In The Crease

You don't know Jack (yet)

I wish I were in Los Angeles tonight. While it's starting to feel like playoff weather here in Ann Arbor, Michigan's finest hockey player isn't gearing up for the Frozen Four as the Yost faithful had hoped. Instead, Jack Johnson is making his debut tonight for the Kings and foregoing his final two years of college hockey.

Not that I blame him. It's not an understatement to say Johnson is the biggest thing to happen to Kings hockey since Wayne Gretzky departed Edmonton for the California sun. There's the t-shirts (Kill Jack Kill and JMFJ -- take a wild guess what that means). And there's the endless loop of videos on YouTube, a reel of hope for playoff-less fans:

LAK fans, you really don't know what you're getting into. After the Al Montoyas and Eric Nystroms left Michigan, Johnson was the face of Michigan hockey. He embodies what hockey markerters crave most -- scoring, hitting, and charisma to boot. And he's kind of an asshole, but in an adorable way. Piss him off? Canadian fans tried. He loves that; it just gives him more reason to punish your team on the ice.

A few quick ones about JMFJ:

• Last season, in a game up at Michigan State's Munn Ice Arena, Johnson was hit near the Spartan bench. As he came crashing down, his stick flung up and almost took off the heads of a few Spartans,  including head coach Rick Comley. Careless use? Or just a little Jack for you?
• In a 4-0 blanking of Alaska Fairbanks last season at Yost, Johnson got into a team-wide tussel which landed five Wolverines in the penalty box with less than minute to go in the game. But he didn't just sit in the penalty box; he led his teammates in playing tic-tac-toe through the dust on the glass, and wrote "Go Blue."
• Scared of the hitting? That smirk? How about that shot? Here, Johnson almost ripped the head off of Boston College's goaltender with an absolute rocket.

• I also won't soon forget his heroics against Sweden in the World Junior Championships this year. The U.S. faced elimination going into the last round robin game against Sweden, and gave up a game-tying goal with just 14 seconds remaining in the third. Who made sure the U.S. didn't go home empty-handed? Jack. He scored a power play tally in overtime to allow the U.S. to continue on and eventually take home the bronze medal.
• It's not just about Jack, either. It's the whole Johnson family that took over Yost for two years. Who can miss younger brother Kenny, who seemed too preoccupied with running up and down the bleachers at Yost in a mini Jack jersey to even notice his brother playing on the ice. And fans didn't leave their seats in the second intermission. When the Pep Band blasted the Blue Brothers theme, Jack Sr. got his groove on, eliciting chants of 'Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson' from the student section. Wonder if that will become a Staples Center tradition...

Is he ready for the NHL? Yes. His skills are obviously there, and he doesn't take the excessive penalties that he did freshman year. He's just itching to make a difference. And tonight's the first time we get to watch if he can do it in Hollywood.

Conspiracy theories

I'm not one of those fans panicking, whining about how Teppo Numminen's age is finally showing or how Ryan Miller is slumping. I'm too busy wondering how a team that should have been reinvigorated by the return of its captain, Chris Drury, had two of its most pathetic outings of the season in a row this week.

This is the same team that had captured 23 of their last possible 28 points without a third of its lineup. They didn't have Max Afinogenov, Tim Connolly, Ales Kotalik, and then lost Chris Drury to a vicious Chris Neil hit. The team looked more like the Rochester Americans than the Buffalo Sabres, but they managed to pile of up the points and score like crazy. Last week, the Sabres scored 17 goals in three games. And now, just three goals in two games.

But it wasn't just the lack of finish. Buffalo's looked a little uninspired. Bucky Gleason in today's TBN:

"Here’s a word that hasn’t been tossed around in a few years: boring. Looking for another? Sloppy. Another? Ugly. If you didn’t know any better Friday night, you would have thought the Buffalo Sabres revisited the forgettable 2002-03 season rather than being energized by starting back-to-back home games for the first time in eight years."

The team looked disorganized, like a turnover machine, and couldn't make the passes that make them the most dangerous offensive team in the league.

Even more puzzling was Lindy Ruff's decision to start Miller Friday night against the Minnesota Wild. All week, it seemed Ruff had Ty Conklin penciled in for his first start with his new team. But suddenly, Friday came and Miller, who has a history of getting tired, got the nod for his 11th straight appearance. Tonight, Miller has to play against New Jersey. The Devils are just three points behind the Sabres for first overall in the Eastern Conference. And now, the Sabres have dropped to third overall in the league behind Detroit and Nashville.

