Parity Stirs Up Talent, Marketing for League

New Jersey, gone.

Dallas, gone.

Detroit, gone.

Colorado, gone.

The four teams that won the last nine Stanley Cup championships were eliminated before the conference finals began. None of last season’s individual award winners got this far, either. Jacques Lemaire, voted coach of the year with the Minnesota Wild, and Jean-Sebastien Giguere, the playoff MVP with the Mighty Ducks, missed the playoffs entirely.

“I think we’ve come to a kind of generational change,” San Jose Coach Ron Wilson said.

The NHL has reached parity, and it’s a mixed blessing. A Calgary-Tampa Bay final -- or San Jose-Philadelphia final, or any other pairing -- won’t boost the league’s microscopic TV ratings, but it’s a welcome change because it presents new personalities for the league to market and build upon as Steve Yzerman, Peter Forsberg, Brett Hull and other recognizable stars near the ends of their careers.

Although Martin Brodeur and Ed Belfour exited early, Evgeni Nabokov, Miikka Kiprusoff, Robert Esche and Nikolai Khabibulin excelled. While Forsberg limped along and Yzerman was slowed by a gimpy knee, Calgary’s Jarome Iginla was sharing the goal-scoring title and Martin St. Louis was leading the league in scoring as he sparked Tampa Bay to its first conference final.

“The league, scoring-wise, has been dominated by the same 10 to 15 guys for quite some time, in particular since Wayne Gretzky retired,” Wilson said. “Some of our younger players are obviously being noticed more.”

He also said he was not surprised to see new teams rising after having watched Detroit, Colorado, Dallas and St. Louis pound one another the past decade in the West, and Toronto, Ottawa and New Jersey beat each other up in the East.

“It’s only logical to me that maybe the fighters with the least number of rounds under their belt move on,” he said. “Everybody talks about how important it is to get experienced playoff performers in your lineup. Well, right now, out of the top 10 teams in playoff experience, only one’s left standing, and that’s Philadelphia.”

Which explains why the Flyers started the season with the league’s fourth-highest payroll, according to the Hockey News, and Calgary, San Jose and Tampa Bay were 19th, 20th and 21st, respectively.

To his credit, however, Wilson didn’t buy the party line that low-spending teams can compete every year with the big boys. Minnesota was hailed as a marvel of frugality last season but its success led to big salary demands by key players and contract disputes that undermined its season.

“The fact is, we’re low-paid because we’re young,” he said. “If you play in this league 10, 11 years you’re going to be a pretty well paid guy as you follow along.”

Of course, the development of these new stories and emerging talents could be halted by a lockout in September, just as the NHL’s momentum was halted in 1994 after the New York Rangers’ Stanley Cup triumph drew new fans and energized old ones. The loss could be infinitely worse this time.

Bay Watch

When a coach and a superstar player clash, the player usually prevails because it’s easier to find another coach than to find a natural scorer.

But when Tampa Bay Coach John Tortorella and forward Vincent Lecavalier butted heads over Lecavalier’s defensive shortcomings, Tortorella won.

Lecavalier won too, though, because he became a better player, General Manager Jay Feaster said last week.

“When I came on board as GM, I met with Vinny and I told Vinny, ‘My legacy won’t be that I will forever be the GM that traded Vince Lecavalier,’ ” Feaster said. “And yet, at the same time, I told him that I very strongly believe in John Tortorella coaching this hockey team and I went to meet John and said the same thing to John, ‘My legacy is not going to be that I traded Vinny, but you’re the right guy to coach this team.’

“I think that our players, to a man, have now started to understand John’s approach, and they understand what he’s all about; and that when he is coaching them, as he likes to say, it is not personal, it’s not meant to belittle or criticize, it’s meant to get the most out of them.”

Rocky Mountain Low

Although Tony Granato’s two seasons as coach of the Avalanche ended in first- and second-round playoff exits, he apparently has the support of General Manager Pierre Lacroix.

Firing Granato “never crossed our mind,” Lacroix said. “We’re very pleased about what he delivered to this organization.”

Lacroix blamed the team’s exit on injuries to Rob Blake (cracked rib and torn cartilage), Alex Tanguay (knee) and Paul Kariya (ankle).

He’s right, but only to an extent. Colorado’s top six forwards were rarely injury-free at the same time. Still, that doesn’t excuse the team’s defensive lapses and lack of grit. With David Aebischer playing capably in goal, the Avalanche should have fared better.

Kariya might be asked back, but he’ll never again get the $10 million he earned with the Mighty Ducks in 2002-03. Teemu Selanne won’t return, after a horrible season in which he was a healthy scratch several times. Granato rarely played them together, for reasons he never explained. If he separated them to prove he was the boss, he didn’t prove much.

As for the Avalanche’s future, Lacroix was optimistic.

“This is not the end of an era,” he told the Denver Post. “It is the same era going forward. It’s the same goal, the same philosophy.”

If he thinks that, he’ll find the same unhappy outcome.

Slap Shots

The Dallas Stars, anticipating an economic squeeze during a lockout, fired 12 employees last week. All worked behind the scenes, in areas such as game presentation and the team’s website, but club executives and coaches will take pay cuts if games are lost while a collective bargaining agreement is being forged, club President Jim Lites said last week.

Many other teams have devised similar cost-cutting plans that include pay cuts or reduced hours. The NHL Players’ Assn. and agents have advised players the last few years to put money away in case of a long lockout, so both sides are digging in.

General Manager John Ferguson Jr. said after the Toronto Maple Leafs’ second-round exit that it was “a team capable of getting it done,” but added he’d keep Coach Pat Quinn even though Quinn didn’t get “it” done.

“Age didn’t beat us,” Ferguson said, referring to late-season deals that added Ron Francis, Brian Leetch and Calle Johansson.

Then why did they lose, after taking on a $63-million payroll? Stupid penalties, shoddy defensive play and Quinn’s reluctance to use young players. They won’t get better goaltending than they got from Belfour. They need depth up front and mobility on defense. And younger legs.

Ferguson proved he can’t buy a championship and must now show he can build one. He said he expected to have “a budget that is really generous” next season, while competitors are paring pennies.

Just ask Ranger General Manager Glen Sather, he of the $80-million payroll and no playoff berth: It’s not how much you spend but how well you spend that matters.