Hockey notes

Hot seat talk here is cold

By Kevin Paul Dupont

Globe Staff / December 21, 2008

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One thing about winning, as we've seen in Boston for nearly the first three months of the 2008-09 season, it sure puts a damper on trade chat, roster moves, and speculation over how soon the coach will be cashiered.

Claude Julien yesterday afternoon watched over his 121st game behind the Bruins' bench. That's far from a team record (see: Art Ross, 793 games), but it is all but a certainty that by the time the Bruins play their last game this season, Julien will have coached more games for the spoked-B than five of the club's six most recent head coaches (Steve Kasper, Mike Keenan, Robbie Ftorek, Mike Sullivan, and Dave Lewis).

So many coaches, so little longevity. Nothing speaks better to the lack of a franchise's success and overall stability than the churn-and-burn rate behind the bench. Pat Burns ended up with 272 games behind the Boston bench, and he stands seventh on Boston's longevity list for regular-season games (254).

There have been three coaching changes in the NHL this season. Denis Savard was dumped by Chicago faster than you can say spin-o-rama. In Tampa, Barry Melrose faded to black in little over a month. The third and most recent firing was by the Hurricanes, yesterday's visitors to the Vault, who were 12-11-2 when they told the Bay State's Peter Laviolette to pack his bags. Paul Maurice helped his team to a 3-1-3 mark prior to arriving in Boston. If they miss the playoffs this year, it will be their third straight DNQ since winning the Cup under Laviolette's guidance in 2006.

The quick change worked wonders in Chicago. The Blackhawks went 1-2-1 out of the gate, ditched Savard, hired Joel Quenneville, and went into this weekend's play with a 16-6-7 mark.

The Lightning, meanwhile, have remained flatlined under the combined tutelage of Rick Tocchet and assistant Sullivan. Melrose was shown the door with the club 5-7-4. As of Friday morning, the Lightning had gone 2-8-5 in their next 15 and were dead last in the NHL, along with the Islanders (23 points apiece).

Who's next to go? The crosshairs at the moment are trained on Craig MacTavish in Edmonton and Craig Hartsburg in Ottawa, with Hartsburg's Senators perhaps the greatest disappointment in the league.

MacTavish is in his eighth season behind the Oil bench. That's gold watch territory. He is in charge of an inexperienced club in transition, and one that appears destined to miss the postseason for a third straight time after going to the Cup finals in 2006.

If he were not a favorite of owner Daryl Katz, the 50-year-old MacTavish likely already would have been given the heave-ho. But he remains on the beat, his club hovering around .500 despite a humiliating 9-2 hammering by the Blackhawks Tuesday in Edmonton. The Oilers open January with five straight games at Rexall Place, where they have gone a lackluster 4-5-2. How the Oilers fare in those five games could determine whether MacTavish's ticket gets punched.

Hartsburg, somewhat like Melrose in Tampa, was a curious pick in Ottawa. He had not handled an NHL bench since 2000-01, when he was fired in Anaheim, and his run with the Ducks was remarkably unremarkable - two games under .500 in 2 1/2 seasons and an 0-4 record in his one playoff season. Despite some excellent success as a coach in the Ontario Hockey League (Sault Ste. Marie), some eight years out of the NHL head coaching loop appear to have left him short on being able to figure the trigger points on some of the NHL's better offensive performers.

Dany Heatley is again clicking at about a point per game, which amounts to about a 20 percent discount from his expected production level. The metronomic Daniel Alfredsson is right around his average (again, about a point per game), which makes him the least disappointing of the Senators' top three forwards. Jumbo Jason Spezza, with 22 points in 29 games, is projecting around 60-65 points, a significant setback from the 90 he averaged the last three seasons. The 25-year-old stud, now in his sixth season, has this season and four more at $8 million per.

If Hartsburg can't find the solution in a hurry, then what is general manager Bryan Murray to do? Murray stepped down from coaching duties after taking the Senators to the Cup finals in '07 (loss to Anaheim), then returned to the bench last season as GM/coach after the club fell flat under John Paddock's watch (and Ray Emery's antics). Canning Hartsburg would be hard to believe - even when looking through a Boston prism - but with the No. 8 seed in the East slipping from sight, Murray could be left with few options.

Canadian teams bring home bacon
No doubt the general, and in some sectors acute, lowering of the economic tide will catch up with the NHL, especially in some of the already challenged markets among the 24 United States-based clubs of the Original 30.

The down-and-out Islanders, for instance, reported a crowd of 11,655 Tuesday with Alexander Ovechkin at Nassau Coliseum, and the true figure (people in seats) appeared to be more in the range of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (i.e., challenged to reach 9,000).

