A full schedule after a lockout-shortened season, a new divisional setup, outdoor games galore, the Chicago Blackhawks seeking their third Stanley Cup in five years. Those are all solid story lines for the 2013-14 National Hockey League season, which begins with three games on Tuesday. But make no mistake, much of the season will be about the Winter Olympics.
The Sochi Games will cast a long shadow over the season, until Feb. 9, when the N.H.L. pauses to allow nearly 150 players to fly to Russia for the 12-day tournament.
If those dozen days produce anything like the 2010 men’s tournament in Vancouver, which was capped by Sidney Crosby scoring the golden goal for Canada against the United States, it will be worth the wait.
The Olympic question will hang over every N.H.L. game. Will the Buffalo Sabres’ Ryan Miller rebound from three middling seasons to tend goal again for the United States, or will it be the Los Angeles Kings’ Jonathan Quick? Who will man the nets for the Canadians: Roberto Luongo, Corey Crawford, Carey Price or Cam Ward? Can Crosby stay healthy enough to play for Canada, and can his Pittsburgh Penguins teammate Evgeni Malkin stay healthy to play for Russia? When N.H.L. play resumes on Feb. 26, it will be the playoffs and the Stanley Cup finals, making this a season of two climaxes. Here is a look at some of the stories to follow.
New Coaches
Canadians call Vancouver Lotus Land because, supposedly, it is so laid-back. But the city has been the scene of plenty of civil disturbances over the last two decades, including two riots having to do with the Canucks.
So, it seems, Vancouverites take their hockey as seriously as does John Tortorella, who signed a five-year deal in June to coach the Canucks. Throw in the highly contentious Vancouver hockey news media, a citywide 24/7 obsession with the game that Tortorella never experienced as head coach in New York or Tampa and Tortorella’s own tripwire temper, and you have the recipe for a perfect storm.
He was on good behavior when the Rangers visited for an exhibition game last week, but do not count on that lasting.
He has already demanded that his players stop using their Twitter accounts, which just happens to be something Roberto Luongo, the Canucks goalie, is famous for.
“I think it’s stupid,” Tortorella said last month.
Other new coaches to watch: Rangers Coach Alain Vigneault, the former Canucks coach, is as good-natured as Tortorella is hair-triggered; Patrick Roy, in his first N.H.L. coaching job, takes over the Colorado Avalanche, whom he led to two Stanley Cups as a goaltender; Lindy Ruff, the former Sabres coach, is now in Dallas after he protested long and loud that the Stars beat Buffalo for the Stanley Cup on an illegal goal in 1999; and Dallas Eakins makes his N.H.L. coaching debut with a young Edmonton Oilers team of unfulfilled promise.
New Uniforms
The Columbus Blue Jackets made the biggest catch of the off-season when they signed Nathan Horton, a free-agent wing, from the Boston Bruins. Horton has scored 402 points in 591 N.H.L. regular-season games, but more important are his 36 points in 43 playoff games during the Bruins’ Stanley Cup championship run in 2011 and their 4-2 loss to the Blackhawks in the finals last spring.
Now ensconced in the East, the Blue Jackets, behind their president for hockey operations, John Davidson, are making a run at respectability. They have right wing Marian Gaborik, the former Rangers sniper; goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, the reigning Vezina Trophy winner; and now Horton, a playoff hero. All they have to do is make the playoffs, something they have done only once in 12 seasons. They just missed last season, finishing ninth in the West Conference.
Other key players putting on new sweaters: Tyler Seguin (Stars, from Bruins), Jaromir Jagr (Devils, from Bruins), Cory Schneider (Devils, from Canucks), Jarome Iginla (Bruins, from Penguins), Bobby Ryan (Ottawa Senators, from Anaheim Ducks), Daniel Alfredsson (Detroit Red Wings, from Senators), Valtteri Filppula (Tampa Bay Lightning, from Red Wings), Vincent Lecavalier (Philadelphia Flyers, from Lightning), Tim Thomas (Florida Panthers, from a year off).
New Divisions
The N.H.L. restructured its divisions to allow Detroit and Columbus to move to the Eastern Conference and Winnipeg to move to the Western Conference. The shuffling eases the travel burden on Western teams and adds some longer trips for the Rangers, the Islanders, the Devils, the Flyers and the Penguins.
Now those five teams are joined by the Blue Jackets, the Washington Capitals and the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference’s Metropolitan Division. But for sheer hockey gravitas, there is the new Atlantic Division: the Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit, Boston, Buffalo and the Ottawa Senators, and for all their snowbird fans in the Sunshine State, the Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay.
New Rules
Players will be penalized an additional two minutes if they take off their helmets to fight, so in a preseason game Krys Barch, then of the Devils, and Brett Gallant of the Islanders resorted to the genteel Western Hockey League custom of coming together to take off each other’s helmets before rearing back and throwing punches. Gallant said, “I wasn’t trying to make a mockery of the N.H.L.” The loophole was subsequently closed.
Players will also get a two-minute penalty if their sweaters are tucked into their pads. Presumably, this will keep the labels of nonlicensee companies off N.H.L. telecasts, but it will ruin the on-ice silhouette of Alex Ovechkin, who, like Wayne Gretzky before him, tucks his sweater in. Ovechkin’s opinion of the rule: “Everybody wants to do his own thing. It’s stupid.”
Most significant, the players’ association voted Monday to allow hybrid icing as a way to reduce dangerous races for the puck. Many players said they were confused by the rule during a preseason trial, but they approved the change anyway. The problem: the rule will not eliminate the most dangerous high-speed races into the end boards.
New Classics?
Maybe the New Year’s Day Winter Classic had lost some of its novelty, and maybe it had not. But the six outdoor stadium extravaganzas on tap will make up some of the revenue lost in last season’s lockout. In addition to the New Year’s Day Winter Classic game between the Red Wings and the Maple Leafs at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor (expected attendance: 105,000), outdoor games will be staged at balmy Dodger Stadium, Yankee Stadium (twice), Soldier Field in Chicago and B.C. Place in Vancouver.
Dates to Circle
WARM AND FUZZY DEPARTMENT Teemu Selanne’s farewell visit to Winnipeg (Ducks at Winnipeg Jets, Oct. 6); Coach Lindy Ruff’s return to Buffalo (Stars at Sabres, Oct. 28); Rick Nash’s return to Columbus (Rangers at Blue Jackets, Nov. 7).
MEDIA CIRCUS DEPARTMENT Tim Thomas reacquaints himself with Boston reporters (Panthers at Bruins, Nov. 7); John Tortorella charms New York (Canucks at Rangers, Nov. 30); Daniel Alfredsson faces jilted Ottawa fans (Red Wings at Senators, Dec. 1).
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