Adam Hall and the importance of bottom six players

And we're back. Work and other things have kept me from writing a bit, but now I want to get back and at least put some thoughts to the virtual paper while hockey is still on.

The Flyers season ended a couple of weeks ago, and while I would have liked to do a full analysis of the season, I think other sources have done so better than I could and now it's a bit too late to do that anyway. However, yeah, it sucked ass, but the future is looking not all that bad. The Flyers are an up and coming team with a lot of young talent that will develop given enough time.

However, just as every time a season ends for any team, the discussion turns to what will change, and what will have to change. Besides the biggest and most obvious desire/need for a true #1 defenseman, shared with about half the league, a lot of discussion on the Flyers end was about the 4th line. Fans in general are sick of having fighters like Riley Cote, Jody Shelley, or Jay Rosehill, and agitators like Dan Carcillo or Zac Rinaldo taking up space and contributing very little to a team.

I can't help but agree here. Don't get me wrong, fights are fun, and I don't really think badly of these players as people. Some are even quite entertaining. But their contributions aren't really all that helpful in winning hockey games. Penalty minutes are detrimental, and as much as I like a big hit, a hit always means that your team does not have the puck. To be helpful to a team, some these players have to bring something else to the team as well.

To illustrate this, let's take a look at my favorite 4th line in the history of the Flyers consisting of Darroll Powe, Blair Betts and Ian Laperrière. Now Lappy is a notorious fighter with more broken noses than I want to count, but he was also a great contributor by being a great presence on the penalty kill, plus a genuine heart and soul kind of player every team should want as a leader by example. Darroll Powe also was a tough customer, a pure energy guy putting pressure and bruises on players through his quick skating, but not all that bad defensively (and he has a fantastic hockey name). Blair Betts was also a great PK player and a fantastic face-off man.

All of these players brought something to the table and helped the Flyers go to the Final in 2010. They contributed in multiple ways and added depth to the Flyers while filling roles other players were not cut out for. I just find it unfortunate that Lappy's career got cut short by this season through post-concussion syndrome, and Blair Betts' injury riddle career also ended a season later.

What's good for the Flyers is that while they should get rid of players like Rosehill who can only punch people in the face, they have players that can contribute in a similar manner like the 2009-10 season. The biggest example here is Adam Hall.

Hall is a genuine journeyman who is now on his 7th NHL team, and that illustrates where so many teams go wrong, because any team should love to have Hall on their roster. Hall is the quintessential 4th line center. He is an absolute fiend in the face-off circle, winning 59.6% of the 527 faceoffs he took this season. There are only four players in the league with similar numbers and a better winning percentage: Joe Vitale, Vladimir Sobotka, Zenon Konopka, and Rich Peverley. Manny Malhotra with a 59.4% win rate on a ridiculous 952 faceoffs also deserves a special mention.

Hall is also a great penalty killer, helping the Flyers to become one of the best PK teams in the league, though I guess we can't understate the impact of Sean Couturier and Matt Read on that front.

Adam Hall is not a scoring threat, and he doesn't need to be. He adds value to the team in other ways. He carved out his niche and fills it out entirely in a role that every team needs and every team should look to have. And he basically only costs you a league minimum wage.

The bad thing is that it looks like the Flyers might not bring him back. Now they have a decent excuse with the glut of centers they have. Claude Giroux, Luke Schenn, Sean Couturier, Vincent Lecavalier, plus Scott Laughton on the horizon is stiff competition for Hall. Personally the first guy I would get rid off from these six players is Lecavalier as elaborated on previously and the playoffs did little to change that opinion. However, Hall's expiring contract would be the easiest and the front office of an NHL team rarely passes on an easy out. However, while Hall is not a priority player I think it would be good for the team if they retained him.

A team needs players like Hall which bring different things to the table and fill roles in this kind of manner. Just look at the Pittsburgh Penguins as they were just eliminated by the Rangers exposing one of the biggest flaws in their team: An awfully weak bottom six forward group. They have very little forward depth and while they have a similar player like Hall in Joe Vitale, the rest of their bottom six is a burning wreck.

I like to compare them to a spinning top. They can move fast and overcome obstacles through velocity, but if they are upset enough they lack the solid foundation to remain upright. They topple over for that reason.

Compare that to recent cup-winning teams like Boston, Chicago or Los Angeles to find a good mixture between star-quality forwards in the top two lines, and solid role players in the bottom six. Even look at the 2009 Penguins and their bottom six compared to today (though I would also like to mention another thing that squad had that's missing from the Penguins today: veteran leadership).

