Today's News Clips May 29, 2018
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Today’s News Clips May 29, 2018 Chicago Tribune Fifty years before unfathomable Golden Knights, Glenn Hall and Scotty Bowman led expansion team to Stanley Cup Final David Haugh May 27, 2018 Retirement appealed to Blackhawks legend Glenn Hall, “Mr. Goalie,” who had no plans to return to the crease for the 1968 season when Blues general manager Lynn Patrick called. “Lynn asked me if I still wanted to play because they took me in the expansion draft,” Hall, 86, recalled on the phone from his farm in Alberta, Canada. “I told the Hawks I might retire but then I told Patrick I’d play one year for $50,000. He said, ‘Holy cow, Glenn, how about $45,000?’ I said, ‘Let’s split the difference.’ So I signed for $47,500 — and squirreled away enough money to buy this place.” The salary was more than double what Hall ever made in 10 terrific seasons with the Hawks (1957-67), an investment nobody in St. Louis doubted after the Hall of Fame goaltender helped the Blues become the first expansion team to play in the Stanley Cup Final. The Golden Knights will be the second when their series against the Capitals begins Monday in Las Vegas, 50 years after Scotty Bowman coached the Blues further than anybody in hockey imagined. Bowman, the NHL’s winningest coach with 1,244 victories and nine Stanley Cup titles, replaced Patrick behind the bench after 16 games in November 1967 and redirected the Blues on a historic path. Their distinction deserves an asterisk because all six expansion teams — half the NHL that season — were placed in the West Division, guaranteeing one would play for the Cup. The division-winning Flyers went 31-32-11 for 73 points, which would have finished sixth in the East. The Blues finished the regular season 27-31-16 before getting hot in the playoffs. So while the Golden Knights reaching the finals in a 31-team league puts them on the verge of producing one of the greatest moments in sports history, what the Blues accomplished lacks the overall significance to everyone but those who still remember it fondly. “A special year,” Bowman, 84, said of the first of his 30 seasons as an NHL head coach. “The league was a lot different then, and it only cost expansion teams $2 million to get in compared to the $500 million Vegas paid. But the biggest similarity between the two teams is the two goalies: Glenn Hall and Marc-Andre Fleury (of the Golden Knights). They’re like two peas in a pod.” Fleury, 33, a strong Conn Smythe Trophy candidate, came to the Golden Knights after winning three Stanley Cup rings with the Penguins. Hall was 36 when he joined the Blues after stints with the Red Wings and Hawks, the Cup champions in 1961. In the 1968 Cup defeat to the mighty Canadiens, Hall won the Conn Smythe despite the Blues getting swept in a series that included two overtime losses. Each game was decided by one goal. “We forced the Original Six team to sweat and they wanted to win without sweating,” Hall said. “We made them work.” Hall made everyone else on the ice more confident knowing he was in net, much the same way Fleury affects the Golden Knights. “Glenn carried our team,” Bowman, a Blackhawks senior adviser, said. “Like Fleury, he was the face of our franchise that first year.” The growth of the league and changes to the game make any other comparisons between the ’68 Blues and ’18 Golden Knights moot. Consider Bowman’s fondest memory of the Blues’ playoff run: To shore up depth the day before a Game 7 victory in the first-round series against the Flyers, Bowman vividly recounted calling up 43-year-old defenseman Doug Harvey, the longtime NHL star defenseman who was the player-coach of the Blues’ minor-league affiliate in Kansas City. “I think he played 40 minutes and we won,’’ Bowman said. “Imagine doing that now.’’ It’s hard to, even though the Golden Knights do have their share of unlikely contributors on a team whose only star is their goalie. Bowman commended hockey architect George McPhee for building a championship-caliber roster with pieces tossed onto a scrap heap of squandered talent. Besides nabbing Fleury in an expansion draft that exposed players with bad contracts, Bowman believes two shrewd moves allowed the Golden Knights to grow quickly into a contender. The first involved the Panthers trading forward Reilly Smith to the Golden Knights only if they agreed to take Jonathan Marchessault in the expansion draft due to salary-cap considerations. The Golden Knights’ most dangerous line comprises Smith, Marchessault and William