It’s pretty perfect that Ilya Kovalchuk was signed to a massive contract by the Devils on the same day the Lightning traded for Simon Gagne.
It shows the two styles of managing in the NHL.
On the one hand, you have the Devils going for the expensive, long-term contract. In Kovalchuk’s case, it’s 17 years, $102 million, [...]

A lot of NHL teams are making the most of the Stanley Cup intermission.
The Blue Jackets hired Scott Arniel after getting turned down by Guy Boucher.
Arniel is an AHL coach who was in the mix for the Oilers coaching job before it went to Pat Quinn.
Boucher reportedly turned down the Columbus job to take a [...]

In graduate school I took a management course where we had to read canonical leadership books (most of which seemed to come from the 1960s and 70s).
I read THE PETER PRINCIPLE, which maintains that every employee within an organization rises to their level of incompetence. It sounds cynical, but the logic is that someone is [...]

New Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik is off to a dramatic start, firing coach Rick Tocchet and GM Brian Lawton.
Vinik said he wanted a clean slate to work with.
Not helping things was the fact that Lawton and Tocchet spent much of the second half of the season at each other’s throats.
The team definitely imploded [...]

I have to say, and say completely without sarcasm, that I think Tampa does a nice job with their young players.
Victor Hedman was starting to look a little overwhelmed and outmatched on the ice. Coach Rick Tocchet could have yelled at him or coddled him or told him to figure it out. But instead, he [...]

When a GM supports a coach, that’s usually the surest sign the coach is about to be fired.
Down in Tampa, GM Brian Lawton is supporting coach Rick Tocchet, even as the team struggles to find consistency.
One thing that’s forgotten about Tocchet is that he’s a new coach with an inexperienced coching staff. Rookie coaches and [...]

Some interesting coaching from Tampa Bay’s Rick Tocchet last night.
Despite a strong-if-ultimately-ineffective game from Vinny Lecavalier, Tocchet wound up benching his top two lines for most of the third.
Tocchet was probably upset that the Caps have pretty much owned Tampa Bay since 2007. He also couldn’t have been happy about his team dropping five of [...]

What a crazy season.
Jeff Gordon says he’s already hearing trade chatter from certain NHL GMs, with many already thinking about giving up their season and trying to dump salary.
What separates NHL GMs from most other sports, is that NHL GMs only seem to think about salary implications after a contract is signed.
Vinny Lecavalier, under [...]

Are we too impatient with first-round draft picks?
Maybe.
Even though he finished last season relatively strong, Steve Stamkos was written off as a bust, or at least as someone with the potential to be a huge bust. Now, 10 games into Tampa’s season, Stamkos has nine goals and five assists and looks like a real [...]

After the lockout, everyone talked about the new NHL, and how a premium would be placed on offense.
In the new NHL, we were told speed and talent would matter. Players would be free to actually play, and wouldn’t spend entire periods with sticks embedded in their abdomens.
It seems that crazy-sounding idea continues to blossom.
We’re [...]