stormboy

yeah, don't think pho or cls should have gotten such high grades, but that's just me.

detroit: goals for, 1st period: 54. rank, 1. goals against, 1st period: 30. rank, 4. goal diff, 1st period: +24. goals for, 2nd period: 61. rank, 2. goals against, 2nd period: 47, 15. goal diff, 2nd period: +14. goals for, 3rd period: 49. rank, 7. goals against, 3rd period: 28. rank, 1. goal diff, 3rd period: +21. so we can see that the second is their word period although, interestingly, they also score the most in that period. it's pretty clear that in general the second period seems to be the most wide open period of the game, not just for the wings, but for the whole league, as 54gf is good for first in the league in the first period, but 61 is only good for second in the league in period number two. other observations: the wings are the best first period team in goals for, and probably differential, although i don't have the rank for those stats (i just did the math). the wings also play a good shutdown game in the third, which makes sense since they have, a majority of the time, secured a lead by that point. still great goal differential, but a lot less goals both for and against. but, yeah, the worst stats there are that we are exactly average in goals against in the second (using median, not mean as average) and that we have the worst diff in the second. but, even for having bad defensive seconds, we score a s*** ton in that period as well and still keep a comfortably positive positive differential.

yeah, it'll be interesting to see. they're both on mediocre teams, so you can't blame one's performance on the skill / lack of skill of their team. as of now, kane has more points, and, maybe more importantly, more goals, although i'm not sure how much that factors in. also interesting, six of backstrom's eight assists in the last two games have been secondary assists. it's hard to say (since i haven't seen either of the games) how much of that was great play and how much was two other people made a great play and he got credit for it. kane is -5 while backstrom is even. what other players are in the running at this point?

oh, well no worries then. seriously...this is a bummer. more so because this happens every year. the guy's never going to get a hundred points if he can't play more than seventy games a season. it's most important that he's healthy for the playoffs...we can pretty much play .333 hockey from here on out and still probably make it. (not that i want them to of course.) it would be best for the the team for him to take his time recovering so that he's nice and healthy when he comes back...but i really want z to end at least in the top three scorers this year and get some well-deserved recognition. but, we'll see.

i think cleary is worth more than we can pay him. he might score thirty goals this season. whether or not he'll stay, i can't say. last year was by far his best career year, with forty points and twenty goals. he's only one goal away and three points away from his entire total last year. teams aren't going to look at the fact that his career average is somewhere in the twenty point range...their going to see this 30-30-60 season. which, i think he can repeat, but it's hard to say. and with needing to sign hank soon, i don't think holland will pay cleary $4 million a year, even though he might be worth that if he continues to play like this. lilja i can take or leave. 1.25 mil is plenty...if he doesn't want that, let him go. --------- players with similar point production as cleary at th is point in the season: dan cleary, DET, RW. 37pts, +21. salary: 675,000. on pace for career-best season, by far, after having a career-best season last year. brad richards, TB, C. 08 season: 40pts, -23. salary: 7.8 million. former 91-point getter. career -53. j.p. dumont, NSH, RW. 08 season: 39pts, +6. salary: 2.5 million. best season, 66pts, +14; 5-time 20+ goal scorer. alex tanguay, CGY, LW. 08 season: 38pts, +12. salary: 5.25 million. one-time 80+ point getter, 5-time 20+ goal scorer. on pace for worst year in five seasons. pierre marc bouchard, MIN, RW. 08 season: 38pts, +3, 8 goals. salary: 2.5 million. small size, little grit.

yeah, the issue of how linemates affects these stats is interesting. as someone else mentioned, stats can never tell the whole story. i mean, in theory, you could have a guy who makes the plays all the time, but is always the fourth guy removed from the goal, so he never gets an assist, that kind of thing. so he doesn't have very many points, but is contributing to the offense a lot. on the other hand, you could have a guy who really isn't that good at all, but just gets put with really great players, so he's on the ice for a lot of goals. i like these stats, though, because they don't give the per-game stats, which are even more misleading. good and interesting post.

bad news overall, in my opinion. bad for the game, for reasons stated above. bad for the penguins, who i still think have the potential to be a great young team that captures everyone's attention. bad news for the allstar game...i agree with those who think that now that he's injured, a lot of the talk at the asg is going to be about how crosby isn't there rather than about what the players who are there are doing...and that's annoying, i'll admit. oh, and bad news for my fantasy team. s***.

yeah, that was nasty. also, good for my last-place fantasy team. : P

so he makes a few bad turnovers. i think that if schnides was still here, we'd be seeing even more out of him. i mean, look, the guy's a plus twelve...which is good for 3rd among defensmen on the wings. maybe you could expect more, but, and stop me if i'm wrong here, he normally doesn't get paired with lids in even strength situations, right? lids is unique because he's amazing at offense and defense. if he plays with a stay at home guy, there will be a lot less goals against...and if he plays with an offensive minded defenseman, there will be a lot more goals for. rafalski is great at offense, but not as stellar at d. so with the amount he's producing upfront, i'll give a little on the backend. i'd be concerned if he was -10, but +12 is nothing to scoff at. just my opinion. sidenote: there are certainly times when watching a game when i'm like, "rafalski, you dumb f***!" but there are about three players on the wings that i don't say that to from time to time. *shrug* when he starts turning the puck over that lead to goals against way more than he's scoring, then i'll start bashing him.

