The American Hockey League and the CBC television network have announced a one-year broadcasting deal that will see the network broadcast ten games during the upcoming 2010-2011 season.

The games are going to air on Sunday afternoons and will feature affiliates from the six Canadian NHL teams. The games will also be streamed live and available on demand on the CBC Sports website.

October 17 marks the first game for the broadcast schedule. The Toronto Marlies host the Binghamton Senators at 1 pm.

“We’re tremendously excited that CBC, with its distinguished excellence in hockey broadcasting, will be helping us celebrate our historic 75th anniversary this season,” said David Andrews, president and CEO of the American Hockey League.

The deal is tremendous news for those looking for a way to check out more hockey action. The AHL puts on a good show and the ten game schedule for the CBC is a nice start. If the ratings are good, we can probably look forward to more games making the broadcast schedule the following year. If the ratings are not so good, the CBC hasn’t committed beyond the one year. Sounds like a win-win.

While many may see the ten game schedule as not being enough, we have to realize that things have to start somewhere. The CBC isn’t suddenly going to open its doors to a full schedule when the audience isn’t proven yet. And they certainly aren’t going to gamble on other leagues like one commenter at the CBC website suggested when he or she “requested” coverage of the Swedish Elite League.

So again, it’s a good start. We can look forward to watching some AHL games on a reputable network that knows how to broadcast hockey. Here’s hoping this is just the beginning of exposing more Canadians to brands of hockey that go beyond the National Hockey League.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

Former Vancouver Canucks forward Pavol Demitra has signed a contract with Yaroslavl of the KHL, ESPN is reporting.

The 35-year-old Slovakian player may not suit up for another NHL team in his career, so his tenure with the Canucks may go down as his last stop in the National Hockey League. The deal with Yaroslavl is for one year.

Demitra spent the last two seasons with the Canucks. He struggled last season but managed 53 points in 2008-2009. Throughout his career in the NHL, Demitra skated for Ottawa, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Minnesota, and Vancouver. He managed 304 goals and 464 helpers.

Demitra may not have endured himself to Canucks fans over the least year, but he sure showed his stuff when he suited up for Slovakia in the Olympics. He was a dominant player, skating like a man possessed and showing passion and drive with every shift.

Health issues were almost constant, too, and Demitra never seemed to be a player who reached his full potential with any single club.

In any event, Demitra belongs to the KHL now. Here’s hoping he regains some of his passion for the game and makes an impact for Yaroslavl in some capacity.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

Evgeni Nabokov is the latest big name NHLer to head to Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League. The KHL’s SKA St. Petersburg signed Nabby to a four year deal worth $24 million.

Nabokov is coming off of one of his best NHL seasons in his career. He went 44-16-10 on the Sharks, which admittedly was partly due to having such a superior squad skating in front of him. Nevertheless, Nabokov posted a 2.43 GAA and .922 save percentage.

Prior to signing in the KHL, Nabokov spent 10 seasons with the Sharks in the National Hockey League. He was drafted by the team in 1994 and won the Calder Trophy in the 2000-2001 season. Named an All-Star in 2007-2008, Nabokov suited up for Team Russia at the Vancouver Olympics earlier this year and posted a 4.16 GAA in the process.

When Nabokov arrives in SKA St. Petersburg, he’ll have the company of some other former NHLers. Sergei Zubov, Darius Kasparaitis, Alexei Yashin, and Sergei Brylin all play for the club.

In context, the deal works out well for both the KHL and the Sharks. San Jose has the opportunity to move on to a goaltender who can produce when it counts. Nabokov, for all of his statistical success, looked a little shaky at times in the post-season and didn’t step it up when the chips were down for the Sharks. Getting swept by the Blackhawks may well have been the nail in the coffin.

