Sport-scan daily brief

“If we want to win the games against tough teams like L.A. we have to be better,” said Pavelec. “No question.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Winnipeg Sun LOADED 10.05.2013

719662 Winnipeg Jets

Jets' Evander Kane pops the question

By David Larkins ,Winnipeg Sun

First posted: Friday, October 04, 2013 11:02 AM CDT | Updated: Friday, October 04, 2013 05:57 PM CDT

The Winnipeg Jets think they've found suitable linemates to play with Evander Kane.

Now the star right-winger is confident he's done the same in his personal life.

Social media heated up late Thursday night with news Kane had popped the question to his longtime girlfriend, Ashley Chamberland, at Hy's Steakhouse. The news was uncovered when the bride-to-be's friend, Kirsten Jantunen, congratulated Chamberland and posted a photo of what is purportedly the engagement ring on her Instagram account.

"My best friend got engaged," Jantunen posted.

A short time later, Jantunen retweeted a tweet of congratulations from Hy's.

A manager at Hy's reached on Friday said he could not confirm Kane proposed to Chamberland, but did confirm he was dining at the restaurant Thursday night and said he is a fairly frequent customer.

A spokesman at jeweler W.K. Chan said is difficult to discern much detail from the Instagram image because it's not entirely clear. He said, however, that it is a double-halo design and said it is "a fairly large stone, probably a few carats at least."

Kane and Chamberland are both from B.C. They've been a couple since before the Atlanta Thrashers were moved to Winnipeg to become the Jets.

Kane has been no stranger to social media since the Thrashers became the Jets in 2011.

In the Jets' first year back in Winnipeg, rumours swirled that the then-20-year-old had been skipping out on tabs and that a concussion he suffered was a result of being in a fight at a nightclub. Both of those incidents, the Jets said, were investigated and found to be false.

In 2012, Kane posted a photo of him holding a money phone as a reference to boxer Floyd Mayweather, but the image hit the wrong tone with some fans who didn't think a millionaire should be flashing stacks while the league was in lockout.

In the summer, Kane again rubbed some fans the wrong way by tweeting that NBA star Chris Bosh "looked like a fairy" during the NBA Finals in June, a tweet some construed as homophobic. He apologized soon after.

Winnipeg Sun LOADED 10.05.2013

719663 Vancouver Canucks

Canucks give Alex Burrows day off from practice but he’s expected to play Saturday versus Oilers

October 4, 2013. 1:45 pm

Posted by:

Steve Ewen

First-line winger Alex Burrows didn’t skate with the Vancouver Canucks at practice on Friday at Rogers Arena and coach John Tortorella said after that he was receiving a “body maintenance day.”

Burrows is expected to play Saturday, when the Edmonton Oilers come to town. There were reports that Burrows was on the limp after the season-opener Thursday against the San Jose Sharks.

Suspended winger Zack Kassian took Burrows’ spot skating with Henrik and Daniel Sedin on Friday.

Vancouver Province: LOADED: 10.05.2013

719664 Vancouver Canucks

Canucks lose opener. Here’s what we learned

October 4, 2013. 1:42 pm

Posted by:

Jason Botchford

1. Jason Garrison should score goals, and there should be lots of them.

But even with Garrison, and his power play goal which exposed last year’s coaching staff to appropriate derision, the man advantage unit remains a work in progress under Torts.

The Canucks managed just two shots with six opportunities (more than seven minutes).

Shooting the puck has been a big point of emphasis here, but it was under the old regime too.

Daniel Sedin said he wants to get three or four shots a game. He had none last night.

2. The Canucks have been delinquent in putting together their bottom six.

Sure, they were playing a stacked team in San Jose, but the Canucks third and fourth lines got shredded.

Mike Santorelli was on the ice for 12 shots against and Zac Dalpe was on the ice for five. That’s 17 shots, nearly half of the Sharks total (35) for two centres who combined for just 17:29 of ice time.

It was awful.

Expect Brad Richardson to centre the third line tomorrow, but again with Santorelli and David Booth. Just an average third line here would be an upgrade.

Wouldn’t it be something if what closes the window on the Sedins, Kesler, Luongo and this core is a pasted together bottom six forward group, from which you’d have a hard time making one decent fourth line, let alone a third.

We all know where this is going, right?

