We have to be ready for hockey season.

 In most years, I get amped for hockey season because I've neem tracking the offseason so hard. As a Wild fan, that hasn't been nearly as invigorating. Te primary stories about the home team has been the cap hell they find themselves in thanks to the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts. The only player they added in the offseason was Patrick Maroon, thought Jujhar Khaira may make the roster and Michael Johanneson was added at the deadline last season. The hope is for internal growth.

That is nerve wracking, not necessarily exciting. It's not really revving my engines as someone who is a big enough fan of hockey that I intermittently write about the game. 

No, it isn't the front office machinations and the desire to see new guys for my team that has me excited. This is going to be a weird one, but all summer, especially in the last few weeks, I've just been in a lot of ice arenas I've learned much more about ice sheets than I thought I needed to know. My real life work now takes me to various construction sites, and for a variety of reasons, that has recently involved ice arenas.

I've literally been watching hockey being build from the ground up. I walked through locker rooms that had just had their plumbing studded in, and probably smelled better than they ever will in the future. I saw nets and scoreboards sitting on the ground, because they were there, and the building wasn't ready, and there wasn't anywhere to store it.

I got to visit some refrigeration rooms, where I learned about indirect ammonia refrigeration systems. This is one of the reasons for arena expansions. The ammonia units are powerful and efficient enough that you can freeze two sheets from the one unit. And they are more environmentally friendly.

One thing that the contractors on site repeated is that they "had to be ready for hockey season". Those words are true for all of us now, what with training camp and preseason underway. We all just have to be ready for hockey season.

They sold the Senators!

 As a reminder, South of Edmonton is a hockey blog, you don't need to get all political about bribery or whatever your theories are on why this senator did this, or this senator did that. This is the Ottawa Senators, the hockey team, which has been kind of a backwards organization since their inception, save for a hot period in the 2000s. Regardless of how good they are or anything like that, they are one of 7 NHL teams in Canada, at least while the Coyotes are still in Arizona, and are a precious commodity. Thus, they were purchased by a billionaire, who hired some former personnel to try to right the ship, even if it's been listing forever. 

The Senators owned by someone who cares and wants to keep them in Ottawa is a good thing though. I want to make that totally clear. 

Hooray, billionaires!

Matt Dumba shouldn't be in Arizona

Free agency is almost at it's end this NHL offseason, with the most recent big name to get a new address being Matt Dumba, who will now be a Arizona Coyote. That's a bummer, not only for me, a Wild fan, but I think also for a lot of the teams in the NHL.

During the bubble, during a time of great civil discord in the Twin Cities and the nation at large, Dumba proved himself to be a leader not only for the hockey team, but for the sport. He was given a voice and didn't shrink from the spotlight. At the time, he represented what we all wanted hockey to be.

In  that time, and really ever since, Dumba was clearly on his way out in Minnesota, the victim of a tight cap situation, thanks to the presence of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter's albatross contracts, and a need to preserve some of the offensive talent the team had. 

It's not surprising that he left the Wild, as his talent and veteran status meant he was no longer a fit in Minnesota. It is disappointing that he ended up in Arizona. Dumba is a voice from within the game that needed to be heard by players and fans. In Arizona, he'll just be another player that nobody really cares about. Dumba ending up anywhere else was a better outcome. He will be muffled in Arizona

I watch the convoluted cap system of the NBA, or the designated player system in soccer, and wish there was a way to work around the NHL cap like there was in those leagues. If teams could keep their own players for lesser values against the cap that might help. So might not having a team in Glendale any longer.

Dumba, I hope, will be a great veteran peace in an Arizona team that will struggle a lot, before he turns into a trade deadline chip at the end of the year. I also hope that next year, he gets the multi year deal he deserves. For now though, it stinks.

Won't anyone think of Chuck Fletcher?

 For many NHL roles, the best way to get a new job is to have held that job in the past. Look at the front office executives and head coaches that are recycled after previous stints with other teams ended in disaster. 

There seems to be a little bit of new blood every once in a while, and when it happens, it's noteworthy. When general manager Chuck Fletcher was let go by the Flyers, he was replaced by Danny Briere. I remember Briere as a player, which means he is young, or I am getting old. I assume the former. 

Don't worry about Chuck, though. He's through his second NHL GM gig, after some stops as an assistant along the way. He's practically guaranteed himself another opportunity, perhaps with the next role that opens up this summer. Chuck Fletcher will be fine.

One of the jobs that opened up was in Pittsburgh, where Fletcher served as an assistant GM before he moved on to Minnesota. Kyle Dubas, president of the Penguins decided to take on the mantle of General Manager as well. He did that n Toronto, so even though it wasn't a traditional path, at least Chuck Fletcher, and his FletchFans (tm) can rest easy knowing that the job was kept in the "former GM" family. 