It is probable that Nabby’s salary demands just didn’t match his level of play in the NHL anymore. In light of this, he may have chosen to go where the money was like other players are starting to do. Regardless, Nabokov will probably enjoy some success in the KHL. If nothing else, he’ll enjoy a bigger paycheque.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

Tuesday was a history-making day for the great sport of hockey as Angela James and Cammi Granato were inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Granato and James will be the first women to be in the Hall. They’ll be formally inducted on November 8.

James was a Canadian scoring superstar and played for Canada at the first women’s hockey championships. She was Canada’s dominant female player throughout the 70s and 80s, blazing a trail for other Canadian players to follow. James was often considered the female Wayne Gretzky, remaining as top scorer for eight seasons and winning the MVP award six times in the Central Ontario Women’s League. She also was MVP at eight Canadian championships.

Granato is the only woman to participate in each of the first nine women’s world championships sanctioned by the IIHF. She is the all-time leader in goals and points for the United States in world championships and was Eastern College Athletic Conference player of the year three straight seasons for Providence College from 1991 to 1993.

Dino Ciccarelli will also be inducted to the Hall of Fame in November as a player. His accomplishments made him one of the players that many considered as “overlooked.” After breaking his leg during his second year of junior and being told he’d never lace the skates again, Ciccarelli proved them all wrong by playing for 19 NHL seasons. He finished his career with 608 goals and 592 assists over those seasons.

In the builder category, Detroit Red Wings executive Jim Devellano and Calgary Flames founding member Daryl “Doc” Seaman will be entered.

The committee, 18 males, voted on Tuesday. Women were given their own player category for the first time this year and it was clear that this should have been done ages ago. The Hall has a maximum of two females that they can put in each year, so we can expect a few more inductees in the coming classes as the great women of the game are finally honoured properly.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

Dominik Hasek has signed a one-year contract with Spartak Moscow of the Kontinental Hockey League.

The 45-year-old netminder actually came out of “retirement” last year to play for Pardubice in the Czech league. After winning nearly every award imaginable in the game of hockey, Hasek pulled off a .921 save percentage and helped Pardubice win its first league title in 16 seasons.

Hasek’s year-by-year outlook continues with his latest foray into international play. “In the last five years I have been playing I always signed one-year deals,” Hasek told Yahoo!’s Dmitry Chesnokov. “And after this season I will see how I feel, what I can do. But it also depends on the organization and what they think about me. I just take it year by year.”

Hasek even addressed rumours of his return to the National Hockey League, built in part out of the ground that Steve Yzerman is laying down in Tampa. According to Hasek, he was asked to join the Lightning by Yzerman and had to turn him down - for now. “Maybe in the future. The weather is always nice over there. At least I would think about it. But it just won’t happen this year,” he said.

Should Hasek actually return to the NHL, he’d surpass Moe Roberts’ record as oldest goaltender to play the game. It’s entirely possible for Dom to pull it off, as he’s one of the most athletic and physically gifted players in all of modern sports. When one considers that Johnny Bower, Lester Patrick and Jacques Plant all suited up for their final playoff games at age 44, it’s hard to rule out Hasek.

For the Dominator, it’s about the love of the game.

“It’s not about trophies,” Hasek told Chesnokov. “It doesn’t matter which trophies I won in the past. It doesn’t matter to me. I love hockey. I love this game. And for me to play for a new team in a new league is a great opportunity and a great challenge. I am very excited about it. The love for hockey is what is driving me.”

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

With Corey Perry as the lone Olympian on the Canadian squad, the team fell to the Russians in the World Hockey Championships on Thursday. The Russians took the victory in the quarterfinal matchup by a final score of 5-2.

The game drew immediate comparisons to the last time the Canadians and Russians met. The Olympic results were significantly different, however, with the Canadians pulling off the 7-3 victory on February 24. Perry scored two goals in that contest, but was in the penalty box for two key Russian goals on Thursday’s loss.

The Russians had a total of 14 Olympians on their team, including Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Evgeni Malkin. He popped in two goals in the game and goalie Semyon Varlamov made 25 saves.

