stormboy

they could just ditch the skates and play the game in a parking lot on roller blades. but here's the catch: they don't close the parking lot. check of the game: St. Louis drilled by P. Aztek! i actually really like this idea. i do think it would still keep the event special -- only one DAY a year still, even if it's two games. i wonder if the reason that hasn't happened is the network's trepidation to go to a full day of hockey programming. but, hell, that would be a lot of fun for hockey fans, for sure. plus, you get a lot more teams involved that way -- by making more markets part of the event every year, you'd get more buzz in more cities. go rangers-habs early, nucks-aves late, and you're emphasizing the US versus Canada aspect, which i think would be fun, you're playing to fans of both conferences. and, hell, you can still involve southern teams as long as they're playing away games. i'd love to see this happen sometime down the road. i literally lol'd. well played, sir. heh. it could be like SURPRISE SNOW STORM when another part of the roof collapses.

this is not a rule i'm familiar with specifically, but wouldn't stealing someone else's stick be illegal? i don't understand why koivu would do that in the first place...maybe he figured that taking a penalty was better than having the puck in his team's end without him having a stick??? that doesn't really make sense. it would be sort of hilarious to see that happen more, though -- lidstrom breaks his stick, then just swipes shea weber's. hate the ducks of course, but don't mind bobby ryan too much in and of himself. it's also funny that ryan is a right hand shot while koivu is a left hand shot -- i thought he looked sort of weird and awkward when he took the shot -- he was using an opposite-handed stick!

almost makes me miss sammy. that's still an amazing play. i wouldn't say that's ALL he does, but i do agree that it sometimes gets tiresome because you hear the same complaints over and over again. i guess for an occasional viewer, it's good to have that stuff in a lot of games, but for anyone who watches a lot, you know what he's going to say before he even says it a lot of the time, when it comes to that stuff. i like the rest of his commentary, though.

that would be the one, yeah.

i don't get a chance to listen to many out of town games (or even many wings games these days, for that matter) but i've always appreciated that ken will still call the goal in an exciting way when the other team scores if it's a big goal. and i've always appreciated how mick will say a bad call is a bad call even when the wings benefit. he might get a little more pissed when it goes against the wings, but he still calls it how he sees it no matter what. yeah, i kind of agree with this. i often find myself cringing when murph talks. he's an alright in-studio guy for little interviews between periods IMO, but i'd rather leave him out of the games. i think that's my favorite GT call. for some reason i always love when the dude's name is part of call, like of helm's series-winning goal.

there's something about brawls like this (or that UK one somebody posted the other day) that always make me a little queezy. i'm not sure what it is -- something about the unbridled chaos just rubs me the wrong way. i'm all for fighting in certain circumstances, and i wish the wings would do it more. i was stoked when pavs dropped the gloves early in the year. but, i don't know, there's something about stuff like this that i really don't like. especially the way it was so obviously planned that all five starters just friggin jumped the other players like they were in a dark ally. call me a ***** if you want, but i'm just not into this at all.

i actually lol'd. i kinda forgot about that.

maybe you meant zero playoff wins for the first one? i agree with your point in any case. also, not that i mind, but i love how this had turned in to a lions thread.

Hey everyone. I was browsing stats this morning when I noticed how huge of a percentage Crosby had of his teams goals and points (Crosby has 24 goals, second place guy has eight). I thought I'd dig a little deeper and compare him and the Pens to the other top teams in the league. I looked at the top two teams in each conference (Washington and Pitt in the east; Detroit and Dallas in the west), and looked at their top goal/assist/point producers and what percentage of their team's total they owned in each category. I also looked at the top three players as a combined total. In some cases, the individual with, say, the most goals was not the one with the most assists. In such cases, I have included full lines for each player, bolding the category in which they lead the team. Same goes for the player triplets. For example, two of Detroit's top three goal-scorers are not among their top-three point producers, so I included multiple combinations. Note that the sets of three are not necessarily an actual line, just the top three producers in each category. Make sense? Here's what I came up with: Pittsburgh Penguins Crosby: 27% goals, 15% assists, 20% points Crosty Kunits Malkin: 45% goals, 30% assists, 36% points Crosby Letang Malkin: 42% goals, 38% assists, 39% points Washington Capitals Semin: 19% goals, 10% assists, 13% points Ovechkin: 13% goals, 15% assists, 14% points Semin Ovechkin Backstrom: 44% goals, 38% assists, 40% points Dallas Stars Richards: 16% goals, 15% assists, 15% points Richards Neal Eriksson: 43% goals, 38% assists, 40% points Detroit Red Wings Franzen: 14% goals, 5% assists, 8% points Datsyuk: 9% goals, 13% assists, 12% points Cleary Franzen Zetterberg: 38% goals, 19% assists, 26% points Datsyuk Lidstrom Zetterberg: 23% goals, 35% assists, 31% points So. What do you think? It seems obvious that of the top four, Pittsburgh is the most imbalanced team, while the Wings are the most balanced. Does this matter? My gut is to say that we're in the best position because we would be the most resilient to injury (if Crosby goes down the Pens lose a quarter of their current goal production), but could it mean that no Wing is really playing a dominant game this season? Does it not really matter? Is there a better way to look at team scoring balance (I'd thought about doing it by actual lines, but that's problematic too because lines don't always play together)? Also, this is not a Crosby thread -- that's just what drew my attention to this whole issue. tl;dr -- discuss team scoring balance.