For the Flyers this should be a guiding line. A team can't just be a number of scoring players. They need some solid backup and have multiple dimensions filled, rather than stacking up in one direction and neglecting another. Unlike Dungeons & Dragons, min-maxing doesn't really work in hockey. Sometimes that means that players like Adam Hall are more valuable to a team than Vincent Lecavalier. Let's just hope that the Flyers manage to see the same thing, rather than have to find out the hard way.

The Greatest Franchises in the History of the League (and why the Flyers are among them)

With each passing season new history is made. Some franchises improve, find success, write new stories which will later be passed along by fans and media alike. They add to their legacy. Other franchises don't do so well, and while tragedies also make for great stories and add a certain kind of mysticism and intrigue, it requires perseverance to suffer through them and find new glory rather than fail and sink into a swamp of misery.

As a fan of the Flyers I find it interesting how this year went. From the miserable start to a remarkable turnaround which saw them return to the playoffs after last year's absence. It is already a season to remember for it, and it bodes well for the future too. Captain Claude Giroux solidified his role on the team and his position as one of the premier forwards in the league, while a lot of the young talent that surrounds him is also improving and finding their place in the league. Throughout the season the Flyers have shown the resiliency that is required to be successful and the team has with it done their heritage proud.

The Flyers put together another winning season, and the franchise thus remains as the team with the 2nd best yield of points in the history of the league. This will also be the 38th time they will make the playoffs in 47 years of team history, or more than 80% of the time. And while they haven't won the Cup in a while, they are known to make a run with 8 appearances in the Stanley Cup Final, which is the 3rd most of all franchises since they entered the league (and until last year it was tied for 2nd most). The Flyers also have 16 division titles to their name.

They may not have as many Championships as I might like and some other teams do, but they are always a threat to look out for. And the longest lull in their history was a period of 5 years in the early 90s in which they missed the playoffs, but only once were they out of it by more than 4 points.

They are, to put it simple, the picture of constant high level play and continuous success. And even outside just being successful the Flyers have influenced the league, the Broad Street Bullies and the Lindros trade (probably the 2nd most significant trade in NHL history, after the Gretzky trade) just to name a couple of examples.

Still, some people seem to look at me incredulously whenever I exclaim how proud I to be rooting for one of the best franchises within the sport. In their mind, only teams from the Original Arbitrary Six have a claim at such a legacy, which I find strange considering that the expansion of the league began almost 50 years ago.

It appears to me that they are thinking solely in absolutes. Team X has more Cups/Playoff Appearances/Division Titles/1st place finishes etc. than Team Y so it is automatically better, and seem to simply neglect the fact that Team X has been around twice, sometimes three times as long. They also conveniently overlook the fact that it was easier for a franchise to win something back then than it is today. Now a team has to beat 29 other teams. Back then it was only five others.

Simply in the interest of fairness we have to handicap the Arbitrary Six to a certain extend, and if it's only dividing a teams success by the number of years of their existence.

But even taking such things into account I will easily admit that the Montreal Canadiens are the cream of the crop. They have won the Cup 24 times (as any Habs fan will pretty quickly remind you) and even after expansion they were a force to be reckoned with. They have the best points yield of any franchise throughout history and a slew of division titles and other accolades. However, their grasp on the power has been waning since their last Cup victory in 1993, with 7 missed playoffs and 7 first round exits since.

On the other hand, Canada's other A6 franchise should be excluded from the "great franchise" debate outright in my opinion. Yes, the Toronto Maple Leafs are no longer a great franchise, and haven't been for a while. They have won the Cup 13 times, but all these victories came when there were seven or fewer teams in the league On one occasion it was only four. It doesn't take a lot of math to figure out that even a base probability of a Cup win is much lower now that 30 teams are in the league.

What nails down the Leafs however is their lack of success ever since the 1967 expansion. They have not only failed to win a Stanley Cup, they have failed to even make it to the Final. In 47 seasons they have only won their division once and missed the playoffs 19 times. And since the lockout that ate the 2004-05 season they have only made the playoffs once, failing in spectacular and soul-crushing fashion in Game 7 to the Boston Bruins. Add in their horrifying collapse this year that rivals that of the New York Mets in 2007, I have a hard time believing that anybody still thinks of them as a great franchise.

