In the spirit of DownGoesBrown….

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Well, its that time of year again.  Playoffs.

And at this time of year, journalists, reporters and TV pundits are all focused on the boys who made the cut and still have a chance at Lord Stanley’s Holy Grail.

Fortunately for you, you read the blog of an ex-player, and I have the connections to give you a look at something different.  Truth is, even though NHL players make a ton of money, a lot of them still live paycheck to paycheck.  You know how that can be.  So, I thought it’d be entertaining for my readers if I made some calls and figured out what a few of the NHL guys that didn’t make playoffs are doing for work in the off-season. 

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* It seems Dog the Bounty Hunter is getting too old to do his show, so they were doing interviews for someone to take over the lead role.  Nobody thought Evander Kane would actually get the part, let alone immediately after his interview, but apparently he knocked it out.

* Phil Kessel was told he could come in any time over a two week span for a job interview at some place called “Olympic” Pizza, but apparently he went missing the whole time.

* Rick Tocchet apparently hasn’t been able to find any summer work, but he somehow moved into a nicer home.  I’ll give you 3 to 1 odds he’s got something going under the table.  5 to 1?  Okay, 5 to 1.

* Steven Stamkos was already up for the salesman of the week bonus at the Nissan dealership that hired him - apparently he tied the lead guy in sales by selling a tricycle to a blind guy for $80 bucks at the last second, just to reach the numbers.

* Apparently Keith Ballard got a job coaching t-ball.  Not sure why.

* Rick Nash got a job doing landscaping, but was noticeably frustrated after seeing that, even though he was doing an amazing job, his co-workers sucked so bad things always turned out horribly.

* Amazingly, Daryl Sutter got a job running a major league baseball team.  Since then he’s been there he’s been desperately trying to get some Blue Jays on his roster, at one point reportedly saying “I know all they’ve done is lose, but trust me, I really like what’s going on with these Toronto guys.”

* The only other scoop I heard was that Dion Phaneuf has apparently sunk to being a bus boy at Earls.  It’s not about the money, I’m told.  The staff said he just likes taking care of the sloppy seconds.

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After learning about a few of the Maple Leafs summer jobs, I realized I hadn’t heard much from that organization lately.  I did a few quick Google searches to see what’s been going on:

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For your daily mix of (mostly hockey) insight and humour, follow JTBourne on Twitter.

A few blogs back I asked the question “I wonder which team has played (against) the most back-up goaltenders this year?”  I figured there’d be some correlation between that stat and the standings.  Well, our friend Wychwood crunched the numbers for us.  Check out the answer (bottom comment) here.

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Not much help for Rolly in MSG

Last nights 5-0 Islanders loss at the hands of the Rangers was broadcast in 3-D, as I hear a lot of sporting events plan to be in the near future.  I don’t even get what that means…. do you have to wear glasses?  Have a special kind of TV?  See it at an IMAX?

Whatever steps you need to take to make it work, thank god I didn’t take them last night.  5-zip in the Garden?  At least us Isles fans got this far without having to wish for next year.  Time to bring out the old 4-0-1 forecheck, entertain the fans and lose every game, methinks.

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Player insight: y’know what’s horribly frustrating?  Taking a good, long run at a guy – usually a defenseman – trying to pound him into the glass, but the guy gets pressed up against the boards so not only is there no loud sound, but you bounce off him the other direction like a trampoline.  That’s really frustrating.

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It’s hard to tell if a guy is a good coach when he’s got Washington’s roster.  Or the ones Al Arbour had.  Or some of Scotty Bowman’s, Phil Jackson’s ….guys like that who’ve had stacked teams.

Yayyyy for us!

There’s something to be said for recognizing you have the most talent, and generally backing off to let them do their thing.  You stay valuable by being less involved, and letting the talent flourish organically.  You know a guy like Tortorella could never coach a team like the Capitals, cause he wants to do too much.  At the same time, we never really got to see Bowman/Arbour/whoever make chicken salad out of chicken s**t, because their rosters were already chicken salad…. weren’t they?

Anyways, that was a bit of a detour to get to “I wonder if Bruce Boudreau is a good coach?”  I’ma text college teammate Jay Beagle who’s got some games with Washington and try and get an answer for us.

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You know those young kid hockey players that are so cocky that you wanna break their $200 Synergies over their skinny little necks?  Like, by the age of 12?  Some of them are so crazy good that it’s hard to put them in their place.

Well, my theory is that those kids (as hockey players go) have a huge advantage.  Guys like myself, or my buddy Charlie Kronschnabel (Syracuse) weren’t exactly thrillers at a young age.  We were good and got better - we worked on the game until we were valuable enough players, but we were never the best player in our towns growing up.  There’s still bits of doubt coming from that.

Those cocky little bastards have the advantage because hockey takes a crazy amount of “f**k-I’m-good” to have the puck with your head up, move and think quickly, but stay relaxed.  When you see guys make a play in the NHL and think “I wouldn’t even try that in rec league”, it’s a good chance that dude’s still got a healthy amount of “f**k-I’m-good” in him.

