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Glen from Calgary sent along this entirely kickass picture of a pumpkin that he did with a dremel tool. Wow. Even more impressive for a guy from Calgary, his email was contained no spelling mistakes and made sense gramatically. I’m only vaguely aware of what a dremel tool is but this is impressive nonetheless. Well done sir.

Two of the hockeyosphere’s more philosophical types wrote about Dave Nonis’ whining that the new age for free agency has destroyed Pittsburgh’s chance to recoup all of the development money that they’re pouring into the black hole that is Sidney Crosby. I’ll pass on the chance to kick at him for sheer stupidity of suggesting that they’re pouring development money into Crosby that they won’t get a return on and talk about the philosophical aspects of this.

The problem that I have with the Nonis’ complaints is his introduction of the development costs that Pittsburgh supposedly will not recoup as an issue. I see this as distinct from the issue of whether players should be owned by a certain team for a longer period of time. The first issue is economic and, as I’ll explain, I think Nonis’ point is full of holes. The second issue goes to what’s best for the game. This issue is the one that I think James Mirtle seized on. In many ways, it’s a subjective one and one on which reasonable people can disagree. I think that a lot of Tom Benjamin’s agreement with Nonis falls on this side of the debate as well. Tom doesn’t like how good teams now have to shed talent because of the salary cap. Fair enough. That’s got nothing to do with development costs though.

To take Nonis’ first point though, let’s think this argument about development money through. In the old NHL, you had the rights to the product that you developed until that product reached the age of 31. Now you have the rights to that product until it’s been in use for seven years or reaches the age of 27. Realistically, if we’re talking about development costs, the team owns the player until he’s 27 - guys who come into the league at 18 or 19 don’t cost a dime to develop, generally speaking - they’re playing junior somewhere.

Why do teams invest money in developing players? Presumably, they do it because they generate a return on that money. That return comes in the form of having players on your roster who you can pay less than you otherwise would. The logical thing to do with this change to the system is to re-evaluate whether or not the return on the development costs invested still justifies that scale of expenditure. In Sidney Crosby’s case, it obviously does. If in fact the line at which the return disappears has moved, it certainly hasn’t moved that far.

I’m not at all convinced that the line has moved so far as to make the development of prospects uneconomical though. You’d think if that was true, we’d see more teams doing what the Oilers have done and running without their farm team. You’d think that we’d see teams desperately trying to get rid of their picks after the second or third round or picking players for whom the development cost is negligible, like college players, far higher than they otherwise would. If I was the owner of the Canucks and my GM didn’t think that there was money to be made in developing hockey players, I’d be on the phone to him right away, asking “Why in the hell do we have a farm team in Winnipeg then?”

That’s why I think Nonis is wrong here, at least insofar as he bases his argument on unrecouped development costs. If there’s no money to be made on developing hockey players, teams should stop doing it. They haven’t. Therefore, on the basis of their actions, I’m willing to assume that there’s still money to be made in developing hockey players. There might not be as much as there was before, but what does anyone who isn’t an NHL employee care about that? MOreover, this is where the tradeoff comes in - there’s less money to be made in developing hockey players now but there’s presumably a hell of a lot more to be made off of veteran hockey players and at a younger age than ever before. Dave Nonis got the best goalie in the league for $6.8MM annually. To get a goalie of Luongo’s stature in the old NHL, the going price would have been $8MM. Plus he would have had a hell of a lot more miles on him because he wouldn’t have got him until he was 31.

Benjamin makes the point that the young age at which players attain free agency didn’t necessarily have to be the cost of the salary cap, for the owners. Again though, the NHL might have been able to have it both ways, they just had to be willing to invest more foregone revenue in the lockout. They weren’t. Presumably, they weren’t willing to invest because they didn’t think that the risk was worth the return, or as he suggests, because they’re happy with a young free agency age.

It’s important to note as well that the development costs aren’t just thrown away by the leaguea as a whole either - if a player that a team has spent $1MM developing signs somewhere else when he becomes a free agent, the team who lost him will presumably go find another player from some other team to fill his spot, thus stealing the fruit of someone else’s development investment. On the list of people who have a legitimate gripe that they’re coming out on the short end of their investment in developing hockey players, Nonis and the NHL probably take a back street to Pavel’s boys in Russia.

