eva unit zero

He's established a home in the Montreal; which means if James' case is dropped, he's living in an area where questionable sex with young boys is the norm. *rimshot*

Flip/Huds/Franzen will send Niemi to the dressing room with the message "We have better Finns."

The Wings pay him big money for playoff performance, not points.

The first tiebreaker is goals scored. This has determined the NHL's scoring leader three times. The second tiebreaker is games played. If two players have the same number of goals and assists, the one with fewer games is ranked higher. The third tiebreaker is who scored a goal first in the season.

You would be wrong. I'll show you an example: Schembechler 10 points Carr 9 points Harbaugh 8 points Hoke 7 points Rodriguez 6 points Now, in this situation it's clear where everyone goes. But what if a scoring change happens and one of Lloyd Carr's goals is given to Brady Hoke. Schembechler 10 points Carr 8 points Harbaugh 8 points Hoke 8 points Rodriguez 6 points The order is the same, right? But now we have a three-way tie in second place. Does Rodriguez suddenly move up from 5th to 3rd? Of course not. Why? There are four people ahead of him, that makes him fifth. It's really easy. Really.

Don't worry, Joe Thornton will be too distracted. I sent him this over Facebook (Warning: Audio may be NSFW) He won't be able to get it out of his head, so he'll choke even harder than normal.

Hull signed a two-year deal with an annual cap hit of $2.25m; the first year was the lockout year, and was therefore nullified. Hull retired five games into his first actual season with the Coyotes. I do not recall if the full $2.25m was applied to the cap or not, but my understanding is that it should be in that situation.

"I'm going to clip part of your post and quote it completely out of context to try and make you look bitter and jaded while both myself and the Canucks are pure and unsoiled."

Maintain puck control. If you maintain puck possession in the zone against the Wings, that is when they seem to take a large number of their minor penalties. Basically, get the Wings backed into their own zone, and you'll end up with a goal or a power play in a lot of instances. Get into Howard's head. Jimmy has been playing well, but ultimately if the Sharks can crack his mental wall and get inside, the way the Hawks did with Luongo, then that will play a big part in a San Jose victory. Neutralize the Wings' top scorers. Datsyuk is Detroit's Conn Smythe candidate right now, and San Jose has to find a way to stop him and guys like Z, Franzen, Flip, and Hudler. Their best chance is to ice a line of Marleau/Pavelski/Mitchell against ZDH. Ice Wellwood/Thornton/Setoguchi against Cleary/Abdelkader/Bertuzzi, and Clowe/Couture/Heatley against Franzen/Filppula/Hudler. The matchups remain the same if you swap Z and Franzen.

You say the Canucks want to model themselves after the Wings. The Wings have had so much success over the years because the organization has treated their players right; not simply discarded them if they weren't perfect or if they didn't fit the ideal. And don't give me that "one ray of light" bulls***. The Wings won the Cup in 1997 after a 42 year drought. You're thinking "But they just went to the finals right before that!" Yeah, they did. For the first time in 29 years. And up until the few years before the Cup wins, the Wings were perenially the league's doormat. Vancouver has at least been a competitive club with playoff chances. Did Wings fans in the mid 1990s act like they deserved a Cup? Like we were owed one? No. How about Chicago fans? They had some great teams in the early 90s; with a little luck they could have had back-to-backs in 1992 and 1993. But you're busy complaining about the fact that true Canuck fans need therapy for their depression because the team didn't win the Cup last year, or the year before that... and maybe they need to all be put on suicide watch for the duration of the playoffs! Gimme a break.

They deserve nothing. That said, Cyclone Taylor led Vancouver to a Stanley Cup win in 1915. Let's bring up the list of remaining teams in the Stanley Cup playoffs in cities that have not won it: Nashville San Jose Washington That's three. If you want to count Vancouver because it was a pre-NHL Cup win, fine, make it four. But in what way does Vancouver deserve the Cup more? Because it's a Canadian city? San Jose has a huge fan base, Nashville and Washington have pretty decent followings. Vancouver no more deserves the cup than those cities do.

