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I’m having a hard time bringing myself to writing anything about the Edmonton Oilers. It really feels, on the basis of the first quarter’s returns, that this is going be year four of the rebuilding process, without getting any closer to having been rebuilt. Blogging about the team and being invested in it doesn’t buy you anything of course, but it’s difficult to maintain that investment when we’re dealing with a team that insists on making stupid moves year after year and then pretends to be surprised when things go to pot. I’m honestly feeling like I don’t have a lot to say about this team anymore - they aren’t even interesting, they just suck relentlessly, with little hope of any improvement in the future.

I don’t have any kids, but I imagine that the experience of watching a kid be exposed to and react to new things is not unlike the experience of having a new head coach who’s a quotable guy. The old guy, who had seen it all with this particular bunch of players, didn’t seem to have a sense of wonder about it all anymore; he just seemed bitter and cynical. Quinn at least still seems surprised by it all. It’s sort of fun watching the Oilers grind a new coach down. Hopefully he starts conspiring to steal Tambellini’s job soon - this team is desperate for something interesting to happen.

It’s Columbus tonight, with the Oilers facing a team that has a lot of the characteristics of the more interesting Oilers squads a few years ago (including several of the players). Short on money, they somehow seem to get the most out of every dollar, unlike the Oilers who are basically a sad empire in decline. Raffi Torres is out of the lineup tonight but I thought it’d be interesting to point out that he’s 73rd in ESG/G amongst the 406 guys with at least 160 GP since 2003-04.

The chart simply sorts players into bins by this measurement. Raffi is at 0.198 ESG/G. For what it’s worth, even in his last three injury plagued seasons, he’s producing at about the same level - 0.18 ESG/G.

We know that this measurement won’t favour Raffi - he tends to get less ES TOI than most goalscoring types but when you add in that he can play against the other side’s top six (a role Hitchcock seems to becoming more comfortable using him in this year) and that he’s a physical player…I just don’t understand the Oilers desire to be rid of the fellow. He has definable dimensions to his game. Can anyone tell me what a guy like Robert Nilsson brings to the rink?

Are there aspects of his game that are frustrating? Certainly, but it seems to me that in focusing on the things that he wasn’t, they overlooked the things that he did bring to the table. They’re now left with an awful lot of guys who don’t seem to have any dimensions to their game at all or who had some of the dimensions that Torres did when they were younger, but don’t anymore.

Torres is a free agent after this season. If he isn’t re-signed by Columbus and the price is right, bringing him back would be a step in the right direction. How a club basically gives him away and then ends up a year later with JF Jacques starting the season with their top line is a mystery to me.

Looking around to see what’s shaking with old friend Raffi Torres, I came across this fascinating little anecdote:

[Delaney] Collins has seven goals and 30 assists for Canada. She was an alternate defenceman on the 2006 Olympic team and feels it was the eight weeks she was out with that torn muscle that cost her a spot on the team.

She received sage advice from Canadian teammate Jennifer Botterill, who suffered her own major concussion in 2004. During a summer scrimmage against pro men’s players, she collided with Raffi Torres, who currently plays for the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets.

Botterill, from Winnipeg, spoke about her experience at a concussion seminar in London, Ont., earlier this year.

“It can be a very frustrating injury because you have to show a lot of patience,” Botterill explained. “It’s unlike other injuries where you can do active recovery and things to help. With your brain, you just have to let it rest.

I did not know that Jennifer Botterill belonged on the list with Ladislav Smid, Milan Michalek and Jeremy Williams.

Raffi, for those who are curious, apparently looks like he’ll be playing on the Jackets’ “checking” line, with Sammy Pahlsson and a player to be named later. He fit in nicely with Stoll and Pisani during the Stanley Cup run; I’d expect him to prove to be a useful piece of the puzzle for the Jackets during the coming season, although looking over the numbers, I see that he doesn’t exactly have a lengthy track record of doing well against elite competition. He might be an odd fit with Pahlsson, whose line will presumably see the toughest.

There was a post at The Puck Stops Here that was excerpted in a thread at Hockey’s Future that I thought warranted a bit of comment, as it touched on mc79hockey fave Dan Heyda. I’m going to excerpt a rather large part of it but go read the whole thing:

It is clear that when Jan Hejda is on the ice, his team outscores their opponents. It is also clear that his team is outshot significantly in the process. The logical conclusion is that Hejda forces opponents to take bad shots instead of creating good offensive opportunities. This is consistent with observation of his play.

Hejda highlights a problem with Corsi. It does not distinguish between bad shots and good shots. A blocked low percentage shot counts the same as a goal. He is the most significant example of a player in the NHL who has successfully forced lots of bad shots in place of a lesser number of good shots as a defensive strategy. He is an example that shows that Corsi Numbers of defencemen with little offensive talent should be taken with a grain of salt - especially when they disagree with +/- ratings.

Jan Hejda is a good defenceman. His +/- shows that he is effective in limiting scoring when he is on the ice. The fact that he does this by forcing low percentage shots does not hurt his playing level. His Corsi is misleading. He is the best example of that in the NHL. It is reasonable to be skeptical of the Corsi Ratings of other defensive players with low offensive value. In cases where their Corsi Rating and +/- disagree, the +/- is more likely to be the meaningful one.

I enjoy The Puck Stops Here and thought that the author, whoever he might be, was doing the Lord’s work in the playoffs when he was trying to convince red clad heathens that Chris Osgood was not, in fact, some sort of a playoff force and Hall of Fame level talent. This post above strikes me as being just crazy though.