Another draft pick and prospect traded for a centre on an expiring contract.

3. Players are going to get hurt blocking shots

The Canucks are going to block a lot of shots. Last night, they had 22. The most they had in any of the playoff games last season was 17. In two of those games, they had 11. And those were playoff games.

Alex Burrows was limping after the game from blocking a shot and missed Friday’s practice.

Tortorella said he’s banged up but expects him to play against Edmonton. This is going to be an ongoing theme all season.

4. Tortorella is fitting right in

What greets you outside Rogers Arena is a statue of Roger Nielsen, raising a stick high in the air with a towel draped on the butt end like a white flag.

It’s like saying to every fan on their way in: “Your team didn’t lose, it got screwed.”

Tortorella gets it. Like, Jarome Iginla fighting to fit in with Boston, Tortorella was calling out the refs in Vancouver the day after an opening night in which they had to kill seven penalties.

“Quite honestly, some of the penalties, weren’t penalties,” Tortorella said. “Two of Kesler’s penalties weren’t penalties.

“Pavelski throws his head back, it’s not a penalty. I will never have a player stop going to the net, I don’t think that was a penalty as far as Kes going to the net.

“I disagree with some of the calls.”

Keep this up, and the playoffs should be fun times.

5. Sedins will be fine shorthanded.

It may not look it on the stat sheet, but the twins had a good night. As you’d expect they were the Canucks most dangerous line, even though neither Alex Burrows nor Daniel Sedin managed a shot on net.

Ya, rough night all around.

They also were Vancouver’s best penalty killers.

“I thought we played well there,” Daniel said. “I though we put a lot of pressure on them and that’s a really good power play.”

Though, it should be noted, their assignment was generally defending the Sharks PP2. Still, this Canucks team was burned for seven power play goals in four games in the postseason.

The Sharks did manage 13 shots on their seven power plays, but Bieksa pointed out a lot of those were from angles in which Roberto Luongo could make easier saves.

“We’re tight on the penalty kill right now,” Kevin Bieksa said. “We’re blocking a lot of shots and not letting much through.

“We’re taking care of our net, so all the shots that are coming, are coming from the angles we want.

“If we can get comfortable and confident on the penalty kill, it’s going to allow us to play even more aggressive.”

Vancouver Province: LOADED: 10.05.2013

719665 Vancouver Canucks

Will Canucks winger Dale Weise be a centrepiece of Edmonton’s visit Saturday for his hit on Hall?

October 4, 2013. 1:37 pm

Posted by:

Steve Ewen

One of the storylines sure to crop up Saturday when the Edmonton Oilers visit the Vancouver Canucks is whether there’s any sort of carryover regarding Canuck winger Dale Weise.

Weise, the Canucks winger, was suspended three preseason games for his hit to the head on Edmonton star forward Taylor Hall in that Sept. 21 encounter. Weise fought Edmonton forward Mike Brown later in the game. Hall was not seriously injured.

The same night, Vancouver winger Zack Kassian broke Sam Gagner’s jaw, thanks to catching the Edmonton centre with an errant stick. Kassian was suspended three preseason games and is in the midst of sitting out five regular season ones.

“I had to miss the rest of the preseason and Zack got eight games and I think that’s fair,” Weise said after a brief Canuck practice on Friday at Rogers Arena. “I answered the bell when I had to. I don’t think there’s going to be any repercussions after that, but who knows? For us, I’m going to play the same way and we’ll see what happens.”

Weise has been critical of staged fights but Edmonton has been vocal about what happened in that game. Edmonton winger Ben Eager was quoted as saying, “We’re going to go after their skill players also,” and coach Dallas Eakins called the Kassian episode, “a disturbing play by a disturbing player.” (Eager, oddly enough, was placed on waivers earlier this week.)

Edmonton then went out and added mammoth tough guy Steve MacIntyre to their roster. He promptly hurt his knee trying to hit Luke Gazdic of the Dallas Stars, and, oddly enough, Edmonton picked up Gazdic off waivers to replace MacIntyre.

Gazdic, a left winger listed at 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds, had four goals, 11 points and 80 penalty minutes for the AHL’s Dallas Stars last season.

He fought Winnipeg Jet centre Chris Thorburn in his Edmonton debut on Tuesday.

