September 30, 2007
NHL kicks off across the Pond
  

It wasn't about expanding the global reach of the National Hockey League, but the start of the 2007-08 campaign was more about jet lag, power failures and regular season games contested in an exhibition atmosphere.
 

Not that there wasn't intrigue for opening night if you were a Kings' fan because the next generation of goaltenders was introduced to you that evening.

Nineteen-year-old Jonathan Bernier shook off a 15 minute partial power outage that delayed opening face off and laid down an effort no one expected, stopping 26 of 27 shots on the was to his first NHL win. Bernier looked like a composed veteran throughout, his lack of extraneous movement in the crease is something not usually seen around 11th and Figueroa.

With the mediocre performance of his running mate, Jason LaBarbera, in Game 2 on Sunday, it would be a shock if the rookie wasn't between the pipes for the Kings real home opener on Saturday against St. Louis.
 

THE WEEKEND THAT WAS

For starters, London is a marvelous town; the sense of history is nothing you can approach.

I'm a proud but respectful American and you're in wonder as you tour the town and witness the landmarks that have been here for centuries.

Yep, those pubs have some great beer. Oh yeah, there's a big clock (Ben something?) and a nice bridge (rumor is it's always falling down) and a tower where they keep all the nice jewelry as well. You should stop by those places too, in between beers.

Though they held the matches in the UK, the feeling walking the halls was definitely more European than anything; I've never seen such a varied collection of hockey sweaters in my life. There were probably no more than 1,000 Kings and Ducks fans in attendance from North America and that made for a weird scenario especially when goals were scored. When either a Duck or King netted one, there was a mini celebration from the respective side in the lower bowl, but absolutely no reaction from anyone in the upper tier; just plain weird.

And then there were those nice, drunk Finnish fans that had a home made banner, which read: "But, where 'the duck' is Teemu.' Ah, Finland hockey humor at its finest.

By the way, I can deny those rumors that Ziggy Palffy and Peter Forsberg were roaming the concourses of the O2 looking for a gig.

The Kings were staying at the Four Seasons hotel in the Canary Wharf area, where rooms there go for $ 700 a pop for a night, but when a billionaire owns the team, does it matter? The story wasn't so much that where they were camped but the fact that they took a boat, not a bus, to the practice. The O2 sits on the water so it was quicker for the team to shuttle over, Rover.

You can make book on this one. This series will mark the only time that Ladislav Nagy has a bigger media crush around him than Jack Johnson. In the Kings locker room after Game 1, Johnson quietly got dressed and was an afterthought. The European press mobbed Lubomir Visnovsky, the biggest fan favorite, and Michal Handzus and Anze Kopitar (who apparently left his game in Salzburg, Austria where the Kings stopped first to play and win a pre-season tournament).

I spoke with Johnson upon his arrival with great fanfare at the end of last season and he's still the same good natured kid that has a limitless upside. He even joked about the ice surface saying: "The ice wasn't that bad, but the boards were really high."

'To shoot over, Mr. JMFJ,' I asked.

"No, they were really hard to CLIMB over," he said.

He then made a statement that will send shutters down the spines of most ardent Kings fans. We asked who was his favorite defense partner was, thinking that he'd mention Rob Blake because of the mentoring aspect he's supposed to provide.

"Blake's a great guy, but I really have developed chemistry with Jaro," Johnson said.

For the tragically uninformed, Jaro is the maligned, no make that MALIGNED (at least in the Kingdom) Jaroslav Modry. (So THAT'S why GM Dean Lombardi re-signed the guy after making public statements last March that Modry wasn't going to be around this year.)

The Ducks really are up against it at the beginning of the season, starting play in Europe and then having to turn around for Detroit's home opener on Tuesday and then on to Columbus and Pittsburgh for weekend matches.

Chris Pronger was grouchy about the trip by mid week (Anaheim arrived on Monday) but warmed up by the post-game locker room.

When told the Commissioner Gary Bettman would be debriefing both teams on the effects on the trip on the start of their seasons in a couple of weeks, the new Ducks' captain said: "It would really take a couple of months to see if it did."

