I kind of don’t care about the NHL trying to clamp down on long-term contracts.

I think it’s a stupid loophole that teams are exploiting, but I also think it’s one that needs to be closed during contract negotiations, not after.

But I can totally get that the NHL wants to make sure everyone works within the framework of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA).

The NHL obviously feels long-term contracts, like those given to Roberto Luongo and Ilya Kovalchuk, violate the spirit of the CBA, if not the letter.

And to be honest, those contracts might even violate the letter. I’m not a lawyer. I still get 12 cassettes a month because of the last contract I signed.

But I do want to point out one thing.

Back in June of 2008 the Tampa Lightning hired Greg Malone as their head of professional scouting, right around the time they traded for the rights to negotiate with Ryan Malone.

Greg Malone, in addition to being a former NHL player and a scout for Phoenix and Pittsburgh, is Ryan’s father.

A few days later Ryan signed a seven-year deal with the Lightning.

Maybe Ryan would have signed the contract without his dad getting hired in the organization.

Maybe Tampa really wanted both Malones.

But what if Greg was hired to make Tampa more desirable to Ryan? Then shouldn’t Greg’s salary count against the cap, too?

Also, please note Ryan has not indicated his dad’s hiring was a factor in his decision to sign with Tampa.

Within the NCAA, this sort of thing is common, but is also a violation of NCAA rules.

As far as I know, the CBA has no such rule prohibiting the hiring of family members as a recruitment tool, but it gives teams an unfair advantage, much the way a front-loaded long-term contract does.

If the NHL wants to make sure all of its contracts honor the spirit of the CBA, it needs to start looking at all of the contracts that get signed. The league also needs to look at all of the things that happen around a signing.

It’s not enough to care when it’s a $100 million contract spread out over six decades. The NHL is either interested in preserving the spirit and integrity of the CBA or it’s not.

Up until a few weeks ago, the league seemed to have no interest. Now, suddenly there is interest.

Since that’s the case, the league needs to do the right thing and review every contract signed since the lockout.

It’s not fair to punish the most recent offenders while possibly missing out on some older ones.

Without consistent enforcement of the CBA, the NHL’s actions over the past few weeks will seem downright arbitrary.

It seems that most goalies never want to surrender starts, no matter how ridiculous their numbers start to get.

New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist started 72 games last season and now even he’s admitting that was way too many.

The funny thing is, Lundqvist wasn’t even an exclusive member of the 70+ start club. There are actually five other goalies who started 70 or more games last season.

The season before, Lundqvist started 70 games, along with three other goalies.

There have always been certain goalies that are NHL work horses. New Jersey’s Martin Brodeur for one. Calgary’s Miikka Kiprusoff for another.

Sometimes a goalie starting over 70 games speaks to goalie depth (or lack thereof) within the organization.

Sometimes that many starts speaks to a hot goalie.

A lot of the time it speaks to a coach who’s too scared to change goalies.

Lundqvist has played in a perfect storm of all three factors. He’s never had a true backup before this upcoming season, assuming Martin Biron works out for the Rangers.

Plus, Lundqvist, has had some breathtaking goaltending moments over the years, including some very hot streaks. When Lundqvist is on, it has to be difficult to entertain the thought of sitting him – even for just a few games a month.

And finally, Rangers coach John Tortorella is a creature of habit. He likes giving a lot of work to his best players, even if it means risking running that player down and perhaps even exposing him to injury.

Lundqvist is obviously a quality NHL goalie, but he’s often been susceptible to yielding soft goals. One theory says mental fatigue from so many starts is what causes Lundqvist to lose his focus at inopportune times. But another theory says Lundqvist needs a lot of work to maintain his focus and less work would result in more mental lapses.

It’s probably a good thing that Lundqvist and the Rangers are going into the upcoming season with ideas of a more conventional goalie workload. But it’ll be interesting to see if the reduced starts results in stronger goaltending from Lundqvist.

Starting over 70 games a season isn’t sustainable but Lundqvist has done a pretty nice job of making it work.

