stormboy

glad to read Shero's comments on it. obviously, the hit is indefensible, but i can still see some GMs, coaches, etc. sort of himming and hawing, trying to rationalize or downplay the hit. there's something to be said for sticking up for your own guys, of course, but he really didn't have a choice here.

pretty damn funny. more than likely, you'd have a chip on every square by the end of the game. this would also make a good drinking game, except that you'd be bombed by the end of the first period. i realize that there are a lot of hockey fundamentals that just don't change, and you're getting paid to comment on them. but he, more than just about everyone, seems to repeat the same goddam things over and over and over. we all probably hate him even more because he seems to hate the wings.

not excited to see the wings face thomas for a full game. i'm hoping we can pull off a 2-1 win here. we'll need another strong effort from howard, and to build off the momentum of last game. you know boston is going to play pissed.

having never been an athlete myself, i at first thought you were glibly suggesting that members of the wings actually commit seppuku. then, my repressed memories of middle school gym class resurfaced and i realized what you were talking about. now, instead of thinking you are a terrible person, i fully agree with you.

At least Datsyuk and Cleary are back already. It would be nice to keep a consistent roster to work on chemistry, though.

I remember hearing Ken and Mick talking a while back about coaches wanting powerplay percentage + penalty kill percentage to add up to (at least) one hundred percent. Beyond that, I don't often hear people talking about overall special teams performance in terms of PP + PK percentages. I was curious what the totals looked like and how they compared to overall team performance. This is what I came up with. It's arranged from highest total to lowest total. I included the individual PP/PK percentages for reference, and the teams power ranking as well (which is calculated simply as points percentage). Just a few observations: First, it jumps out that the first place team (Vancouver) is tops in the league and the last ranked team (Edmonton) is dead last overall. The two other teams that jumped out at me were Buffalo, who's ranked eleventh in overall special teams, but near the bottom in terms of points percentage. The other is Philly, who is second in the league points-wise but is right in the middle in terms of special teams. Anyone notice anything else? Thoughts? Should this stat (overall special teams percentage) be calculated and referenced more, or is it fairly useless?

I was just watching the Red Wings TV bit they post on facebook after the game -- guy interviewing Pavs asks him how long he thinks it'll be before his game is back to where he wants it. In true Pav form, he answers "I think, uh, 2014," in the way that only Pavel could.

i do think we need to block more shots, but just looking at the total number of blocked shots might be misleading. we're usually near the top (or bottom, depending on one's perspective) in shots against every year. i believe we're eighth right now; and top-five in shot differential. i wonder what the stat would look like in terms of shot block percentages. perhaps we'd still be near the bottom....

god damn that pxp guy is annoying. i realize ken and mick (and most other local announcers) are homers, but that guy...wow.

gotta love the ubiquitous "OOHHhhh" with his canadian accent.

i liked the quote from the puckdaddy article:

hey, look! it's mindfly, finding any excuse to ***** about his "favorite" team! that's pretty awesome -- hadn't seen that before.

yeah, i've thought about that, too. i guess at that point, you're down by three with three minutes left -- the chances of getting three goals in less than three minutes is pretty slim (even though they did that exact thing earlier in the game), so you figure at that point you have about a 99% chance of losing if you go five-on-five the rest of the way. if you get a six-on-five goal within a minute, then you only need two goals in two minutes. still not a great chance, but better. if you somehow get that, then you've got one minute to get one goal six-on-five, which is normally when people pull the goalie anyway. so, yeah, the chances of them actually coming back at that point were pretty slim in any case, but unless you really care about your players' plus-minus rating or your team's overall GAA, losing 6-3 or 10-3 doesn't really make a difference. i respect that the coach was at least sending the message that down by three with three left, he thought his team had a chance to win.

i'm not sure, but i think mindfly just made a post that had nothing negative to say about the wings. i think my brain just exploded. :flash:

couldn't watch the game, but i listened to about the second half on the radio at work last night. really proud of the team (and howie especially) for rebounding so well after the three-goal outburst in the second. you have a few bad minutes in a game, and that can be a back breaker. proud of the way they responded. congrats to eaves, of course, and howie for being the first goalie to 20 wins (plus he tallied an assist!). as a side note, the highlights on NHL.com were from FS Dallas, and i was actually really impressed by the dallas commentators, at least from the clips they had in the highlights package. he actually called the away goals with nearly the same enthusiasm as he did the home goals, which is rare (i don't expect any local guys to be totally even, of course -- i'd hate it if ken and mick weren't homers at least to an extent). anyone have to watch the game on FS Dallas and have any thoughts! good win standing-wise, too. glad dallas didn't even get a point -- we've got some descent separation from them for the time being. vancouver, of course, could take the lead in the conference if they win their two games in hand...and next saturday we play them IN vancouver the night after playing the flames (vancouver plays the night before, too...but at home against edmonton). tomorrow's dallas-vancouver game should be interesting...just hope it doesn't go to OT. here's hoping they don't take the islanders for granted -- i hate how we often seem to get beaten by s***ty teams. i think i might actually get to watch that game...which will make it the second game i've watched all season (first was the opener way back in october). working overnight sucks.

like plus-minus, i think the GWG stat is easily altered by fluke effects, but isn't entirely meaningless. sure, you're going to have situations like this one with cleary where he just happened to end up in the right spot in the goal-scoring order. then you have, say, OT winners or goals that break a late tie that are obviously deserving of the GWG stat. i suppose you could make more complicated requirements -- like, for example, a GWG HAS to actually break a tie after which the other team doesn't score. so, in the example given by OP, no one would get a GWG because zetterberg broke a tie but cleary had the goal that put the winning team up by one goal. you'd have a lot less GWGs, but it would be a more telling stat, maybe. still, if dude breaks a 0-0 tie a minute in to the game and his team goes on to win 5-0, it still wasn't a "clutch" goal -- he just got lucky because his goalie got a shutout. like i said, i feel the same way about GWG as i do about plus-minus -- you have to take the stat with a large grain of salt, but that doesn't mean it's completely worthless.

