Mediocrity Is the Byword as Defenses Still Dominate

The NHL season reached the halfway point last weekend and it’s clear the league’s glass is half empty, rather than half full.

Teams are averaging 5.3 goals a game, the lowest since they averaged 5.1 for the 1955-56 season, and it’s not because Jacques Plante has been reincarnated in Damian Rhodes, Olaf Kolzig, Byron Dafoe, Ron Tugnutt and 15 other average goaltenders whose goals-against averages are under 2.50.

Defense reigns because the no-infringement rule around the crease tips the scales in goalies’ favor, talent has been thinned by expansion and it’s easier to teach defense than to find natural goal scorers.

If the decline were the result of skilled defensive play and great goaltending, that would be fine. Good defense is an art, and fans appreciate it. This downturn, however, stems from ineptitude and the continued mauling of skill players. Only two players are on pace to score 100 points and there already have been four scoreless games, one of them the first at Boston in more than 40 years. That won’t sell hockey to new fans or entertain old ones.

Because there’s little depth, there’s little consistency. Try ranking all 26 teams every week. The top few are constant--Colorado, Dallas, Detroit, Philadelphia, New Jersey and maybe St. Louis--but after that it’s a tossup.

Commissioner Gary Bettman would undoubtedly say if the glass is half full, that means there’s room for 50% improvement. And there are reasons for optimism, most notably NHL governors’ willingness to move nets out five feet next season. That will increase maneuvering room behind the net and shrink the neutral zone, which should make teams less likely to clog it and use the hated trap. But that won’t help until next season.

This is a crucial time for the NHL, which will showcase its best players in the Nagano Olympics and add four teams over the next three seasons. All the slick packaging and marketing in the world won’t disguise a mediocre product, which is what the NHL has been too willing to settle for.

TROPHY CASE

Some first-half performances that deserve recognition:

MVP: John LeClair, Philadelphia; Peter Forsberg, Colorado; Teemu Selanne, Mighty Ducks.

The first two may be the only 100-point scorers this season, and Selanne was the Duck offense during Paul Kariya’s holdout.

Norris: Nicklas Lidstrom, Detroit. He has been superb for a while but is being noticed only now because of Vladimir Konstantinov’s tragic absence.

Vezina: Martin Brodeur, New Jersey. He’s on his way to a goaltending triple crown, leading in wins, near the top in save percentage and goals-against average.

Rookie of the half-season: Patrik Elias, New Jersey. He has 13 goals, five of them game-winners.

Coach of the half-season: Kevin Constantine, Pittsburgh. Despite Mario Lemieux’s retirement, the Penguins are Stanley Cup contenders because Constantine sold them on the virtues of team defense. Honorable mentions: Boston’s Pat Burns, St. Louis’ Joel Quenneville.

Comeback of the half-season: Pat LaFontaine, New York Rangers. He’s averaging a point a game in an impressive recovery from post-concussion syndrome.

Duds: Chris Gratton, Philadelphia; Joe Thornton, Boston. The Flyers, Lightning and Chicago Blackhawks fought over Gratton--why? Thornton, the first overall draft pick, looks like a boy playing against men. Which he is.

Team duds: The Mighty Ducks and Edmonton Oilers. Instead of building on last season’s success, the Ducks have regressed. They must upgrade on defense to keep up. The Oilers seemed to be on the rise after upsetting Dallas in the playoffs last spring but they lack grit.

Pleasant surprises: The Kings, Boston and St. Louis. The King offense has faded and they’re averaging a league-high 31 shots against, but they have more heart and should get a playoff spot. Boston has stayed near .500 despite a feeble offense and iffy defense. The Blues are a bunch of castoffs playing like all-stars.

Deal of the half-season: Florida picked up center Ray Whitney on waivers from Edmonton, and he has scored 16 goals.