Joe Thornton and the Sharks are already starting to talk contract extension.

Thornton’s current contract ends at the end of the upcoming season.

Here’s the thing about Thornton and the Sharks: The Sharks want to keep him around and Thornton wants to stay in San Jose. He’s comfortable in San Jose, where he and his family have put down roots.

There’s very little doubt Thornton and the Sharks will be able to work out an extension without much drama.

But maybe that’s the problem.

Thornton is a hugely talented player, but also a lazy one. He tends to disappear in pressure-packed situations, unless he’s being called out.

Look at last season’s playoffs: Three assists in a first round win over Colorado, with just about everyone screaming the Sharks were about to choke in the post-season yet again. Then, in a huge series against Detroit, Thornton came alive with three goals and five assists in five games. Then, having established his ability to succeed in the post-season, Thornton once again disappeared, with just one assist in the final series, where the Sharks were swept by Chicago.

But even looking at Thornton’s career as a whole, you see a similar trend. Back in Boston, where Thornton felt safe, his numbers were good: He averaged just under 57 points a season in seven seasons, plus part of an eighth. But once he was shockingly and suddenly traded to San Jose, a tremendous indignity, Thornton’s numbers improved. Suddenly he was averaging over 95 points per season.

The difference? Obviously, Thornton’s play improved as it most likely would have had he stayed in Boston. But Thornton also stepped up his game in an effort to show Boston they were wrong to trade him. Thornton was angry and upset and it elevated his game.

This is the challenge the Sharks must navigate. Thornton plays better when he’s not comfortable. Thornton is at his best when he’s been pushed to the brink and feels he has something to prove. Because once he’s comfortable, once he’s not upset, he can be susceptible to disappearing on the ice.

So while it’s great both parties want Thornton to stay a Shark, the team needs to be careful about making Thornton too happy. A long-term contract could saddle the Sharks with an underperforming, high-priced player that could handcuff the team for years.

The Sharks need to figure a way to keep Thornton happy, but not too happy. Maybe it’s in the form of a shorter-term contract. Maybe it’s in the form on an incentive-laden contract.

But if the Sharks want to get the best out of a very talented player, they need to keep him from feeling too content. Thornton is at his best when he’s uncomfortable, so the Sharks need to make sure his next contract doesn’t make all of his dreams come true.

While Donald Fehr, the legendary head of Major League Baseball’s players union, hasn’t taken the NHLPA job quite yet, it seems like he’ll eventually accept the gig.

It also seems like someone is working with the NHLPA to give them leverage moving into the next Collective Bargaining Negotiation.

Otherwise, would Ilya Kovalchuk’s camp really be threatening to leave for the KHL?

Kovalchuk has always seen torn between the NHL and the KHL. But he spent most of his summer trying to get contract in the NHL. And then, when he got a contract and it was rejected, he still stuck around (possibly past a second rejected contract).

That indicates he’d prefer to play in the NHL next season.

Plus, the KHL season starts September 8, which is less than two weeks from today. I’m assuming Kovalchuk doesn’t want to make his first line change from the baggage carousel, so if he was serious about leaving for Russia, I think he might have put a plan in motion by now.

This isn’t to say Kovalchuk won’t leave for the KHL. It just doesn’t seem to be his preference. But neither did New Jersey and look how that worked out. Or didn’t work out.

Kovalchuk’s threatening to leave is a wonderful thing the NHLPA, though.

It can be used to show the owners that the current NHL CBA is causing a player drain (I’m sure the NHLPA is hoping the NHL doesn’t bring up the fact that Kovalchuk would be the first elite, in-his-prime player to leave the NHL for the KHL, post-lockout).

Kovalchuk’s leaving, or threatening to leave, can also be taken to the fans to illustrate how restrictive the CBA can be to certain players. It can also be used to show that if NHL owners don’t get more competitive with their salaries, more players could leave.

To be clear, I don’t know any of that would be a consequence of Kovalchuk’s leaving the NHL, but I suspect the NHLPA would be interested in those arguments as rhetorical techniques to keep the fans on the side of the NHLPA, where they didn’t really seem to be during the last lockout.

