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via TSN's YouTube page,

Following a conference call between 12 major league sports commissioners and the President of the United States Donald Trump, TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun joins SportsCentre to share the takeaways from the call and discuss whether or not Trump's desire to have sports resume 'sooner rather than later' will expedite the process.

LeBrun's personal option is no NHL hockey until next season.

via the YouTube page of the NHL,

Although construction began without a budget, architectural plans, or a tenant - Joe Louis Arena became the destination for hockey royalty and the home to champions.

“The Joe” chronicles four decades of unforgettable moments in Red Wings history retold by the players, coaches, and managers that lived them. Dubbed the “Dead Wings” for their futility during the late 70s, the transition of ownership from the Norris family to the Ilitch family began a renaissance in the Motor City. Future captain Steve Yzerman arrived in 1983 and Detroit quickly established themselves as a perennial contender for the Stanley Cup.

After disappointing playoff exits in the early 1990s, the Red Wings, led by future Hall of Famers Sergei Fedorov, Brendan Shanahan, and Nicklas Lidstrom, finally ended a 42-year championship drought in 1997. Detroit repeated as cup winners the following season and won two more Stanley Cups in 2002 and 2008 - all while making 25-straight playoff appearances at the Joe.

In addition to cultivating a culture of winning on the ice, the new owners created family atmosphere throughout the franchise, arena, and fan base. Players, fans, and staff mingled within the rink’s corridors and shared highs and lows, not just as a team, but as a community.

Every moment is here - from Gordie Howe’s return, to the Russian Five, to the emotional final ceremony. “The Joe” utilizes exclusive access and never-before-seen archival footage to present a unique perspective of Detroit’s storied past in one of the NHL’s most iconic arenas

Watch the over one hour NHL Productions feature below.

added 6:13pm,

from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- ...day after day you still hear deputy commissioner Bill Daly talk about plans for completing the season and squeezing in the playoffs. There’s no reality to what he’s saying. How can there be?

There may, however, be some financial motivation to keep hope alive. By not cancelling games officially, the league’s teams are under no obligation to return ticket money. And in large markets certainly, this year’s money will certainly be applied to next year’s season tickets. But that doesn’t help the individual ticket holder, who put out good money for a single games that isn’t going to be played.

There’s also a television revenue side of the equation in all this. By announcing cancellation of the season, advertisers will be due refunds of some kind and quite likely television networks will be compensated for games they purchased that won’t be played.

To date, the NHL has put on a happy face with delusional plans to play out its playoffs, if not its season. It sounds like a whole lot of fantasy talk from here.

- How much did the Maple Leafs drop from one season to the next? Last year after 70 games they were fourth in the NHL. This year, tied for 12th overall.

- Since January 1, 2019, Jordan Binnington has started 105 games for the Stanley Cup champion, St. Louis Blues. His record in that time: A rather stunning 70-27-8.

a few more hockey notes...

from Kyle Austin of Mlive,

Michigan is getting help from its sports stars and coaches in its search for more doctors and nurses to help fight the coronavirus outbreak.

The state released a video Saturday in which Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, Detroit Pistons coach Dwane Casey, Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire, Lions coach Matt Patricia and Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill ask nurses and doctors from across the country to travel to Michigan to volunteer their services in the state’s hospitals.

continued plus you can watch the video or view it below.

from Zach Braziller of the New York Post,

Hope of resuming the NBA season is fading as even a shortened postseason may not be possible due to the coronavirus.

“It is clear that the NBA is angling to set up a deal that enables them to shut the season down,” ESPN insider Brian Windhorst said Friday on “SportsCenter.”

“They don’t have to do that yet. The way they’re negotiating, they’re leaving an option either way. But they’re not having talks about how to restart the league. They’re having financial talks [regarding player salaries] about what would happen if the season shuts down. I think there’s a significant amount of pessimism.”

There was talk of restarting the season in Las Vegas and using UNLV’s campus as a way to create what would amount to a bubble of people who have tested negative for the virus.

But the Chinese Basketball Association tried a similar idea to no avail. The virus did not go away.

continued

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

The last two months of the season must have been exactly what Henrik Lundqvist envisioned at the 2018 post-Letter deadline purge when he chose to remain with the Rangers after he was given the chance to opt out of an embryonic rebuild program and pursue his Stanley Cup dream somewhere else.

