toby91_ca

This reminds me of an old Rock 'em Sock 'em video where Don Cherry recapped the Boston team he coached during the 1977/78 season. That team had an incredible 11 players with 20 or more goals. I am not sure if that is still a record or not, but it probably is.

Are you insane? Do you know how small that would actually be? Current rink sizes are 200' by 85' I believe. Assuming you are talking about Boston Garden, since it was usually considered to be one of the smaller rinks, it's actual measurements were 191' by 83'.;

I was actually wondering how long Eager would last in the league. He certainly is NOT great. I'm not sure what he does well to be honest with you. He is somewhat of a tough guy, but not really. He cheap shotted Laraque, but no way he was going to drop the gloves with him. He took on 41 year old Roberts instead and got his ass beat pretty good.

I read this last week and thought it was pretty funny. I've heard a few people over the years ask the same type of question. Unless you can find someone that would "literally" cover the entire net (which I don't think would be possible, a person of the size would likely be bed ridden), any space they leave open would pretty much stay open due to their inability to move.

You're just supposed to take my word for it Seriously though, I'm sure someone could try to explain why he is a better skater, but I find that to be very difficult to put into words, you actually have to watch them. Also, I didn't say Niedermayer was a god of defenseman, I simply said he was the superior skater. Niedermayer's skating ability is one of the main reasons why he is one of the best defensemen in the league. Lidstrom is one of the best due to his smarts, sound position game and shot from the point. I would guess that most would consider Niedermayer to be amoung the best skating defensemen in the history of the game. I know there aren't many on my list ahead of him.

I know, because of his style of play, Nick won't fade as quickly as others, but I'm not sure how inclined I would be to sign him to a 3 year deal at $7 million +. I'm not sure I'd want to commit $7-8 million to a 40-41 year old. Then again, you never know, he still may have it at that point, but there is a lot of risk there. With all that said, a lot of contracts that are signed have plenty of risk....

It doesn't matter how you define skater, Niedermayer is clearly a better skater. This doesn't mean Lidstrom isn't a good skater, Niedermayer is simply that good.

Not only are the playoffs not taken into account, the voting takes place before the playoffs start.

Niedermayer won't win. Had Pronger played a full season last year, he probably would have won it, but he didn't play the full season. I'm not sure I would go as far to say Lidstrom was "clearly" better on paper last year than those two. I think it was much closer than you are letting on. His +/- stat was clearly better than Niedermayer's but not the other stats. His +/- stat wasn't that much better than Pronger if you prorate Pronger for 82 games.

Looks like he is going to be taking some time away, regardless what punishment the NHL hands down. http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=225410&hubname=

I don't think it changes anything and I don't think it should.

For a guy that is young enough to be Chelios' son, I doubt he is too old to handle the grind of a full season. I think the Wings have 8 or 9 players on their roster older than Niedermayer.

Could disagree more, sorry. Having a great team doesn't make for a great hockey town. Think about it, if you take the Wings and ship them to some other town, does that all of a sudden make that town a great hockey town just because there is a great team playing there now?

Russia is one of the states of the US?

Some of what you are saying may be true, but I'm not sure how relevant it is. I don't think you can statistically show what state is the biggest hockey state. For the record, I think there are more NHLers that came from Boston University than those that came from Michigan (either way, it is probably pretty close). In terms of players in the NHL: MI - 23 MN - 22 NY - 18 MA - 12 Not exactly staggering stats. Compare these numbers to the 140 players from Ontario.

Here we go......AGAIN....

Oh sweet Lord....I have to restrain myself, but my head is about to explode. Not only is this the 19th thread on the allstar voting, I think most have caught on that voting is only for the starters, but for some odd reason, a lot of people still think the coachs play a role in picking the rest of the spots. Maybe it's the baseball mentality?

Sorry, should have explained it further. He played pretty much the whole game, effectively got a shutout, his team won, he was named the 3rd star of the game.....but alas, no win for him. Interestingly enough, the Sens were outshot 32-26 in the game.

Weird that Emery left at the same time the Sens scored their 2nd goal. Another strange thing along the same lines, Gerber was the 3rd star of the game.

Sometimes it is actually pretty awesome the way he controls the puck down low and he does throw heavy hits every now and then. There was a hit 2 games ago where he just leaned into someone on the boards and squished him. I'm not sure if that guy played the rest of the game or not. In terms of the Philly game, believe me, he would have loved to fight, but their whole team is afraid of him. You can't fight if you don't have a willing partner. Eager throw a nice elbow into Laraque when Laraque had his head down, not looking. I didn't catch what Larque did, but he obviously wanted to fight (got a 4 min roughing penalty). Eager had none of that and chose to fight Roberts instead and proceeded to get his ass whooped by Roberts. He didn't play for the rest of the game.

As far as I can tell, not a single team in the history of the league has done that.

For a guy in his 4th year in the league, 35 points in 27 games is really not that good. It's actually below his production from the previous year and the year before that. As a comparison, Brett Maclean, who was also a 2nd round pick in the 2007 draft (Emmerton was a 2nd rounder in 2006) has 64 points in 26 games.

Well, Ward did not play in the 8-1 game, so your memory is a little off there. I do find it odd though, that Graham wasn't pulled at some point in that game. Also, Ward was never pulled in the 5-1 or 6-0 game last night. I didn't see the 6-0 game, so can't comment, but the 5-2 game, the game was tied 2-2 midway through the 2nd and the Wings scored to make it 3-2, it stood that way until very late in the 3rd when the Wings scored 2 goals in 30 seconds. No need to pull him in that game.

Not arguing against Detroit being hockeytown, but using the logic that they have the longest tradition of professional hockey in the world doesn't quite work for me since they will always have that unless they lose professional hockey alltogether, does that mean that they will always be the most deserving of hockeytown? In terms of Minnesota attendance for the North Stars, I'm not sure it is relevant (we are talking about now, not the past), but just to dispute your claim that 13,200 would have been their best ever, data I have shows that in the 1992 and 1993 seasons, they averaged 13,447 and 13,910 respectively. It's also difficult to compare to today's attendances as well as I am not sure what capacity was, for all I know, capacity was 13,500, which makes those numbers look good. Their attendance was awful in 1991 and low in 1990. I don't have data earlier than that currently.

Right now it looks like a fair deal, in terms of assessing whether it will pay off, or turn out to be a steal, I think we need to be much deeper into this deal than today's date.