The NHLPA might have had more leverage if the fans had been outraged by the lockout. But to be fair, so many things went wrong the NHLPA during the lockout, it’s kind of hard to isolate that one critical variable that might have turned things around for them.

I don’t know if Kovalchuk’s camp is deliberately helping out the NHLPA with their posturing, or if they’re just trying to get a client the contract he wants.

I’m pretty sure that the NHLPA, and whoever their leadership might be, have to love that right now, the current CBA might drive an elite NHL player out of the NHL.

From a negotiating and rhetorical perspective, it’s a huge win for the NHLPA.

Of course, for hockey fans and the NHL as a whole, it’s a huge loss.

Welcome to the post-lockout, pre-second-lockout NHL.

This is a cool video featuring the faces of Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Teemu Sellane, and Henrik Zetterberg being morphed into a new Soviet player. The transformation takes place using Photoshop and it’s pretty amazing:

Merrill Kazanjian, the artist, has a YouTube channel here (although, sadly, he doesn’t work exclusively with hockey players).

Lyle Richardson is asking if the Islanders need another goaltender.

Right now, the plan seems to be going with Dwayne Roloson, who’ll be 41 when the season starts, and Rick DiPietro, who has played just 13 games over the last two seasons.

I’m not sure what the thought process is for the Islanders.

Roloson was strong last season, starting 49 games and finishing with a .907 save percentage. But as Roloson gets older, the likelihood of his ability to repeat that kind of performance diminishes. It seems mighty risky trusting a position as important as goaltending to someone that old.

And if the thought is this is the season DiPietro gets fully healthy, that also seems like a bit of a high-risk proposition. As talented as DiPietro is, and I truly believe a 100% healthy DiPietro could be an elite NHL goaltender, he seems too prone to injury to be a viable starting option.

The Islanders started last season with Roloson and Marty Biron, and the tandem worked out well for them. Rather than having one solid goalie, GM Garth Snow went with two journeymen. Roloson eventually emerged as the starter, but Biron proved to be a solid-enough second option.

Now, with Roloson a year older, the Islanders are hoping lightning strikes twice, which is never a good thing to hope for.

Even if Roloson has another year of solid goaltending in him, he can’t start 82 games. The Islanders’ offensive system doesn’t do much to protect goalies from rushes, so goaltending is an especially important position. The Islanders simply can’t afford to have an unproven entity in goal for 30 to 40 games.

The Islanders have been linked to Antti Niemi, last seen hoisting the Stanley Cup for the Chicago Blackhawks, but apparently aren’t interested.

I’m not sure what kind of contract duration Niemi wants, but we know his salary demand is in the $2.75 million per year range — that’s what he was awarded in arbitration before the Blackhawks walked away from the ruling (earlier this month Anthony SanFilippo reported Niemi was getting offers beyond his arbitration award, but if that were the case, I assume he would have signed somewhere by now).

It’s a lot of money to spend on a goalie who might have put together a pretty hot streak last season, but who’s also unproven over the long haul.

But the Islanders have over $19 million in cap space for next season.

As near as I can tell, the cap floor is $43.4 million and the team has just under $40 million in salary, so why not spend some money on goaltending? Why not have some insurance in an important position? Especially since the money doesn’t seem to be earmarked for anything else.

If you have to spend money to meet the floor, why not take on goaltending? If we learned nothing else during this year’s playoffs, it’s that teams really can’t have enough goaltending options, because you never know who’s going to get hot.

I’m not sure Niemi can play himself past Roloson. But he was once a backup and he can probably return to being one. Is it awkward to have a backup making more than a starter? Perhaps. But it’s probably worse to write-off 30 some-odd games because you’re hoping this is finally the year your supposed franchise goalie is healthy enough to be the franchise goalie.

The Islanders have ambiguity in goal plus plenty of cap space. They can afford to take a risk on Niemi. They can’t afford to take a risk on the Roloson/DiPietro tandem.