THEY ARE FAMILY

Since winning the Stanley Cup last June, the Red Wings have traded playoff MVP Mike Vernon, lost Konstantinov to a car accident and haven’t re-signed Sergei Fedorov, one of the NHL’s best two-way forwards. That they remain among the league’s elite says as much about their determination as their talent.

“We had a short summer to go through all these things and face the season like a Stanley Cup champion,” defenseman Viacheslav Fetisov said. “Guys have kept that in mind and everybody has responded pretty good. Especially [to] the loss of Vladimir Konstantinov. That’s a big loss. He’s irreplaceable. . . .

“I would say this team is not a sport team, more like a family.”

Fetisov, who will be 40 in April, is the NHL’s oldest player. But he ignores the calendar.

“You can be old at age 20 or young at age 50,” said Fetisov, who was voted to the World lineup for the All-Star Game Jan. 18. “I don’t see any difference in my game from four, five years ago. I feel much better now. I don’t want to just stay around. I want to be helpful to the team.”

TRADE WINDS

Edmonton General Manager Glen Sather has been busy. Less than a week after he acquired talented but lazy defenseman Roman Hamrlik from Tampa Bay for Bryan Marchment, Jason Bonsignore and Steve Kelly, Sather sent center Jason Arnott to New Jersey for Bill Guerin and Valeri Zelepukin.

The edge in the Hamrlik deal goes to the Oilers, because Bonsignore and Kelly were flops and Marchment was a marked man because of his dirty play. If they can persuade Hamrlik to show up regularly, they can win big.

They could win the Arnott deal too. Guerin and Zelepukin are big, talented wingers who bring maturity to a young team. Arnott has been disappointing since he scored 33 goals as a rookie in 1993-94, and he will have to fit into Coach Jacques Lemaire’s restrictive defensive style.

Guerin asked to be traded and, to his credit, didn’t whine about going from a contender to a team that may miss the playoffs.

“I think it’s something I really need, even if it’s the frozen tundra of Edmonton,” he said.

The Carolina Hurricanes’ misguided moves began with their migration from Hartford and continued when they dumped Jeff Brown on Toronto for a draft pick and sent left wing Geoff Sanderson, defenseman Enrico Ciccone and goalie Sean Burke to Vancouver for goalie Kirk McLean and winger Martin Gelinas.

Sanderson is a more dependable scorer than Gelinas, and McLean isn’t Burke’s equal. The Hurricanes feared they’d get nothing for Brown and Burke, who can be unrestricted free agents, and they wanted to dump salaries because they’re losing so much money in Carolina. They can’t win no matter what they do.

SLAP SHOTS

New York Ranger Coach Colin Campbell, trying to shake up his team after deals to acquire Sanderson and Arnott fell through, pulled goalie Mike Richter and replaced him with rookie Dan Cloutier 6 minutes 20 seconds into Saturday’s game at Washington. Campbell also benched captain Brian Leetch for most of the first period and might have sat him longer if Ulf Samuelsson hadn’t injured his knee. The Rangers won, 3-2, but Leetch was unhappy. . . . Trevor Linden is back in Mike Keenan’s doghouse in Vancouver and could be next out the door. Alexandre Daigle, the 1993 top draft pick, is in the same situation in Ottawa.

The Blackhawks are thrilled with Dmitri Nabokov, not only for his four goals in seven games but because he’s now willing to wade into traffic. He learned that during a lengthy stay in the International Hockey League. . . . Chad Kilger, whom the Ducks drafted fourth overall in 1995 and were reluctant to give up in the Teemu Selanne trade, refused to report when Phoenix assigned him to Springfield of the American Hockey League and may quit. Makes the Selanne deal an even bigger steal.

Surprise! Al Iafrate’s return to the San Jose Sharks was short-lived. Limited to 46 games over four seasons because of knee and back injuries, he underwent knee surgery that will sideline him until after the Olympics. . . . Poor Vaclav Prospal. The Flyer center missed the Stanley Cup finals because of a broken arm and will miss the Olympics because of a broken leg.