Kovacevic: I want my hockey back, please

A dozen years and not nearly enough NHL goals ago, I made a rookie mistake as a reporter covering the Penguins. Mario Lemieux had just scored a superb overtime goal, drilling a four-on-three slap shot behind the Oilers' Tommy Salo. The shot was planted perfectly inside the far post. By an athlete unlike any we've ever witnessed in Pittsburgh.

And yet, this dummy went to the Civic Arena's home locker room and asked the author of that goal this: "Did you see something on the far side there, Mario?"

Those who know Lemieux will attest that, for all his warmth and charity, he'll flash an acidic side upon sensing something he doesn't like. And he most assuredly didn't like this question because what came back was laced with sarcasm: "No, I saw short side and went far side."

Ow. I wanted to die.



As the session ended, I asked the Post-Gazette's Dave Molinari, my one-time mentor who's now in the Hall of Fame and remains on the beat after three decades, what that was all about.

"I think," Molinari explained, "that he got tired a long time ago of people asking him if he meant to do what he just did."

'IT'S OK ... IT'LL COME AROUND'

Embarrassing as that was -- and Lemieux will still occasionally rib me about it -- I genuinely miss asking those kinds of questions in NHL locker rooms.

Did that breakout go the way you scripted or was it improv?

How did your linemate know to be in that spot for that pass?

Does the goalie you just beat backhand top-shelf have a weakness up there?

I don't do that anymore. I certainly didn't do it after the Penguins' latest flat-liner, a 2-1 loss Friday night to the Blue Jackets at a nearly comatose Consol Energy Center. And I'm sure I wouldn't have done it if the home team had prevailed or even scored -- gasp -- three or four goals. Because even those have been boring.

This isn't about this game. This isn't about the Penguins. I've expressed similar sentiments for years now, including when the Penguins were No. 1 in scoring. This isn't about making excuses for individuals underperforming on this night or any other. And believe it or not, for all I've criticized Mike Johnston of late, it isn't about the head coach.

It's about hockey.

Or whatever Gary Bettman has left on the bone:



I can't stand to watch the Penguins anymore. But I also can't stand to watch other NHL games, whether in person or plopped on the couch. And it absolutely kills me to type that onto my screen while looking down from this press box at the ice that just witnessed three total goals, 57 shots, 21 shot attempts that missed the net and 30 others that were blocked.

That's more than $120 million of talent between these two teams, both of which are loaded up front, having almost half as many of their shot attempts fail as those that reach the target.

And even the goals that were scored were the standard banks off people's behinds or feet or random sticks on the way. They're mishaps where they once were magic.

This Scott Hartnell everything-else-had-to-happen-first goal past a prone Marc-Andre Fleury was as good as it got Friday ...



Dude was at the beach, and he hit the ocean. Huzzah.

People talk about chances as if shot totals reflect that. They don't. The shots are more Tyler Kennedy than Tyler Seguin. They're taken from Pluto, and they're rarely even intended to score. In this game, there were barely any odd-man breaks, aside from a bizarre two-on-none by Columbus that Fleury read brilliantly, and there were no other breakaways or slick one-on-one moves or one-touch passing or blazing shots while speeding down the wing ... no creativity of any kind.

Can't have that, of course. Coaches, who always are first and foremost about self-preservation in the fickle world of NHL employment, aren't interested. That wouldn't be good "puck management," a term that should sicken hockey fans today as much as the previous generation spurned the "neutral-zone trap," the monster born in a New Jersey swamp in 1995 that continues to haunt the sport to this day.

Sidney Crosby, a truly generational player cursed to have come into the NHL during Bettman's tenure, played 23 minutes and one second on this night and registered one shot.

A single shot!

From someone capable of knocking down a Coke can from center ice!

I'll repeat for emphasis: I'm not offering up excuses here, though it's inevitable some will interpret it that way. Crosby didn't have a good night. He hasn't had a good season. Evgeni Malkin had two shots, three giveaways and was awful on the power play. Kris Letang must have had a million passes blocked. Johnston inexplicably played Daniel Sprong for five minutes despite most of his shifts being dynamic. All are culpable. This isn't about all that.

Rather, it's about how utterly ridiculous it's become that this is the new normal not just in Pittsburgh but around the league:

• A league that once oversaw the very best version of the world's fastest team sport now sees its teams averaging a pathetic 2.67 goals per game, almost touching the historic low of 2.63 from 1998-99. And the trend that precedes it is a steady down arrow since Bettman instructed his referees to enforce existing rules following the 2005 lockout, an edict that evidently carried as much weight as Johnny Gaudreau.

• Games are over early. This season, teams that score the first goal are 173-55-17. Teams leading after the first period are 124-26-9 . And after two periods, just forget about it because teams are 140-11-12. The only suspense is remembering where you parked your car when you bolt early.

• Only six teams are averaging better than three goals per game, led by the Canadiens and Stars way above the pack, both at 3.65. Neither will come close to sustaining that, surely not Montreal. The Lightning, maybe the league's most exciting team last season and a Stanley Cup finalist, has plunged to 24th in scoring. The Penguins are 25th. The Ducks, with Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and a lot more, are dead last with a 1.69 average.

• A league that once had 21 players top 100 points in a season -- 1992-93, when Lemieux put up 160 in 60 games and beat cancer -- just crowned the Stars' Jamie Benn the scoring champ with 87. Currently, as the schedule approaches the quarter pole, four players -- the Blackhawks' Patrick Kane, Seguin, Benn and the Jets' Blake Wheeler -- have topped 20.