This brings me to the Chicago Blackhawks, who are kind of the reverse Leafs. They were absolutely atrocious during the A6 era, qualifying only twice for the playoffs in 14 attempts between from 1944 to 1958. After that they made 28 consecutive playoff appearances from 1969 to 1997, but never managed to win a Cup losing in the Final three times. After another decade of losing and consistent bottom rung finishes they amassed talent through the draft and won the Cup for the 2nd time in four seasons last year.

A similar story is told by looking at the Red Wings, though with a higher peak. They were a force in the Original 6 era, and were a veritable Dynasty in the last two decades, managing to make the Final six times between 1994 and 2009. This year they qualified for the playoffs again, making it their 23rd consecutive year doing so.

However, separating those two runs was the "Dead Wings" era. In between 1966 and 1986, the Red Wings were perennial bottom dwellers, missing the playoffs 16 times and getting past the first round only once. They were the absolute laughingstock of the league and a shame to everything that came before.

For both the Hawks and Wings recent success is fine and dandy, but it can not overshadow their long bouts of futility entirely. A franchise has to live with its history. If I had to make a choice between the two, I would take the Red Wings. The Hawks could prove me wrong in the immediate future though.

The Boston Bruins also have a similar history, though their only true futile years were 8 seasons in the 60s in which they failed to qualify for the post-season. They also had kind of a lull through the 90s and 00s. However, 18 Division Championships and 9 appearances in the Final since the league expanded are a strong language, particularly if added to their recent Cup victory and last years appearance in the Final.

This leaves the New York Rangers, who are definitely a step below all teams named so far. The Original Arbitrary Six era was not kind to them, as they missed the playoffs 18 times in the seasons between 1942 and 1966. In the 6 years they managed to qualify, they made it out of the first round only once, and were then dispatched. There's also the infamous 54 year Cup drought from 1940 to 1994, with little to write about between those years or since that Victory twenty years ago. Even with the advantage of having played within a league that consists of only six teams they were incapable of amassing the accolades like their colleagues from the same era did. The Rangers are an old franchise. Successful is a different matter.

So with the Original Arbitrary Six covered, let's look at some more recent additions to the league.

The  New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers are a curious case of symmetry. Both teams entered the league in the 70s, wear Orange and Blue, quickly established themselves as veritable dynasties, but have fallen flat ever since and are currently trying to rebuild through the draft. The Oilers have a little bit of a better claim, with one more Cup victory in their history, plus a somewhat miraculous Final appearance in the deviant post-lockout 05-06 season.

However, whatever capital both teams amassed through their dynastic years in the 80s is long gone, fallen by the wayside through years of losing and both teams have become the laughingstock of the league at one time or another through bad management. How the mighty have fallen.

From the 80s we jump to the 90s and 2000s, in which for the most part the Colorado Avalanche and New Jersey Devils split whatever the Red Wings left over.

While Wikipedia is trying to fool people by separating the seasons in Quebec and Colorado, the Avalanche are still the same franchise as the Quebec Nordiques and the Nordiques' years must be taken into account when looking at their franchise history. Make no mistake, the Avs won the Cup in their first season in Colorado because of the players amassed in drafts and trades made in Quebec so it is only fair to count the losing years of the Nordiques against the Avs franchise history. And lose they did often, collecting four consecutive 1st overall draft picks in the late 80s and early 90s.

The Avalanche made good use of those picks, and the rewards for trading away one of those draft choices named Eric Lindros and won two Cups, but the Avalanche never made another appearance in the Final since their last victory in 2001. Since then they have fallen off, but thanks to talented amassed in the drafts they seem to have returned to form. This hasn't delivered anything too outstanding yet, though it seems to be developing that way.

The Devils also once played in Denver, and Kansas before that, but all those years were miserable and hardly worth mentioning. Even after moving to New Jersey little happened, to the point where they were infamously declared to be a "Mickey Mouse franchise" by the best player to ever play the game. However, thanks to four appearances and three victories in the Stanley Cup Final over nine years they managed to get rid of that moniker. But those seemingly dynastic years are now in the rearview mirror and the franchise is running on the fumes of old glory. They had another appearance in the Final only two season ago, but the leading player in it, Ilya Kovalchuk has since "retired" from the league as well, leaving the Devils somewhat stranded, with Martin Brodeur, the last vestige of their glory days appearing to leave the franchise in the immediate future.