So, if something happens Saturday, doesn’t that seem premeditated, Dale?

“I think so,” said Weise. “I’m not the type of guy that goes in expecting to fight this guy or that guy. I’ve told you guys that before.

“I guess they’ve got a new guy that’s trying to earn a spot on the team. I’m sure he’s going to be looking to make a name for himself.

“He had a pretty good first game there. I guess we’ll see what happens.”

Vancouver Province: LOADED: 10.05.2013

719666 Websites

ESPN / Don't forget names Trouba and Scheifele

By Pierre LeBrun

As far as first impressions go in this young NHL season, Jacob Trouba certainly opened some eyes.

The 19-year-old rookie blueliner from Michigan played a whopping 25:02 in his first NHL game Tuesday night. Oh, and he had a goal and an assist with a plus-2 rating in Winnipeg’s season-opening win at Edmonton.

But what impressed me the most was the poise he played with.

"We certainly hope that that trend continues, and that’s what we saw in preseason," Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff told ESPN.com on Friday. "And he got better every preseason game. He played high minutes in each of those games. The coaching staff tried to expose him in preseason to the other team’s best players to try and gauge where he was at. That was good. And obviously the first game, you don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself, but it was nice for all parties involved to see, for sure."

Trouba was drafted ninth overall in the first round in 2012 and certainly impressed in January at the world junior championships for Team USA, collecting nine points (4-5) in seven games.

Nashville Predators assistant coach Phil Housley was head coach for Team USA at the world juniors and got a firsthand view of Trouba’s talents. He had him again in the spring at the IIHF men’s worlds in Stockholm and Helsinki when Housley was the assistant coach.

"I’m not surprised," Housley told ESPN.com on Friday when asked about Trouba’s NHL debut. "Jacob has done a great job of continuing to develop as a defenseman. At the world juniors, he played in all situations for us, PK, power play, even strength. He was a dominant force in that tournament. And what I really liked was his edge to his game; anyone going into his corner would pay the price. I know he’s playing against men right now, but he was a big factor on our team.

"And even at the men’s worlds in Finland and Sweden, he really proved himself again. Just learning the pace of the game, I’m sure that was the fastest pace he had seen yet. He had some bumps, but he battled back. That’s what a true pro does. I’m not surprised by his first game against Edmonton. He’s a terrific player and, better yet, a terrific young man."

If Dustin Byfuglien, Tobias Enstrom and Zach Bogosian can stay healthy after all missing big chunks of last season -- plus Trouba continues to make strides in his rookie season -- suddenly that's a Winnipeg back end that stacks up pretty darn well with a lot of teams. Trouba has begun the season on the second pairing with Bogosian.

Up front, another rookie delivered an important statement early: No. 2 center Mark Scheifele. The 20-year-old also scored a goal in the opener.

It’s such an important storyline for the Jets this season to get that second line going and have a center on that unit who can get the most out of Evander Kane in particular.

Cheveldayoff and coach Claude Noel sat down with Trouba and Scheifele on Thursday to chat about what a grind an 82-game season is in the NHL and what to expect moving forward. In other words, their opening efforts were terrific, but it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

"It’s important for younger players who haven’t been through it to understand about nutrition and understand about rest and recovery," said Cheveldayoff. "The days off between games are going to be as much if not more important than the actual game days themselves for a rest and recovery period."

"We had a nice chat, talked about Game 1. We said, 'Guys, keep on going. You’ll get the opportunities as you deserve them and as they come,'" the Jets GM added. "They’re both very humble kids, but they’re both showing a lot more maturity than a lot of 19-year and 20-year-olds."

It’s incredibly early, folks, but don’t forget the names of Trouba and Scheifele as the Calder talk evolves this season.

Timmy's old self

It’s one game, sure, but as far as openers go, how about Tim Thomas?

The 39-year-old made 25 saves in a 4-2 win by the Panthers at Dallas in his first start since the 2011-12 season. Thursday night's performance was highlighted by his trademark brand of saves.

The opposing team took notice.

"He was his old self," Stars GM Jim Nill told ESPN.com Friday. "He competed and tracked pucks well. There was no rust to his game."

Panthers forward Scottie Upshall told my pal George Richards of the Miami Herald: "I said after the first, 'How good is Thomas?' He makes the saves, catches the puck. He’s the backbone of this team."