My point, in a roundabout way, is that an inability to recoup development costs doesn’t suffice as a rationale for criticizing this current setup because teams can simply stop investing money if there’s no return there. They have an option. Even if developing hockey players is something at which you can no longer make money, it’s undeniable that, taken as a whole, the return on a dollar invested in the operation of an NHL team is significantly greater now than it was a year ago and to complain that certain aspects are now less lucrative is to miss the point. What kind of businessman would complain if he was told that his profits would increase but a certain aspect of his operation would get more expensive, and there’s nothing that he can do about it? It’s not how much money you make, it’s how much you keep. NHL teams now keep more than they used to and even if they can no longer make money developing hockey players (which I don’t believe for a second), they’re better off now than they used to be.

You know why I love the Internet? Every so often you catch entertaining contradictions. I noticed earlier this year when lines critical of the Edmonton media in an Al Strachan story somehow disappeared from the version that made it into the Edmonton Sun. Perusing the accounts of the EDM-WSH game, I noticed two different angles on the same story. Robert Tychkowski of the Edmonton Sun wrote:

Ovechkin gets his back patted a lot for being a charismatic poster boy for the NHL, but it’s easy to have a big grin and a quick wit when things are going great. You get a better read on a player when the chips are down. Last night, after going pointless and minus-2 against the Oilers, Ovechkin hid in an off-limits area of the Washington dressing room and refused to speak with the media.

Tarik El-Bashir of the Washington Post reported the same thing, but with an ever so slight difference:

Ovechkin, who was not made available to the media after the contest, recorded three shots on goal in 21 minutes and 23 seconds of ice time.

Which version is accurate? Who knows. Tychkowski doesn’t need anything from Ovechkin or the Capitals until next year (if he goes on the road with the Oilers, which I don’t know that he does) or 2008-09, assuming the current schedule holds. El-Bashir needs something from them every day. I’m cynical when it comes to media dealings with teams and I generally assume that the guy who’s the least obliged to the team or player who will give you the more accurate story.

Personally, I couldn’t care less if players talk to reporters - I’d love it if Sportscentre just eliminated all player comments and hauled Steve Ludzik in to tell me something interesting that was happening on the ice. That said, it doesn’t bother me to see Ovechkin get whacked by the Edmonton Sun. I thought that Crosby took an unfair hit last year for not being as personable as Ovechkin that carried over into the coverage of the two players in terms of their hockey skill. The media loved Ovechkin from the perspective of being reporters wanting something interesting to write and Ovechkin was rewarded with nothing but superlatives. I thought that the two players were closer than the media portrayed it and that, given Ovechkin’s age and professional experience, Crosby is the smart bet to be the better player in the long run. You wouldn’t have known it from the media coverage of Ovechkin though, which can only be described as so fawning that Larry King would have shook his head.

I could write 500 words trying to explain why I hate the Maple Leafs so much, or I could steal Sports Illustrated’s line - they’re the Yankees but without the winning. I was in Paupers last year with a group of Oilers fans trying to watch G1 of the Stanley Cup finals but, this being Toronto where they don’t care about hockey, just the Maple Leafs, we couldn’t get the game on a big screen. Everyone troops down the street to some other bar and we watch. 3 hours later the Oilers are down 1-0 in the series, the acronym by which Marc-Andre Bergeron is known is now FMAB and Dwayne Roloson is injured. Butterfly effect? Quite possibly. Toronto’s love for the Maple Leafs and disdain for all other hockey may well be possible for Edmonton losing it’s shot at the Stanley Cup.

Anyway, I was looking forward to the Leafs sucking again this year. I’m starting to wonder though. As of Friday night, the Leafs were outshooting their opposition at ES by 34 shots. They destroyed Montreal in terms of shots on Saturday, so I assume that that margin has only widened. I don’t have the ES/PP/PK times up to date at the moment, so I can’t pull up their ESS/60 or their ESSD/60 but it’s going to be pretty damn good. It’s a reasonable indicator of success as well - of the top 15 teams in ESSD/60 last year, only three missed the playoffs. The Leafs are doing quite well so far and are set up to be well within the top 15.

It’d be interesting to see whose shot rates are up this year - something that I’ll have to take a kick at. I’m not a big believer in coaches making mammoth differences like taking teams from out of the playoffs to being contenders, so I’ll be interested to see if it’s established players who are seeing big boosts in their shot numbers or if it’s players who’ve been replaced. Probably also warrants mentioning that the Leafs ES shooting percentage kind of sucks, so it may well be that this is a “Shoot the puck from anywhere” sort of an offence. Even so, interesting to see. One of the big changes this year, to be sure.

