Sport-scan daily brief

Goalies

Custance: No. 22 Kari Lehtonen, Stars -- Lehtonen must still be paying the price for his disappointing time in Atlanta because there's no way that 21 goalies should be ranked ahead of him, including guys who aren't even the clear-cut No. 1 on their own team. His work with Dallas Stars goaltending coach Mike Valley has paid off, and his three seasons in Texas have been mostly successful. His worst save percentage during any full season with the Stars is .914, and when he's on, he steals games.

LeBrun: No. 22 Kari Lehtonen, Stars -- Some people point the finger to Lehtonen for the Stars' leaky defensive play last season, placing 24th in goals against per game. But Lehtonen has been super-solid in Dallas, and his .916 save percentage was middle of the pack among NHL starters. I'd point the finger to a lackluster blue-line corps in Dallas. The guy should be higher for sure.

Strang: No. 7 (tied) Corey Crawford, Blackhawks -- What's a guy gotta do to get some respect around here these days? The 28-year-old, who finished third in the regular season with a 1.94 goals-against average and tied for fifth with a .926 save percentage, entered the 2013 season with a healthy number of skeptics, but he squashed the doubters en route to a Stanley Cup championship. Yes, Crawford had a stout defense in front of him and a stellar backup in Ray Emery (with whom he won the William M. Jennings Trophy), but he deserves credit for leading his team to and winning the ultimate prize.

SURPRISES

Burnside: Time (and voters it appears) are merciless, so a couple of guys who will definitely get Hall of Fame consideration at the end of their careers and who are looking for major bounce-back seasons saw their stock fall dramatically in our rankings. Specifically, I was a bit surprised to see former Calgary captain Jarome Iginla finish at 84th, a function, no doubt, of his disappointing turn in Pittsburgh after eschewing the Boston Bruins' advances at the trade deadline (he ended up signing with the Bruins as a free agent in the offseason). We're looking for Iginla to prove he's still got game with the B's, where he'll be counted on to deliver top minutes and production likely on the team's top line. And then there's former playoff MVP Brad Richards whose difficult transition to life in New York with the Rangers -- he finished up last season a healthy scratch during the playoffs -- saw Richards ranked 97th out of 100. Look for the proud, classy center to rebound this season under new head coach Alain Vigneault.

Custance: Voters seemed to be especially hard on veterans, but it's surprising to see Brendan Morrow (No. 99) barely crack the top 100 of NHL forwards, even if he is still looking for a contract. It's not like he wasn't good down the stretch last year, either. In 15 games after being traded to the Penguins, he put up 14 points. He might not have as much tread left on the tires as he once did thanks to his physical style of play, but he's still a guy you want on your side.

LeBrun: Not sure how "surprised" I am that Ryan Suter ranked ahead of Shea Weber in the rankings, but it is indeed telling how differently the players themselves feel about it. When Scott Burnside and I interviewed some 25-plus NHL stars in New York City during the Player Tour event earlier this month, Weber was the runaway leading answer when we asked each player to name who he believed was the top defenseman in the NHL. Zdeno Chara was second. Suter wasn't mentioned once. Nothing speaks louder than the respect of your own peers, which is why Sidney Crosby's winning the Ted Lindsay Award as most outstanding player (as voted on by his peers) compared to Alex Ovechkin's winning the Hart Trophy as MVP (voted by writers) shows you the difference in opinion sometimes between the athletes and the media. In this case, I personally believe you can flip a coin between Suter and Weber, but as one NHL head coach told me last week when we had this exact conversation, Weber gains more notoriety with opposing players because his physical dimensions scare the heck out of them.

Strang: As much as this is a "what have you done for me lately" league, I have learned my lesson underestimating Martin Brodeur. That's not to say I haven't always recognized him as one of the best goaltenders to play the game -- I have and I do -- but each preseason I question his age and his durability, and each year he finds ways to prove me wrong. I can think of a few acrobatic saves he made last season, ones in which he contorted himself in ways even my yoga instructor couldn't dream of, that left me feeling particularly chagrined. The season prior, he led the Devils to the Stanley Cup finals. Yes, Brodeur's best years might be behind him, but it's somewhat baffling that the future first-ballot Hall of Famer is ranked below several goaltenders who haven't even shouldered a full season as the No. 1 guy.

