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The Opening Faceoff: Team CTN ready to take on the NHL's best

Thursday, 01.24.2008 / 9:00 AM / Crashing the Net

By Shawn P. Roarke - NHL.com Senior Managing Editor


Pretty women out walkin' with gorillas down my street
From my window, I'm starin' while my coffee goes cold
Look over there
Where?
There!
There's a lady that I used to know
She's married now or engaged or somethin', so I'm told
Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
Cause if my eyes don't deceive me
There's something going wrong around here
Tonight's the night when I go to all the parties down my street
I wash my hair and I kid myself I look really smooth
Look over there
Where?
There!
Here comes Jeannie with her new boyfriend
They say that looks don't count for much and so there goes your proof

Is She Really Going Out With Him? Joe Jackson

Last season, Crashing the Net introduced, to much fanfare, the fictitious First Annual CTN Challenge Cup before the 2007 All-Star Game.

CTN picked a team of non-selected all-stars who would challenge the winner of the 2007 All-Star Game and, hopefully, beat them in a traditional game. CTN served as the GM of the team, picking the coaches and the players, even setting the lines. It was well-received and engendered much chatter from the CTN community in the following weeks.

So, why abandon a good thing, right? Therefore, welcome to the Second Annual CTN Challenge Cup.

Once again, CTN scours the refuse pile of All-Star snubs and finds 20 players to form a team that could give either the Eastern Conference or the Western Conference a run for its money.

How, you ask, does Joe Jackson’s Is She Really Going Out With Him? fit into all of this? A good question. Let’s just say that CTN will use it as part of the pre-game soundtrack – full of songs about rejection and heartbreak -- to get his so-called also-rans in the mood to beat the All-Stars.

Speaking of music, last year CTN had Dallas-area legends Pantera as the musical talent for the Challenge Cup, adding a little local flavor to the proceedings. So, staying in the local vein this time around, CTN will have Atlanta-based thrashers -- get it? -- Mastodon play both during intermission and after the game.

If you have not heard their most recent disc Blood Mountain and you like fast, hard-core metal check it out. Also, their second full-length album Leviathan, released back in 2004, is a must-listen – a concept album about the hunt for Moby Dick that will just blow the listener away. Plus, this band kicks you know what live. So, we’ll have that going for us.

But, now onto the more important stuff: the actual makeup of CTN’s Challenge Cup roster.

The Opening Faceoff

First off, before the players are revealed, they will need coaches to give them a game plan and prepare them properly to face the theoretical best team on the planet.

Detroit’s Mike Babcock, San Jose’s Ron Wilson, Ottawa’s John Paddock and New Jersey’s Brent Sutter are unavailable because of their duties with the All-Star teams. That’s OK, though, because CTN wouldn’t have picked any of those as part of his staff. OK, well maybe CTN would have tapped Sutter, but it’s OK.

CTN would be happy to name Jacques Lemaire the head coach again after he served in that capacity last year, but CTN also believes in spreading around the honor of coaching this team, much in the same way Team Canada used to feel about the World Junior Championship job.

So, CTN will move on and select Ken Hitchcock to be the head man this time around. Hitch has a Stanley Cup title under his belt and has quickly and quietly turned the Columbus Blue Jackets into a respected franchise. He’s the man for this job. His assistants are Boston’s Claude Julien and Andy Murray of the St. Louis Blues.

Now, we can move on to the important part of this exercise – the players that will actually form the CTN All-Star Team that will take on and beat the world’s best collection of hockey talent.


Goalies

Thomas
If CTN is going to play the rejection theme, than there might not be a more appropriate goalie to start than Boston’s Tim Thomas, that was until he was named as a replacement for Martin Brodeur. Columbus goalie Pascal Leclaire, the backup in CTN’s original plan, now gets the starting nod. Here’s another guy used to facing a lot of rubber who is also used to being passed over for attention since his arrival on the NHL scene. Dallas’ Mike Smith would be the backup. He is having a very good year and few people know about it. Appearing in this game might change all that for the better.