Finally, let's take a look at the nouveau riche of the NHL, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Since their incarnation the Penguins were a doormat up to them drafting Mario Lemieux, which was pretty much a race to the bottom with the Devils. The interesting thing though is that even with Lemieux in their lineup, there was little immediate impact. When they drafted Lemieux in 84, they had already missed the playoffs twice. They would miss it another 5 times in the next 6 years before winning two Cups, conveniently falling in between the end of the Oilers Dynasty, and the start of the triumvirate of the Red Wings, Avalanche and Devils. They also only managed to do that after luckily picking up another all-time great forward in Jaromir Jagr.

While continuous playoff appearances followed, the unfortunate illness of Mario Lemieux would put a dent into their hopes of regaining another Cup to the point were they traded an unhappy Jagr for players that never panned out. Mismanagement on both the financial and athletic side followed with the team becoming a bottom dweller just at the right time to pick up a couple more generational talents in Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby, a player they literally won in a lottery. Talk about lucky.

The little secret here is that even after putting up two more Stanley Cup Final appearances and another victory in it, and while retaining those two generational talents, the Penguins are far from threatening now. They have been routinely exposed by a variety of opponents in the playoffs as unfocused and easy to manipulate, and are thus less thought of as the team to beat than other recent Cup winners like Boston, Chicago or Los Angeles.


The NHL has a number of great franchises. I'm lucky to be a fan of one of the best of them as they can very much hang with any other franchise in terms of team success, pride, community and history. If you ask me, while the Canadiens are the clearcut all-time leader, they are slowly fading, and teams like the Flyers, Red Wings and Bruins are gaining on them. Of that pack I think the Flyers are a nose ahead, though that may be bias on my part speaking. The Bruins are improving though and may soon be in position to make a claim for it. However, saying that it isn't close is a mistake I don't think any fan should allow themselves.

Which franchise is truly the best ever can never be truly answered while the league is still running of course, which I hope it will for a long time. This leaves us with continuously adjusting a franchises reputation and whether their recent play solidified their legacy or brought shame on itself and took away from their history. However, this also keeps things interesting as a franchise can not simply rest on its laurels.

James Neal should not be made of teflon

Here we see Neal inflicting grievous harm before swiftly exiting the ice for the bench.

It should be no secret that I do not like the Pittsburgh Penguins. Besides being a pain in the ass and currently involved in a heated rivalry with the Flyers, I consider them to be an aberration in sports. They are a franchise that has been sustained not by hard work, but almost entirely by luck. They had the good fortune to suck at the right time, unlike Panthers, Blue Jackets or Coyotes for example. First in the 80s they win the Mario Lemieux sweepstakes, and more recently in the mid 2000s they drafted first or second overall in four consecutive years yielding them Marc-Andre Fleury, Jordan Staal, and the generational talents of Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby. Crosby is of course the biggest example of the Penguins good fortune, his draft choice being awarded through an actual lottery involving every NHL team.

What is worse however is how the Flyers and the Penguins are being viewed by outsiders and more casual hockey fans. The Flyers have earned a reputation in the 70s as the Broad Street Bullies, a mean and physical team. They have suffered from this reputation ever since, never being awarded the benefit of doubt whenever something less than wholesome has happened.

On the other hand the Penguins are the darlings of the NHL and presented through its marketing, which routinely focuses on them due the presence of Sidney Crosby, as the dynasty-to-be and the clean-cut shining example of how a franchise should conduct itself.

However, anybody with more than a passing familiarity with the NHL knows that nothing is further from the truth. The Penguins are just as rotten as the rest of the NHL. They commit cheapshots and penalties just like everybody else. However, considering that they have employed the consensus dirtiest player in the league Matt Cooke for a long time they may have been even worse than the rest while masquerading as sheep.

Matt Cooke's history of dirty play has been chronicled pretty well. But to give credit where it is due, he has actually managed to turn his career around in the wake of a 10 game suspension and make his living as a defensively responsible player and penalty killer, as opposed to a cheapshot artist. He is still a pest, but at least he is a clean one. Cooke is however tainted which is why the Penguins opted to not bring him back during the 2013 offseason.

In his wake the Penguins quickly found a successor for the mantle of local cheapshot artist, and his name is James Neal. Neal is a very skilled player, has a great shot and is a genuine power forward impressing with size. He is also dirtier than a sewer rat, routinely getting his elbow and stick out against opposing players for little to no reason, often just because there is an opportunity.

What is odd however is how Neal appears to have somehow snuck into the blind spot of the Department of Player Safety, either being punished with a slap on the wrist or not at all.