The Russians will now head on to face the Germans in the semifinals and will put their seven-game winning streak to the test as they seek their 26th world title.

As for Canada, they were eliminated in the quarterfinals for the first time since 2002. The loss has to hurt, but it can also serve as a growing experience for many of the team’s younger players. These players will only learn from the experience and from the sting of the loss and it will build character as time goes by.

“You want to win and it’s disappointing when you don’t,” said forward Steven Stamkos. “It’s a bitter taste.”

That bitter taste is a little sweeter for Canadian fans when they consider the tremendous talent that the team has and will have for the next several years. Players like Stamkos and John Tavares will continue to cause trouble for opposing teams and they will grow with more experience.

Tavares will especially grow from the tournament. He put his tournament-leading seventh goal in the net on Thursday and should be one of Canada’s favoured players in the Olympics when they reach Sochi in four years. For the time being, this experience is the sort of thing that can’t simply be taught in a classroom.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

HC Dynamo Moscow isn’t the first KHL team to fold up this season, but it is the most significant. For fans, news that the Moscow team in the Bobrov Division in the Kontinental Hockey League is merging with HC MVD is heartbreaking.

“In Russia, they’re probably the same as Montreal - it’s a historic team, a great organization,” Alex Ovechkin said. “I can’t believe there’s going to be no more Dynamo. It’s too bad.”

Ovechkin is just one of several notable NHLers who spent time with HC Dynamo Moscow. Sergei Gonchar, Alexei Kovalev, Viktor Kozlov, and others also played for the club.

HC Moscow Dynamo came into existence in 1946. The team has won nine national titles, two Spengler Cups and one IIHF European Champions Cup. They are one of the most elite teams in Russian hockey history.

Dmitry Chesnokov, a Russian journalist working with Yahoo!, first broke the story earlier this week. News of the team’s financial condition and the resulting merger hit the Russian fans hard, but the team has been sliding downhill for months. With a disappointing post-season performance, several of the team’s top players were sent away and the entire coaching staff was fired at season’s end.

Dynamo captain and two time NHL All-Star Alexei Zhitnik told Chesnokov that the team’s players were sent away with instructions to “stay in touch” with respect to what was going to happen.

So what was the key problem?

“Hockey in Russia is not business but is more of a social program,” explains Chesnokov. “People pay between $5 and $20 to see a game. The bulk of the money comes from sponsorships. And Dynamo’s sponsors decided not to invest in the team anymore. Dynamo’s revenues cannot sustain the expenses the team has. As strange as it sounds, the oldest club in Russia does not even have its own arena.”

Chesnokov believes that the structure of the KHL can leave key franchises out in the open. “The KHL is different from the NHL in that the league does not represent individual clubs, the league doesn’t really have an interest in keeping certain clubs in the league. If a club goes under, so be it. That’s the philosophy,” he said.

There is also the possibility that HC Moscow Dynamo won’t merge with HC MVD. This is largely due to HC MVD’s success in the post-season, as they continue to compete for the Gagarin Cup against AK Bars Kazan. Unfortunately, if the merger doesn’t go through, HC Moscow Dynamo could just disappear.

For the fans, there’s a sliver of optimism as they look for answers. For Chesnokov, the glory days of HC Moscow Dynamo are finished. “The talk is to try and save the brand, but it is proving to be impossible,” Chesnokov said. “A Dynamo-MVD team is not Dynamo. It is a new team with new rules and traditions. The logo will change. The brand is as good as dead.”

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

Former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson wants to meet with IOC head Jacques Rogge to talk to him about the state of women’s hockey. And she’s already met with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to help solidify real competition in the sport.

Clarkson, who will be handing out the trophy named after her in the Stanley Cup-ish tourney in women’s hockey, said that she was “enraged” when she read Rogge’s comments regarding the future of women’s hockey as an Olympic sport. “We’ve been playing hockey since the late 19th century. Women were playing it with long skirts. Surely we don’t have to prove anymore that we can play hockey,” she said.

