The Week That Was

The NHL season is starting to develop to the point where evaluation of where teams stand can begin, though the unevenness of scheduling means that as of this writing some teams have played as many as seven games and others as few as four. That will even out and the standings will normalize in the next couple weeks and I will probably wait until then to start looking back at season opening predictions. I think ten games of evidence is the minimum needed to determine breakthroughs as opposed to aberrations.

The Colorado Rockies won again last night, a feet that extends their remarkable run to 20 wins in 21 games, including six straight playoff games and the one game playoff to get take the wildcard spot away from San Diego. They have been doing by committee also, getting big hits from up and down their lineup and strong pitching no matter who they send to the mound. This could be the makings of historical run if they can continue to be hot for another series after closing out the Diamondbacks. I think their biggest worry, however, could be a lengthy layoff should the Indians and Red Sox series go six or seven games. It will be interesting to see if a break in the routine causes a young team that has just played the same way every night for the past month to start to think too much about what they are trying to accomplish.

The other great drama in baseball isn't the ALCS but the off-field questions surrounding the New York Yankees who have seen George Steinbrenner handing over control of the team in the midst of an oddly public evaluation of Joe Torre's position with the club. Overlooking the question of why Brian Cashman's job as general manager is safe, despite the fact that it was noted all year that the Yankee's weakness was pitching and he did nothing to address it, there are any number of cautionary tales for the Yankees to look to before firing Torre for the sake of change. Torre is almost universally acknowledged as being an excellent manager and while the seventh consecutive playoff failure should not be overlooked, it only makes sense to fire him if you can replace him with another excellent manager. There has been some debate as to who that might be and it seems the Yankees are doing their due diligence in delaying any announcements but the troubled start of the San Diego Chargers should give them just a little more pause. Having already lost more games than they did last year, the Chargers knee jerk reaction to a playoff loss may have cost them the chance to host the almost inevitable playoff matchup with New England or Indianapolis (assuming they turn things around and make the playoffs as they seem to be doing). Time will tell if they made the right choice but certainly the prospects are not terribly enticing.

The other interesting topic is the suspension of Jesse Boulerice for crosschecking Ryan Kesler in the face. While I think that the 25 game punishment was not as severe as I would have liked, it is a long suspension and debating games with the NHL could be incredibly frustrating. What seems to me more interesting is the question of punishing the team. It has been pointed out that this is not on the radar for the NHL governors but perhaps it is a topic that warrants legitimate debate. The fact that the incident involved a member of the Flyers and that they now have two players serving 20 plus game suspensions simultaneously certainly raises questions about the culture of that organization when it comes to violent play. Much has been made of the way the Anaheim Ducks bullied their way to the Stanley Cup last year and how teams are trying to toughen up to follow that model. There is little doubt that the Ducks toughness is an organizational culture that extends from the GM's office all the way down to the fourth line players and depth defensemen. So the question should be asked, if the Flyers really felt that Steve Downie's actions that led to the first suspension were unacceptable would Jesse Boulerice have felt comfortable enough on the team to cross the line he crossed. Would punishing the team encourage more internal discipline? It is hard to say. Is it reasonable to punish the team for an individual's actions? Possibly. The biggest obstacle that I see to that is the current unpredictability of NHL discipline. Without set punishments for certain crimes, it seems that uneven punishment of the teams is compounding the existing unfairness of uneven punishment for the players. It might, however, encourage teams to consider the type of players that they us on the fourth line and we might see more opportunities for players who have some skill but lack a certain something to stick fulltime in the league. If teams are worried about the costs of so-called energy players who they don't expect to score, they me be more willing to give a skill guy the chance to fight for ice time and have an extra opportunity to prove that he can produce in the NHL and it never hurts the league to have more skilled players on rosters.