The Neutral Zone Trap

I’ve been largely ignoring the NHL playoffs. I watch the games here and there, but I’m not really wrapped up in it. I am, however, excited to see that the NHL Network will be showing the Memorial Cup, the championship of Canadian Major Junior hockey, starting tonight through the final next Sunday. The tournament is being hosted by the Kitchener Rangers, my second favorite OHL team (I lived in Ottawa first, so the 67s claimed prime territory in my heart before the Rangers). Also in the tournament are Gatineau (my favorite QMJHL team), Spokane, and Belleville.

The Junior Blue Jackets are no more. This isn’t especially surprising, given that they struggled even to fill the Dispatch Ice Haus. What’s perhaps surprising is that they came back for a second season in Columbus at all, given what many people consider to be their genesis as a vanity project for Doug MacLean.

I’ll admit that I only made it to one game over the two seasons they were in existence. And I consider myself a pretty serious fan of hockey at all levels, so you can see what they were up against. With plentiful cheap tickets to the Jackets and hockey Buckeyes available, it just doesn’t seem like there was an untapped niche of hockey fans in Columbus for the Junior Jackets, even with all the free tickets on Craigslist, etc. Maybe in a decade or so…

Good news. This guy was solid for the Jackets last season. Glad to see he’ll be sticking around.

This is interesting…the owners of the Dayton Dragons baseball team are eyeing a new arena that would be located just north of the Warren/Montgomery County line. And they’re studying whether an AHL team would work there.

Of course, this is all still at the very speculative stage — there is no arena yet, and the AHL’s affiliation rules make it difficult for new franchises to get off the ground. But this ownership group has been very successful with the Dragons, so we should expect they know what they’re doing when it comes to minor league sports.

If it does come to pass, several entities stand to be affected, not necessarily in a positive way:

• Obviously, the ECHL Dayton Bombers would face a stiff threat from an AHL team. They’ve struggled at the gates as the only hockey team in town, been near the brink of folding before. And we’ve seen in Cincinnati just how sustainable two minor league hockey teams are in the long run. The Bombers would have the name recognition and some loyal fans going for them, but I could see them not being long for the world if the AHL team is created.
• I wonder as well how this would affect the Cyclones? They’ve finally seemed to gain some traction in terms of attendance in the second half of 2007-08. But the proposed south Dayton arena would be closer and more convenient for a lot of people in places like Mason, West Chester, and elsewhere in Cincinnati’s northern suburbs than US Bank Arena. I could definitely see the ‘Clones losing some fans to a Dayton AHL entry. How many is the question. This is purely impressionistic evidence taken from a handful of games, but I’ve observed that there seem to be as many Kentucky plates as Ohio in the garage for Cyclones games. So, if their fanbase is mostly south of the river, they likely wouldn’t feel this new team much. But if they have been drawing a lot of people from Warren and Butler Counties — watch out.
• Finally, I wonder what this would mean for the Jackets, or more precisely, for the Crunch. When Cincinnati and Cleveland were without AHL teams and looking to get them back, there was a lot of talk among fans about moving the Jackets’ AHL affiliate to Ohio because of the marketing synergy that would be created. Of course, as it worked out, Cincinnati’s franchise fell through due to low ticket sales, and the Jackets had renewed the agreement with Syracuse before Cleveland got their team back. If Dayton comes on-line in a couple years, though, I imagine the debate will start up again. And given that Dayton is probably the best potential non-Central Ohio market for the Jackets (proximity to Columbus and no competition from other major league sports based in that city), it might make more sense than it would have with Cincinnati and/or Cleveland. Which could be fun for Jackets fans, to have the prospects playing an easy hour drive away. But could lead to the good folks in Syracuse losing their AHL team, as happened in Cincinnati when the Ducks switched affiliates to Portland. Of course, it’s also worth noting that Columbus dropped the Bombers as their ECHL affiliate this season and went with Elmira instead, so maybe Upstate New York is just fine for the CBJ management?
• As for me, I loathe the Nutter Center with the white-hot intensity of 1000 suns, so I for one welcome our new suburban arena building AHL overlords…

In any event, we should keep an eye on this and see how it develops.

Yeeahhh!

Jackets’ majority owner passes away at the age of 84.

He’d been in poor health the past few years, so this isn’t utterly unexpected, although it was still a bit of a jolt to read on my BlackBerry in the checkout line at Giant Eagle just a few minutes ago. It also adds a bit more of a sad note to the Jackets’ failure to make the playoffs yet again this year, that Mr. McConnell never got to see his team play in the postseason.

