An Evening at the Sprint Center: NHL Exhibition: Los Angeles Kings vs. Pittsburgh Penguins

Enough with the gripes and complaints, already, people. The National Hockey League is not coming to Kansas City anytime soon, and that has nothing to do with Tim Leiweke or AEG. Really, it doesn't.

I tweeted Randy Covitz earlier, and in doing so, I was mistaken. Apparently, last night's NHL exhibition contest featuring the Los Angeles Kings and Pittsburgh Penguins was a record crowd for Kansas City hockey. By 494 people. I sent that tweet, because I swear that announced attendance at that Blues/Blackhawks game was 18,000+, but I've been wrong before, and I'll certainly be wrong again.

What I'm not wrong about is that the dose of professional hockey Kansas City is currently getting -- in the form of the Central Hockey League's Missouri Mavericks, just down the road in Independence -- is all the metro area will be getting for years to come.

Eleven years ago, Paul McGannon formed the grassroots NHL 21, whose primary initiative was to bring an NHL club to Kansas City. At that time, it was a brilliant plan, and the organization continues to work hard to, as they say, "cultivate Kansas City for the NHL." But, at that time, the league landscape was much different.

The Dallas Stars had just won their first Stanley Cup, seven years after moving from Minnesota. The Colorado Avalanche, a mere five years relocated from Quebec, would win their second championship a season later. The following season, it was the one-time Hartford Whalers coming in as runner up, followed by the not-that-young-of-a-franchise Anaheim competing in the Finals, the expansion Tampa Bay Lightning winning it all, and then of course, the lockout.

In each of the previous four seasons, clubs with long-time tenures in their initial cities have been in the finals on both winning and losing ends. Thus, the days of significant franchise shifts are likely behind us. Sure, the Atlanta Thrashers just moved to Winnipeg, but Winnipeg had an interested buyer, and Atlanta -- a city mind you, that already failed once in its NHL endeavors -- was not supporting the club.

So, it's easy to get riled up about Leiweke's quotes, and even easier to point the finger at the Sprint Center's "failures" regarding event management. These, my friends, are not even small bones. They're microscopic.

A few people were caught outside while the game began? Big deal. The venue fixes that first with an anchor tenant. Long lines at concession stands? Didn't we hear those now-stifled gripes after Kauffman Stadium was remodeled?

What matters is what the people in and around Kansas City think about the sport (and thought about the contest) in a global sense. And for the most part, people are far from centered enough to comprehend the two-tiered concept that would make an NHL franchise successful in Kansas City for the second time: single-game and season tickets.

With the September the Kansas City Royals have produced, and with the start to the season the Kansas City Chiefs have not, folks on Twitter and on the radio are rolling out the old this-is-a-baseball-town carpet for the first time in a while. That's fine. It very well may be. Folks continue to purchase mildly significant numbers of season tickets, and, by and large, single-game tickets are something that many, many Kansas City families have always invested in and will continue to do so because this is a game on which our country was raised.

In the '90s, Kansas City was mad-scientist crazy for the Chiefs. The team was good, and fans had not had that experience in over two decades, if ever. Throughout most of the Herman Edwards regime, attendance at Arrowhead fell to talks-of-blacked-out-games for the first time since the '80s. And that's an American sport with a franchise with over four decades rooted in Kansas City. What, then, would make anyone think that, in the event the NHL grants Kansas City a franchise (Editor's Note: They're not going to, plain and simple.), this town would support it?

I'm embedded in the Kansas City hockey community. I know guys that run the youth programs, I know rink managers, I volunteer for the Mavericks, and I've played with the majority of adult rec-league skaters for over a decade. Even in that community, even in the form of a company owner who was a significant sponsor for last night's game, are people that think Kansas City has to continue to turn out large numbers, if not sell them out, for these exhibition contests because that translates to league awareness.

In the end, they don't matter. Not one bit. Mostly they don't matter because the league is not going to award the city a franchise, or even promote it as a locale for a club that's interested in relocation. There's simply not enough confidence to suggest that the city could support it.

So attendance last night broke the record by 500 heads. How many of those people were given free tickets? How many of those people were bombarded by package deals presented by NHL 21 and companies like QuikTrip who had the $99 four-pack (tickets, sandwiches, etc.)? How many people had die-hard NHL-in-KC fans buy tickets and take their friends free of charge in hopes of hooking them on the in-game experience?

The answer: a lot.

What's more, of the families in attendance, most of them, by both sight and sound, were cheering for the Penguins. These kids had signs and cheers and no, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a Sidney Crosby jersey. How many of these fans were aware (of the slim chance) that Crosby might not play again? How many of these kids are aware that team owner Mario Lemieux used this very venue as leverage for his own new building in Pittsburgh? And how many kids are aware of the surprise run that the Kings just displayed this past post-season? That club was the bigger (of the two) story in the playoffs.