The problem with Rogge arose when the IOC boss effectively threatened the future of women’s hockey as an Olympic event by saying it had to become more competitive in order to remain part of the Games.

“That’s the way you do it by encouraging it. Not by saying, gee I think maybe some of you aren’t good enough and so we’ll close it off. People feel they can do that to women sometimes. And I think it’s kind of brute force being used against women which I kind of resent and I think most women too,” said Clarkson regarding the comments.

Clarkson’s visit with Bettman, which took place back in January, laid some important ground work to get women’s hockey some sponsorship and financial support. “In order to be successful you have to go to people that have made it work before and that’s why we went to the NHL and that’s why they were first choice and we really believe they’re the future of the game,” Clarkson said.

Along with players like Mississauga Chiefs goalie Sami Jo Small, Clarkson said that the key to growth in the sport is exposure. And there’s a great pool of supporters behind the scenes, too, including Bob Nicholson and others.

But to make it to the next level competitively, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League needs to have some money behind it. The plan, which was presented to Bettman, is to start paying coaches and general managers. There’s also a salary of $35,000 set aside for players. The CWHL is hoping to flesh out a league with six teams, all of which are within driving distance of one another.

By creating a professional league, women would finally have a place to compete that involves sponsorship and some big money. As we all know, money talks and a women’s league, with the right backing and right sponsors, could make some real waves in Canada and even in some key American markets. The possibility of seeing various Olympians suiting up for some CWHL teams is the icing on the cake.

Small is doing her part by pressuring the NHL. “Women’s hockey is not going to go away,” she says. “There’s enough support for female hockey in this country not only from females but from males alike, including someone like Bob Nicholson, that they wouldn’t allow that to happen.”

Whether Bettman will get off his duff to support women’s hockey remains to be seen, but there are a lot of potential partnership possibilities that could give the CWHL a good start in the right direction. Done properly, something of this magnitude could benefit both men’s and women’s hockey considerably.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

World juniors Team Canada captain and Rouyn-Noranda Huskies centre Patrice Cormier has been suspended for the rest of the season by the QMJHL after his vicious elbow on Quebec Remparts defenceman Mikael Tam during a QMJHL game on January 17. The incident left Tam convulsing on the ice in a disturbing scene.

The suspension effectively ends Cormier’s junior career, as he is a 19-year-old and won’t be returning to any sort of junior hockey in any capacity. The responsibility now really falls on the New Jersey Devils to keep the kid playing some kind of hockey until he can come up to the big club.

Tam suffered brain damage and may never lace the skates again. He was rushed off the ice on a stretcher while being held down by his teammates.

“When I was in emergency and I was asking myself where I was, and I didn’t know why I was in this condition, I was scared, very scared,” Tam, 18, said at a news conference Friday. “When I regained consciousness, I had no recollection of what had happened.”

As for Cormier, he took the expected route and said he never meant to hurt Tam. He called the move a “reflex.”

“I never had the intention of hurting anyone,” he said. “But I’m not going to sit here and say I didn’t do anything. You can clearly see that it was an elbow. But it was a reflex. I was only trying to check him. I never had it in my mind to hit Mikael in the head.”

Cormier had been in trouble for elbowing before, having hit Sweden’s Anton Rodin with a similar blow to the mouth in an exhibition game ahead of the world juniors in December.

Cormier is already developing quite a reputation and, at the ripe age of 19, will certainly need to cool things down a little. He’s a physical player, but there’s no room in hockey for vicious, disgusting elbows. While Cormier perhaps didn’t mean to hurt Tam, there’s no question that his play is over that edge and that his actions put other players at risk on the ice.