The Canucks brought in Mark Messier as a free agent signing, paying him a ridiclous amount of money. Despite the fact he was well loved by players and fans, and had established his tenure as captain with the team for nearly a decade. The forced captaincy of Messier also led to friction in the dressing room and between coach and players; most players supported the idea of Linden as captain, and he was the team's leader, but the organization wanted Messier to be the captain and leader. Ultimately, Keenan grew angry at Linden for effectively disrupting the dressing room, largely brought on by a severe loss to the Blues which Keenan openly blamed on Linden. Linden was traded shortly after for Bertuzzi and McCabe. The Canucks traded franchise cornerstone goaltender Kirk McLean for basically nothing due simply to the fact that, despite the fact he was playing as well as he had for the past decade, his partner (Arturs Irbe) was playing better. The Nucks got Sean Burke back in the deal, and Burke flopped; so Keenan had to go out and get a new goaltender at the deadline; Garth Snow. Irbe was on a one-year deal and the Nucks were unable to keep him, so they ended up with Snow as the starter for the next season and Corey Hirsch made a triumphant return to Vancouver's backup spot. The season after that would see Kevin Weekes, who had played mininal time the previous year, up as Snow's backup until he was traded for a new starter; Felix Potvin. The next season, of course, saw Bob Essensa take over the starting job, Vancouver shipping Potvin out and the Canucks trading away their best defenseman (Adrian Aucoin) for a backup goaltender in Dan Cloutier. McLean retired at the end of that year, having provided better goaltending both in Vancouver and outside of Vancouver than any goaltender the Canucks attempted to replace him with. And of course, finally, there's the entitlement factor. Canucks fans, and Canadian fans in general, have this attitude of entitlement to all things hockey, to winning, and feel as if a great injustice has been done when their team loses. It's the same attitude that prompts the "Where was he in Winnipeg or Quebec?" comments about Bettman trying to save the Coyotes in Phoenix.

Yandle blocked 103, Brian Campbell blocked 101, and Lidstrom blocked 92. Kronwall had 37 points and 129 blocks. Maybe he should have been nominated instead of Chara or Weber?

What, for the snarky response? Or the fact it's a lineup with Hudler at center that would actually work? I can do better, you know... PP1: Zetterberg/Datsyuk/Holmstrom/Lidstrom/Hudler

The question is...does Hank get a second team selection at LW or C, or does he get screwed by playing both positions at an elite level and not having the numbers the Sedins and Stamkos have, or the name recognition of Ovechkin? It will be interesting. IMHO the Sedins bear the only legit challenge to him at those two positions; they're pretty decent defensively and very good offensively. Big difference is that Z had basically no offensive help; his 21-point lead over Datsyuk tied Buffalo's Thomas Vanek for the largest difference between the top two scorers on a team. I am torn between Z and Kesler for the Selke, because Kesler was absolutely fantastic defensively this season, but I would definitely put Z in my top five for the Hart. But that's all off topic. So enough of that.

Not quite. Are you familiar with Cristobal Huet, Wade Redden, Mike Komisarek, or Jeff Finger? All of them have fairly large one-way deals and none of them count towards the cap. Huet was actually being paid by the European team he was loaned to if I understand the loan terms correctly, but is still under contract to the Hawks. When a highly paid player is effectively exiled to the minors because a team can't afford to use that kind of cap space on him, it's called cap leakage. The salary counts towards the "player's share" of the total league revenue, but the player is never actually on the roster. This increases the chance that due to the escrow terms in the CBA, the players will not receive their full salary; effectively a store hiring everyone to what are normally 40-hour jobs at too high a wage, and having to cut back everyone's hours to fit within its payroll budget.

The answer is yes. Konstantinov was the league's best defenseman. He would be replacing Bob Rouse on this hypothetical roster, assuming no other changes. The team without him was Cup-capable even without Vladdy and without the motivation to win it for Vladdy. Having Vladdy instead of Rouse would have more than covered that difference. Even better; Imagine Konstantinov wasn't in his crash, Grigorenko wasn't in his, and Fischer didn't have heart issues. We still draft Fischer and Kronwall...Lidstrom and Konstantinov handing off the reins to Fischer and Kronwall? Grigorenko was Ovechkin-level when he was drafted, and then in a car crash he shattered his femur and nearly died from an embolism. Scary roster... in a good way.