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Can I get a ruling on Matt Moulson’s hair?  I mean, I myself was once a proponent for “hockey hair”, but homey’s kinda taken it next level on me:

How long until it crosses the line from "flowing" to "Hartnell"?

Actually…….. actually, it’s sick.  I just made up my mind without your help.  Either way, I’ll leave the picture there for you to enjoy.

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In looking for a long-hair pic of my own, I came across one that touches yesterday’s visor topic as well (full length article on that in THN next week).  In college, I would come home for summer hockey visor-less, and take my cage off.  My mom, being the ever-intelligent woman that she is, protested constantly.  She offered to buy a visor, if I’d just wear one.  I agreed.

I took the visor money and went to the sports store I worked at.  With my employee discount, I noticed that if I got the crappier visor, I could buy that basketball I wanted too.  So, I did.

The problem was, the crappy visor looked crappy.  So, before I went out to use it, I took it off my helmet with a dime from my pocket, intending to go get the good one before next time out.  Here’s the resulting picture, courtesy a Mike Ridley (the ex-NHL one) snapshot in shinny, demonstrating both my slightly longer hair (it got real bad at one point), my need to be in a Rocky movie, and the fact that NOT WEARING A VISOR IS DUMB:

Happy Thursday.  Take some time to enjoy your unshattered face. 

Matt Moulson has scored a couple times in the past two games for the Islanders on passes from John Tavares.  The following is a story about the week we both tried out for the Vernon Vipers in 2001.

I showed up for my 18-19 year old season and started sizing up the competition.  I was one of about four players already signed by the Vernon Vipers of the BCHL after my stellar year playing junior B in Osoyoos, BC.  Moulson was a lock for a spot on the team, but hadn’t been signed yet.

And fortunately for him, he happened to be a lot better at hockey than first impressions.

Moulson, all growed up.

He showed up at the arena for tryouts with a glossy blue button-down shirt buttoned multiple buttons down with a gold chain and slicked back black hair.  He was… confident.

And he was good.  Very good.

Tryouts consisted of a few practices, then being separated into three or four teams, and playing a mini-tournament while the coaches watched.  Our coach was the notorious hard ass, Mike Vandekamp.

The more I think about Mike and my junior years, the more I think they were book worthy (I kept a thorough journal of the madness).  That whole unwritten book could probably be summed up in two words: toughness mattered. 

In reality, fighting mattered.  Over my days as a Viper, I saw our trainer get told to beat up our opponents mascot (and saw the resulting assault charges), watched my coach thow my stick like a javalin at our opponents, saw our team bombarded by navel oranges, saw a steel gate thrown at our opponents coach, and saw much, much (much) more.  Toughness mattered.

Matt Moulson wasn’t tough yet.  Our captain also happened to love Vandekamps style, and hated that this kid thought he was a fancy-pants.

During intermissions of those tryouts, fights were set up between kids for the next period like Don King was the assistant GM.  It “never came from the coaches”, but we all knew it did.  Someone would walk into the dressing room and say “Waddell, you’re fighting Singer next period”.  The whole group of players trying out were basically Roman gladiators looking for the thumbs up or down from Caesar Vandekamp (22 fights in the final scrimmage, with me accounting for 0.0% of them).  I’m not gonnal lie, it was more than a bit scary.

Apparently, there's life after getting cut in junior hockey

So, our captain (this time on his own merit) sent word to our dressing room that he was fighting Moulson next period whether Moulson was fighting him or not.  Matt had four goals in the previous game.  Four.  Moulson was so good they had already put him up with a bilet family and a teammate - who, as fate would have it, happened to be the captain.  He must’ve thought “why should I have to fight anyone?  I should have fighters protecting me.”

What basically ended up happening, is that our captain chased the kid all over the ice.  Moulson wouldn’t fight him.  They were roommates for the year, for f$@%s sake.  After a couple periods, most people couldn’t figure out why Moulson wouldn’t just drop his gloves, seatbelt the guy, and go down.  Just get it over with.

Well, our captain eventually caught him and Moulson did exactly that.  He held on so tight he broke or dislocated his fingers, I can’t remember which.  Either way, our coach was so disgusted by the performance that he cut the guy in the next day or two.  He was second or third in points during camp at the time, tall, and could skate like the wind.

And that was the last time I saw Matt Moulson.

Oh, and for the record – our scrappy team advanced all the way to the BCHL league finals that year before losing in game six to a Chilliwack team that had NHL names like Jeff Tambellini, David Van Der Gulik, and Gabe Gauthier.  We were probably a goal scorer short of being national champions that year.

In retrospect, it’s funny how three people I ended up liking (coach, captain and Moulson) were involved in such a string of shitty decisions.  Who knows where the kids career would be if he had made the team.  Maybe he gets buried by a coach who thinks he’s soft, doesn’t play, and quits at 20.  It’s a crazy game, dude.