Notebook: An old friend in the booth, Benn’s return, NCAA-CHL stuff, Nate Danielson, and thoughts on reviews
Happy Tuesday, hopefully you enjoy some of my random musings.
Happy Tuesday.
Busy day at the rink(s) today for me between morning in Detroit, featuring the Red Wings and Kraken, making a bunch of calls on other things, taking the kids to learn-to-skate lessons, then rushing back downtown to watch a 4-2 win for Detroit.
South of here, down in Texas, Dallas Stars captain Jamie Benn made his season debut after having surgery to repair a collapsed lung in preseason.
So, busy news days, let’s hop through topics, both on and off the ice, that are on my mind today.
I had lunch today with my good friend Everett Fitzhugh, who happens to be the play-by-play voice of the Kraken.
Everett and I have a friendship dating back to our days as students at Bowling Green State University, when he was one of the hockey broadcasters and I covered the team for the school paper, The BG News.
For two seasons Everett and I carpooled across the Midwest for CCHA hockey. See at BG, the team bus only had room for the play-by-play broadcaster, so if a analyst wanted to make it to the game, they had to find a way to get there.
This is where my old 1993 Buick LeSabre - which I had bought for $500 - came in handy, with Everett and I splitting the drive places like Kalamazoo, South Bend, and East Lansing.
At one point, on our way back from Kalamazoo, I got pulled over for speeding. Fun times.
So it’s always fun for me when Seattle comes to town, because I get to reconnect with an old friend and we can trade old college stories of covering hockey.
It’s also one of those things that’s a good reminder of how, in life, things can be very weird and you never have any idea how much someone might circle back into your life.
Moral of the story, I guess, is be kind to people. Build those friendships, you never know if somehow a decade later you’ll be grabbing lunch with them when they are traveling as the voice of an NHL team.
OK, to the situation in Dallas, where Benn made his return to the lineup for the Stars games against the New York Islanders.
When Benn was injured, I wrote a piece over in D Magazine about how the Stars next captain would step up during this stretch. Not just not on the ice, but off of it where someone would emerge as the voice that connects the room with Benn, the Stars spiritual leader for more than a decade, absent.
And honestly, I would be stunned now if Mikko Rantanen isn’t the next captain of the Stars.
We are already knew Rantanen was unlike anything the Stars had had before at forward, he’s a force of a nature, but his ability to unify a group away from the ice and his voice has spoken volumes according to those in the know.
It’s also worth taking a quick note to acknowledge here what Benn has meant to the Stars and the perception that I, personally, don’t like him — which someone told me on one of the social media sites earlier this week.
Two things can be true. I’ve been critical of Benn, I also have immense respect for what he’s done in his career, and I think he’s a good case study in how a shy personality can be the ideal in-the-room captain, but struggle to connect with the outside world.
Benn is very much like many of, myself included, who act one way and feel comfortable with our chosen group, but struggle with immense shyness when we are uncomfortable. Personally, I can seem stand-offish or aloof when I don’t know someone, but as I feel more comfortable or open in a relationship I become a completely different person.
That’s who Benn is, in fact, when I wrote my book he was super helpful taking time to sit down with me and had even been open to doing the foreword of the book if Mike Modano wasn’t available.
Anywho, that’s just some food for thought on things, let’s get to some more on-ice/hockey things.
I find the NCAA/CHL dynamic rather fascinating right now, it’s like living through a brave new world right now and I don’t think anyone has all the answers of where this is or isn’t going.
I caught up with Red Wings rookie Nate Danielson about this on Tuesday morning, who went through the WHL and in another world might have considered the NCAA route for his 19-year-old season.
“I think it would have been something I would have looked at pretty closely,” Danielson said. “I think it probably would have been a better step for me, would have made me better for the pro game earlier.”
Why?
“I think the 19-year-old season is about the time you are ready to jump up (in the WHL),” Danielson said. “I think there’s something to be said about going from being one of the oldest guys, graduating from that, and getting a more physical challenge in college.”
Speaking of Danielson, he had the best game of his young NHL career on Tuesday.
He scored his first career goal in the second period, seemingly scored another, and also set up Emmitt Finnie with an assist.
Danielson’s would-be second goal was a beauty, he tracked down a bouncing puck and danced a Kraken defender before leaving Seattle goalie Joey Daccord flat-footed on the power drive to the net.
The play, however, was ruled offside after a lengthy review.
Here’s my thing on replay and getting it right — we need a time limit. If you can’t figure out the call on a replay in two minutes, then the play needs to stand.
Reviews should be about the spirit of the thing, and unfortunately we lost a pretty cool moment because of the technicality of it all.
And that’s the notes for today. Not sure if people like or dislike this format, but I’m curios of your thoughts. It’s something I enjoyed doing and will probably do more often when I have a bunch of random notes that don’t fit well into one story.