Spector on NHL: Veterans cast aside

“He can play in the National Hockey League.”

The speaker was Darcy Regier, that free-spending, bottomless money pit general manager of the Buffalo Sabres. The ‘speakee’ was Ales Kotalik, a player whom — if you watched the Calgary Flames at all over the past couple of seasons — you could not believe Flames GM Jay Feaster had found a way to unload on another NHL team.

“We expect him to come into camp and compete for a position. We won’t buy him out,” Regier said that day at the NHL draft, having swallowed Kotalik in the Robyn Regehr trade, kind of the way you take the throwaway husk with the sweet Taber corn.

And on Monday, long before Regier is to be tasked with his the real, tough roster decisions, across our Blackberry came this news release from the Sabres:

“Buffalo Sabres General Manager Darcy Regier today announced that forward Ales Kotalik and defenseman Shaone Morrisonn have cleared waivers and been assigned to the Rochester Americans (AHL).”

The salient fact is that Kotalik is set to earn $3 million this season, while Morrison is due $2.075 million. The Sabres were over the cap on Monday morning, yet wake up Tuesday with almost a million dollars of wiggle room after that dual transaction.

So money transpired against Kotalik. But what does that say for Owen Nolan, who would have worked for peanuts in Vancouver, having compiled career earnings of $43,387,276, according to the web site hockeyzoneplus.com?

“This is the team I want to play for, and I’m going to give it my all to make it,” Nolan had said in Vancouver, before softening his stance a bit. “If it doesn’t work out here, my goal is to play in the NHL…

“Now, it’s coming down to the end, closer to retirement age. I feel like I still have something in the tank, and could help a team.”

He’ll get that chance. The Canucks released him on Monday, after he had strained a groin, missed a practice, and simply failed to convince management he could be durable enough to help Vancouver down what they hope will be the long road ahead.

Mike Modano recently retired after a discernable lack of interest among the 30 NHL GMs, with no zest out for giving a 41-year-old a chance to play game No, 1,500. Modano call ‘er quits after 1,499 games.

Philadelphia released both Michael Nylander and Adam Mair on Monday, sending 71 years in combined age out into the hockey wilderness. St. Louis farmed out Jonathan Cheechoo on Monday as well.

There was a time when a team like the Dallas Stars would get better by getting older. They would build a nucleus of players like Modano, Sergei Zubov, Joe Nieuwendyk, and Derian Hatcher, and then simply add whatever Mike Keanes, Kirk Mullers or Guy Carbonneaus became available.

Those days, however, are ancient hockey history.

Today, even a former first-round pick with size — like Edmonton defenceman Alex Plante — can’t play if he can’t keep up. He too was sent to the farm in Oklahoma City on Monday, as we reach that point in the pre-season where reality is setting in for young players who were hoped to be ready soon.

Like Toronto’s Joe Colborne, who had only played one full season of pro hockey. It was fair to hope that maybe, just maybe, Colborne would surprise this fall and be ready for third-line duty. But it became increasingly clear that Colborne wasn’t ready for the grind at this level, and if you can’t find consistency at this time of year against largely AHL and junior opponents, you’ll never have it through 82 games in the bigs.

Or over the next 10 days, when teams begin to get their top players ready for the season.

In Vancouver, none of Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Roberto Luongo, Dan Hamhuis, Alex Burrows, Manny Malhotra, Kevin Bieksa or Alex Edler have dressed for a pre-season game yet.

“We played 107 games last season,” assistant GM Laurence Gilman told Iain MacIntyre of the Vancouver Sun. “Our players aren’t old, but they’re middle-aged. We want them to be fresh. Fresh emotionally, fresh physically.

“We looked at a lot of teams that went to the finals and how they started off. What came from that [analysis] was we really needed to keep everybody fresh, both mentally and physically.”

If you can’t find fresh on the open market, then the Canucks will try to keep those players they have as fresh as possible.