With the Ducks missing five major players to start the season, they're reduced to being a really good team and not the dynamic Champions that went through the competition with little resistance in last year's playoffs. Sammy Pahlsson, Jean-Sebastien Giguere and newly-signed Mathieu Schneider are sitting with injuries while every day drags on with the continuing saga of "Teemu and Scotty, won't you please come home?"

I asked Pronger if there was a feeling of necessity to do more with such major players missing.

"Absolutely not," he said. "Other guys here have to step up and once you go outside of your limitations and try to compensate, you'll only wind up hurting the team, not helping."

Even head coach Randy Carlyle struggled with line combinations in Game 1 and decided to wisely reunite Perry and Ryan Getzlaf again and it did wonders for Anaheim. Doubt we'll see those two split up again.

Talk about not helping: Todd Bertuzzi's debut in a Ducks' sweater has been inauspicious to say the least. The only dent he's made on the scorecard is in the PIM column (6), taking two bad penalties in the first period of the loss and killing any momentum the Ducks may have had early on. Looks like the gamble GM (Mr. Next Commissioner) Brian Burke took on Bertuzzi may have been a bad one. Granted, it's only two games in but that $4 million probably looks better in Dustin Penner's pocket than it does Bertuzzi. Sure, there were whispers about Penner's work ethic after a 29 goal season but not only does Bertuzzi brings oodles of baggage (no truth to the rumor that he needed his own plane to the UK) and he's not a good guy in the locker room. At 32 and now injury prone, to keep continuity with the team may have served the organization better.

Now before you Ducks' fans take off any more skin from wringing your hands waiting for Teemu and Scott to come home, here's the reality. By November, they'll both be back and you can quote me on that.

Niedermayer, though on the suspended list, is currently in Southern California working out and it should be another few weeks before he decides to strap on the skates. Just as Scott's finishing tying his laces, Selanne's ink will dry on his one-year deal, it's that simple.

No one in the Ducks' organization will say it, but that's how they're operating. These transactions will put Anaheim over the cap (some grouse that Burke is circumventing the cap, but I don't see it) and the roster ramifications are in the offing.

Ilya Bryzgalov will be dealt not soon after Giguere makes his first appearance, with Hiller's first performance reassuring Carlyle and Burke he's a capable caddy for Jean-Sebastien.

Secondly, with acquisition of Mark Mowers from Boston, look for Todd Marchant and his $2 million cap hit to say bye-bye. They'll miss Marchant's grittiness in the second season but he's a casualty to a cheaper fourth line replacement.

But with these five players coming back within the next six weeks, the cold fact is that this roster is even better than the one that raised the Cup in June. While we'll stop short of predicting a repeat but things like complacency and injuries rear their heads, the Ducks will once again quack deep into the post-season.

And if you're now wishing you had been here with the rest of us, wait about 12 months and you'll have another shot to witness the NHL in Europe.

Final touches are being put on a deal to have the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Tampa Bay Lightning open next season in Prague, Czech Republic.

If you've never been to that Eastern European country, and I haven't, its beauty is legendary. Additionally, it would be front page news in the Czech Republic, a very different treatment than the games got from the local London press.

On the day of the game, the BBC World TV channel had a two-minute report on the series and that was the fifth story in. On Sunday, the Telegraph newspaper had front page coverage of the firing (here they say sacking) of the Welsh rugby coach (I ain't lying, hockey fans) and not one word of the result in its twelve page sports section. Guess you can cancel those English expansion plans, eh?

There was a secondary thought of bringing the Toronto Maple Leafs to Stockholm in tribute to Mats Sundin, but heck, the Leafs don't want to travel west of Detroit, so I can't imagine their plane setting down in Sweden.

And finally, for reasons I cannot divulge in print, the best part of the trip was my one day side-venture to Amsterdam. You figure it out.
 

Dennis Bernstein, the man behind SCORE! Media, is a columnist for TheFourthPeriod.com and the Los Angeles Correspondent for The Fourth Period Magazine.