STANLEY CUP
Why Is Marek Zidlicky a Success With the Devils?
By Jonathan Willis at
The New Jersey Devils are one of the unforeseen success stories in the East this postseason, and no player is more surprising than Marek Zidlicky.
The New Jersey Devils are one of the unforeseen success stories in the East this postseason, and no player is more surprising than Marek Zidlicky.
Two weeks ago, the Minnesota Wild came thisclose to having a 51-year old embroidery store owner named Paul Deutsch suit up as an emergency backup goalie. The Wild's top guy, Niklas Backstrom, was scratched late on game day, Josh Harding would be starting in net -- and it wasn't clear whether the team's preferred backup guy, 21-year-old Matt Hackett of the AHL's Houston Aeros, would be able to make it to the game in time.
Less than a week before the beginning of the season, an article about the Phoenix Coyotes in the Arizona Republic had this to say about the team's personnel in net: "Mike Smith, who calls parts of his game 'a work in progress,' will be in goal when the Coyotes open the regular season Saturday night at San Jose."
It wasn't exactly a rousing outlook for the Coyotes, who lost their starting goaltender, Vezina Trophy candidate Ilya Bryzgalov, in the summer to the far richer Philadelphia Flyers. The Coyotes, who are currently owned by the league and may not be long for Phoenix unless a new buyer can be located, instead inked former Tampa Bay and Dallas backup Mike Smith to a far thriftier two-year, $4-million contract than the nine-year, $51-million deal Bryzgalov ultimately wrung out of Philly.
All the NHL's attention lately has been focused on its players' heads. The league voted this summer to broaden the scope of several rules addressing the kind of contact that can cause concussions — those hits that land up high or from behind — and it has even gone so far as to actually enforce them. New VP of player safety Brendan Shanahan has doled out 60 pre- and regular-season games' worth of suspensions, most of them for head shots, in this year's preseason alone.
It's safe to say that no small factor in this crackdown was Sidney Crosby, the league's most talented and marketable player, who has been sidelined since January with a concussion. (This weekend he announced that while he continues to progress, he will not be suiting up for Pittsburgh's season opener Thursday night.)
And yet over the weekend, a loud and impassioned debate was revived within and around the NHL community about a rule that many deem to be the most dangerous in all of hockey. As usual, it took a sickening injury to get everyone talking, but this time it wasn't a superstar's rattled head that did it — it was a relative unknown's shattered leg.
Outside the Centre Ice Arena in Traverse City, Mich., a man talked on his cell phone and described the scene inside the rink.
"You should see them," he said. "They all walk in together and they all wear the same thing. They've got on these jackets with the team logos, and slacks. They're all glued to their BlackBerries and phones. These guys, they can't stay in one place for even 10 minutes. They're always looking around."
It was, I thought as I eavesdropped, an apt description of the eight teams' worth of hockey hopefuls gathered in the beautiful lakeside town in northwestern Michigan for the 2011 NHL Prospects Tournament, a five-day exhibition of players who could someday be the league's future stars.
But the man wasn't talking about, as everyone refers to them, the kids.
"These scouts, they're like, all former players," he continued. "None of them can sit still."