don't they have an "intent to injure" penalty, which is assessed whether the player is hurt or not? alternatively, if a player is hurt on a clean hit, the hitter is not assigned a penalty simply because his check got hurt, so long as the referee judges that he didn't INTEND to hurt the other player.....

the only thing wrong with the current system is that some games are worth more than others. there are forty eight games between the other teams in your division that don't involve you, correct? (st. louis vs. nashville, chicago vs. colombus, etc.) that means, one way or another, at least 96 points are going to be added, in some combination, do your division opponents, assuming they're all 2 point games. on the other hand, if they're all three point games, 144 points are generated by intra-divisional games that don't involve your team. that's a pretty big difference. i am not a fan of the tie, for the reasons others have stated; essentially, it's a huge letdown. i also am not a huge fan of indefinite overtimes for regular season games, not only because of tv reasons, but because of potential injury. if one team continually is getting into long overtimes, their total minutes played are going to be a lot higher come season's end. i don't like the schemes with four points because, although you can make every game worth the same ammount, you get into the whole 15-8-7-2 thing, although, undue complications aside, i think that actually makes the most sense. i don't like awarding a team for just making it into overtime. the idea of making a shootout win 1 point, all other wins 2 points and all losses zero points has some merit...but you still have unbalanced amount of points per game. it's basically the same as the current system, but instead of rewarding a team for making it to the shootout, you're punishing a team for requiring the shootout. i could see this working if you did a ten minute four on four overtime, with an overtime win being two points and an OT loss being zero. this way, the teams wouldn't be playing for the shootout, since no team would want to lose the point, and the longer OT would make it much more likely that a winner would be decided that way. in this way, the purists aren't quite happy, because it's four on four not five on five, and there's only one ten minute OT, but you'll see a lot less games decided on the shootout, so they'll be somewhat happy. the people who like the thrill of the shootout won't be quite happy, because you'll see less of them and, more importantly, you won't REALLY be able to celebrate because you only got half the points you could have...but you'll still get to see shootouts. the thing with making shootout win almost worthless (the same amount of points as some losses currently) is that the shootouts will be less exciting because much less will be on the line. maybe 2 for any win, 0 for any loss, but make the OT period longer so that fewer games are decided by a "gimmicky" fashion. there would also be less stops and starts (the last minute of basketball analogy is imperfect but fairly comparable) because you'd have one longer period before stopping again for the shootout. the way it is now, it seems like OT is over almost as soon as it begins. so, i don't really have a proposal. just rambling. oh, but please don't touch the playoff OT system. when one point out of eighty two games is on the line, you can argue about whether a shootout is too much of an individual effort. but when four losses end your season, you can't let one (or more) of them be decided by shootout.

if we could sign hossa long term, i'd be arlgiht with giving up hudler, who i have been a proponent of keeping in discussion of trades for sundin, etc. i really, really don't want to lose flip. i'm not really well versed with the picks / prospects for the wings right now, but with the trades they've done in the last few years, and with them always finishing near the top of the league, they can't have a ton of up and coming talent. but, and i guess this goes without saying, if kenny could sign hossa long term and resign zetterberg, then i'd be alright with just about anything. kronwall hasn't been playing GREAT this year, but he's been better lately...and i'm not sure who you'd replace his twenty-some points and even occasional hard checking with. i feel like if we gave up kronner for hossa we'd end up playing a lot of 5-4 games...not that kronwall makes THAT huge of a difference on our blueline, but again, can we replace him with someone from the ahl who's not a liability at all?

surely you can't think he'd do worse than sammy...

sorry for the jinx.

propal's a good hockey player. he's been playing along side some wicked talent lately, though. i mean, putting him along side our top guys, he would probably do well, too. but i think that prospal right now is a guy who is made better by the guys around him, not a guy who makes the others around him better. put him on a line with, say, flip and cleary and you're going to see the production drop for all three of them. i was thinking, though, if you put him on a line with z and dats...they're all centers, and we could run the I-formation. just take one shot after another and hope for big rebounds. thoughts?

