The house cleaning has commenced with the news that the Jackets have not retained strength and conditioning coach Barry Brennan. Instead Howson has tagged Kevin Collins who comes over from Portland of the AHL for the job.
Couple of comments (hey, that's what we do here right!).
Maybe there is some weight to what former interim HC Claude Noel said about the Jackets conditioning? If you recall he said if he had to pick a number between 0-10 in terms of the Jackets conditioning level he'd pick a 3.
Ouch.
Check out this comment from Brennan though:
"Of course you have to take some of the blame," Brennan said. "You can't point fingers when it's your job. I wanted the guys to be ready. We did things differently for a bunch of different reasons, and some of them worked and some of them didn't."
If you recall two seasons ago many of the young guys stayed in town for conditioning. That typically comes with a cost associated to it right? Last season it was said that instead of players staying in town they would be given programs and expected to do them on their own and Barry would make spot visits.
Color me skeptical but when he refers to "do things differently" I can't help but think corners were cut to save $$ last offseason and now Brennan is taking the fall.
That said there have been rumblings for years that the Jackets were not where they needed to be conditioning wise. Certainly some of that, regardless of my cost cutting conspiracy theory (which goes a lot farther than this), has to fall on Brennan's shoulders.
Don't kid yourselves though - it's not all on Brennan.
Regardless I respect Barry taking it like a man and welcome a change in this area to see if things can get on the right track.
Don't expect to changes to stop there though. My guess is that all the assistant coaches will be replaced and probably some scouts have or will be replaced behind the scenes among others.
The hockey operations seems to get that the status quo is not good enough - now what about game operations?
If Brennan and his training program have gone stale after 9 years then somebody please explain to me how Kimberly Kershaw is still employed? I've tasted 15 year old pretzels that were less stale than the game ops experience at Nationwide.
...and I still haven't forgotten about that Blackhawks goal song embarrassment.
Does this year's draft remind anyone else of the 2004 draft? You know the one where it was a consensus top two in Ovechkin and Malkin and then everything else dropped off? In fact, Cam Barker went 3rd in that draft.
Now we've got Hall and Seguin and then everyone else. To make things even more interesting is that a lot of folks compare Cam Fowler to Cam Barker.
Let's hope we end up with a better pick than Alex Picard. My $$ is still on trading down.
Still trying to figure out how the NHL could draw its best Stanley Cup Playoff ratings in their history without ESPN involved? Folks actually figured out a way to find Versus?
Ahh.. there is that myth again.
You won't hear a peep about the NHL's successful season from the mothership however. Their mouthpieces only pipe up when they can kick this dog when it's down.
Lot's a chatter about trading for a center - that's great but I still think priority #1 has to be upgrading our defense with a puck mover or two.
It's almost pointless to look at the UFA market if you're a CBJ fan as this ownership is not going to spend much more $$. It will have to come through a trade as has been said time and time again. Unfortunately it's damn near impossible to speculate on who may or may not be available in both directions.
Kaberle is one guy but certainly there are more names out there being kicked around. Oh to be a fly on the wall.
I think our most tradable assets are Hejda, Methot, Filatov and all our draft picks. Some put Brassard in that mix although I think it would be a big mistake to give up on him this early.
Ain't noone touching Commodore unless a bad contract is coming the other way (ex. Souray).
I was just sent a link via BHG to the new NHL 11 game. If you're interested in the trailer check it out here.
UPDATE: Agnew and Murphy canned per Portzline's twitter. Not unexpected but you never know with this organization until it actually happens!
-LTL