Phoenix couldn’t even get to the point of the year when time falls back before losing control of their own destiny in terms of winning their division. If they win all of their games for the year and Anaheim wins all of their games except for those against Phoenix, Anaheim will win the division by a point. That’s a hell of a team they’ve got there.

I’ve been emailed a couple of interesting stories from people recently. Just speaking generally, I get a lot of great emails from people and I’m not great about replying to them. They’re always read and I appreciate them - it’s nice to know that I’m not just shouting into a void. As for the stories, Michael, who was unfortunately sentenced to life as a Leafs fan (but at least seems to acknowledge the miserableness of his existence, as his blog is calledBitter Leaf Fan Page sent me a link to a storyabout the NBA’s adoption of +/-. They’re going to make available to fans the ability to find out how many points specific combination of players scored. It’s been a big couple of weeks for the NBA, what with this and the David Stern formally requesting that his players use their firearms for home defence only and not, say, for firing into the air outside a strip club at 3AM. I assume he’s also cool if you’re carrying a piece as part of a botched kiddy porn bust as well but that’s neither here nor there. Damien Day would be proud.

I also got a link to a neat story from a Waterloo alumni about some mythical research claiming that goalies with target like logos will have higher save percentages. I frown on qualitative analysis around here but I saw the Oilers goalies last season. This is simply not true.

Two of my favourite hockey writers have completely opposed viewpoints on the IIHF study on European players in North American hockey. Lowetide reads the study and states “Be honest IIHF. Very rich men in European countries are pressuring everyone they can in an effort to return to the good old days when players would fill the stands for pocket change.” Eric Duhatschek reads the study and writes “The International Ice Hockey Federation issued a thoughtful, provocative report Thursday about the world-wide development of professional players that immediately made you wonder: Political correctness must not have entered the fabric of society in Zurich, Switzerland, the way it has over here.” (I won’t blame him for the headline on his story, which reads “IIHF report findings are indisputable” despite the fact that it will quickly become clear just how disputable they are.

Pretty diametrically opposed conclusions from two smart observers of the sport.

I’m inclined to agree with Lowetide - the IIHF, like pretty much all bodies that regulate sport, is a contemptible organization. It’s dominated by Europeans and North American hockey interests have traditionally been ignored. The people who make up the IIHF know who their masters are and they aren’t from this side of the pond. Their credibility should be immediately suspect.

Starting with the end of the study, the author includes this laughable note:

Today’s teams representing Canada in IIHF championships on all levels and in the Olympics rely on speed and skill as much as on traditional Canadian “intangibles”, those which European teams always will be envious of, because they can’t be taught.

If Don Cherry wrote this (ok, said it on TV), William Houston would be writing some column about how Cherry’s a disgrace. I don’t know how you can write what’s supposed to be a legitimate study and include a statement like this.

Truth be told, I don’t think that this study warrants serious consideration. To start with, there’s not full disclosure of their methods. The authors studied three groups of players. First, there were all Euros with a minimum of 400 games played. Second, there are Europeans in the NHL and/or minor leagues between 2000 and 2006. Finally there are all Europeans drafted into the CHL between 1997-2006. Fine, those are all objectively defined groups.

Where it starts to get sketchy though is with the fact that the author classifies the players by subjective criteria. Here’s the groups, quoted directly from the study:

5 — Superstar, trophy winner, on an NHL all-star team (Example: Forsberg, Lidstrom, Jagr)
4 — Star, first-liner (Example: Koivu, Ohlund, Marian Hossa)
3 — Solid NHLer, plays every game (Example: Zednik, Sturm, Holmstrom)
2 — Marginal players, frequent “healthy scratches” or callups
1 — Non impact, minor leaguers (Example: Jakub Cutta, Joakim Lindstrom, Zdenek Blatny)

It quickly becomes evident that they’ve got levels within the levels as well - there’s reference in the study to 3- and 3+ players. I wanted to get a feel for who they’re sticking where, so I went to the study itself to read the appendix - surely a reputable study will have an appendix listing these players, no?

Hmm. No appendix. Well, at the end of the summary, there’s an email address for the man who apparently authored the entire thing, a guy by the name of Szymon Szemberg. Ix wrote Mr. Szemberg an email:

It was with interest that I read your study on the IIHF website about the success of European players in North America. I note that your study did not include the lists of players and how they were classified…I’d like to take a look at the lists of players that you have for each classification in terms of drafted by CHL, experienced NHL players and those who spent time in North America, as well as how you rated those players in terms of their skill. Would you forward me a copy of your lists?