( obligatory )

i mean, let's be honest, the only reason it wasn't 8-1 was lebda's outstanding defensive play. no but seriously...obviously osgood has not been the ozzy from the first half of the season the last few games. maybe he's just in a funk. maybe he just came back down to earth. maybe, and i think most likely, the whole team's in a funk. sure, we got lots of shots tonight, but most of them were not great chances. and the good chances that we did have came to nothing because nobody could pick up the puck. flipper could not accept a single pass tonight. and when you have guys like draper and lidstrom taking penalties, of course you're going to get plenty of pp goals against. also, and maybe i'm just being a homer here...i mean, atlanta was playing a physical game. but to me, it seemed like they were getting away with stuff, especially given the calls that were made on us. i remember at one point, a thrasher got out of the penalty box and cross checked lidstrom from behind on his way back into the zone. no call. i also remember one replay when homer was getting crosschecked from both sides while being taken down to the ice. then nick taps somebody on the gloves with his stick and gets two minutes. maybe i'm just pissed 'cause my team lost...but that's how it seemed to me. *shrug*

goddam right.

right, like bertuzzi was.

on the one hand, every loss is certainly an opportunity to examine your faults and try to improve them. on the other, you're GOING to lose some games. losing three-two to ottawa is not terrible. it concerns me that we got outshot by such a wide margin, considering our style of play, but hasek played pretty well, we dug ourselves out of a two goal deficit, and it was anybody's game, including the few minutes after the second alfie goal. if this WAS the SCFs, we lose one game by one goal IN ottawa. i'd say our chances are still pretty good. so, i don't know if babcock has every reason to be pissed. sure, you want to have the mentality that every game is winnable, but have you looked at the standings lately? and about the comparisons to the edmenton series...i really feel like this is a different team. we had such a great record that year because we feasted on weak divisional opponents. though our division still isn't stellar, we're not raking in the points off of easy wins over these teams. that year we won seven out of eight games against chicago. they're crushing us this year. but that means that our points are coming from beating other teams...like that one time we beat second-place dallas twice in a row, outscroing them 7-1 in two games. i do agree with those who are saying that our checking guys like kopecky and downey will have a lot to do with how we fare in the playoffs. the scorers will continue to do what they do -- it's the physicality that is inconsistent. but, let's be honest, inconsistent is a big step ahead of where it was two years ago: nonexistent. we've still got some time to work that s*** out. let's destroy atlanta and call it good.

well, a puck isn't considered in the goal unless it completely crosses the goal line, right? wouldn't the same be true of the center line? assuming that "possesion" begins in the players own zone when the shootout begins, until the puck had completely crossed the center line, it'd either be still in the defensive zone or in some nebulous "no man's land," if you will. FORE!

franzen i think brings the least to the team because, as others have mentioned, he doesn't really use his size to his full potential. on the other hand, if they're going to get paid the same (which i doubt they would, but if they did) i'd trade hudler first only because i think we could get a lot more for him in terms of picks and prospects than we would for franzen. i think this playoffs will be interesting. a lot of people are saying that hudler's going to get dominated in the playoffs while mule's grittiness will give him a clear edge. if that's the case, and you need to trade someone, trade hudler, though i'd hate to see him go. if it's not true, and hudler continues to play well (which i have a hunch he will) and we need to get rid of someone, lose franzen, though i'd prefer to keep them both. danny and flip to not leave under any circumstances. well, maybe flip for crosby straight up. otherwise, no.

i think there are a few problems with the cup champs vs. league idea, although, in theory, i like it. for one, especially under the new cba, it's often hard for teams to retain their core after winning a cup. if a few young guys have big playoffs, they're going to want huge raises which the team probably won't be able to afford since, if they own a stanely cup, chances are they already have some fairly high-priced players. (imagine cleary and flip are both ufa's after this year, and both have amazing playoffs. they demand raises [that they're entitled to] but because we need to keep hank we don't sign them. then the wings of next season are a lot unlike the wings that won the cup.) add on to that the rent-a-player scenarios, and the cup winning team and the team of the next year's allstar game are hardly the same. then dom and chelios retire...you get the point. secondly, i for one am in favor of the every-team-gets-represented thing. on the one hand, i agree that it sucks for those who are allstar worthy (rafalski, maybe) who get snubbed because their team's already got a bunch of players and every team needs a guy in the game. and while a lot of pheonix fans probably aren't going to tune in just to see ed jovanovski (sp) play, even less are going to watch if they know already that there are NO coyotes playing. with that idea, you'd have several not being represented. that also means that no one team would be able to have more than one guy on the allstar team, since several of the teams are getting snubbed all together. so are you going to pick danny heatley or jason spezza to play in the all star game with dallas drake and matt ellis? 'cause you can only get one. or, put differently, we'd have to chose between sending hank and pavel to play against travis moen, who has all of four points in forty-six games this year. i think someone mentioned earlier that when this was done, it was when the league had a lot less teams. one the one hand, that meant that the overall talent per player was a lot higher, because you didn't need to populate thirty teams with full rosters. on the other, it meant that every single team got represented with not only their superstars, but some of their role players, too. so sending zetterberg, dats, lids, rafalski, AND flip to play against a team with a lot higher average talent makes more sense than what it would today. all that being said, it's an entertaining idea.