I wasn’t in Columbus yet when the whole debate about the funding of the arena occurred. But certainly Mr. McConnell seemed to have high popularity among Jackets’ fans for bringing the team to Columbus, as evinced by the standing ovations at Nationwide Arena whenever he was shown on the jumbotron during a game. I know some Jackets’ fans felt like he held the purse strings too tight, especially this past season, and thus hampered the organization’s ability to put a winning organization on the ice, so the support wasn’t 100%. Although he did open up his wallet for Doug MacLean on more than a few ill advised occasions, so I hardly think we can accuse him of being an Ohioan Bill Wirtz. And given that the sports owners I was most familiar with prior to moving to Columbus were Marge Schott, Mike Brown, Bruce Firestone and Rod Bryden, Mr. Mac did always seem like a pretty good guy by comparison. So I’ll be recognizing his passing with some sadness.

The big question is what this means for the CBJ. I’ve heard from people who have dealt with both in business capacities that John P. McConnell, who I assume will take control of all his father’s holdings, is more of a hard-nosed businessman, and less inclined to suck up continued losses for the sake of civic pride. Which may or may not be true, but would seem to put some more pressure on the team to start winning next season and building the fanbase back up, lest relocation become something more than Jim Balsillie’s wet dream…

In any event, RIP Mr. Mac. I wish I could toast your memory this evening while watching your team fight towards the Stanley Cup, but a toast in front of the Rangers-Penguins game will have to suffice.

Thankfully, he’s talking about the Florida Panthers, not the Jackets.

Today’s Dispatch has a nice story about how Duvie Westcott has been making the most of a bad situation, fitting in well with the Crunch since he was demoted by the Jackets.

I always liked Westcott, but it was pretty clear he was done as a Jacket when his play slipped so much after his injuries of the past couple of seasons. It’s good to hear that he seems to have a positive attitude about his situation and wants to continue playing somewhere.

As far as the NHL playoffs go, I’ve been watching bits and pieces of games here and there, but am mostly out of touch with the major storylines of the playoff year. Just one of the many benefits of being a fan of a bad NHL team — I get to start catching up on my Netflix queue weeks or even months earlier than most of you!

At last, the long awaited season wrap-up post. And yes, my lack of enthusiasm for writing this post pretty much sums up my feelings towards the sputtering end of the CBJ’s 2007-08 season. Or, to put it another way — I had a ticket to the last game and didn’t go, because I was tired and wanted to assemble my new kitchen table. Had the team been heading into the playoffs, could I have let the table wait and had an espresso? Probably. And, as it turns out, I didn’t miss much of anything in that last game (which I did watch on TV); the Jackets lost 4-1 to the Blues.

I struggle to wrap my head around this season. I’ve spent much of the year being irritated and demoralized by the constant negativity in some quarters. And yet, my own feelings about the season now that it’s all over are mostly negative and depressed. Yeah, it was the best season in their history, but I was really hoping for something more.

I didn’t expect playoffs this year. But I did expect a little better than how they ended up. Mostly, I expected they would at least be in the playoff race, and that we’d at least have some excitement in the last few weeks of the season. And I realize that they weren’t “mathematically” eliminated from contention until near the end, but honestly, it never felt like they were in it after they stumbled post-All Star Game. Yeah, they climbed up to around five points out, which is better than they’ve ever been before in the second half of the season. But to me, a team that’s really in the playoff race is going to be in that eighth spot for at least some time period after January. So that, to me, was very disappointing. Disappointment which was compounded by some of the terrible efforts we saw at the tail-end of the season.

Essentially this year showed how far away they still are. The big holes in the lineup going into the season continued to be big holes; no one stepped up from within to fill them. So the Jackets end the season as they started it — searching for a legit top line center and top d-man. Unlike some people, I’m comfortable with Howson not being a big player in the FA market last summer, but now that he’s had a season to assess the current lineup as they performed for a full year under Hitchcock, I do want to see more this summer.

But how much money will there be for signing FAs? We also saw attendance fall to near the bottom of the league this year, and for the first time, questions are starting to be asked about how secure the franchise’s future in Columbus is. While I don’t think we need to fear an imminent move to Kansas City, it’s a matter of concern. And creates all the more pressure for the team to win next year.

There were bright spots this season: Pascal Leclaire finding his form as an NHL keeper, Nik Zherdev playing (at least until the end of the year) like he wanted to be here, Rick Nash becoming the first homegrown captain in CBJ history. And there are always what ifs: what if Freddy Modin had been healthy, what if David Vyborny hadn’t gotten hurt in preseason?

Of course, like all fans of perennial losers, I maintain my faith — in the face of all evidence — that next year will somehow be different. Gilbert Brule will blossom, Jakub Voracek will be rookie of the year, Wade Redden will sign here as a UFA…okay, maybe not, but I do still feel like they’ve got at least some of the pieces in place, and with a few judicious additions, some consistent work, and some luck (for once), maybe April 2009 will bring with it playoff hockey at Front and Nationwide. And if not, well, the Crew have to be good one of these years, right? 1-1 so far, baby!

And on that optimistic note, I declare my spring-summer semi-vacation to be officially opened. I’m sure I’ll blog occasionally about the playoffs, draft, free agent frenzy, and whatever else goes on this summer, but not with any regularity. ‘Til September…

Here, read this while you’re waiting for me to get around to my season rounding-up posting.