toby91_ca

The league has shown some consistency here at least. Legwand received the same $5,000 fine for his butt end to Malkin's junk. However, is there video of him doing close to the same thing not that long ago? I have no idea if the first Lucic incident was caught by the league or not. If it was, he should have at least received a $10,000 fine. Unfortunately, stuff like this happens way more often than you might expect. Next time you attend a game, just take a few minutes to watch things behind the play when no one else is looking. Would help if you are attending a BOS or PHI game as well.

It is typical of around here....complain about reffing....non-stop, even when the Wings aren't playing. It does get pretty tiresome. I'll admit to not watching most of the game last night, but from what I saw, CBJ got away with taking a ton of liberties, there was definitely no favouritism going the Pens way from the little that I saw. From a pure stats perspective, CBJ took a grand total of 3 penalties during the game (yup, gotta be a conspiracy here). Pens took 4 penalties by the way, theirs were all well deserved of course. Can we be a bit more original around here (at least when the Wings aren't playing against them?)

I think that is the trick. Getting under the skin of the Penguins is how you beat them. That has been the case for the past few years anyway, not sure if that's changed. If they get by CBJ and then face PHI in round 2, that team will do a very good job at getting under their skin. It works very well on Malkin and used to work pretty well on Crosby....we'll see if that's changed. The other recipe is a great goaltender or collapse by Fleury.

This has to be the dumbest award. The award goes to the goalie, playing in at least 25 games, on the team that has given up the fewest goals (so, sometimes it is shared). So, it's really a team award, but they give it to an individual. I don't like a lot of goalie stats because I find most of them to be team oriented, however, if you want to give out an individual award for fewest goals against, why don't you give it to the goalie with the lowest GAA? Harding and Elliott had significantly lower GAA stats than Quick. They both played more than 25 games, but not much. If you want to draw the line in the sand on it at 40 games, that's fine, Schneider had a GAA of 1.97 and Rask had 2.04, both lower than Quick. What the award shows here is that Quick ended up having the worst GAA on his team.

Well, not surprisingly, bold could have been one adjective to use to describe the predictions. I must admit though, I was pretty surprised at how close Howard came to 25 wins. 21 is actually quite a bit short, but a lot closer than where I thought he'd get to when the predictions came out (he went 14-9-3 from that point....respectable). All the others were laughable.

Had that been applied this year, the Wings don't make the playoffs. The rest of the top 8 in the east stays the same except for TB and MTL flipping spots.

I like the passion and somewhat agree with the sentiment, but other than that...completely dumb, dumb, dumb....idiotic. You bring up baseball and Pete Rose. Wonder how MLB would handle this? I know in the NBA, if guilty, he'd get a 2 game suspension, that's about it. Actually, a 2 game suspension would be more than what someone in the general population gets...which amounts to a loss of license for a short period of time.

I have to be honest....I really don't see how you can argue the Detroit has hard the more difficult year with injuries. I can understand suggesting they were equal, but your comments are far too biased in playing down the Pens injuries and playing up the Wings injuries. The Wings have missed both Datsyuk and Zetterberg for significant time, but I'm not sure I'd qualify any of the other players that missed time as significantly important players. The Pens have missed one of their first liners for more than half the year and both Malkin and Neal have missed 20+ games each. Their top 2 defensemen have missed more than half the year and their backup goalie has been gone all year. I remember one stretch where they were playing without all of their top 6 Dmen. They will also finish 15+ points ahead in the standings. I wouldn't be surprised if Roy gets it though. Hard to argue when your team goes from 29th overall to either 2nd, 3rd, 4th....something like that.

Saw this at HFBoards (not sure why I was there...google search must have taken me there). Ovechkin went the entire month of March without scoring a single even strength point. Apparently, he only has 7 ES assists all season. I checked the March stats, no even strength points....haven't checked the 7 assist stat though, so I'll just have to take the poster's word for it. So, this gave me a few thoughts: 1 - Wow 2 - Don't let the Caps get on the PP 3 - These stats probably help explain why the Caps might miss the playoffs.

That has ZERO to do with this in my opinion, for a couple of reasons: 1. They have been looking for a while now for someone to take on this role. They offered the job to Gretzky last year and were close to bringing him aboard from what I hear. 2. More importantly, the Leafs don't have to worry about fan backlash. Season tickets will be renewed, TV deals are a given, there are no concerns from that respect. Your comment would probably ring true in pretty much every other market in the league, but not Toronto. In Vancouver for example, Linden was brought in to do just that....they were worried about selling tickets.