Is Hartford Whalers gear outselling a significant proportion of active NHL team merchandise?

It depends who you ask.

According to a vendor who’s a major Whaler seller, Whaler gear is in the top five nationally.

According to the NHL, Whaler gear is popular, but they won’t rank it against other NHL teams.

The Whalers are in the midst of a full-born renaissance.

This weekend was the Whalers Reunion and Fan Fest.

The Hartford Courant has created a Whalers site that includes an article archive.

It’s pretty stunning when you consider the number of papers that won’t cover an active team, let alone one that left town in 1997.

Why the Whaler nostalgia?

A lot of it is driven by people from Connecticut who miss their team.

But that’s not enough to propel Whaler gear sales as high as they seem to be.

There’s the general popularity of throwback gear. Once a celebrity is seen with it, others tend to follow suit.

But also, I think the Whalers are seeing a resurgence because they represent a simpler time in the NHL. The Whalers left Connecticut for North Carolina, part of the NHL’s sunbelt expansion that pulled teams out of cities that loved them, and placed them into cities where hockey love had to built from square one.

For hockey fans, the Whalers are a nice reminder of the days when the NHL would stick a franchise in a city not because it was a large market or an important geographic location, but because there were people in the city willing to pay to see hockey.

Of course, to be fair, part of the reason the Whalers had to leave Hartford was that there weren’t enough people willing to pay to see hockey…

The fact that so many NHL fans are so interested in the Whalers should send a message to the league.

Fans obviously aren’t satisfied with the current state of the NHL and so are looking back to a time when they loved hockey. Back to a time when you could see daylight between a goalie and the goal. Back to a time when games weren’t decided by a skills competition. Back to a time when fans talked about hockey and not about contracts and cap space.

The Whalers love isn’t necessarily about the Whalers. I think it’s more about remembering one of the last moments the NHL was a league for hockey fans, not a league trying to attract more casual viewers.

And as long as we’re talking about old NHL franchises, Rich Chere has a really nice piece on the old Golden Seals.

With all of the Ilya Kovalchuk drama going on, it’s time to take a deep breath and ask a simple question:

What is the business of the NHL? What is the NHL there to do? What does it make?

I would argue the NHL makes hockey. The goal of the league is to allow players to play so hockey can be produced.

One would think the league wants the best players to play, since the whole point of the NHL is to showcase hockey.

And yet, not only is the league going out of its way to prevent Kovalchuk from playing in the league, the league also seems like it might be about to target the contracts of some its best players.

Ostensibly, the NHL is trying to protect its salary cap. But one has to wonder what the price of cost-certainty is.

Not only might the NHL drive a player like Kovalchuk right into the arms of the KHL, but adding insult to injury, they’re going to also take aim at some of the NHL’s best players: players like Marian Hossa, Roberto Luongo, and Chris Pronger.

What if those players are frustrated by having their contracts approved and then rejected years later? Will they be upset enough to contemplate leaving the NHL?

Realistically, they probably won’t be driven out of the league. But fans will be frustrated.

Teams will feel challenged to plan, constantly worrying players they thought were locked in actually aren’t.

And if this contract situation, assuming it becomes a situation, isn’t resolved quickly, the NHL might find itself starting a season without some of their best players on the ice. In fact, they could find themselves with elite players in contractual limbo.

The league exists to put on hockey. The better the players, the better the hockey.

It’s not a highly complex business model.

So why is the league targeting itself like this? What’s to be gained by placing a barrier between NHL talent and NHL contracts? Why not let owners sign players as long as they work within the constraints of the Collective Bargaining Agreement?

Why did the NHL go fishing for problems? And why is it trying to amplify the issue?

Bill Clinton famously used an “It’s the economy stupid” sign to keep his campaign focused on what he considered to be the core issue.

Someone needs to make NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman an “It’s hockey, stupid” sign for his office. He seems to have forgotten why he needs to go to work every morning.

The other day, I wrote about how Cup-winning experience is actually a good thing.