on the one hand i see your point that it can be annoying to see so many threads about or involving the guy. but, on the other hand, he is, at least right now, the best player in the league, hands down. so to intentionally ignore the guy would be silly. for the purposes of this thread, i started it after making some observations on scoring balance among the league's top few teams. right now, we're tops in the west and they're tops in the east -- and i thought it was interesting the drastic difference in scoring balance between the two clubs. if crosby was having a below-average year and ovechkin had 25 goals (or more than a quarter of his team's total), the topic would be more focused on him. i don't see why focusing on the current situation as it is in the league should be so annoying. in this case, it doesn't have anything to do with hating the guy or having a boner for him. it's simply about observing current trends among the league's top teams.

i certainly agree that that CAN be the case, which is why i looked at only the top two teams in each conference. you could make an argument that edmonton is more "balanced" then the penguins, but obviously that would be a pointless statement to make. to me, i find it interesting that the wings have a higher goals for average than the pens, while our top goal scorer has half the goals their top guy does. then again, our top goal scorer has as many goals as ovechkin. all of this obviously speaks to the fact that crosby is red hot, ovie is ice cold, and franzen is, i'd say, about where he should be.

i'll accept this thread simply because if quincey was third in defense points right now, there would be threads about how bad the management had f***ed up letting him go. you can't judge the quality of a decision like this until further down the road. obviously, this isn't the end of the story, but i think it's an important plot point as we weigh the decision as it happened.

yeah, i agree that it's not a terribly drastic play -- i think the problem is that the ranger got called for a penalty when, if anyone should have gotten called, it was crosby (albeit by perhaps only a marginal amount). if this had happened between two players in an islanders-canes game, no one would be talking about it...but when there's a general feeling among fans (and players, it seems) that crosby gets a way with a lot and whines a lot, this is yet another incident in what seems to be a pattern. the thing with detecting patterns like this, though, is confirmation bias. we make a big deal out of the things that confirm our presuppositions and ignore everything that doesn't.

yeah, i have mixed feelings on this one. my gut reaction is that it's a very bush league thing to do, and that i think it should get penalized. but on the replay, it's not like it goes on for a long time, kipper is wailing on him, and it stopped a significant amount of time before the shot was taken. it would be different if the ref called the penalty AS pronger was doing it, but the ref let them play and it seemed like he retroactively assessed the penalty. i don't know. if this happened to a wing, i'd probably be really pissed. but it happened to pronger so i'm a little happy on the inside. just like the correy perry own-goal, couldn't have happened to a better jackass.

wait, this is hudler we're talking about, right?

yeah, how 'bout that lions game. alphonso smith looked like he was payed off by the patriots that game. three of their TDs were, not solely, but primarily his fault.

like many others have said, i like the lightning more now just because of stevie y. plus, i have no reason to dislike them. in the east, i've always liked the bruins and the rangers, and the canes have a special place in my heart because they beat edmonton the year they upset us in the first round. the rest of the teams i'm really neutral to. and, of course, i hate the pens. that's got to be one of the best inter-conference rivalries in the sport right now, just because they faced each other two consecutive years in the finals. few teams in different conferences ever play that many games against each other in a relatively short period of time (a few seasons). i like the caps because they're exciting, and, perhaps, because we haven't played them yet in the finals. in the west, i hate the ducks, hawks, and sharks, in that order. of course, any team that we've played a playoff series against in recent years, i've developed a hate for during the series...but, say, phoenix, i don't really hate them in general, just because i hated them during the series last year. i kinda like the wild (unless we're playing them), and i like to see st. louis doing well (again, unless we're playing them). most of all, though, i ******* hate the ducks. edit: to clarify my like of the bruins: i've been to boston only once, but really, really loved the city; plus, i love the departed. after visiting, i became a red sox fan, too. not sure why, that city just rocked my face off. so now i'm a fan.

if i could have chosen one guy in the league for this to happen to, it would have been perry. perfect.

wow, i read the last four pages and not one LITSTROM IS OLD HOWARD SUCKS ZETTERBERG'S CAREERS IS OVER BABCOCK IS A BUM post from mindfly. maybe he was busy tonight... anyway, this afternoon i was bummed i had to work. now, not so much. at least i made money (and didn't spend it on beer). why does atlanta always seem to dominate us no matter how bad they suck or how good we are? must be the wings just don't get up for those games... maybe this will be a wake up call -- they've been winning, but it seems like they haven't been playing super great. can't complain too much, of course -- first in the conference. but, either way...

this SHOULD be a good goal, but the way the rule is written now, it was NOT a goal. the rule should be changed, but until it is, they should enforce it equally. i would probably be on the pens' side (or any team's side that his happened to) if it hadn't bitten us in the ass so many times. but, hey, that's how they enforce it, and even if they're going to enforce a bad rule, they should do it consistently.

:rotflmao: i love green not even skating. he probably could have prevented the goal by putting his body into the guy while he made his move around the goalie. laughable.

yeah, that's a terrible hit. glad we kicked that ***** to the curb.

i certainly see the points about not wanting your stars to get into fights all the time...and i'd be worried if this started happening frequently. but it's the home opener against the ducks which, at least to me, are in our top three rivals, and against that dick perry. i'm glad pavs didn't get hurt, and since he didn't i'm really, really glad that happened. let him not fight the rest of the year, but tonight was great. go pavel!