Because here were the Blueshirts, powered to a great extent by kids and big-money free agent and trade acquisitions, storming into the playoff race by going 16-6 under just the type of accelerated rebuild program that the King foresaw two years earlier when he pledged his heart to New York.

Which made it even more cruel that Lundqvist was more apart from it than a part of it. As much The Franchise as Tom Seaver ever was in Queens, the goaltender essentially was airbrushed out of the team picture and watched as the pair of 24-year-olds, Igor Shesterkin and Alex Georgiev, took his job and ran with it.

When the NHL season came to a sudden halt following the March 11 match in Colorado, Lundqvist had started one of the Rangers’ last 19 games, and he got that one because Shesterkin was injured and Georgiev needed a break.

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NEW YORK (April 3, 2020) – The National Hockey League today released the following statement:

“The National Hockey League is appalled that a video call arranged today by the New York Rangers to introduce their fans to one of the League’s incoming stars, K’Andre Miller, was hacked with racist, cowardly taunts. The person who committed this despicable act is in no way an NHL fan and is not welcome in the hockey community.

“No one deserves to be subjected to such ugly treatment and it will not be tolerated in our League. We join with the Rangers in condemning this disgusting behavior.”

NEW YORK, April 3, 2020 – “We held an online video chat with fans and New York Rangers prospect, K'Andre Miller, during which a vile individual hijacked the chat to post racial slurs, which we disabled as soon as possible. We were incredibly appalled by this behavior, which has no place online, on the ice, or anywhere, and we are investigating the matter.”

Watch them all in 18 1/2 minutes.

awood40 with another great job.

from Steven Impey of Sports Pro Media,

The broadcast partners for three of the four US major leagues are set lose out on more than US$1 billion in combined TV advertising revenue due to the coronavirus-enforced shutdown, according to new research.

That figure, which forms part of a study carried out by ad sales specialists MediaRadar, is based on the net spend of 900 companies who advertised during National Basketball Association (NBA), National Hockey League (NHL), and Major League Baseball (MLB) broadcasts between March and May last year. That is the same timeframe MediaRadar anticipates the leagues will be forced to close during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Specifically, the data shows that NBA broadcasts generated US$839 million in advertising revenue during the three-month period last season, while NHL games brought in more than US$120 million and the MLB accrued more than US$60 million.

continued

from Andrew Gross of Newsday,

The uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic has left Islanders president and general manager Lou Lamoriello juggling many different plans for best positioning his team when the NHL season restarts.

That’s when, not if.

“I’m extremely optimistic that we will play at some time as far as this season,” Lamoriello told Newsday on Thursday. “Whether it’s in June, whether it’s in July, whether it’s in August, I’m not thinking about that. I’m just thinking, in my mind, knowing that we will play and using this time to get ready for that.

“But, prior to that, the most important thing is everyone staying safe and everyone doing the things in the best interest of their families because we’re in a different world today,” Lamoriello added.

continued

Hockey Insiders Bob McKenzie, Darren Dreger and Senior Hockey Reporter Frank Seravalli discuss how some NHL players are considering foregoing their final cheque of the season, have the latest on the separation between the Jets and Dustin Byfuglien nearing an end, which OHL team could take a chance on No. 1 prospect Adam Fantilli, and much more.

Watch at TSN.

Adam Gretz of NBC Sports takes a long-term look at the Wings,

This is kind of an odd situation at the moment because the players with the longest contracts and biggest financial commitments are players that probably do not actually fit in with the long-term direction of the team.

For example, here is the list of players that are actually signed to contracts beyond this season: Dylan Larkin, Filip Zadina, Frans Nielsen, Justin Abdelkader, Darren Helm, Valtteri Filppula, Luke Glendening, Patrick Nemeth, Alex Biega, Danny DeKeyser, and Jonathan Bernier.

Out of that group, Larkin and Zadina (who is still on an entry-level contract) are the only ones that are under the age of 28.

Nemeth (who is 28) is the only other player under the age of 30.

Mantha, Bertuzzi, and perhaps Fabbri all figure to stick around for a while and are still under team control as restricted free agents this summer, but they are not technically signed yet.

All of that leaves general manager Steve Yzerman with a fairly clean slate to build from. He also has a couple of really interesting building blocks in Larkin, Mantha, and Zadina.

continued and scroll down for 2 more Detroit topics...

from Chris Johnston of Sportsnet,

Talk about opening Pandora’s Box.