ESPN LOADED: 09.19.2013

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ESPN / The new normal for Chris Pronger

By Scott Burnside

ESPN.com

But life is not that. It is full of twists and turns, both literal and figurative, and those twists and turns continue to bedevil one of the most dominant defensemen in NHL history.

Recently, Pronger -- out of action with concussion-related symptoms since taking a stick to the eye in November 2011 -- stepped onto the ice with his kids. He hadn't skated all summer, but it seemed to be going well.

"I was surprised," Pronger told ESPN.com in a recent interview. "I was like, Oh, I feel all right. But I was just going in a straight line. And then all of a sudden, I started to spin and go in circles. ... I was like, OK, apparently this didn't get better."

He remains an imposing figure. In shorts and T-shirt, beard and glasses, if it's possible to be both professorial and imposing, that is the soon-to-be 39-year-old. With a rapier wit, Pronger continues to exude a zest for life, at least externally.

When Pronger met with a group of local reporters at the Wells Fargo Center later that day, he joked immediately that he had to leave. He grudgingly took a microphone while a communications staffer videotapes part of the conversation. He then tossed it aside in mock disgust when he found out the videotaping had stopped long before the end of the conversation and he had still been holding the microphone.

To see him like this, arching his eyebrows and rolling his eyes as he joked with those who have covered the Flyers on a regular basis, there is something somehow comforting, a reminder of a more familiar routine.

But if these moments hint at normalcy, they are just that: hints, a thin veneer that covers a life that is a million miles from normal. Perhaps more to the point for Chris Pronger, the new normal is the unknown.

The 6-foot-6 Pronger, selected with the second overall draft pick by the Hartford Whalers in 1993, continues to work with doctors to try to deal with symptoms from the combination of injuries that, essentially, cut his career short. Although most people believe Pronger's issues are strictly concussion related, they are much more complex than that. They involve Pronger's eyesight, the relationship between the body's optical center and things like balance, headaches and overall stability.

"A lot of the stuff that I'm doing now is more eye related, vestibular related," he said. "It's not concussion or what have you. I still get symptoms, but I think a lot of those are due to my eye.

"There's a lot of the things that still trouble me are things that are associated with my vestibular system and my ocular system and those are things that's an ongoing process."

Often Pronger receives advice from people on what he needs to do to get better. It is both touching and more than a little frustrating.

"I get letters and people calling, 'Oh, you go do this and you'll be fixed.' Meanwhile they don't even know what's wrong with me," he said. "They think, 'Oh, he's got a concussion.' Well no, I don't know if you saw the injury, but I got slashed in the eye. So it's funny. I feel for them. A lot of people that have sent me letters either had concussions or one of their loved ones had concussions.

"I get it and I understand it, but when they don't know the extent of my injury, it's hard for them to say they have a cure-all. Well this helped me, so it's going to help you."

The fact that Pronger receives such advice is a window on the medical challenges in dealing with these issues. The connection between concussions and other related injuries is in its infancy. Researchers and doctors are in some ways feeling about in the dark to understand the relationships and correct forms of treatment.

When a pro athlete is injured, the first question is invariably, When will you be back? Shoulders, knees, muscles, bones all have a more or less defined period required for healing and rehabilitation.

Not so for what ails Pronger and others like him.

He'd like nothing more than to know the answer to the question: When will you be better?

"There's no answer to what's the time frame; will it get fixed; how much can it get fixed; on and on and on," he said. "That's where we're at with all this. There is no time frame. There is no set, OK, you go and do these exercises, you go and do this surgery, you go do this and you'll be all better and you'll be able to do this and you'll be able to do that."

Pronger remains under contract with the Flyers and will continue to be until the end of the 2016-17 season, with an annual salary-cap hit of slightly more than $4.9 million. Last season, Pronger did some scouting from his home base in St. Louis. He watched games on television and sent notes to GM Paul Holmgren and the coaching staff.