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Gary Bettman, March 2, 2009:

This will be our fourth consecutive year of record revenue growth and, because our attendance historically increases month by month, 2008-09 also likely will be our fourth consecutive season of record attendance.

There was a story that appeared in the Globe shortly after that quote that I picked up on in which David Shoalts estimated that the NHLPA would be paying back 13% of their salaries to the NHL this year. I ran the numbers and figured that Bettman’s comments didn’t make any sense - revenues couldn’t be that high if the players were going to be paying back 13% of their salaries. Bill Daly appears to have confirmed this in the New Jersey Star Ledger yesterday:

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“When I see 14 of my guys playing so well in Columbus, it excites me to get back in,” said MacLean, who is friendly with Leipold. “Everybody wants a second chance as a GM. There’s a great foundation in Columbus, and I feel really proud of that. Now that Minnesota’s an established team, and we all know how amazing a hockey market it is, anybody would want a chance at that.”

Columbus’ forwards for G2, sorted by TOI

18 R. Umberger - 17:25 (Howson)
61 R. Nash - 16:31 (MacLean)
27 M. Malhotra - 16:21 (MacLean)
50 A. Vermette - 16:17 (Howson)
29 J. Williams - 14:23 (Howson)
19 M. Peca - 13:25 (Howson)
14 R. Torres - 13:07 (Howson)
25 J. Chimera - 12:39 (MacLean)
93 J. Voracek - 12:06 (Howson)
33 F. Modin - 11:30 (MacLean)
20 K. Huselius - 11:13 (Howson)
15 D. Dorsett - 9:16 (MacLean)

Columbus’ defencemen for G2, sorted by TOI

97 R. Klesla - 24:12 (MacLean)
51 F. Tyutin - 23:59 (Howson)
8 J. Hejda - 20:09 (Howson)
22 M. Commodore 0 18:58 (Howson)
3 M. Methot - 16:03 (MacLean)
10 K. Russell - 14:41 (MacLean)

Steve Mason is a Doug MacLean draft pick too. I guess when he says “14″, what he means is “Nine, two of whom were top four picks.” Yeah, I think that I’d be ok with him running the Wild.

I watched Sportsnet Connected tonight, which isn’t something I’d generally do, but I missed the game and wanted to catch the highlights. Mike Toth looks like he lives outside. Does Sportsnet not encourage shaving? Personally, I’m all in favour of greatly reduced societal standards when it comes to shaving, but as far as I’m aware, they haven’t been introduced yet. I’m also baffled by the introduction that had a bunch of highlights from last year’s Stanley Cup Final but that’s neither here nor there. Very impressed with the fact that the 1AM version starts with a story about the Canucks loss last night, even though they didn’t play today. There’s a reason Sportsnet is nowhere near TSN.

I’m really hung up on the Oilers division at the moment. I just can’t believe how tough the NW is. For all the flak that Lowe has taken this year for the defence, if you believe in the numbers put out by Jeff Sagarin and Andy Dolphin, despite having a team that should be at the low ebb of its fortunes for the next couple years and breaking in as many as four defencemen at a time, despite suffering significant chunks of lost time for guys like Steve Staios, Ethan Moreau, Ales Hemsky and Ryan Smyth, both guys have the Oilers as being in the upper half of the NHL. They’re 19th in the league in points at the moment but rated as high as 13 by the number crunching guys. It’s a real shame that there’s a significant chance that they’ll miss the playoffs. It’s unfortunate for Lowe as well - I suspect that the risk that he took would look a lot better in any other division in the NHL.

It’s definitely worth scrolling down to the bottom of Dolphin’s page, by the way, and playing with his result predictor.  It’s kind of neat to get a feel for how slim the line is between elite and average.  If the Oilers were to host the Preds, the number team in the league according to Dolphin, they’d have a 45-46% chance of winning.  That’s a thin line.
I can’t make this up - Nick Kypreos just made a comment about how unfair it is that the winner of a division is no worse than a third seed, citing the fact that Detroit is ten points ahead of Vancouver and Calgary at the moment. While I’m generally sympathetic to that point of view, if you’re going to have a schedule like the NHL has, you simply have to do things like this. It sucks when there’s a brutal division (Atlanta is probably ripe to be upset) but a situation like this is so borderline unfair that it really is necessary. Knowing that Kypreos disagrees gives me added confidence that I’m right. Is it that hard to find someone, anyone, who can appreciate how tough the NW division is?
The Oilers-Canucks game tomorrow night is huge. Vancouver should win the game; they’ve had a night off and the Oilers are probably on the plane as I write this. I’m sure that it breaks both ways in terms of the scheduling but Edmonton just needs to steal a game like this to get right back in the mix. It’s almost like tennis - basically everyone except Vancouver held serve on Tuesday night, the Oilers held serve on Wednesday and we’ll see if Vancouver and Colorado can hold serve tomorrow. Oilers/Avs wins tomorrow and it’s a four point swing from first to worst.
Incidentally, something I’ve never understood is why teams don’t send the goalie ahead in a situation like this. Say that the Oilers sent Zach Stortini down, called up JDD to sit on the bench tonight and sent Dwayne Roloson ahead so that he gets a decent night’s sleep. Would that not make a ton of sense? Is dressing Winchester instead of Stortini for a night that detrimental to the Oilers? I can’t imagine that the difference is that significant.