In any other National Hockey League season, losing your co-top playoff goal scorer might be a deathblow for a team trying to repeat as Stanley Cup champions.
But not for the Chicago Blackhawks, who fell victim to the league’s salary cap rules, saying so long in the offseason to 11-goal playoff scorer Dustin Byfuglien and numerous other role players that helped them win the franchise’s first championship in 49 years.
“Our team won’t skip a beat,” captain Jonathan Toews said. “Everybody wants to beat the defending champs. That is something we have to be ready for. Some of our guys had to move on, but we are excited to see how the new players are going to fit in.”
The 2010-2011 regular season gets underway today with Carolina against Minnesota in Helsinki, Finland. Then later in the day, it is two premier matchups as Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins host Alex Ovechkin’s Capitals and long-time rivals Montreal and the Maple Leafs square off in Toronto.
Columbus, Boston, San Jose and Phoenix also start the season in Europe, with games being split between Finland, Czech Republic and Sweden.
outdoor game
The league also brought back the successful annual outdoor game and this year it features Pittsburgh battling Washington at the home of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers on Jan. 1.
The challenge for Chicago general manager Stan Bowman is to absorb the loss of Byfuglien, Kris Versteeg and Andrew Ladd and re-distribute the wealth in other ways.
Bowman did just that with the addition of Swedish forward Viktor Stalberg, matching the San Jose Sharks’ offer sheet to keep defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson and beefing up their goaltending by adding veteran Marty Turco.
“We did a lot of celebrating in the summer and it just makes you want to do it all over again,” Chicago forward Patrick Kane said.
“It is tough to repeat. It is not like we have the same guys that we won it with last year, but the new guys are going to be hungry that will help us get motivated,” he said. “They weren’t necessarily our best players that carried us to the Cup, but they were good players. We have our core group back.”
Under the new-look NHL, the dynasties of old are gone. Salary caps have brought parity into the league and almost no one gives the ’Hawks a chance to repeat as NHL champions.
However, they still have one of the best one-two offensive punches in Kane and Toews and a rising superstar in Duncan Keith, who won his first Norris Trophy as the league’s best defenseman. Keith also won a gold medal with Canada at this year’s Vancouver Olympics.
Washington, Pittsburgh, Stanley Cup runners-up Philadelphia and Detroit all have a chance at making long runs through the postseason.
Detroit is the NHL’s model franchise, averaging a league-best 51.4 wins per season over the past five years.
However, for the first time in over a quarter century, they are going to have to get used to not having hall-of-fame player and front office guru Steve Yzerman in their organization. Yzerman left in the summer to take the job as GM of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Edmonton Oilers youth movement continues as they used the first-overall pick in the entry draft to take Canadian Taylor Hall.
Fresh off his second-straight MVP of the Memorial Cup tournament to decide the top junior team in Canada, Hall has led his Windsor Spitfires to consecutive national titles.
fearless
The Montreal Canadiens also have a star in the making in their fearless puck moving defenseman PK Subban.
The 21-year-old Subban, who plays like he has ice in his veins, will be asked to take on a more prominent role in 2010-2011 because of the early-season absence of Russian veteran Andrei Markov due to injury.
Crosby and Ovechkin have yet to meet in a Stanley Cup final, but this year’s outdoor game will pit the league’s two hottest stars against each other.
This will be the NHL’s fifth outdoor game since 2003, when the Canadiens met the Oilers at a frigid Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton.
Ovechkin has collected the lion’s share of the league’s top individual awards over the last few seasons, but Crosby has had more team success.
Ovechkin has won the Ted Lindsay Award for three straight years as the league’s most outstanding player as chosen by his peers and has been a first-team all star for the past five years.
Crosby scored the overtime winner against the US to lift Canada to a gold medal at the Vancouver Games and captained the Penguins to a Stanley Cup championship last year.
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