Sometimes he would watch Flyers games, make notes about his perceptions and pass them along to Holmgren, the coaches or the players themselves. He occasionally scouted pro games, paying attention to potential free agents.

"Chris has a tremendous understanding of the game and how it should be played," GM Paul Holmgren told ESPN.com. "He's been a good sounding board for me" and for the coaching staff.

Pronger has spent time with young defenseman Luke Schenn and, in fact, had Schenn and his brother, Brayden, also a member of the Flyers, to his home in St. Louis in the offseason.

“ProngerYou're put in a position now where you've got to think about it, like what do you want to do? And to be honest with you, I don't know.” -- Chris Pronger

Assistant coach Kevin McCarthy, a former NHL defenseman and longtime NHL coach, is far more used to sending Pronger over the boards than he is in talking scouting issues. But even as a player, McCarthy said, Pronger wanted to be reminded of things, always striving to be better.

"I've never been around a guy that understands the game like he does," McCarthy told ESPN.com.

He said Pronger would come back to the bench and not only describe what happened defensively, but what everyone else was doing on the ice. His input is important, McCarthy added, because there is always value to hearing something from your peers, whether it's praise or constructive criticism.

Still, the constant backdrop through all of this for everyone involved -- Pronger, Holmgren, the coaches and the players -- is that he'd rather not be doing this somewhat awkward dance between being a player and being something else.

"I'm still paid as a player, still a dues-paying member of the [National Hockey League Players' Association]. So there are a lot of things I can't be a part of and I guess, for all intents and purposes, don't want to be a part of," Pronger said. "There's only so much you want to know."

Not that Pronger minded the chores he was asked to perform last season.

"It's twofold," he said. "It keeps you somewhat active, keeps your mind going and keeps you in the game, I guess a little bit. But as you were about to say, it can be frustrating. It is somewhat limiting. That's the position the situation I'm in right now. Kind of in limbo."

Pronger's doctors want him to keep pushing the envelope, doing things that sometimes makes him feel poorly.

"There are times when you feel better than others, and those are the times when my doctors are like, 'You've got to keep pushing yourself.'" Pronger explained. "You don't want to get stagnant where you're always doing the same thing. You want to try and push the envelope and push the bar. We're past the scenario of, 'Oh well, stop if you get symptomatic.' They're like, 'No, you've got to try and push through and try and get to that next hurdle, trying to keep bumping up the ladder.' That's when you get symptomatic and that's when you feel like s--- sometimes."

It makes sense, in theory, but it's also a plan that provides a sobering reminder that he is nowhere near where he wants to be.

"There are times when you start to feel good and you're like, 'Oh, maybe I'm turning a corner,' and you go and do something random and it's like, Oh, you just get knocked on your ass," he said.

Chris Pronger has problems with his eyesight, the relationship between the bodys optical center and things like balance, headaches and overall stability.

What bugs him?

Well, how about bright lights, loud noises, lots of motion.

"Doesn't sound much like a hockey game, does it?" Pronger said with a laugh that can only be described as rueful.

"You start looking at all the things that bother you: lights and noise and you start adding all those things up. And you go, OK, obviously these are things I need to work on and you need to be in these environments, but they make you feel like s---."

The team had asked Pronger if he'd do a couple of scouting trips, but he didn't feel up to it. Toward the end of last season, Pronger went on a road trip with the team, sitting in the press box, watching as kind of a test because it was something he hadn't done before.

"I felt like absolute s--- because I was up in the top [of the rink] and the lights and the noise," Pronger said. "Watch a game, traveled that night. I mean my eyes were burning, I couldn't even keep them open they were so sore."

It goes without saying that this is a particularly hard time of year for Pronger.

Not far away at the Wells Fargo Center, players are going through their first on-ice sessions of training camp. They are working out, meeting with coaches and having lunch together. The storylines are unfolding as they always do at this time of year: the arrival of Vincent Lecavalier and Mark Streit, the goaltending saga, the team's chances of getting back to the playoffs.