It’s sad to see such stuff happening at the beginning of someone’s hockey career. Tam’s career may be over due to carelessness and negligence and, like many, I tend to think that the suspension wasn’t enough.

Canada’s junior hockey leagues are developing quite a reputation around the world for their dangerous physical play and a lot of these young guys are learning bad habits early. Throwing the book at a star player like Cormier was the right move, but I can’t help but think more of a message should have been sent.

As it stands now, the Devils are chomping at the bit to get their player and all Cormier has to do to lace the skates in the bigs is wait. Ironically, that’s all Tam and his family can do too.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

Ask Steve Sarty, the athletics director of Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, and he’ll tell you that Mike Danton is fitting in as well any any student adjusting to academic life. Attending sociology lectures and taking classes just like anyone else, Danton is in the process of piecing his life back together.

The 29-year-old’s story, however, is anything but normal. His relationship with David Frost well-documented and his five years spent in an American jail for conspiring to murder Frost (or his own father, depending on the narrative you subscribe to), Danton’s story is disturbing to say the least.

And now, on top of it all, Danton is ready to skate again and join the Saint Mary’s Huskies.

To say that opinion is divided on this issue would be an understatement. Comments on The Hockey News pertaining to this issue lean on politics, with some calling out the “liberal scum” who applaud Danton’s return to the ice and others cheerleading him all the way back to the National Hockey League.

Toronto Star writer David Cox suggests that the notion of allowing Danton the chance to return to hockey is “embarrassing.”

Danton hasn’t been on the ice in five and a half years, while his academic appearance at Saint Mary’s doesn’t appear to be ruffling any feathers. Even Cox applauded his return to his studies, charting it as a significant way to get back into society.

“He’s not an imposing figure. Hockey has created a controversy, but the hockey is a secondary thing. He wants to attend university,” said Sarty. “He has an affiliation and desire to play hockey, yes, and being a member of a team should be part of his reintegration.”

One of the leading arguments Cox brings to justify his case against Danton’s second chance is that of age and NHL experience, but Sarty’s comments seem to negate this line of attack. “Some disagree with it (the difference in age between varsity hockey players and typical freshmen) but we didn’t invent the process. The CIS rules have no age limit on hockey players. I know of other schools that have ex-pros on the roster,” he said.

So with no age limit on hockey players in the CIS (Canadian Interuniversity Sport) guidelines, Cox’s argument really has no legs in this regard. This is especially reinforced in light of the fact that the senior Horse Lake Thunder hockey club recruited Theo Fleury and Gino Odjick to give their club a chance at contention only a few years ago.

What about the idea that Danton’s arrival on the Huskies would taint the integrity of the club? After all, few people or organizations want to be affiliated with a convicted criminal.

Granted this is a tougher one to justify, as people are going to have their opinions on this sort of thing regardless of the facts. It essentially comes down to whether or not there’s a strong enough belief in second chances. Danton’s life has not been easy; he was taken advantage of by a cruel manipulator from the opening moments of his career and was essentially brainwashed.

While Danton holds responsibility for his crimes, he also served his time and paid his debt to society. Isn’t it time to let him heal properly? Couldn’t allowing Danton back on the ice serve to do more good than harm? Wouldn’t it be possible for a return to hockey to help heal some of Danton’s family wounds?

Danton is still on parole and it will be another couple of weeks before he’ll be on the ice. He won’t be interviewed individually due to an order from Corrections Canada, but his support system will be evaluated before he can make any sort of return to the game he loves so much.

With Corrections Canada watching him like a hawk and a new, valuable, moral support system in place, I think it’s fair to say that Danton’s second chance is off on good footing. In my humble opinion, the young man deserves a chance to play hockey. Other players in similar situations would have ditched the sport in light of the obstacles they’d face, but Danton’s strongest desire has always been to lace the skates.

As a society, we ought to admire that kind of dedication - even in the most unlikely or unconventional of places.

Posted by Jordan “Liberal Scum” Richardson.