The Blackhawks’ summer payroll purge has resulted in a Cup-winning team jettisoning a decent part of its Cup-winning experience.

And that could wind up being a fatal mistake for Chicago. Obviously, a lot of the experience purge is due to salary cap considerations, and so are — to a certain extent — out of GM Stan Bowman’s hands. But there are still ways to retain talent and experience working within the constraints of the cap.

Experience has come up a few times this week.

The Red Wings signed Cup-winning, 40-year-old Mike Modano to a one-year deal that will see him centering the Wings’ third line.

The Wings are a team that have always treasured success and experience. While I don’t think the move will ultimately pan out for the Wings, I can see where they would want a guy like Modano in the room.

Modano would represent another way to reinforce the principles of hockey success, assuming he plays well enough to be taken seriously.

And of course, Peter Forsberg’s annual retirement reconsideration always draws interest from NHL teams.

Part of that interest is driven by the memories of Forsberg’s immense talents. Some of is driven by the desire to get a deal, the same way people buy garbage at garage sales, hoping it turns out to be a priceless antique. But Forsberg also draws interest because of the experience he brings to a team. While his physical abilities have consistently waned, he still sees the game like very few players. And to a lot of NHL GMs, that makes Forsberg worth the risk.

The Blackhawks are shedding experience and flying in the face of what some other NHL GMs are doing. They’re taking a big risk. Other than the Devils of the 1990s and the NFL’s New England Patriots, there aren’t too many successful teams that dismantle themselves, feeling they have too much success and experience on the roster.

I’m not sure the Blackhawks will be one of those rare exceptions.

Winning the Stanley Cup is like being in a fraternity. It’s a little bit of a job hook-up device. Players who had any kind of significant role in winning the Cup are usually more likely to get jobs or traded for.

The idea is that if a team is making a Cup run, GMs want some Cup-winning experience in the room. They want non-Cup-winning players to hear what it takes to win the Cup and how great it feels once the Cup is won.

By walking away from goalie Antti Niemi, and his $2.75 million arbitration ruling, the Blackhawks are walking away from Cup-winning experience.

Again.

On the one hand, Blackhawks’ GM Stan Bowman felt he needed more cap space than Niemi’s contract would have provided. Also, Niemi has hardly been a lights-out goalie, even as he helped Chicago win the Cup.

But on the other hand, by signing goalie Marty Turco to replace Niemi (for $1.75 to $1.25 million less), he’s going with a goalie who’s consistently wilted under the pressure of big games.

Turco will probably be fine during the regular season. But the Blackhawks aren’t looking to win the regular season. They want more Cups.

And I’m not sure Turco is a guy who can bring in more Cups.

Dallas parted ways with Turco without looking back after a decade with the goalie. That’s a pretty huge indicator that the team saw some limitations in his abilities.

The Turco move only makes sense if Bowman expects goalie Cristobal Huet to finally start living up to his contract. While he wasn’t a key part of the Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup-winning run, he was around for it. Maybe Bowman thinks bearing witness to success is just about as good as being successful.

Obviously, Bowman would love to move that contract, but I can’t see anyone being remotely interested. Unless the Islanders actually become that desperate to reach the cap floor.

Or maybe the Blackhawks are finally ready to put the highly-regarded goalie Corey Crawford into the NHL mix and expect it to be a seamless transition.

Bowman made a tough move in walking away from Niemi. For Bowman, I think he felt Niemi’s talent didn’t justify that much money.

My concern is that Niemi’s intangibles — his calm and composure and experience — were actually worth a lot more and will be tough to replace. In fact, I think a great comparable might be Chris Osgood, who won three Stanley Cups with a level of talent and ability similar to Niemi’s.

Neither goalie has game-changing talent, but both seem able to stay calm in the face of increasingly higher stakes.

It’s hard to say to what extent Niemi has this kind of calm given just one post-season of data to work with.

But while at least the possibility exists that Niemi is a big game goalie, it seems fair to say we know Turco isn’t that kind of goalie.

So the Blackhawks have saved some cap space. Hopefully they haven’t compromised too much of their future.