There is a natural order to things at this time of the year as teams prepare for the coming season, a routine that is ingrained in players' psyches. It's no different from the DNA chip that tells the birds to fly south or the whales to head down the coast.

It's training camp: Time to get down to business.

Pronger's DNA is still wired this way. But he cannot act on those impulses that have been triggered at this time of year since he was a kid.

"You see the guys, the anticipation of the season starting, the excitement, the buzz, the adrenaline rush of stepping on that ice for the first time," Pronger said.

"Starting the season, getting ready for the blood, sweat and tears and going out and battling every night and doing all that stuff. That's the part that's hard, getting that adrenaline fix, if you will, of coming to the rink every day with a purpose and knowing you're preparing for a game or preparing for a playoff series, whatever the case may be. You have set goals and things you're trying to achieve."

Pronger? Well, he took his physical, which will at some point lead to him being placed on long-term disability in order to give the Flyers salary-cap relief, and he's going to meet with the local media for a few minutes after this interview is over.

"Now my day is done," he said with a wry grin.

This injury has given Pronger unprecedented time with his family; his three children, ages 11, 9 and 5. It is something of which he is keenly aware.

"You have the ability and the option to be there more for your family and your kids and help raise them, whereas a lot of parents don't," he said. "It is a silver lining of being able to be around and help parent your kids and help be a part of their lives, be an active participant in raising your kids.

"I'm around a lot," Pronger added with a laugh. "Sometimes more so than they probably would like or I would like."

But being around is another reminder of the uncertainty -- uncertainty over how or when or if his medical issues will be resolved. And if there is a then, what he wants to do with the rest of his life.

"You're put in a position now where you've got to think about it, like, what do you want to do? And to be honest with you, I don't know," he said.

For a player who never backed away from a challenge, who was a difference-maker his whole career -- a Stanley Cup champion, twice an Olympic gold medalist, a Hart Trophy winner, a Norris Trophy winner, in short, a winner -- Pronger finds he must dedicate himself to not letting the uncertainty get the better of him.

"You don't want people playing the woe-is-me card or saying, 'Oh, I feel for that guy,'" he said. "Listen, there's a lot of good things going on and there's a lot of s--- things going on. There's bigger things in life to worry about than me having a headache or me having a blurry eye or whatever you want to say.

"I don't think people should feel sorry for me. It is what it is, man. It happened. And we've got to move past it and try to find something positive here."

It is one thing to give voice to those sentiments, but it is quite another to come to grips with them in your heart of hearts. And Pronger, as always, is candid in saying that it's an ongoing struggle. Just as there is no defined path to getting better, there is no defined path for accepting his lot in life.

He noted that there are days he wonders what he should be doing. "You've done everything and you're like, OK great, now what?" he said.

"It goes up and down. Some days you're high and other days you're down in the doldrums and you're depressed. Those are the times when you really need to have a grasp on yourself and have some willpower. That's where guys fall into becoming alcoholics or drug addicts or whatever. They want to have something to take the pain away, or whatever it is."

It's almost time to go. The other reporters have shuffled into the room and Pronger is getting ready to give them a few jabs, let them know they can't get away with anything, keep them in line as he always has.

"You need to really fight that urge of feeling sorry for yourself," he adds as the group approaches. "You've got to look for the positives. It's hard sometimes, but you've got to look for them somewhere and they can be small or big, it just depends."

Sometimes that means enjoying, even for a moment, a short, slow straight line and just trying to stay away from the twists and turns.

ESPN LOADED: 09.19.2013

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NBCSports.com / Ducks owner ‘optimistic’ about business under new CBA

Jason Brough

Sep 18, 2013, 5:10 PM EDT

Anaheim Ducks owner Henry Samueli is looking forward to the first full season with the NHL’s new CBA, and says last season’s lockout was a necessary evil if the club ever hoped to stop losing money.

“We’ll know this year for sure what the impact is,” Samueli said in an interview with the OC Register. “We’re optimistic we’ll turn the corner and start heading in the other direction.”

With the new CBA, the Ducks are now eligible to receive revenue-sharing — something their market size prevented them from getting under the previous deal.