Defensemen

You can’t win a game against a talented offensive team without being able to score yourself. And that scoring has to come from a variety of sources. As a result, CTN made sure his blue line was balanced between stay-at-home types and offensive defensemen. Without bragging, CTN thinks he has hit a home run here. Detroit’s Brian Rafalski is a points machine that also happens to be very sound in his own end. Washington’s Mike green is having a special season on the offensive side of the puck and has developed into Washington’s most dangerous offensive weapon after Alex Ovechkin. New Jersey’s Paul Martin, meanwhile, is a younger version of Rafalski. He can move the puck fluidly, handle PP quarterback chores and, as a Devil, is fundamentally sound in the defensive half. But even CTN’s shut-down defenders are no slouches offensively. Both Ottawa’s Wade Redden and Minnesota’s Brent Burns have more than 25 points each. CTN’s true defensive defenseman is Montreal’s Mike Komisarek and he is the epitome of what a stay-at-home guy should be. He has just a dozen points, but is near the top of the League in both hits and blocked shots. He will put the fear of God into the opponents’ top offensive players.

Rafalski
Here is how CTN sees them paired:

Rafalski-Redden
Green-Burns
Martin-Komisarek


Forwards

As all CTN aficionados know, CTN is a defense-first guy, believing that offense might win fans, but defense wins titles. So, there will be a defensively responsible theme to the selections here, but CTN is not fool enough to believe that he can win by simply throwing the shackles on the all-stars populating the team faced in the CTN Challenge Cup. No, there will be a need to score and CTN believes he has the players to win a shootout if it devolves in that direction. But CTN also believes he has the two-way skill to win a more conventional game.

Parise
CTN’s top line can score with anyone. It’s a crime that Kristian Huselius did not make the Western Conference All-Star Team. But the West’s loss is CTN’s gain and we’ll happily take his opportunistic scoring ways. He highlights a left flank that has no problem finding the net. Vancouver’s Daniel Sedin (possibly facing his brother Henrik, who made the West team) is approaching the 30-goal plateau. Plus, CTN adds Zach Parise, one of the most underrated young players in the game. He leads New Jersey in goals and has the ability to score from anywhere in the offensive zone. Heck, Dustin Brown of Los Angeles, the fourth-line left winger, is scoring once every two games and still finds time to plaster guys all over the place with his trademark checking game.

In the middle, it is all about size. Sure, smallish centers have found a place in the new NHL, but CTN still has a fondness for pivots that look – and play – more like linebackers. And, you won’t find a collection of physical, yet gifted, centers that can rival this group: Toronto’s Mats Sundin, Florida’s Olli Jokinen, Buffalo’s Tim Connolly and Carolina’s Rod Brind’Amour. As a group, this quartet has no problem distributing the puck, but also has a desire to drive the net and create offense by taking on defensemen and initiating a cycle. Part of CTN’s plan will be to wear down the other team with a never-ending physical presence spread through four lines. This collection of pivots makes that possible.

The right wings for CTN, aside from St. Louis’ Brad Boyes, are the old-guard. Shane Doan of the Phoenix Coyotes and Minnesota’s Brian Rolston are both on the wrong side of 30. Dan Cleary is just 29, but has been in the League for a decade already. Yet, they are all playing at an elite level, especially Cleary who is enjoying a breakout portion of his career after years of struggles.

Huselius
Here is how CTN would put together the lines to maximize the skills present among the forwards:

Huselius-Sundin-Boyes
D. Sedin-Jokinen-Doan
Parise-Brind’Amour-Cleary
Brown-Connolly-Rolston

So, there is the 2008 CTN All-Star Team. We’ve got winners of Sunday night’s game. And, whichever team it is that emerges victorious Sunday better be prepared for a stiff challenge from the CTN All-Stars. Bring it on!



The Opening Faceoff | The Breakaway | The Penalty Box

 

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