Colleague Craig Custance had more on the Panthers in his Friday blog post (paywall warning).

Sens' secondary scoring

All eyes are on the Jason Spezza-Bobby Ryan connection this season on the big line for Ottawa (along with Milan Michalek), but if the Senators are going to reach the high expectations that many have for them, the team needs to generate secondary scoring.

The second line of Kyle Turris between Clarke MacArthur and Cory Conacher will be integral, especially on nights when Spezza’s unit is shut down by a tough, top defensive pair.

"We’re very encouraged by the play of Kyle Turris, Clarke MacArthur and Cory Conacher through the exhibition as far as consistently giving us that secondary offensive threat," Senators coach Paul MacLean told ESPN.com on Friday morning ahead of his team’s season opener in Buffalo. "I think that’s going to be important for our team, like any team, is to have people who can come behind that first group and be a threat."

The Sens also have some offensive options in their bottom-six forward group, such as training camp surprise Stephane Da Costa and last spring’s playoff revelation Jean-Gabriel Pageau -- both centers.

"The people we have down the middle we feel are going to be able to generate offense on all our forward lines," said MacLean, the reigning Jack Adams Award winner as NHL coach of the year.

Aside from health, which can’t be ignored in Ottawa after what happened last season, secondary scoring is absolutely going to be a huge story, good or bad, in Canada’s capital this season.

Leafs' Rielly set for debut

The fifth overall pick from the 2012 draft appears set for his NHL debut Saturday night.

Mark Fraser's knee injury opens the door for 19-year-old Morgan Rielly, who survived camp to get an early-season trial with the big club before the Leafs have to decide whether to send him back to juniors (nine games max before that decision).

I was surprised that he didn’t play Wednesday night in Philadelphia after sitting out the opener in Montreal, because I felt Paul Ranger and Jake Gardiner both struggled against the Canadiens. But coach Randy Carlyle stuck with a winning lineup, and who can argue with a 2-0-0 start.

The Leafs have to give Rielly some games. There’s no benefit in him sitting in the press box when it comes to his development.

Rielly got a taste of pro hockey last season, playing in 22 AHL games with the Marlies (regular season and playoffs combined).

I reached out to an NHL scout from a Western Conference club to get his view on Rielly. His assessment (via text message): "Stronger skater. Good strength and good head in battles. No edge but good compete level. Like his sense with and without the puck. Will make some big gaffes with the puck and they will have to stay patient and positive with him. I don’t think he’s in the Doughty-Karlsson-Letang potential, more of a No. 3-4 D. [Think] Paul Martin-plus in his prime."

Hey, Martin-plus in his prime is not bad at all. But the Leafs view him with a higher upside than that. Personally, I think he's going to be better than that, but it's certainly interesting to hear how different people view him.

Kudos to the Habs

Tip of the hat to the Montreal Canadiens organization for bringing the club to Lac-Megantic, Quebec, a town still healing after a tragic train explosion killed 47 people.

ESPN LOADED: 10.05.2013

719667 Websites

CNN/Sports Illustrated / NHL working to halt scoring drought, but more must be done

Michael Farber>INSIDE THE NHL

On a Sunday in early September, Kay Whitmore helped his family in Sudbury, Ont., jar 13 bushels of tomatoes, drove four hours to his house near Toronto, ate dinner, changed clothes and then continued to the NHL's downtown offices, where he started work shortly before 9 p.m. Whitmore has an office on the 10th floor but conducts much of his business one floor up, in a storeroom near the elevators. Some 50 boxes, many empty, others filled with goalie pads or chest protectors, clutter the room. With the tools of his singular -profession—box cutter, calipers, tape measure, paper clips, Sharpies, loose-leaf binder and a stand constructed on four-inch tubing that looks like something a pediatrician might use to check a toddler's height—Whitmore measures every piece of equipment for every professional goaltender in North America. His title is senior manager of Hockey Operations. Informally he is the goalie cop, and he walks his beat alone.

