask this question then. Knowing the obvious connection between Castonguay and Lafreniere. Would you trade Lafreniere for Vancouver’s J.T. Miller at the trade deadline? We know the Rangers are all-in and are looking to bolster their top-six forward group. And Miller, a former Ranger, would be a dynamic fit.

Miller’s also got one more year left on his current deal at a manageable $5.25 million cap hit. So the Rangers would be getting two potential playoff runs out of Miller, which makes the ask for him that much higher for Vancouver than a straight rental on an expiring contract.

Which is why if the deal makes sense, it makes sense now, not in the summer or next season. Lafreniere is a talent, but he’s not fully realized his potential in this his second season with the Rangers. He has moved up and down the lineup and from side to side for head coach Gerard Gallant while his ice time has likewise been very fluid. Hey, he’s still a kid.

But the Rangers are on the cusp of something special and Miller puts them in a better position against teams like Carolina, Pittsburgh and thinking deeper in the postseason, against Tampa Bay, Florida and Toronto.

Vancouver continues to have success under Bruce Boudreau, but the playoffs remain a longshot and this would be a terrific piece to add for a team that has a pretty barren assets cupboard. Food for thought no?

Will this be the month we see Jack Eichel in his first action as a Vegas Golden Knight? GM Kelly McCrimmon has been very cautious about a timeline for the former Buffalo captain, whose neck disc replacement surgery seems to have gone according to plan.

It seems just a matter of time. And while the Golden Knights may have hit a slight sideways patch on a trip east, we spoke with one longtime western scout who believes a healthy Eichel makes the Golden Knights the team to beat, a bold statement given that Colorado is absolutely on fire.

But assuming Eichel slides into the top-center spot, it gives head coach Pete DeBoer all kinds of options. Chandler Stephenson, who has performed admirably in the top center role, could move easily to a third-line spot, assuming DeBoer — who appreciates consistency in his forward units — keeps William Karlsson as his second pivot between Jonathan Marchesseault and Reilly Smith. Nicolas Roy has been holding down the 3C spot, but his size and skill allow him to move to the wing quite easily.

In short, a team whose lack of center depth cost them against Montreal in the conference final last year is even better. And according to this scout, matches even more favorably against high-flying Colorado, although of course all that is predicated on a return to form for Eichel.

And finally a tip of the cap to future Hall of Famer Henrik Lundqvist, as his jersey now rests in the rafters at Madison Square Garden. Always enjoyed our interactions with the Ranger netminder over the years, whether it was in scrums during playoff runs or one-on-one moments during the NHL’s preseason player tour.

I may have asked for tie-tying advice during one of those.

But when I think of Lundqvist, I think of one moment that distills for me the thin line between winning and losing, heartbreak and glory. It was after Game 2 of the 2014 Stanley Cup Final. The Rangers had blown a 2-0 lead in Game 1, losing in overtime and then blew multiple two-goal leads in Game 2 before succumbing 5-4 in double overtime. The large media crowd covering the final waited a long time to get into the Ranger room at Staples Center as Lundqvist tried to compose himself.

Even as we entered, he was sitting still in some of his gear, his head in his hands. What stands out for me was the quiet, almost reverence that the media group had (I know, sounds counterintuitive, no?) as we waited for the appropriate moment to begin the questioning. It was as though we all understood that the series had just turned on this game and that the ever-classy Lundqvist deserved the time he needed before addressing us. It was awkward but in a way kind of beautiful.

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