• A league that once boasted of transformational stars setting records that ushered in an unprecedented wave of cross-continental and even global expansion, whether Wayne Gretzky's 215 points or Lemieux's 13 short-handed goals in one season or Teemu Selanne's 76 goals as a Winnipeg rookie, it's all now mired in mediocrity.

It's a who's who of who-was-that on the nightly highlights. Hockey fans are diehards, so they know all the names unconditionally. Not so on the outside.

Stop and think about that for a second beyond the hockey perspective.

Imagine an NFL in which scoring wasn't encouraged by protecting quarterbacks and wide receivers to encourage passing.

Would we still be looking back at Joe Montana or Dan Fouts or Dan Marino and bemoaning how their various achievements could never be touched?

Imagine Major League Baseball, however you feel about how it handled the steroids era, never having encouraged hitters to keep an equilibrium with pitchers?

The home runs might be tainted and untouchable forever, but there are still plenty enough records and milestones within reasonable reach.

Toss in the NBA, for that matter: I'm not a watcher, as I prefer my basketball without palming, traveling and the like, but I can appreciate from afar that people aren't forced to pine for Michael Jordan when they're blessed with LeBron James and many, many others between those two.

The NHL has nothing of the kind. Except goaltenders, of course. They get better and better every winter, as do their numbers, and not even the highest-profile among them strikes a solitary nerve with the broader public.

Unless, of course, I missed some new nine-story Nike billboard in Times Square featuring Carey Price. I saw one there last spring for an NBA player ... I don't even remember the guy's name, but he sure wasn't the league MVP.

So yeah, I'm running out of questions about offense, as this brief postgame exchange with Letang will underscore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfnMFJ5KP6Y

"It's OK," the man said. "It'll come around."

I don't think it will. Not here. Not anywhere.

'I'M NOT REALLY SURE'

Bettman is a terrible commissioner. And if he hadn't moved mountains to get the NHL a salary cap -- an achievement that, along with his general support of the league's place in Pittsburgh, immeasurably helped the local franchise -- he'd be that much worse.

And, at the risk of sounding overly cynical, I dare add that, had he been proactive about protecting the sport's signature commodity -- goals -- he might not have needed to go to the extreme of losing an entire season to labor issues, and all that could be rendered moot. When Roger Goodell needed a boost, he made Tom Brady rules. When Bud Selig needed a boost, he turned a blind eye to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Again, say what you will about both gentlemen's body of work, but they understood that scoring sells.

Oh, if only the NHL were so lucky.

Remember Bettman's hilarious statement this past January at the All-Star Game in Columbus that the league's product was just swell because 71 percent of all action was taking place with teams separated by no more than a goal.

“The quality of play is terrific," he said. "It’s probably never been better.”

I wrote a column from Nationwide Arena about that.

In that same column, I offered three proposals for increasing scoring, while stressing that not one was remotely original. In no order, they were to expand power plays to two full minutes even if a team scores, to make the nets bigger by angling the inside of the posts so that more post shots would score, and kill the blocked shot. If you click that link up there, I lay out reasoning for all three.

But I've got to tell you, those last two were panned. The column got a good bit of circulation, and most of the response was about how changing the nets or preventing players from going down to the ice would change the game forever.

News flash: It's changed. And not for the better.

At least some seem to have recognized this, as the bigger/angled nets are now actually on the NHL general managers' docket -- they're entrusted with rule changes, though Bettman does the pushing and the approving -- and there's actual momentum, though still too small, toward making it real as soon as March.

Heck, people are actually talking about it, which is encouraging all by itself: Mike Babcock, the Maple Leafs' coach, openly called for bigger nets in the past week. Patrick Roy, legendary goaltender and now the Avalanche's coach, did likewise. Players have discussed bigger nets and smaller goaltending equipment. Tuukka Rask, the Bruins' goaltender, suggested not letting goaltenders leave the blue paint to allow shooters more angle.

Alas, the dinosaur faction -- or is the Brian Burke faction a more fitting term? -- is dominating the discussion that matters most.

Let's roll the tape ...

Colin Campbell, NHL senior executive vice president of needlessly long titles or something: "I don't think the game needs more goals, I think the game needs more opportunity for lead changes. If you go down one or two goals, even three, you need the opportunity to come back. The game shouldn't be over."

Oh, my. He gets paid.

David Poile, the Predators' general manager, called bigger nets "the subject that no one wants to go to right now, the last resort."

Really? Why? Hasn't the game been defaced already?

Burke, the Flames' president, predictably came up with the winner: “You’re rewriting the record books if you change the size of the nets."

No, sir. You're restoring dignity to the concept of NHL records by adjusting with players and goaltending equipment being bigger than ever.

Out of everyone of importance in the league, Babcock came up with the best line: “By refusing to change, you are changing. Purists would say you can’t do it because you’re changing the game. But by not changing, you are changing the game.”

Exactly.

And listen to John Davidson, the Blue Jackets' president, a former goaltender and another bright light: “It’s slowly growing on me that the only way to fix this is to get bigger nets.”

Spoken like a man tasked with selling the sport in Ohio.

Unfortunately, Babcock and J.D. won't make that call. The GMs will shrink from duty, conjure up unenforceable regulations for goaltending equipment, crow when scoring goes up a tick, then watch in silence as all 60 keepers resurrect their inner Michelin Man.

In the interim, at least for as long as Bettman sees denial as the path to preserving his legacy as commissioner, this once-great sport will suffer.

I sat with Crosby after this game, as I often do once the bigger media sessions end. Hope to take his temperature a bit, see how he's feeling. I hadn't really planned any question of any kind, or even a topic, but right there it struck me to ask about a specific play someone had made or some other creative sequence.

Couldn't think of a blessed thing.

So I finally concocted as I got up, "Have fun in Jersey."