He scored 2 fewer points; sure he scored more goals but that is because instead of being the playmaker he was the shooter. Still a 70-75 point guy, same as last year. It's official. Henrik Zetterberg is the most underrated player in the NHL. And Dave Bolland is right behind him. The nominees should have been Kesler, Zetterberg, and Hanzal; Toews is good on D, but Bolland is the lock down guy in Chicago. I was saying it since he went out; if he had not been injured Chicago is a top four seed, possibly division champs, and if he had come back in Game 1 of the playoffs Chicago wins in 5 games. Zetterberg, Datsyuk, Kesler, Bolland, and Hanzal (who I very much want on the Wings) are IMHO the top five defensive forwards in the league.

Top five IMHO should be: Lidstrom Weber Chara Ehrhoff Enstrom HM to Yandle, Doughty, Letang

You may expect Lidstrom and Rafalski to play a few more years, But all I have to say about offering multi-year deals for a player over 35 whose cap hit doesn't go away: Brett Hull in Phoenix.

The thing is, diving is any It doesn't say "Any player who dives trying to draw a penalty call where there shouldn't be one." People need to get the "Is it a penalty, or is it a dive?" attitude out of their brains because it can be both.

Ok. So when a player dives, it is rare for him to dive without his opponent to have committed a penalty; at least as far as the rulebook is concerned. So if the referee sees what he considers a dive, and is going to call it, he almost certainly saw what led to the dive, and will be calling that as well. In your example, Campbell cross checked Sedin and Sedin dove. Cross checking is one of the more obvious penalties, if not the most obvious. I mean...both hands on the stick, hitting the guy with your stick...pretty hard to plead "not guilty" to that one. The only things wrong with the play were, assuming your account is exactly accurate (I didn't see the play) are the ref not calling Sedin for a cross-check (or GI if you prefer), and the fact that Sedin was too obvious in his dive. It's likely the ref didn't see Sedin's bump on Crawford, but he did see the rest and that led to coincidental minors. I'm assuming Vancouver had the puck, or the whistle would have been blown dead on Campbell's crosscheck. So Vancouver has the puck, Sedin bumps Crawford, and Campbell hits Sedin. If the ref sees Sedin and calls him for that, we still end up with coincidental minors; just no dive this time. EDIT: Upon Seeing the GIF posted above, I'd say Campbell should have been called for roughing rather than a cross check; although a cross check is arguable. Also, it looks like Sedin's right skate gets caught on or in something. Plus, Campbell shoves Sedin into the crossbar. I have the benefit of instant replay, but that looks more like an awkward fall than a dive.

Let's compare Visnovsky to our own beloved veteran defenseman. Visnovsky: 81 GP, 18-50-68, +18 Rafalski: 63 GP, 4-44-48, +11 You thought I was talking about Lidstrom? Well, assuming Rafalski keeps that pace for another 18 games, he would end up as: 81 GP, 5-57-62, +14 Pretty close numbers to Visnovsky's, and better numbers than Lidstrom's or Yandle's. Those numbers would put Raffi square in the top five for Norris voting. Lidstrom, Chara, Visnovsky, Carle, Ehrhoff, Letang, Yandle. Weber's numbers aren't even close; so the Norris being decided simply on stats should not be a question this year.

Filppula/Datsyuk/Holmstrom Abdelkader/Zetterberg/Cleary Franzen/Hudler/Bertuzzi Does that work for you?

I would have ranked Visnovsky behind (in no order) Lidstrom, Weber, Enstrom, Chara, Ehrhoff, Edler, Letang, Keith, Seabrook, Doughty, Rafalski, Kronwall, Yandle, and a bunch of others. Being able to get the puck to a stacked line and to join an offensive rush well does not make you a top defenseman. If Visnovsky were Canadian, of course, he'd win the Norris this year.