Meanwhile, business continues to run away like a rabid moose north of the border, where anything less than a full house in the six NHL arenas is considered a crime against culture and state in the country that considers itself the original hub of hockey.

Last night, the Vancouver Canucks, fresh off their free agent acquisition of Mats Sundin, stretched their consecutive sellout mark to 229 with the Blackhawks in town. Pencil in No. 230 for tomorrow night when the Ducks visit, and from there, well, keep that pencil handy. The Canucks, by the way, have failed to reach the playoffs in two of the three seasons since the end of the lockout, yet they've sold out the Garage for every game dating back more than six years.

Headed into last night's action, five of Canada's six NHL clubs were riding streaks of consecutive sellouts. Below, a look at the lengths of those runs. Figures include playoff games:

City Streak Start Arena capacity

Vancouver 228 Nov. 14, 2002 18,630

Toronto 212 Nov. 2, 2002 18,819

Calgary 159 March 22, 2004 19,289

Montreal 158 Jan. 8, 2004 21,273

Edmonton 127 Nov. 29, 2005 16,839

Ottawa, while not boasting a sellout streak, had sold out nine of 16 home games this season. However, because of an abundance of standing-room tickets sold to some games, the Senators' average attendance stood at 19,170, slightly above Scotiabank Place seating capacity of 19,153.

Etc.

Staying out of it

For those of us who care about such things, it sure seems linesmen are being more lenient this season when it comes to giving fighters time to work out, shall we say, their differences. Maybe someone at NHL headquarters has figured out that most of the seat-holders kind of enjoy the punch throwers? Longtime linesman Kevin Collins, now part of the league's supervisory and recruitment staff, said he was unaware of any loosening of the guidelines as to when linesmen break up the combatants. All in all, said Collins, it's vastly different than days of old when multiple fights would break out. "Heck, some nights you'd have three fights going at the same time," recalled Collins. "The hardest thing to do was figure out which one to try to stop."

Time's a wastin'

The Bruins' front office doesn't seek this space for advice, but if I were general manager of the hottest hockey team on Causeway in 15 years, I'd try to tie down Tim Thomas and Manny Fernandez today for three-year extensions worth an average $3 million a year. I could be wrong, but I think each of the 34-year-olds might bite (key stat: age 34). That wouldn't be music to the ears of wunderkind Tuukka Rask, eager to launch his NHL career, but Thomas and Fernandez are proven NHL commodities. Right now, Rask is labeled a franchise goalie, but some great goalie prospects also never really find their way (Jocelyn Thibault, Stephane Fiset, and Rick DiPietro, just to name three).

Two to watch

A couple of New England kids who could be first-round picks in the June draft: Mac Bennett, a defenseman from Warwick, R.I., and Hotchkiss; and Chris Kreider, a forward from Boxford and Phillips Academy in Andover (headed to Boston College in the fall of 2010).

All aboard

Brian Burke, here Thursday night with his new club, the Leafs, noted how Phil Kessel impressed his USA teammates during last spring's world championships training camp in Portland, Maine. It wasn't Kessel's work on the ice, but on the ocean, that impressed everyone, according to Burke. "The big team outing was getting on a boat for deep-sea fishing," recalled Burke. "Jeff Halpern was the captain, and Phil had told him, 'Look, I get seasick in a bath tub.' So the day came, and Jeff says to him, 'Well, you going?' And Phil's response was, 'You bet I'm going.' He was seasick the whole time, and what's more miserable than that? But he went. That's the kind of stuff that shows you a guy gets it."

Loose pucks

Todd Bertuzzi and his assault victim, ex-Harvard forward Steve Moore, sat at the same table Monday and participated in court-ordered mediation, aimed at settling Moore's $35 million suit against the ex-Canucks power forward and other deep-pocketed defendants. Will they settle? Probably not. At least not until Moore's counsel is able to turn up the heat and bump up a settlement figure to, say, the $15 million-$18 million range . . . Quite a deke by Mats Sundin. Some five days prior to choosing the Canucks over the Rangers, he knocked around with Swedish pals in New York, prompting Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist to say, "I really hope and believe he is going to choose New York." But the Rangers didn't have the salary space, and would have been faced with dumping hard dollars in the minors to accommodate Sundin's $5 million-$6 million payout for the rest of this season . . . Trevor Linden's No. 16 joined Stan Smyl's No. 12 as Vancouver's only retired numbers. Just how much longer can Harold Snepsts (No. 27) be snubbed?

Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at dupont@globe.com; material from personal interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report.