Mr. Szemberg responded quite promptly:

Thank you for your nice e-mail. We have released the study and a summary of it. As of now the IIHF has decided not to release the player research itsself. We may very well do it later. There are various reasons for it. Mainly: we have put huge amounts of work behind it and this is very exlusive material. We do not want anyone to use our researched meterial for someone to benefit from it. Either one trusts our numbers and acknowledges the dangerous situation that the European hockey leagues are in, or it is anyones right to disregard the study.

Emphasis my own. Exclusive material? It’s LISTS OF PLAYERS. You could probably get most of it off of Hockeydb. Their entire study turns on the classifications that they’ve made though and they’re refusing to release them. People shouldn’t waste time on this.

Incidentally, I did a Google News search on this story and this doesn’t appear to have been caught by anyone in the media. This serious flaw in the material available to the public (and the bizarre IIHF position) are readily to all members of the hockey media. You don’t even have to do anything really, other than send a freaking email. The Globe and Mail was particularly aggressive in running with this - William Houston, Eric Duhatschek, Alan Adams…they all had stories in the Globe about the study. None of them pointed this out. I have to wonder whether Duhatschek read the study before he called it “thoughtful and provocative”. While he may be right that political correctness has yet to enter the fabric of society in Zurich, it’s equally obvious that the importance of being open with your research hasn’t either.

I’m still in agreement with Lowetide. The IIHF has a position here and this is propaganda. It’s a shame that no one in the media managed to pick up on that.

Game notes of completely no substance. It’s an incredibly long week and I’m tired…I’m watching the game superficially this evening.

The diligent checking Todd Marchant? I don’t know where to start. First of all, McGuire has decided to pronounce Marchant as if he’s French, as opposed to being a guy from Buffalo. Second, the whole “diligent checking of” thing reminds me of “…the competent drum work Don Brewer.” “Did somebody hire Tie Domi, possiblty while stoned…TSN executives, I’m looking in your direction.”

A rare, rare ugly jacket night for MacT. I noticed that with Gretzky the other night. They both look like they’ve purchased from the newly released Todd Harvey Collection.

The Staios deal is going to get done. $2.5MM would be tolerable I guess, compared to some of the other deals handed out to defencemen these days.

Matt Greeene on that Ducks goal: just knock the fucking guy down already. Enough poking at his feet trying to get puck.

The Electric Norseman didn’t look didn’t look to great on that goal either. Congrats to BOA by the way - they’re #1 on google for “Electric Norseman”. Their cultural contributions continue unabated.

I like the Oilers chances if they stay out of the box. They carried the play in the first.

Even money that Raffi doesn’t know about the rule barring passes to guys who’ve just stepped on the ice before the guy they’re replacing has left.”

It feels like Game 6 of the Western Conference Final that we didn’t get to see? Yeah, one of those G6’s where the team trades it’s best player to the other side on the offday and then replaces half of it’s players.

I read a story today in the Post about a Monarch Butterfly getting blown across the Atlantic Ocean and ending up in the UK. The feelings of disbelief and surprise experienced by the butterfly enthusiast who found it (sacamano?) are probably roughly on par with my feelings at seeing Matt Greene at the bottom of the circle in the offensive zone. Only if that butterfly had the power to bring down the nation or something.

Roli is kind of sucking tonight.

For as much as I’ve heard about how the Ducks defence is the greatest force known to man, there’ve been an awful lot of unmarked Oilers in front of the Ducks goal this evening.

Honestly, dump the puck in. Hemsky skates across the Ducks blueline with all four Ducks there and the entire Oilers team stalled waiting for him to gain the zone. He’s only 23…he’s only 23.

5-2. This one’s over. Edmonton probably deserves to be in this game right now - they’ve won games where they’ve shown less this year.

God. I hate listening to Pierre McGuire. How in the hell was this guy employed by an NHL team? Anaheim has scored 6 goals on 20 shots tonight. Does he really think that that’s going to happen that often? Roloson has been terrible. It’s not the Ducks tonight, it’s the Oilers. The game has looked pretty even to me, edge to the Oilers in far as chances go, I’d say. Edmonton was due to lose a game where they outchanced the opposition - they’ve won some of them this year. It’s just amazing to hear the announcers treat this as if Anaheim has made some grand statement this evening. I haven’t spent my entire life employed in hockey and it’s obvious to me that this is a close game.