The answer: not many.

Regarding the Crosby thing, it's of course good for the game that in Kansas City people know who he is, but what they don't know is that the clubs they saw on the ice last night were two and three tiers removed from those that the Pittsburgh and L.A. franchises will put out on the ice each night this season. For Dennis Dodd to call that a "thoroughly entertaining preseason game" is silly.

That game was mostly flat, full of turnovers, and bereft of true NHL talent. What's more is that there was zero appeal or investment to actually root for a team you come out and support 41 times a year. And the fans in attendance were representative of said lack of appeal.

They were there for novelty. They chatted with their kids and their friends, fiddled around with their phones, asked questions about the game to those around them, and blindly cheered on the Penguins. Since when do Kansas Citians cheer for eastern-conference teams?

While folks remain enamored with the new Kansas City-hockey-attendance record, the one truth that's been written is that many seats were empty. Folks were strolling around, perhaps waiting in lines for concessions -- an easy fix if a franchise actually did come to town -- perhaps trying to entertain their uninterested children, and leaving early in packs of significant numbers.

Last night and this morning, people were posting things of the following nature on Facebook: this pointless story, this dumb picture

I call dumb only because I'm sure thousands cheered the Pittsburgh victory, and my favorite photo caption of all, "Don't have a clue what I'm watching, but it's fun!!!"

As for ourselves, we left at the conclusion of the second period solely because of our nine-month-old in tow (Note: Yes, that'd be her pictured above the jump.), and the fact that it was over an hour past her bedtime. We went, though, because we wanted to see how good the Sprint Center ice-hockey experience looked. For the record, it looked great. The ice appeared to be in good shape, the event had plenty of intermission entertainment, and all the perks of a pro-sports event. They were each a touch rough around the edges, but like the entry lines and the concessions, easy fixes. In sum, though, The Sprint Center didn't blow it.

What's not an easy fix is the current state of possible NHL franchise relocation, let alone expansion. By and large, clubs are staying put, and none will soon call Kansas City home.

You may, if you choose, continue to direct your negative energy toward Leiweke and AEG, or you could look at the positive: Kansas City did not build a tax-payer-funded venue that sits empty and aging, and its downtown revitalization has not been a failure, both of which were distinct possibilities voters feared five and six years ago.

If you're going to crease your forehead over hockey in Kansas City, however, your energy is better spent being compassionate with the unchangeable facts about the National Hockey League, and even more so, recognizing that Kansas City might be a baseball town. It might be a football town. Heck, for all we know, it's a soccer town. One thing is for sure, though, and that's that a hockey town it is not.

If it wants to become one, there's a ton of growth that needs to happen first, and it's the kind of growth that has zero to do with chances and promises.
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Your 2009 Mid-Season Hockey Report: Eastern Conference, Southeast Division

If I had to pick a snoozer division in the NHL, this would be it. Even though the Lightning and the Hurricanes have won championships in recent years, this division is drier than a post-rodeo cowboy crotch. It's got the most new teams, and typically the least success. I've been known to jump on a Carolina bandwagon or two, but beyond that, I posit that no division gets less focus each season than the Southeast. We will cover it, nevertheless, and like Friday's look at the Northeast, we'll start from the bottom.

The Atlanta Thrashers have fewer points than anyone in hockey, save the New York Islanders. The equivalent of that would be the 2008 Kansas City Chiefs who, thank their lucky stars, had the Detroit Lions beneath them, saving them from being the worst of the terrible. They've got the incredible Ilya Kovalchuk leading the stats brackets, and Vyacheslav Kozlov right behind him. Combined, the two have 106 points. But that's about where this team begins and ends. Their defense is about as thin as a frozen lake in Haiti, and naturally, their goaltending suffers as a result; none of their three netminders is close to playing .500 or better.

In fourth are the Tampa Bay Lightning. Five short years removed from their impressive Stanley Cup championship, they're a mere five points stronger than the Thrashers, which as we've seen, isn't saying much. As usual, Tampa Bay icons Martin St. Louis and Vincent Lecavelier top the ranks in offensive production, but the point tallies somewhat taper off after that. They have gotten some help from aged right-winger Mark Recchi, as well as from Vaclav Prospal and Ryan Malone, but not much else worth mentioning. The Lightning defensive pairings are stronger than most of those we've examined in the east, but not by much. To date, the Lightning keeps five goalies on the roster, none of which have stood on their proverbial heads. Thus, this crew has their work cut out for them, and realistically, should be focusing on next year.

The third-place Hurricanes are a ways ahead of the Lightning, and actually have a +.500 record. They sit in the ninth spot, and aren't far from leap-frogging the eighth-place Buffalo Sabres. Atop their offensive producers are Ray Whitney and Eric Staal. They've also enjoyed some stats from right wing Sergei Samsonov and the ageless Rod Brind'Amour. Their defense is less holey than some, but not as stout as those atop the conference rankings in either the east or the west. In the net, Cam Ward has looked better-than-average at 22-18, but he's let 109 pucks by, and will need the pairings in front of him to play some stealthier D than they've thus far been able to muster.