The mixture of no Conklin and Drury's return doesn't equal up to what's happened on the ice. I almost wonder if Ruff and the team know something the fans don't. Are Afinogenov and Connolly still coming back eventually? Or has there been some injury news the team is hiding from the media? This week, it came out that Connolly still isn't improving:

"Connolly’s leg, however, still hurts. He hasn’t been on the ice and nobody knows when he will be. Sabres coach Lindy Ruff has figured Connolly will need six weeks to get into game shape. Four weeks remain in the regular season.

"When you look at a week to 10 days, that wasn’t going to be that big of a setback," Ruff said after Thursday morning’s practice in HSBC Arena. “When you go beyond that, it’s a setback. . . . We were making good progress. Right now, we’re not making any progress." ' (TBN, 3/9/07)

So call me crazy, but maybe the team knows something we don't. This is still the same team that went on the hot streak, that shocked the league with its NHL-leading play with and AHL-looking roster. It's gotta be a problem between their ears. I just hope that I'm wrong; maybe it's just a freak occurrence. And I still can't explain the Miller start on Friday. Let's just hope we won't be kept wondering after tonight.

Emotions lost in the new NHL economics

As new Islander Ryan Smyth took the ice tonight, I didn't feel the urge to join the ovation at Nassau Coliseum. I didn't feel that bad for Smyth, either, who cried his way out of Edmonton yesterday. Lost in the equation were the Edmonton fans. These were the fans who watched their eighth-seed team get all the way to the Finals last season only to lose Dwayne Roloson to injury in Game One, rally from a 3-1 series deficit, and fall short in Game Seven. Follow that up by losing both Micheal Peca and Chris Pronger (and a few more for good measure) in the offseason, and then topped by a shocking deadline deal that sent Oiler-lifer Smyth east. ESPN's Damien Cox writes about Edmonton's plight:

"They believed somehow it was the inalienable right of every one of the 30 franchises to identify one or more key players and then be able to retain the services of those players. In Edmonton, they really believed that. So they supported the owners' lockout of the NHL Players' Association and even gave NHL commissioner Gary Bettman an ovation when he came to town. ...

So all the promises of the "new economic order" captivated the imagination of Edmonton fans, maybe more than fans anywhere else. It would be an even playing field again. The big, dirty cities like New York and Philadelphia and Toronto wouldn't be able to steal all the good Oilers players away, and the self-proclaimed "City of Champions" would be great again."

As a Sabres fan, I can vouch that I felt the cap would bring this too. And so far, it's been great for Buffalo, except that it might prevent them from keeping both Chris Drury and Daniel Briere around after this season.

But Smyth's situation reminds me more of a former Sabres' contract fight -- Michael Peca. Well, pretty much every sob-story-negotiation does. But the facts are similar in this case. Agent Don Meehan represent the player. (I swear he drives evil in to them...) The team and the player are within $100,000s of each other. Both sides are stuck in concrete, not willing to budge. The city is head-over-heels in love with the guy, as he is the heart of the team. And in the end, the fans end up losing. Big time.

I was moved by Smyth's statement as he departed Edmonton. The tears, the emotions... they seemed genuine. But what I don't get -- in both Peca and Smyth's case -- is why it came to this. Why couldn't either of them take a slight hometown discount? Why did negotiations escalate to the point where both sides were completely irrational and unreasonable? Chalk it up to good old human nature. With both sides so entangled in their positions, they completely forgot about the problem and therefore couldn't possibly find a resolution.

In professional sports, it's cold, hard economics that fans are forced to accept. But there's always the hope that the next heart-and-soul player is coming. Although the Peca debacle hurt for a long time, Tim Connolly turned out to be more than just a pretty face and a washed-up juniors star. And Daniel Briere was picked up for a song. It happens. And, if Smyth keeps his words, the Stanley Cup will come back to Edmonton, anyway:

"I want to thank them [the Islanders] for this. I'm going to go there and do my best to make the playoffs and win that cup so I can bring it down here to Edmonton because that's where my heart is."

All I ask is the same thing I asked six years ago -- if this is where your heart is, why leave?