Amid the uncertainty brought on by a paused NHL season, I thought it would be helpful to call on a salary cap expert to address the most critical unanswered questions facing the league while navigating this new frontier.

The founder of CapFriendly.com, Dominik, was more than happy to oblige the request, but little did I realize how deep the questions ran: He came up with more than 80 of them spanning 36 different topics.

For the sake of brevity, I’ve boiled those down into 10 identifiable issues brought on by the paused season and provided some thoughts from CapFriendly on why each is significant.

Consider it a window into the variables every front office is dealing with right now. The NHL has conducted a series of calls with team owners, presidents and general managers since the novel coronavirus halted play on March 12, but it hasn’t yet been able to provide much clarity on many of the issues raised here:

Salary Cap
Questions:

How will the pause affect the 2020-21 cap? How will a possible lost season and playoffs affect the 2020-21 cap? When did the NHL stop its cap counting process for 2019-20 and what happens to that if play doesn’t resume?

Background:

continued

The NHL is a business, and there are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in finding a way to award the 2020 Stanley Cup. The Wings may lament the loss of revenue without the four home games they had left on their schedule, but given the situation, we’ve almost certainly seen the last of them this season.

-Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press where you can read more on this topic.

Graeme Roustan: Today, we have Craig Leipold, the owner of the Minnesota Wild, on with us today for Sports Illustrated and The Hockey News. Thanks very much for joining us.

GR: You sit on the executive committee of the Board of Governors for the NHL. I know that a lot of owners call you to talk about all kinds of issues. How are the owners collectively doing, and how are their staffs doing in general?

CL: We have been talking in the last two weeks. I think there’s high value and understanding what other teams are going to be doing. I have been on the phone to other owners, and we’ve talked through situations and options that we’re looking at. I can say this: if there’s any way that we can get this season, jumpstart it back on the ice and at a minimum play the playoffs, that is the foremost direction that every team owner wants to go. We want to finish this season. I think all hockey fans can rest assured that our No. 1 priority – well, the No. 1 priority is safety and the health of our employees and our fans – but after that, we want to be playing hockey, and we’ll do everything we can to accomplish that. I think all the owners that I’ve spoken with individually and from what I have heard on with the Board of Governors conference calls is everyone feels the same way. Let’s see what we can do to get the season started in some format, make good decisions. And let’s see if we can still play hockey this season.

more Q & A...

from Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet,

- There’s so much uncertainty about where we’re going from a financial perspective that many ideas are being thrown around. Estimated losses of $220 million are projected if this year’s paused games are made up, including the playoffs. (That would likely add four percentage points of escrow to players’ paycheques.)

Projected losses if there’s no season are closer to $1.1 billion, and 35 per cent escrow whenever we resume. One idea: allowing players and teams to defer money. For example, a player with a five-year contract at a $5-million AAV would still have that term and cap hit, but could agree to hold some of the payments. Teams would get a break on cash flow, and players could save until escrow was lowered. Don’t know if it will happen, but spitballing never hurts. Both the NHL and NHLPA would have to agree. Also, the players will decide what to do about their final paycheque by next week.

- One exec wants me to push Saskatchewan as a playoff “hub” site if that method is necessary.

“Not too populous and back to our roots,” he said.

- Five years ago, the OHL’s Plymouth Whalers moved to Flint. The Firebirds had one winning season in its first four, a .369 points percentage and made the playoffs once (a five-game defeat). It was not a model franchise. In September, they acquired goalie Anthony Popovich from defending-champion Guelph. Popovich had backstopped the Storm to the Memorial Cup semifinal, but with talented Nico Daws ready to play, they had a surplus. Never drafted in the NHL, Popovich was trying out for the Red Wings at their rookie tournament in Traverse City when it happened.

“I had a feeling I was going to get traded,” Popovich said. “Some people thought it was a waste to go to Flint. Looking back, it was the best spot for me.”

His new goalie coach was a fiery, determined competitor who played 299 NHL games for Detroit.

“It’s been real tough here,” said Greg Stefan, who coached 2006 Conn Smythe Trophy winner Cam Ward on that Carolina Stanley Cup champion. “The second skate on the ice with him, you could hear the comments in practice from the veteran guys. ‘I like this guy,’ they were saying. I knew right away. His professionalism, character, work ethic, how he was a teammate, unselfish.

more on the last topic plus many more Thoughts...

from Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News,

With the NHL regular season paused because of the coronavirus pandemic, let’s review some of the surprises and disappointments of the Wings’ season.

