|
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
Last call for NHL dynasties? Stars still have chance to become last of the dynasties
Posted: Friday June 09, 2000 08:00 PM
By Jim Taylor, SLAM! Sports And so it comes to pass that after 1,148 league games, 79 playoff games, 100 brain injuries and enough cat-fights to fuel a dozen soap operas, the Stanley Cup final is not yet finally over. New Jersey Devils, blessedly freed of at least a few of their shackles by the grace of Larry Robinson, had a chance last night to become the newest champions of the known universe, and got such a marvellous game from Martin Brodeur they have to be shaking their heads that they didn't. But the Stars refused to fall. The last time Texas had a team that stubborn the guys with the big shots were named Crockett and Bowie. They kept going at Brodeur and eventually got one past him to prolong the pursuit for one more game and maybe two. And then, in 16 weeks, everybody starts over. To make it even more fun, there'll be 30 teams instead of 28 and, if some lobbyists have their way, 20 teams in the playoffs instead of 16. Welcome to the NHL, the league where you can get into the playoffs with a note from your mother.
And if the Stars don't win this one, we lose the last, faint hope of ever seeing even a mini-dynasty. Wonderful things, dynasties. They give fans a team to love or to loathe, and fill rinks wherever they go. They prompt rule changes forced by general managers who can't beat them on the ice and are determined to do it in the committee room. They become such targets the team logo should be a bull's eye. But they are no more. The odds still say theDallas string of Stanley Cups will be snapped at one. Before them were the Detroit Red Wings, who won two. The previous four years produced four champions. Before that, the Pittsburgh Penguins of Mario Lemieux managed to win two straight. As dynasties go, that's closer to Styrofoam than Ming. Remember the '80s? Four straight Cups for the Islanders, then five of the next seven by the Edmonton Oilers, both interruptions provided by the Calgary Flames, who beat them in '86 and lost the final to Montreal, and again in '89 when they won it all? Have you had as much fun any time since? Ask Gary and the Governors about dynasties and they break into a chorus of Ain't Parity Wonderful? Maybe. But maybe it's less parity than mediocrity created by too little talent for too many teams. If that's it, then the birth of two more teams next season further lengthens the odds of any franchise stringing more than two Cups in a row. The Islanders went four in a row by building carefully through the draft under the watchful stewardship of Bow-Tie Bill Torrey, the best construction job since the pyramids. But how do you build through the draft today when the worst team gets the first pick and, barring deals, nothing more until the 31st? The Oilers had a huge advantage. They came into the league directly from the World Hockey Association with a team led by wondrous under-age kids the NHL didn't allow its teams to draft. How might the course of NHL history been changed if Gretzky, Messier and the other WHAers had been scattered through the draft to the have-nots in or close to the basement? But they weren't, and within a couple of years the Oilers had what history may prove was the best collection of young hockey talent ever assembled. We need teams like that. Love them or hate them, they raise the bar. But we'll see the return of the passenger pigeon before we see their like again.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