Take for example his hit on Sean Couturier from the 2012 playoffs. It was a leaping headshot at an unsuspecting player who was not in control of the puck and hadn't been for several seconds. Neal was not called on a penalty, giving him the opportunity to deliver another cheapshot only seconds later on Claude Giroux. Neal was finally kicked out of the game for that one and was assessed a 1 game suspension for his hit on Giroux, but got no discipline at all for his hit on Couturier. How the NHL at all bites on Neal's excuse that he tried to brace himself for the hit on Couturier and it was incidental is beyond me, considering how deliberately he goes after Giroux only moments later. Seems to me like he was on the warpath from the get go.

What makes this decision truly bizarre is the fact that only a couple of days later, a similar incident between Raffi Torres of the Phoenix Coyotes and Marian Hossa of the Chicago Blackhawks occurred. The hit was in my opinion essentially identical to the one between Neal and Couturier. An unsuspecting player who has lost the puck gets drilled by a predatory, leaping hit. The only real difference is that there was a stretcher involved as Hossa had to be transported off the ice, unable to skate by himself. Torres was suspended initially for 25 games, which would later be reduced to 21.

While there is much to be said about Torres established history as opposed to Neal's only burgeoning reputation at the time, as well as the fact that Torres caused a severe injury while Neal thankfully did not, I can not understand for the life of me how the difference between the two incidents is 25 games.


Fast foward to this week. James Neal has now earned himself quite the rap sheet, over the last couple of years, including a 5 game suspension this season after planting a knee in the head of a downed Brad Marchand from the Bruins. This in and off itself should already be a travesty considering how obvious and deliberate he undertook that penalty.

However, to make things worse, this week Neal crosschecked Red Wings forward Luke Glendening in the head. Very deliberate and opportunistic. Considering how much the NHL is attempting to limit contact with heads in order to prevent injuries, and given Neal's status as a repeat offender, this should be another lengthy suspension, right?

Wrong. The NHL chose to only fine Neal for $5,000. What. The. ****. Compare this to the crosscheck Jesse Boulerice delivered to Ryan Kesler in 2007, which earned Boulerice a 25 game suspension. And this was before the NHL declared war on concussions. Do I think Boulerice's hit was worse? Most definitely. The puck was long gone and Boulerice made a bee-line for Kesler for no damn reason in a game which was decided for a while. Is there 25 games worth of difference between the two incidents? Most definitely not.

Or as a different example, here is Washington's Nicklas Backstrom cross-checking Bruin's forward Rich Peverley in the head. That at least got him a 1 game suspension in the playoffs.

The Department of Player Safety has a reputation problem as it is, with many of its decisions appearing to be completely arbitrary and not rooted in precedent or any formal logic whatsoever. There also seem to be different sets of rules applied to high scoring star players and bottom six plugs. And in the playoffs the entire system seems to go straight out of the window anyway. Stuff like the above is definitely not helping.

Something also needs to be said for the lack of initiative at the hands of the Penguins. Yes, Matt Cooke improved himself after a stern talking to by the Pens brass, but this was only after being severely punished by the NHL. For years they let things slide and let Cooke run amok before actually stepping in. And they seem to be content with letting Neal continue down the same path.

It also doesn't appear that Neal is at all remorseful or has any understanding of the consequences of his conduct. From Shanahan's videos we get relays of his cheap excuses. When asked by reporters he never admits fault or shows regret, and even on the plays themselves he is quick to exit for the bench rather than face the music.

Somebody has to step in and make Neal actually feel the some punishment for his transgressions, which appear to have become routine for him. I just hope that it is either the Department of Player Safety finally wising up, or the Penguins leadership doing what is necessary. Otherwise we might see things come down the way they did in 2011 when the Islanders chose to goon it up against the Penguins as they did not believe the NHL had served them in correcting previous wrongs inflicted at the hands of the Penguins. This prompted Mario Lemieux to write an angry letter to the NHL calling for stronger discipline and sharper suspensions, despite his own team being mostly the beneficiary of this lax situation and the root cause in how it got that far.

The situation is also becoming increasingly more dangerous. It is already borderline miraculous as it is that Neal hasn't severely injured a player already, but every cheapshot is a new opportunity for this to happen. I hope for all parties involved Neal corrects his path before then.

Somebody has to step in, as the lack of initiative to punish a "star" player like Neal is slowly but surely becoming an untenable embarrassment to the league.