Surprises

Tyler Bertuzzi: If Bernier wasn’t the Wings’ MVP, then it would have to be Bertuzzi. He was the Wings’ representative at the All-Star Game, and deservedly so. Bertuzzi led the team with 21 goals, and his 48 points only trailed Dylan Larkin (53). Bertuzzi can play in a variety of roles and his consistency has been admirable.

Alex Biega: He was a shrewd acquisition by general manager Steve Yzerman early in the season. Biega outperformed expectations, getting into 49 games, and becoming a dependable third-pairing defenseman. He got a one-year contract extension and he earned it.

Disappointments

Justin Abdelkader: Another subpar season for a veteran forward whose future in the organization is uncertain. Abdelkader had no goals while playing 49 games and was losing his spot in the lineup. At age 33, there’s been severe regression in performance the last two seasons.

more of each...

via the YouTube page of Doner (Ad Agency),

When the motor stops, the spirit continues. #StaySafeDetroit

The month of April normally kicks off with a day of pranks and jokes, but this year I am in no mood for laughs.

If you believe what we are being told here in the USA, the death count by the coronavirus is about to see a tremendous increase the next few weeks.

I hope and even ask you to stay home if at all possible. I talked with a girl in her late 20's last night and she doesn't think she can remain "locked up" for three weeks.

I asked what about the alternative- chances of death increase the more you leave the house and come in contact with other people. She said she would take her chances.

I pray people with those types of thoughts get the message quickly, they are putting themselves at greater risk along with all the people they come in contact with. Then it snowballs and continues to get bigger.

Please stay home, our game will be back at some time, but right now we have a much bigger battle to deal with. It certainly is a matter of live and possibly death.

Be well everyone.

15 1/2 minutes to watch weird thing in the NHL from the 2000s.

from Jonathan Willis of The Athletic,

It started off with the survey. For nearly a month, hockey writers across The Athletic shared the link and asked their readers to share their opinions on their local broadcast teams and the best and worst elsewhere. Thousands of you did, with all of you rating your local broadcast on a scale of very poor to very good, and many of you obligingly chiming in on teams from other markets.

Once the votes were in, the opinions of the fans and non-fans had to be balanced. Local fans are the intended audience of any regional broadcast and watch theirs far more regularly than out-of-towners. Out-of-market fans, on the other hand, tended to be far more objective and equally willing to call out good and bad....

23. Detroit Red Wings

The results: We’ve seen a few markets (Anaheim, Florida) where the locals like the product a lot more than national viewers do, but Detroit takes the cake. FSD’s Red Wings telecast ranks 16 spots higher on the local scale than the non-local scale. No other broadcast has a greater discrepancy between local love and out-of-market disdain.

That’s a good indication of a competent but biased broadcast and seems to be something of which even Red Wings fans who love it are aware.

“Ken Daniels’s play-by-play is excellent, and Mickey Redmond/Chris Osgood on colour is wonderful fan service,” said one Detroit fan who gave FSD the highest possible score.

“Ken Daniels is the best in the business,” said another local with a “very good” vote. “Mickey has learned to tame some of his homerism, but he does still struggle with it, and if they don’t turn it around soon, he might retire because I don’t know how much of this rebuild he can take.”

more ($$$) on the Wings plus all the other teams...

from Curtis Pashelka of the Mercury News,

Jonathan Becher, president of Sharks Sports & Entertainment, said the decision to play NHL games at SAP Center earlier this month after local health officials urged a moratorium on large public gatherings came after he called executives from other Bay Area sports teams and the league consulted with its own health experts.

“Most professional sports franchises, including us in the NHL, don’t have the ability to call off games by themselves,” Becher said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. “That typically comes from the league that they participate in.”

The Sharks played three games — all before thousands of fans — after the Santa Clara County Public Health Department on March 5 recommended all public gatherings of over 1,000 people be canceled or postponed due to growing concerns about the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

“The first question was, is this a mandate? Can you play? And we said, ‘Yes, we can, and if we play, we have to make these following recommendations,'” Becher said. “(The NHL) said, ‘OK we’d like to consult with our health authorities as well.’ (We) go back and forth and ultimately, we made the decision to play.”

continued