That left Edmonton, who is always good for a retread. No matter the situation, the Oilers are going to hire someone who had middling success somewhere else. It's hard to get people to move to Edmonton in the winter, so one might generously think that getting Ken Holland to town, now as the team president, was a coup. Former Wild and Flyers GM Chuck Fletcher seemed right in the Oilers' hiring wheelhouse.

Well, the Oilers hired Jeff Jackson, former agent for Connor McDavid to be their new GM. We're living in a new era, readers. You can't just assume that you will hop to another job when you are dismissed from your previous upper management role. You might just have to take on the role as part of expanded responsibilities, or *gasp* you might just be new blood. 

Sorry, Chuck. The world is changing. It can't last, though. Enjoy running the local arena in New Jersey this winter and come back ready for 2024. The Sabres are probably going to need you before too much longer. 

Tweet of the Moment

Was there any doubt? pic.twitter.com/EnIcjKtPrO

— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) July 10, 2023

Twitter got rid of Tweetdeck in a usable format, which is just one of the many things that has rendered Twitter unusable to someone like me. Really and truly, Twitter's utility now is only because Brands are using it, people still have it set up to push published posts online and lists are still a thing to corral those brands and their posts. If there is an easy way to track the social media commentary from all NHL franchises, please let me know, because right now, Twitter is it. It's the only reason to be on Twitter, and you should absolutely not spend any more time there. I don't even have access to the BarryMelroseRox account anymore, but these posts will show up on Post.news and Mastodon, both @Rhinoandcompass. If Threads ever figures things out (like a chronological timeline, for example) maybe I'll get there too.

But anyways, Milan Lucic has a new number.

A new hockey league is what we need

 It feels like a new era, in so many ways. If you were or are on Twitter, you are probably scrambling to a new service that seems familiar. If you want my opinion, I like Post.news and Mastodon for the news with a reengagement of readers to keep up with sites and blogs that I like. Threads seems like it is winning out right now, but also brings my internet life a little bit too close to my personal life, and I would like to keep those two at arm's length. In the end, I think it is going to be like the transition from cable to streaming. One firehose of too much information to a diffuse amalgam of sources. 

For us here in the hockey space, we are also seeing an important change, and I'm not just talking about the Connor Bedard era coming to Chicago. Existing women's hockey leagues have announced that they are ceasing operations, all in an effort to support a new women's hockey league that is expected to have close support from the NHL. There is a players association that is in agreement with the future leadership of the league. The shiny, marketable components of the league (like, say, its name or franchises) are not available yet. It's existence is confirmed, however. 

There has been a rolling surge in interest in women's sports. The WNBA has the most successful resume in women's sports in North America. It should be noted that the best basketball players in the US have supplemented income by playing overseas, but the league has been mostly stable since it's inception, and has a growing fan base. Part of this is because players in the league have had the WNBA as an aspirational goal since their youth, and gifted athletes have stuck with it. 

Soccer was the next sport that saw overwhelming support from fans, and brought about the NWSL. For a while, the women's game was actually more influential, more popular than the men's game, and after some trauma and scandal is reaching a similar level of stability. With the women's World Cup coming later this summer, it is sure to get a boost. 

Couple that with sports like gymnastics or tennis, where the women's version of the sports are the more popular, the point I am trying to make is that investors needn't fear sinking money into women's sports any longer, especially ones with the following of hockey in North America.

The US plays Canada in every international competition in the women's gold medal game, and it is usually fairly well appreciated. The girls hockey tournament in Minnesota is extremely popular. There are enough women ready to play the game and there are more in the queue for the next generation. With the infrastructure of the NHL and eager investors behind it, the time is right and the success is there for the taking.

The NHL Draft, where dreams come true

 The NHL calendar is set up slightly differently than the rest of the sports world. The season just endd a couple of weeks ago when Vegas defeated Florida for the Stanley Cup, and now starting tomorrow, we will have the NHL draft. Free agency will then explode on the 1st, last a couple of days, and then be over. After that, the offseason is pretty quiet, without a lot of prolonged intrigue.

For the league, the hot and heavy business of the free agency period has a much more immediate impact on teams, and really on interest in the league. I love hearing about trades and free agency, don't you? For the players, though, there will be no more significant moment than the one when they hear their name called on draft night. None of the trades or contracts come until after you have been drafted (usually). The draft is where dreams come true.

That's right, for at least a few young men, their prayers will be answered when they are told they have to move to Columbus.