While Samueli has never been a high-profile owner compared to some of his counterparts around the league, he said he regularly pushed NHL commissioner Gary Bettman during negotiations to do what he could to “help the teams in the bottom half of the league get to profitability.”

The Ducks committed $135 million last season to keep star forwards Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry in Anaheim long term — testament, perhaps, to the optimism Samueli felt coming out of the work stoppage.

NBCSports.com / LOADED: 09.19.2013

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USA TODAY / Tim Thomas, Panthers are a good fit

Kevin Allen, USA TODAY Sports 2 a.m. EDT September 19, 2013

The idea of Tim Thomas playing for the Florida Panthers makes far more sense than anybody wants to admit.

Thomas is a highly skilled, accomplished goalie with an entertaining personality and a moderately controversial past going to a franchise that could stand to add more talent and controversy.

With Thomas expected to sign next week, this will be a marriage of convenience between two parties who need each other.

Thomas, 39, says he is "reborn" as a hockey player after not playing last season to concentrate on his family life, and the Panthers are one of just a few NHL teams that could give him the opportunity to compete to be the No. 1 goalie.

MORE: Thomas meets with the news media

Meanwhile, the Panthers, who have made the playoffs once in 13 years, get a potential difference-maker. Let's not forget that the last time we saw Thomas compete 17 months ago, he was cart-wheeling around the Boston Bruins' net stopping 92% of the shots he faced. His lifetime save percentage is .921 and the Panthers' goalies had a combined .877 mark last season.

Thomas is 27 months removed from winning the Vezina Trophy as the best goalie in the league and the Conn Smythe Trophy as the best player in the NHL playoffs.

Jacob Markstrom is the Panthers' goalie of the future. But right now, with the Panthers needing to contend for a playoff spot, Thomas seems like the better option.

He offers added credibility and hope to a team that will have an uphill climb to make the playoffs in the realigned Atlantic Division.

His so-called controversial past will be a non-issue in the Panthers' dressing room. Two years ago, Thomas refused to attend a Boston Bruins' visit to the White House as a form of protest against how he feels America is being governed.

Thomas made some remarks on his Facebook page that drew attention to his conservative political slant. Goalie or not, he's definitely on the right wing.

But anyone who suggests that Thomas' political positions might create tension in the dressing room doesn't understand the NHL's demographics.

American politics are not a front-burner topic of conversation in an NHL dressing room. About 80% of NHL players are not eligible to vote in U.S. elections. Only one of every five NHL players is an American citizen.

Chicago Blackhawks star Patrick Kane didn't have to declare a political party affiliation before he raised the Stanley Cup and no one in the NHL cares whether Thomas supports President Obama's stance on Syria.

It's possible that there are more players curious about the fact that Thomas bagged an alligator on a hunting expedition than they are about his political leanings.

Undoubtedly, Thomas' political positions will be brought up by fans and the news media. But the controversial tag applied to Thomas might be a good thing for a franchise that has to work to sell tickets in South Florida. Fans seem to like to watch athletes with rebellious or bad boy Images.

What the Panthers can really sell is that Thomas always has been a wildly entertaining, acrobatic goalie with a history of turning sure goals into highlight-reel saves.

Many fans in Boston love him for what he did to help the Bruins win the 2011 Stanley Cup. Before he refused to go the White House, he was known mostly as a highly intelligent conversationalist who could talk thoughtfully on a wide range of topics.

The only legitimate concern about Thomas is how much rust he has on his game after not playing for a season. At his age, can he get back to the level he was at before his sabbatical? That question can't be answered until he starts playing regularly.

You certainly can't tell by looking at him whether he is ready to play 50-plus games. Even when he was crowned the best goalie in the NHL, he looked more like an insurance salesman than an NHL goalie. He's 5-11 and stocky, always listed at 201, but looking like he might be 210. If you saw him in street clothes, you would think he was a Sunday beer league goalie, not an NHL star.

But when he's flying around his Boston crease with gymnast-like agility, no one cares how much he weighed or how he voted.