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Amid a somber past and uncertain future, the NHL is set to begin its 87th season.
The New Jersey
Devils begin defense of their latest Stanley Cup championship on Wednesday night
against the Boston Bruins in a rematch of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal
series.
It's one of three games on opening night, with the Dallas Stars hosting the
Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in another playoff rematch and the Minnesota Wild taking
on the Chicago Blackhawks.
The season opens three nights after Atlanta Thrashers center Dan Snyder died of massive head injuries suffered in a one-car accident involving All-Star teammate Dany Heatley. Ticketmaster
Facing a charge of vehicular homicide and recovering from a fractured jaw and torn knee ligaments, Heatley received permission from a judge to attend Snyder's funeral on Friday.
Their once-promising season now in doubt, the Thrashers begin play Thursday against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
"Playing actually gives the players strength," Atlanta general manager Don Waddell said. "The Snyder family wants us to play Thursday. It's not going to be easy, but we will find a way to move on. I think (playing) helps all of us to move forward."
Looming at the conclusion of the season is the end of the league's collective bargaining agreement with the NHL Players' Association. The pact actually expires on September 15, 2004, when many believe the sport will be hit with its second work stoppage in a decade. Ticketmaster
A week before opening night, players and owners held their first formal negotiating session, although NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow have been meeting informally for months.
"While it was a positive and constructive step to get together more formally than we have in the past, there are many more such steps ahead of us. And I prefer they occur behind the scenes, where they belong, so the competition on the ice can get the attention it deserves," Bettman said.
But with words like armageddon being tossed around like a bucket of practice pucks, the CBA will loom over the NHL season unless and until labor peace can be achieved. Ticketmaster
"Obviously, it's not a good situation," said 40-year-old Dave Andreychuk, the captain of the Tampa Bay Lightning. "Nobody wants to see (a work stoppage) happen, and it's always looming over in the corner that we may not be playing hockey. And that scares me more then anything else."
So get familiar with terms like "cost certainty," which the owners insist they must have, and "salary cap," which the players insist the owners will not get.
"The fans that love hockey are just going to want it to get done," Minnesota Wild center Jim Dowd said. "Hockey, especially in the U.S., it's either you love it or you're really not interested, so I think most of the fans are the same as us (players), just hoping something gets done."
While some insist labor uncertainty will have no impact on the 2003-04 season, evidence suggests it already has.
The free agent signing period lacked its typical frenzy as tradtionally free-spending teams like the Dallas Stars sat it out. The Western Conference regular-season champions watched long-time captain Derian Hatcher jump to Detroit, where he was one of a select group of players who struck it rich this summer.
No one took a more substantial pay cut than Paul Kariya, who signed a one-year, $1.2 million contract with the Colorado Avalanche - where he was reunited with former linemate Teemu Selanne - after he was paid $10 million last season with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
The addition of two perennial All-Stars to a team coming off an unprecedented ninth consecutive division title instantly made the Avalanche a Stanley Cup favorite. But for the first time since 1995, Colorado starts a season without Patrick Roy.
David Aebischer and rookie Philippe Sauve have the unenviable task of replacing the future Hall of Fame goaltender, who retired not long after the Avalanche were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the Wild.
While Roy is gone, Dominik Hasek is back. Ticketmaster
Hasek ended his one-year retirement and returned to the Red Wings, who also added Hatcher and Ray Whitney but lost Sergei Fedorov to the Ducks and have an extra $8-million-a-year goalie sitting around in Curtis Joseph.
While Colorado and Detroit are picked annually to contend for the Stanley Cup, the defending Western Conference champions play in Anaheim, where general manager Bryan Murray replaced Kariya and free agent Adam Oates with Fedorov and Vaclav Prospal.
Murray also made sure to re-sign goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy after backstopping the Ducks to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in their 10-year history.
On Wednesday, Anaheim faces Dallas, the team it eliminated in six games in the conference semifinals.
After losing Hatcher and trading away fellow defenseman Darryl Sydor, the Stars traded for former Phoenix Coyotes captain Teppo Numminen and signed 37-year-old Don Sweeney. They also return goalie Marty Turco, who last season recorded the lowest goals-against average in the NHL's modern era, as well as scoring threats Mike Modano and Bill Guerin.
Giguere and the Ducks were beaten in the Stanley Cup Finals by the Devils, who are coming off their third championship in nine years.
Half of New Jersey's trademark defense has moved on - Ken Daneyko retired and Oleg Tverdovsky and Richard Smehlik were not re-signed - but New Jersey returns its nucleus in goalie Martin Brodeur and defenseman Scott Stevens.
"Our core is still there with Scott Stevens, Scott Niedermayer, Brian Rafalski and Colin White. The top four guys are there. ... I don't think it's going to be that big of a change," said Brodeur, who finally won an elusive Vezina Trophy and inherits the title as the NHL's best goalie now that Roy has retired.
While the Devils are working in three new players on defense, the Wild have holes to fill up front.
All-Star Marian Gaborik and Pascal Dupuis, the team's top two scorers last season, remain unsigned. And Cliff Ronning, who was third on the club with 48 points, is a free agent.
But Minnesota still relies on coach Jacques Lemaire's defense-first system that carried it all the way to the conference finals in the franchise's third year of existence. And the Wild host a Blackhawks' team that missed the playoffs last season and could feature as many as six rookies, including Calder Trophy candidate Tuomo Ruutu.
Brodeur, Giguere, Turco and the other goalies playing Wednesday night will be adhering to the NHL's new standards that reduce the size of key pieces of goaltending equipment.
Brodeur supports the crackdown, but some goalies maintain it will lead to more injuries as pads and other equipment get smaller.
"We understand very clearly the difference between protecting a goaltender from injury and helping the goaltender protect the area of the net from a goal," Bettman said.
Goalies whose equipment is found to be in violation of the new standards will be fined $25,000.
While the modifications to goalie equipment will be almost imperceptible to the average fan, a more obvious change involves the jerseys that cover the equipment. For the first time since the 1970-71 season, home teams will wear their dark or third jerseys.
That means the Edmonton Oilers will be clad in their blue jerseys when they host the Montreal Canadiens on November 22 in the first outdoor regular-season game in NHL history. A crowd of 55,000 is expected at Commonwealth Stadium.