Karlsson — the discarded Blue Jacket who scored 43 goals after combining for 15 in the two previous seasons. The trio combined for 92 goals. The other difference-making transaction Bowman cited involved acquiring center Erik Haula and forward Alex Tuch from the Wild. The addition of a savvy veteran like James Neal complemented the skill. The edge every member of the “Golden Misfits” brought to town kept complacency out of the dressing room. The experience of coach Gerard Gallant, fired by the Panthers early in the 2016-17 season, made him the ideal leader for a bunch of players nobody wanted. “There were all kinds of theories why a team couldn’t win in Vegas but they overcame it all,” Bowman said. “They made it tough for visitors to play there. They jelled. They’re no fluke. It’s great for the league. It’s impressive.” It’s almost unfathomable. No modern-day expansion team in the NHL, NFL, NBA or Major League Baseball ever has posted a winning record in its first season, according to ESPN. The Westgate Sportsbook gave the Golden Knights 500-to-1 odds to win the Cup last fall. For context, the odds of the 1980 U.S. hockey team pulling off the “Miracle On Ice” against the Soviet Union were 1,000-to-1. The odds of No. 16 seed Maryland-Baltimore County upsetting No. 1 seed Virginia in the NCAA tournament were only 40-to-1 before the Retrievers stunned the college basketball world. The Golden Knights winning the Cup would be as shocking as anything ever witnessed in American professional sports. The last time an expansion team faced a similar opportunity came under very different circumstances with Bowman, Hall and the Blues — a half-century ago. This offers a once-in-a-lifetime impact limited only by hockey’s reach. Daily Herald Rockford IceHogs eliminated in OT loss at Texas John Dietz May 28, 2018 Roope Hintz scored with 8.5 seconds left in overtime and the Texas Stars defeated Rockford 2-1 to eliminate the IceHogs from the AHL's Western Conference final. Four of the six games in the series went to overtime. "Disappointment obviously," Rockford coach Jeremy Colliton said of the mood in the postgame locker room. "We weren't ready to be done, and (I) really enjoyed being with this group. … "Proud of how we worked. Sorry (and) sad that it's over." Rockford fell behind midway through the second period but managed to extend the game when Chris DiDomenico took a pass from Adam Clendening and made it 1-1 with just 1:34 left in regulation. DiDomenico, acquired from Ottawa in mid-February for Ville Pokka, probably was the MVP for the IceHogs in the postseason, scoring 7 goals and dishing out 11 assists in 13 games. Jeff Glass, inserted after Collin Delia lost Games 1-3, stopped 38 shots. He posted a .955 save percentage in his three starts. The game-winner came after Texas' Colin Markison won a board battle behind the net with IceHogs defenseman Joni Tuulola. Markison managed to kick the puck to his skate and zipped a pass to Hintz in the slot. Hintz wasted no time and fired a shot that beat Glass to his blocker side. Rockford, which took 35 shots in regulation to Texas' 29, was outshot 11-4 in OT. Texas now advances to play Toronto in the Calder Cup Finals. Daily Herald Could Delia be Chicago Blackhawks' backup goalie next season? John Dietz May 27, 2018 Corey Crawford and … Collin Delia? Could that really be the goalie combination for the Chicago Blackhawks next season? The way Delia has performed for the Rockford IceHogs this season -- and especially in the first two rounds of the Calder Cup playoffs when he went 7-0 with a .948 save percentage and 1.64 goals-against average -- that would seem to be a possibility. "I don't know my path," Delia said after Jeff Glass made 28 saves in Rockford's Game 4 victory over Texas on Thursday in the Western Conference final. "In some ways it's out of my hands, but I can control my effort on the ice and how well I play. All the other decisions that are above my head, I just have to kind of relinquish it." Before we get to whether Delia might jump over Anton Forsberg or J-F Berube to become Crawford's backup, let's show you just how far the 23-year-old has come in his first year as a pro. The 6-foot-2, 200-pound Delia -- from Rancho Cucamonga, California -- began this season with the ECHL's Indy Fuel, a team two levels below the Blackhawks. Even though Delia was struggling in Indy, he nonetheless earned a call-up to Rockford on Nov. 5. After a bit of shuttling back and forth between the two franchises, he grabbed the starting job for the IceHogs in late December when Berube was hurt.