By signing a one-year, $750,000 deal with the Phoenix Coyotes, forward Eric Belanger will look to do the near-impossible this season and provide even more bite to a team that took the NHL by storm last year.
That isn’t due to the Coyotes already being maxed out talent-wise (although they are doing okay in that department). It’s due to how, up until now, the 32-year-old’s crowning achievement was his ability to return to game action soon after losing a handful of teeth in a playoff game against the Montreal Canadiens last spring. Not exactly the kind of selfless act on which you would want to base a career, unless your aim is to eventually become some toothless freak show of a hockey player ironically nicknamed “Sharky” – but it was impressively gutsy, nonetheless.
Needless to say, he’ll be looking to keep the play away from the general vicinity of his teeth and battle-worn face from here on out, because, apparently, contrary to popular belief, that kind of self-sacrifice just isn’t appreciated within the sport.
There is no other way to explain it as, last month, the Washington Capitals sought to repay Belanger for his contribution to D.C.’s dental industry with a reported one-year, $1.8-million contract but reneged on it soon thereafter. Admittedly it was a verbal agreement between the two sides that dissolved when a trade the Caps were looking to make fell through what one can only guess was one of the many cracks in former goalie Jose Theodore’s armour.
As a result of the discussions between him and the Caps, Belanger was led to believe that he had a job lined up for this coming season, with the team even going so far as to help him lease a home and enrol his daughters in schools in the area. However, instead of access to the kind of first-class education one should expect in this intellectually advanced nation’s capital, his kids got a first-hand lesson in the perils of business ethics. Belanger was ultimately forced to take his taking-a-stick-to-the-face antics on the road to the desert, and here we are. The Caps have missed out on a chance to remain legitimate contenders and the Coyotes are the beneficiaries of their mistake. What’s worse is that Washington even has $5 million left in cap space. So, they surely could have accommodated Belanger if they so chose.
Belanger provides the type of two-way play that any team would find valuable, most of all the Caps, who, despite their notoriously highly explosive attack, have the holes in their defensive coverage to match. The Caps are sure to be powerhouses in the regular season again, but it’s the Belangers of the NHL that help to push teams to a Stanley Cup championship.
The Capitals may have lost in the first round last year, but anyone that watched the Habs beat Washington knows it was the flukiest of victories in which goalie Jaroslav Halak supernaturally outplayed both Theodore in the first two games (although a cardboard cut-out with one leg ripped off could probably have done the same) and Semyon Varlamov in the last three.
The truth of the matter is that the Capitals were stacked with the likes of Belanger, Scott Walker, and Joe Corvo... all very decent secondary players all acquired at the trade deadline. Halak and the Habs just were not to be denied. Now, Walker won’t be back, Corvo has gone back to the Carolina Hurricanes, and the Caps, due to their being about as dependable as their own inexperienced goaltending, missed out on Belanger. This now means, unless they’re able to trade for a rugged defensive forward, the very unrugged and just plain offensive Alexander Semin will have to pick up the slack in his own zone. That’s about as likely as the Caps winning the Cup this year. Sure, it could happen, but only through a long and arduous reprogramming process. I mean impotency come the playoffs is all the franchise has ever known. Oedipus complex or not, it’s gotten so bad that someone should schedule a sit-down with Freud.
The Caps do have one of the best players in the game in Alexander Ovechkin and two very strong lines, but they missed a chance at a third, which likely will translate into their fourth-straight early exit from the post-season. Unlike the Coyotes at this point, this team is all bark.
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| "Maybe I should get a gold one to replace it... God knows this team will make me rich next year." |
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