One notch up in the Southeast are the Florida Panthers, who only have a three-point edge over Carolina. This club is arguably the division's surprise through the "mid-point" of the campaign, and their perhaps-unforeseen success can be attributed to forwards Stephen Weiss, Nathan Horton, David Booth, and Cory Stillman. Additionally, they've gotten help from defenseman Jay Bouwmeester, who's logged 12 goals and 18 assists. Their defense takes a bit of a drop beyond Bowmeester statistically speaking, but they do manage to lend a hand to the number of Tomas Vokoun, who's 18-16, and let less than 100 into the net with an admirable .923 goals-against average.

And in first place, the Washington Capitals, which is almost as surprising as the Panthers being in second, especially given that it's by a 13-point differential. Actually, it's not that surprising at all. They do have Alexander Ovechkin who has a staggering 41 goals and 33 assists midway through February. What is surprising has been the output of center Nicklas Backstrom, who's only lit the lamp 13 times, but has dished out an incredible 47 helpers. Left-winger Alexander "you said" Semin and defenseman Mike Green have also more than impressed with 50 points a piece. What's more is that their second-, third-, and fourth-line centers are all in the 30-point eschelon, and collectively, they have one of (if not) the best +/- differentials in the conference from the top of their roster to the bottom, which means they're scoring a ton, and giving up very litte. This, as I've been saying, always makes a goaltender look better; the Caps have four on their roster and every one of them is above .500 in wins/losses, and .900 save percentages. Former Colorado Avalanche/Montreal Canadien Jose Theodore leads the way at 21-10, and he's not yet let his 100th goal cross the line. Washington is currently tied with New Jersey for the second-place spot in the conference, and they're a solid 12 points ahead of fourth-place Philadelphia. I pity the fool that faces them come playoff time.

That's it for our look at the Southeast. Check in tomorrow as we head out west. And if you're really interested, our Atlantic scoop can be found here.
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Your 2009 Mid-Season Hockey Report: Eastern Conference, Northeast Division

Today we'll have a look at how things have fared a hair beyond the midway point in the National Hockey League's Northeast Division. This group of clubs is largely Canadian, and therefore, largely boring, but there are a few tidbits worth mentioning. The skaters from Beantown are in first place, but we'll run the mill of these teams in reverse order today, since we're fly like that in the mix-it-up way of things. For your largely misinformed peek into this currently strongest Eastern Conference assortment of teams, jump the wall and join us out on the ice.

Bringing up the bottom end of things are the Ottawa Senators, which is unfortunate in that the Sens have made the post-season with strong playoff runs in most every season since the lockout. This is not to say that they can't squeak in this year, and their recent three-game win streak obviously helps, but they still have their work cut out for them. As usual Daniel Alfredsson leads the team in points, and Dany Heatley is right there with him. The offense has also seen help from center Jason Spezza, and defenseman Filip Kuba has contributed with a noteworthy 26 assists. Like many of the clubs we examined yesterday, however, the Ottawa defense hasn't impressed many, making goaltending a difficult job. One-time key netminder Martin Gerber has only seen action in 14 contests, leaving Alex Auld with the bulk of the starts, though his 9-13 record leaves little to be desired.

In fourth are the Toronto Maple Leafs. To date, they only have a two-point edge over the Sens, and that's largely due to the play of left wing Jason Blake and center Nik Antropov. Centers Dominic Moore and Matt Stajan are having solid seasons too, and in fact, a significant amount of their first three lines are generating points. The Leafs defense is a hair stronger than average, while their goaltending is barely reaping the benefits. The aged Curtis Joseph has seen some action in the crease, but most of the starts have gone to Vesa Toskala, who currently sits at 18-17, with an .882 save percentage, a number that's pretty low given that he's let 152 pucks by him.

Third place in the Northeast is where the point distance begins. The Buffalo Sabres sit 12 points ahead of Toronto, and if the season ended today, they'd be the eight seed. Left wing Thomas Vanek and center Derek Roy are both having strong campaigns, combining for 102 points between them. The Sabres are also getting results from some of their lower lines, and some strong numbers from their defense as well. This almost always makes for stronger performances from goalies, and this is certainly the case with Ryan Miller, who, at 26-14, boasts a .919 save percentage.

One more notch up are the Canadiens of Montreal. They've only got a two-point edge on Buffalo, but they've got a more well-spread point production across their roster, and their plus/minus ratio is significantly less staggered from positions one through 18. The Habs may very well be a dark horse in this year's post-season, and they've gotten solid play from both netminders thus far. Carey Price has gotten the nod for 35 of their tilts, and he's come away with 18 wins, while Jaroslav Halak has won 11 of 22. This roster has a near-ideal mix of veteran players and youth, something that could position them to peak at just the right moment. And, hey, if you dig them, you can follow them on Twitter. Woo-hoo!

