toby91_ca

Therrien is denying the reports.

I think age will be a factor, but will only matter if it's close, which it isn't right now, however, Panarin didn't play last night, not sure why or if he may be out for awhile. Haven't checked on that.

Panarin didn't play last night....Kane went scoreless....coincidence?

Most good players have gone a really good runs before, but you can't cherry pick a portion of a season and suggest this isn't new territory for Kane. Fact is, he's never produced at this level for this long. Now, I think he may be trailing off a bit though, so we'll see (Pretty sure Crosby has matched him or out-produced him over the past 30 games). Speaking of Crosby, he had a stretch of 25-30 games several years ago where he produced well over 2ppg. If he were to put up 160pts in a season, I would suggest that would be entirely new territory, never produced at that level before...even though he would have over stretches.

I was counting all outdoor games....Detroit and Pittsburgh - 3, Chicago - 4...couple other teams have been in 3 as well.

Detroit has been in just as many as Pittsburgh. Chicago has been in the most.

Tied for goals, but Panarin is 5th in scoring overall and Larkin is 51st. If nothing changes, I'd find it close to impossible to have rookie that is 5th in league scoring not to win the Calder.

Is that Larkin's way of saying Helm can't turn very well?

I have no problem with that though...if guys are pretty equal, go with the guy with more points. I ignore +/- stats almost entirely, it really can be a bogus stat and certainly is almost impossible to use to compare players.

It's not the fame, a lot of star players have been held on a pedestal their entire lives and treated like Gods (from a very young age). I have to imagine that type of treatment produces more aholes than the simple general population, but I have no evidence to back that up.

They wanted to win because there was $1M on the line. Not a ton of money ($90K or so each), but I'm sure they all were still motivated by that. The extra $90K and car sure went a long way with Scott I'm sure.

My point was more than there is always a separate argument or perspective. I agree with you that his production could go up if he got more ice time, especially power play time, but it's also true that his play could suffer because he isn't equipped to handle the extra load and even if he is, production doesn't extrapolate evenly over extra time. The only thing I do know is that no one can answer any of the questions definitively. I do think it would be tough for Larkin to win unless the scoring gap is lessened. I can see some voting for him even if his scoring is lower, but it would have to be close I would think (regardless of all the other fancy stats).

Why won't it stop a thing and why thankfully?

The more I think about it, I really don't have any major beefs with Bettman. Surprising a bit, but I think he's done a pretty good job with the league when you consider what his job entails. - He's an easy target and easy to hate for various reasons: - he's the commish of a pro sports league, that always comes with some dislike, part of the role - his delivery / speaking does not come off very well sometimes, or a lot of times. He annoys me for sure, but not sure about dislike as I don't know too much about him beyond what you see in the public (never met him). I must say though, sometimes, very good speakers and people with charisma aren't always what they seem so... - lockouts - again, easy to point the finger at him hear and dislike him, but I've tended to step back and think that those are really issues between the players and the owners....take a side there if you want, but he's just the guy doing his best for his employers (owners) - not a "hockey guy" - there will always be people that simply will never give him a chance because he didn't grow up playing and loving the game (I assume he didn't). I share some of that as well, but I think people are a bit too hard on him for that and in reality, it doesn't matter in terms of the job he needs to do. Anyway, he's just the easy scapegoat most of the time with anything gone wrong (John Scott incident as well) - not sure how much Bettman had to do with some of the ugly stuff though, so pointing the finger at him may be misinformed as well. When it comes to the game itself, how it's played, any rule changes, etc., Bettman is really just one person involved in all of that and he doesn't necessarily carry a ton of weight in those decisions.

Well, the fans didn't really vote him in. Most fans jumped on his bandwagon the last couple weeks and soaked it all in with him, but the vast majority of fans didn't vote him in. He was voted in by a very small group of people that arranged to have multiple votes a day cast (someone more tech savvy than I can probably explain it). There is a big difference here than simple fan voting. They'll keep fan voting, but they'll ensure that each IP address can only vote once. If everyone was limited to one vote each, John Scott would not have made it into the game.

No, Kane was did not score anywhere even close to this before. Last year, his season ended with injury after 61 games (he had 64 points, or 1.05ppg). If you want to look at his best PPG pace all year, that would have been at the 52 game mark (he had 58pts, or 1.12ppg). This ignores when he was at 1.5ppg after game 2 and 3pts, I figured that sample size was too small He's bee pretty consistently a point per game player over his entire career (just under, just at or just over). At his peak last year, he had 58 points in 52 games. This year, he has 73 points in 53 games. So...how much is Panarin helping him vs. him just having a breakout?

Yzerman was 25 in Jagr's first season (turned 26 during the season)....not 23. Jagr is still impressive though. He's got almost no speed left, but he's still producing.

To balance that argument though, one might question whether Larkin's numbers would change if he was given more ice time and more responsibility in more situations. If Larkin is more important to his team, why isn't he getting more ice time? I must say, Larkin, especially due to this weekend, likely has more publicity, but it's tough to say though, I'm obviously more familiar with him and see him play way more, so my perception may be wrong. Most here would be the in the same boat as well, so tough to confirm. I've only seen Panarin play 2-3 games this year....he's been impressive for sure though...other than that, it's simply looking at his raw stats. The real tough argument to think about is that Panarin's numbers are overinflated because he plays with Kane (I think he does, can't confirm that for sure). However, one might suggest Panarin is bumping Kane's stats up quite a bit as well because Kane has never come close to producing at this level before this year.

So, I was going to say it's ridiculous that the weekend would have any impact at all on Larkin's chances at ROY because it really should have no impact at all, but the voters are human. As someone pointed out, perhaps some of the writers know him better now and could have an impact on their vote.

This is a really old one I think

The other thing is, today's hardest shot competition is not fair compared to McInnis and Iafrate days due to composite sticks, but it creates all sorts of excitement.

Crashnburnluder.....not sure what you just said, but it appears that you are confused. The people complaining are suggesting that, while both times are for one lap around the rink, Gartner's lap started from a dead stop, while Larkin's started while already up to a good speed. I have no idea why the NHL would have allowed it to work that way (other than to artificially increase times or create buzz of a potential new record). Doesn't make a lot of sense for them to do that, but wouldn't put it past them (a way to make the All Star weekend more relevant again?). It's entirely possible as a lot of people only cared about the hardest shot recently...but would people have really cared about that either if everyone was hitting 95mph?

In all honesty, people complaining about the fastest skater record do have a point....starting from the blue line is a significant difference. Not sure about the complaints about nets being moved up though....I think they were in the same spot. For the record, Gartner posted a 12.8 or 12.9 when starting from the blue line in 1994, but it didn't qualify because he started at the blue line.

The thing is though....he calls himself in the group of one of the 700 best players in the world....I don't really agree with that. There are many, many, many players better than him at hockey outside of the NHL, he's there for a very specific reason, not because he's one of the best 700.

I more sympathy for Toews than Ovechkin. Ovechkin played over 20 minutes last night, so tough to cry injury, but then be ready first game back. Toews was pulled out of his game and missed the 3rd period....however, that could have been a plan to try and avoid suspension by only missing a period, instead of a full game. As I stated before, I understand and hate the rule at the same time, but thinking about it....if the league thinks the ASG is important, you need to have your star players play in it, you can't have guys opting out.