didn't get to watch the game, so i can't comment on how "fair" it was because i didn't see any of the plays. still, just wanted to comment to say that i can't remember the last Wings game (or any NHL game) that had 2 PIMs. pretty crazy.

i 'd. i was out with my wife, came home and checked the boxscore -- saw that kopy had scored twice. this thread was the first thing i thought of. apparently the hockey gods want vindication for eva. either that or he sold his soul to them long ago...

hah. right, exactly. s*** like this is stupid and relatively harmless, but ideas like this can be quite nefarious. a friend's dad was dying of cancer a while ago and this dude fleeced them of a bunch of money by convincing to use stuff basically like this -- that he could realign his "frequencies" and his body would heal itself. anyway, i should give myself a stay-on-topic emoticon. maybe i'll go start a pseudoscience thread in the watercooler...

right, it's obviously a flawed stat. someone who's amazing defensively but plays on the fourth line and doesn't score much is likely to be negative despite their superb defensive ability. just like in (arguably) every sport, all stats are, to some degree, team stats. sure, there are rare cases where someone carries the team on their back (see Crosby as of right now), but in most cases, goalie's GAAs depend greatly on the team in front of them, and goals and assists are highly influenced by the people around you. like with all of those stats, it's important to look at trends and not just bark out random stats at a given time. if a given player consistently has a good plus-minus rating on, say, various teams at various times, then you could probably say pretty safely that they score a lot and play good defense. perhaps plus-minus is MORE susceptible to fluke fluctuations than other stats, but i don't think it's completely worthless. hudler is a team-worst -7; datsyuk is a team-best +10. that shouldn't be surprising. what might be surprising is that abbie is tied with pavs at +10. then again, i think most fans have felt like abbie's played really well this year -- hudler has played like s***. the fact that kopecky plays good minutes with good linemates and still has a s***ty plus-minus rating does indeed say something, even if it's far from a definitive something. also worth noting that the top three plus-minus players in the league are on philadelphia -- they also have the best goal differential in the league, at +34. they have one guy in the minus column. chicago is near even as a team (+3 total goal diff) and they have a bunch of minus guys. so, yeah, again, it's a team stat in a lot of ways, but kopy is second to worst on his own team. again, that in no way tells the whole story, but i think it is telling.

it didn't help him with anything else, either. i would think someone as seemingly-intelligent as lids would buy in to crap like that. though, i guess when you make millions of dollars a year you can afford a thirty dollar bracelet that doesn't do anything.

i became a wings fan after these days...and looking back on the videos and the comments of people who lived it...i wish i would have been a fan then. that s*** seems incredible.

i agree. LGWers have been saying "LOL east SUX!" every year, and yet the pens beat us in the SCF two years ago. all it takes is a bad game by your goalie, a out-of-sync night by your forwards, a few defensive gaffes by your d-men, or an out-of-character performance by even a single player on the other team, and you've just lost to a basement-dweller. i think we've all seen this happen to the wings plenty of times. we got blown out by atlanta. and, honestly, i was expecting the wings to lose to the devils the other night, just because they were SUPPOSED to win easily (which they did, and i was glad). if the pens hadn't gotten off to a rocky start, they'd be so far in first right now it wouldn't be funny. then again, we're not even halfway through the season, and if crosby cools and the other guys don't pick it up, who knows where we'll be in a few months. also, i don't think anyone's mentioned this yet: what if ovie heats up? washington is still doing well in the standings, and ovie is having a very subpar year goal-wise (i haven't seen them play, only going by stats). they're still very much hanging in there (last night's beating from the rangers notwithstanding) and if ovie starts netting goals things could go their way in a hurry.

you said it, pal. my god, i had no idea there were this many terrible jerseys in existence. incredible. regarding OP: the socks literally made me lol. the mcdonalds outfits were high-larious. i think this thread is an example of something that wins by virtue of the sheer amount of fail collected in one place.

i've only been watching hockey for about five years, so i'm a relative newbie. but i think i've heard before that what they'll sometimes do is basically take a number out of rotation for a while without actually retiring it. i think that would be a good thing to do with ozzie. to me, 5 is the only lock right now. with 13 and 40 being in their prime, unless one or both of them lead us to a couple more cups, i don't see either of those numbers getting retired. that doesn't diminish my love for either of the players, of course, but like others have said, it's the idea of being a true franchise player. time will only tell with 13 and 40, but to look at the team we're icing today and say that four current roster members will get their numbers retired is very unlikely. comparing ozzie to nick, everyone says year-in and year-out how nick is the best, the best, the best, and how rarely he falters. while ozzie's got a lot of wins, and has at times played amazing hockey, i think if you look at the amount of bad goals he lets in, versus the amount of blown defensive coverages that nick has, it's obvious that lidstrom is the more steady, solid, elite player. sure, you'll hear people praising osgood after he's won a cup, but during the course of the season it's not like he's getting talked about for his stupendous numbers or for carrying the team on his back. again, i haven't watched him his whole career, so maybe it's radically different now than it was. but even looking at nick at 40, not much has changed, and i think that says a lot about why his number WILL be retired. ozzie, on the other hand...i don't know. there's just some intangible that's not there the way it is with lids (not that they're mutually exclusive, of course, but to me, he has to at least be CLOSE to lidstrom to get consideration). so, all that to say, i'd like to see no one wear #30 for a while after ozzie hangs 'em up, but i guess i don't see his number making it to the rafters.