Jacobs: For sale sign not up on Bruins
Bolting from Tampa
Not that there was much doubt, but Jay Feaster made it official Friday and settled up at the pay window, ending his five-year tour as Lightning general manager. Days before, according to one player agent, Feaster already had shifted his focus and energies back to Pennsylvania (the 45-year-old was born in Harrisburg and is a Georgetown grad).
Once Oren Koules and Len Barrie took over ownership, said Feaster, "it became apparent to me that [they] didn't need my advice or expertise."
Koules and Barrie are aggressive - Koules even getting personally involved in pitching agents for players - and the crux of hockey operations is now run by ex-Bruin Brian Lawton and former Canadiens defenseman Tom Kurvers, who had a long run in Phoenix as the Coyotes' director of player personnel.
Feaster won a Cup in Tampa, but soon got boxed into a payroll jam with a drastic overpayment for Brad Richards, who was finally shipped to Dallas at last February's trade deadline.
International relations
Ray Emery's adolescent antics in Ottawa cost him $4.5 million - the dough he forfeited upon being bought out by the Senators last month. But the one-year deal at $2 million he signed in Russia last week with Atlant Mytischy will nearly get him even, considering the tax bite he won't have to suffer while undergoing career rehab in the Continental Hockey League.
Meanwhile, Ufa of the CHL tried to take a bite out of the Predators' backside Friday by signing Nashville forward, and Mother Russia homeboy, Alexander Radulov. The promising forward (26 goals/58 points last season) has one year remaining on his entry-level deal with the Predators. Now the fun begins.
Nashville GM David Poile immediately stated that the Predators want Radulov back, and intends to enforce the final year of his deal (worth $984,000 in the upcoming season). In the hours Radulov was tidying up his Ufa contract, Bill Daly (commissioner Gary Bettman's righthand man) and players' union boss Paul Kelly framed a detente with the CHL that is intended to keep each side from raiding respective rosters.
Even if Radulov inked that deal prior to the agreement, which had all parties at a table in Switzerland, it will be, at the very least, uncomfortable for the CHL to play for Ufa.
LA light
Still no word on who will land behind the Kings' bench for 2008-09, but it's clear the new guy (Marc Crawford's replacement) will be a candidate to moonlight at Jordan's Furniture, where "underpricing" is not just a way of life, it's the fabric of the business.
Los Angeles went into the weekend some $30 million below the $56.7 million cap. The Kings were emphatic about the need for a cap system, prior to and during the lockout, and they've also lamented their continuing, deep financial losses since the implementation of fixed labor costs.
In other words, if a minority partner comes aboard, be it Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck or whomever, there is much work to be done. Wayne Gretzky has been gone now for more than a dozen years (about the same time Clark Gable left Hollywood, too?), and the NHL in LA has that Jack Kent Cooke how-come-it-doesn't-work-here? kind of feel again these days.
Dem's fightin' words
Bettman took Brian Burke and Kevin Lowe to the woodshed last week, imploring each to stop swapping verbal potshots.
Burke, the Ducks' GM, opened volley a year ago after Lowe, his Edmonton counterpart, offered lucrative (read: insane) Group 2 offer sheets, first to Buffalo's Thomas Vanek (matched by the Sabres) and then to Anaheim's Dustin Penner (not matched by the Ducks).
Prudent of Bettman to tell them to knock it off, but in a league thirsting for attention and media play, it doesn't get any better than two ornery cusses spitting invectives and tobacco juice into a venomous spew that really has a way of sticking to the sideboards.
Burke's best of the bon mots last year was espousing that Lowe had run the Oilers "into the sewer."
Lowe, who bit his tongue until Burke started up again a couple of weeks ago, launched back that Burke is a "moron" and that the Harvard-trained attorney operates a club "in a pathetic hockey market."
It was that last utterance - sliming one of the Original 30's fan base - that caused Bettman to call a halt to the lovable caveman antics. In other words, hate me, hate my team, but don't hate my fans. Consider it crimes against the cash drawer.
Burke now wants the Commish to consider tampering charges against Lowe, and also to conduct a thorough review of how Scott Niedermayer was wooed to Anaheim as a free agent. To the latter point, Lowe implied during a radio interview that the Ducks used underhanded methods in getting Niedermayer to leave New Jersey for Southern Cal. Imagine, convincing anyone to give up the posh New Jersey Turnpike for the SoCal lifestyle.
Driving to the net
Dave Barr, who broke into the NHL as a Bruins winger in 1981-82, recently hitched on as an assistant coach with Tony Granato's Colorado Avalanche. Barr, now 47, spent the last five seasons as coach in the Ontario Hockey League as the bench boss in Guelph . . . Barry Melrose's three assistant coaches in Tampa all have Boston ties. Wes Walz broke into the league as a Bruin, long before he became a dogged checking forward with the Wild. Rick Tocchet had a short stay in the Vault, amid the crumbling mid-'90s. And Cap Raeder was an assistant during Steve Kasper's brief tour behind the bench . . . Russia's CHL will play only a 56-game regular season, and just like the NHL, 16 teams will qualify to play for the Stanislava Cup. Most clubs hold 10-14-day training camps over the last two weeks of July, and regular-season play commences in early September . . . According to embedded sources just outside Moscow, no truth to the rumor that Dmitri Kvartalnov has been talking to Adam Oates and L'il Joe Juneau about the Bonanza Line saddling up again as a trio for Lokomotiv.