When Whitmore determines that a leg pad conforms with Rule 11 governing goalie equipment (and he has had to play UPS Ping-Pong with manufacturers until gear has met specifications), he writes kw nhl lds 45 and the date at the bottom of the pad with a black, gold or silver Sharpie and readies the equipment for shipping. The meanings of kw and nhl are self-evident. lds stands for limiting distance size, which is the maximum height of each goalie's leg pads and is determined by some simple math. In August the league and the players' association agreed that leg pads could extend only up to 45% of the way from the center of a goalie's knee to his pelvis, down from 55%. Now the formula for determining LDS, devised by Whitmore and his friend Walter Karabin, an architect and engineer, is:

FK (floor-to-knee length) + 0.45 x KP (knee-to-pelvis length) + 4 (inches from the ice to the top of the skate tongue, a constant for all goalies).

For you history majors out there, think of it like this. To you, Corey Crawford is the Blackhawks' 6' 2" Stanley Cup-winning goalie, right? To Whitmore, Crawford is a 22-1⁄2-inch floor-to-knee, 21-inch knee-to-pelvis guy whose measurements now oblige him to wear 35.95-inch pads, which the goalie found incredibly short when he first strapped them on. (His old pads were 38.05 inches.) You know the Devils' 6' 2" Martin Brodeur as the alltime wins and shutouts leader, but in Whitmore's world he is a 21-1⁄2-inch floor-to-knee, 21-inch knee-to--pelvis guy whose pads must be no taller than 34.95 inches. Because the Canadiens' 6' 3" Carey Price has a long torso and short legs, his pads are 34.79 inches.

The x-factors in the equation are how, and how quickly, goalies will adjust.

In an effort to boost scoring this season, most goalies will lose roughly two inches off the height of their pads. (The range is zero to 2-1⁄2 inches.) Even a goalie who drops into a perfect butterfly to hermetically seal his five hole is theoretically leaving an extra four inches of shooting space at the bottom of the six-foot-wide net. But this is just the start of a chain reaction. Maybe some goalies will compensate by dropping into the butterfly more quickly, which will leave more time for shooters to go top shelf. Or maybe some goalies will once again need their sticks to help close the five hole, meaning they won't be able to tuck their elbows into their sides, which in recent years has closed the seven hole, the space between the hip and the blocker. Or if a goalie is worried about covering post-and-in shots, he might inch farther out from the net, which makes him vulnerable to late cross-ice passes. "The five hole is now a 5.2 hole," Maple Leafs goalie James Reimer told reporters.

Whitmore plans to be on the road at least two weeks every month this season to make random postgame checks of goalies' equipment. "The league was worried about the width of pads," he says (they were trimmed from 12 to 11 inches in 2005), "[but] because pretty much all goalies butterfly, length was the real issue."

Good times return

The NHL is practically all rainbows and unicorns at the start of 2013--14. The third lockout in Gary Bettman's two decades as commissioner produced an agreement last January that could bring as much as a decade of labor peace. The truncated season ended with a scintillating Stanley Cup finals between the Blackhawks and the Bruins that pulled in some of the best TV numbers in the league's history. The ongoing embarrassment of the Coyotes was resolved (at least for five years) when the NHL sold its ward to IceArizona Acquisition Co. for $170 million on Aug. 5. With New Jersey in a precarious state during the summer, drowning in a reported $200 million of debt, Bettman found new ownership for the Devils in a New York minute. (76ers owners Josh Harris led a group that paid $320 million.) The salary cap is down to $64.3 million from the $70.2 million it would have been for a full 2012--13, but a glut of six outdoor games, including a Jan. 1 match at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor between the Red Wings and Toronto should goose revenues for a league that now routinely produces hype and hypothermia.

Realignment should enhance playoff rivalries, echoes of the wonderfully brutish springs of the old Norris and Adams divisions. The most intriguing individual rivalry, Sidney Crosby versus Alexander Ovechkin, has been reignited by Ovechkin's strong close to the 2013 season, in which he edged the Penguins' captain for the Hart Trophy, won his third goal-scoring title (32 goals) and performed so brilliantly that members of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association voted the Capitals' offensive wizard an All-Star twice—as the first-team right wing and as the second-team left wing.

There are some red flags: 215 man-games were lost to reported concussions or concussionlike symptoms in the shortened season, and Ilya Kovalchuk's "retirement" in New Jersey and subsequent move to St. Petersburg of the KHL deprived the league of one of its most dynamic forwards. But all in all, 2013-14 looks like blue skies.