Tiebreaker: 1 - ROW (Detroit has this over Washington 2 - Head to Head (won't matter due to 1) 3 - Goal differential (won't matter due to 1) Wings need 1pt to clinch, or 1 loss by Washington.

Pretty sure there is no such thing as nominations for this award or any other NHL award. Finalists are announced for the purposes of leading up to the awards ceremony, but those finalists are simply those 3 that rec'd the most votes. With that in mind, voting hasn't happened yet, so no guarantee that Babcock will be in that top 3.

Scott is another guy I don't see as having much of a purpose in the league. He has a total of 6 career points in the NHL spread over 6 seasons. That said, he's not as dirty as Rinaldo. Rinaldo's sole purpose is to go out an act like an idiot, get under the oppositions skin, etc. I have no problem with that type of play if you are a guy like Maltby who can at least contribute a little bit beyond that. Rinaldo basically has no additional value and he takes the acting like an idiot way to far and gets way too dirty way too often.

I think PIT has better forwards, better defenseman and a goalie that could be better or worse, depending on what version shows up. However, I think DET has better coaching and play a better system. That part can't be underestimated.

With Fluery, you really never know. I see him as one of the most talented goalies in the league, but he also has the potential to fall to levels that most goalies would not. He'll make absolutely unbelievable saves, but he might also let in a couple goals that leaves you wondering how that is even possible. He has been great during the regular season, but you could say pretty much the same thing every year, so that won't help him in the playoffs.

That caught my eye as well. He was almost the best two-way player in the league from his first game.

You also don't want to be playing a hockey game with teeth rolling around the ice (dangerous)

Saw it, perfectly clean hit.....Milbury is a complete Baffoon by the way (his comments on the hit). When I saw him skate away, I figured it was a shoulder injury, but could be collar bone as well. Last I heard is that he'll sit the rest of the regular season, but is supposed to be 100% for the start of the playoffs.

Not so sure about that. Not sure what superstars you are thinking about. I think more often than not, O numbers drop due to normal aging process, change in overall league scoring, etc.

Looks like the issue is the linseman's whistle catching him somewhere in the face...perhaps near the eye? Assuming anything else would be pretty stupid....he's not going to pull a dive, what would that accomplish? Refs get in the way, trip guys up, etc. all the time. It happens, they don't stop play because of it.

The difference is that Stamkos is a centre and Ovechkin is not. I don't give Ovechkin a really hard time on lack of defense as not as much responsibility is placed on wingers. This is also why I always see centres as being more valuable and more important than wingers.

I know a lot of people have the view that x player sacrifices offense by playing better D, but I really think that is a myth. Playing great D should give you more options on offsensive. Getting the puck back quicker gives you greater possession time. If you are not chipping in on D, your teams will spend more time in your own end, which is very tough to score from.

Can't say I know the specifics, but I do believe there are provisions for this type of thing. My guess is that this is part of the reason why trade calls have to take place with the league before a trade can be finalized.

Okay, so this isn't as interesting as the title may suggest, but I'm just wondering what is wrong with that organization? As a very young kids in the early to mid-80s, they were my favourite team. From Eastern Canada, there was no local team, tons of Leafs, Canadiens and Bruins fans, but as a young boy, just getting into hockey, they were the best. Anyway, they have fallen far from grace over the past 20 years. That much isn't that surprising, what is surprising is the lack of getting any better after drafting all the 1st overall players they have in the past little while. Chicago and Pittsburgh got a lot of high end picks and you see where they have been able to go (both winning cups). Winning a Cup isn't what I'm looking at though, Pittsburgh and Chicago have had good teams every single year (maybe except for 1 for Chicago). What's the deal Edmonton? You can't expect a turnaround in 1 year after drafting well, but their top draft picks have been in the league for a while now. So what is it? - What Chicago and Pittsburgh have done isn't as easy as simply sucking for a while? or - Something is just not right with Edmonton My guess is a combination of the two. One common missconception though is that the Oilers are simply a high skilled offensive team....but they are actually one of the worst offensive teams in the league. Only NJ and BUF have scored fewer goals.

I wonder how the game with the Pens might go. Currently, that is the most likely 1st round matchup. Will the Pens go all out, wanting to get confidence for the playoffs, will they play a little bit differently than they plan on playing in the first round as to not tip their hand, etc. With Malkin out, it's going to look different anyway (that said, no guarantee he's ready to go by playoffs).