Then there's Boston. Take everything that's gone well for Montreal and multiply it by two. The Bruins are an astounding 21 points ahead of their second-place division rivals, and the production from this club is spread like room-temperature butter on a hot dinner roll. Big man Zdeno Chara continues to anchor the defense, and his 12 goals and 20 assists support that claim. The play of their centers, though, is the real story. Marc Savard, Dave Krejci, and Philip Kessel have combined for 64 goals and 99 assists, and there's nothing that can replace consistent production from three of your four lines. Even fourth-liner Patrice Bergeron has lit the lamp 4 times and tallied 17 helpers. Their defense, even beyond Chara, is nails, and that of course, translates to the guys in net. Tuukku Rask has played in one contest and won. Manny Fernandez is the second man, and he's 14-3, which leaves the main guy, Tim Thomas, who sits at a sizzling 24-6, having only given up 76 goals while riding the wave of a .930 save percentage. Season after season, the Bruins squeak into the playoffs. They seldom make it beyond round one, and when they do, they're usually a breeze to knock out of the second. This, however, is the Eastern team to fear come April.

That's your report for today. Check back on Monday, and we'll examine the Southeast.
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Your 2009 Mid-Season Hockey Report: Eastern Conference, Atlantic Division

As sure as I sit here, I confidently predict that this will be the best-read feature on the House of Georges for months to come. You see, not only is our server frequently bombarded with traffic, our comment boxes exploding with opinion, the imminent pressure put upon our staff is inarguably the demand for more hockey coverage. In years past, we haven't delivered much of it, mostly because Cecil and Old No. 7 have season tickets to the Avalanche, and they're too busy to attend the games and write about them, which leaves me, alone out here in my sea of fat, drunk people to try and produce something of the stick-and-puck variety. I won't make any promises, sweet readers, other than that I will reach for far below my very best to produce nothing but the facts. Ma'am.

So we're about 10-12 games beyond mid-season at this point, and things in the Atlantic look pretty much par for the course. Out in front with 35 wins and 73 points are the Devils of New Jersey. Leading the pack is left-winger Zach Parise, who has put together an astonishing campaign; so far he's netted 34 goals and 33 assists for 67 points. Veterans Patrik Elias, Jamie Langenbrunner, Dainius Zubrus, and John Madden have made significant contributions to the campaign as well. New Jersey has, for as long as I can remember, put at least an above-decent defense on the ice, and excellent +/- ratios of 22 from Colin White and John Oduya suggest that the same is still true. In net, however, things are looking different for the Devils. Future Hall-of-Famer Martin Brodeur has only played in 10 games earning his team wins, while the younger Scott Clemmensen has played in 36 times, earned 23 wins and put up a solid .920 save percentage.

As for the second-place Philadelphia Flyers, things don't look too bad for them as they sit a mere eight points behind New Jersey. Center Jeff Carter leads the way with 34 goals and 24 assists, while left wingers Simon Gagne and Scott Hartnell are having noteworthy seasons. The Philly D, however, looks vulnerable while not producing many points. Martin Biron and Antero Nittymaki have split the goaltending duties and done respectable jobs behind their porous defensive units.

In third are the New York Rangers who share a point total with the Flyers, so their post-season hopes are equivalent. Nikolai Zherdev, Scott Gomez, Markus Naslund, and Ryan Callahan have contributed to New York's offensive successes, but like Philly, their defense has underachieved as a unit. Henrik Lundqvist has gotten the majority of the starts between the pipes. His 25 wins don't look bad, but his 114 goals allowed suggest otherwise.

The Lone Reader's Pittsburgh Penguins are exactly where I thought they'd be after an incredible run to the finals last year: in fourth with 59 points and only the lowly New York Islanders beneath them. Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby have combined for an amazing 152 points, and gotten help from Petr Sykora and Miroslav Satan, who together have 35 goals. The Penguin defense, however, has been well below impressive, and Marc-Andre Fleury, after missing a few contests due to injury, sits at a meager 19-14 record. The good thing for Pittsburgh is that they're only one point behind the eighth-place seed, so they can still squeak in with a strong second half.

The Islanders. Well, 16 wins through early February won't cut the mustard. Though you always say don't count anyone out, you gotta count NYI out. Mark Streit, Doug Weight, and Bill Guerin have had decent production, but everyone else on the roster pretty much stinks. You know things aren't good when you've got four goalies on the roster, and the one who's seen the most action is 11-23, while your former first overall pick in the draft has seen action in only five contests.

That's the Atlantic. Check back in tomorrow for some exciting Northeast action.
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