You know what else irritates me about Pierre McGuire? The constant hagiography of someone, anyone. It doesn’t matter what happens in the game or how it plays out - it will be because of some person associated with one of the teams who is deserving of lavish praise. Bill Simmons had a line about Peter Gammons that’s applicable here; I’m paraphrasing but it was something like “Peter Gammons meets more special people in a month than I’ve met in my life.” Enough with this empty praise. I’d suggest telling me what’s happened on the ice but that seems to be beyond McGuire as well. I’d rather listen to Greg Millen tell me

Too many men on the ice? How could this happen - Pierre McGuire was just blathering on about Anaheim’s fanatical attention to detail as is DEMANDED by Randy Carlyle.

Ugh. Oh well. It’s irritating that Edmonton has to go to Phoenix tomorrow - they should just award the Oilers the points and let them head home - but tomorrow is another day. Thankfully, Pierre McGuire won’t be a part of it.

As predicted by Lowetide, there were serious consequences in Philadelphia yesterday. Ken Hitchcock, fired. Bobby Clarke, quit.

I’m surprised by the speed with which this has happened. 8 games really isn’t a hell of a lot of time to figure anything out. You’d think that given Hitchcock’s track record, he’d get more time to straighten things out. It really seems to me that the entire decision is a reaction to a bad loss in Buffalo. Maybe there’s stuff going on there that wasn’t evident - and judging by Clarke’s comments that make him out to be the Jason Arnott of Philadelphia there was - but if you believe in the team that you’re icing, you don’t make these moves. If you’re as convinced that it’s going to be a disaster as Ed Snider apparently was, why do you wait 8 games into the season to deal with it? Why not address it in the summer? Crazy.

The gospel of “It’s early” applies to Philadelphia as much as anyone else. As of Thursday night, Philly was outshooting their opposition at ES - they just happen to have the second worst ES shooting percentage in the league and the worst save percentage at ES. That’s going to change. That’s partly why I think it’s a rash decision - it’s in response to an incredibly small sample of games. How does 8 games this year outweigh what a Hitchcock has done over 20 years? Did he get stupid over the summer? Seems unlikely.

I’ve got less sympathy for Bobby Clarke - I’m sure that the Flyers didn’t ask him to burn out. It’s too bad that he did, and I’m sure that they feel sorry for him but he went goofy on them. He’s getting roasted for the Rathje/Hatcher deals though, which I’m not sure is fair. Even the CiO boys are into him. Vic Ferrari pointed out over the summer that Hatcher and Rathje got a bit of a bum rap last year - Hatcher in particular played tough minutes and Rathje wasn’t that far back. On a Flyers team with sketchy goaltending and with Forsberg out for a large chunk of the year, his EV+ 48 EV- 58 isn’t THAT bad. Rathje was actually a + at ES. Philadelphia has problems, to be sure, but I’m not sure that the blame can be pinned on Rathje/Hatcher. I don’t think that’s the biggest problem in Philadelphia. Give them a decent goaltender and no one is whining about the defence.

My prediction that the Flyers win the division is looking a hair less likely now but I still think that they’ve got a good enough team to do it. Their division kind of sucks - the three consensus good teams have all had games where they’ve allowed at least 7 goals so far. There’s still lots of time to right the ship. I assume that they will.

As for Hitch, we’ll see where he ends up. If Columbus ends up firing everyone (as they should), he’d be a spectacular hire for them, I think. Think about it: they’ve got a ton of young talent - Hitchcock has a great reputation as a junior coach; he’s dealt with young players very succesfully. They’ve got a lot of players with offensive talent who need to learn the defensive side of the game - Hitch has dealt with those types of player before. He’s good with the media, so he could replace the one real skill that Doug MacLean brings to the party. As much as that team is a toxic waste zone at the moment, I think it’d be a good place to come in as a coach or GM at the moment - good ownership, good fans and good young players. That’s my wild ass guess for where he resurfaces.

I love Darren Dreger’s piece on this. He writes:

Already there are whispers suggesting that former Flyer Ron Hextall has been targeted, and time is required for him to consider the role and sift through the legal complications that would exist if Hextall tried to jump from the Los Angeles Kings back to Philadelphia.

Sifting through legal complications? Here’s some YouTube footage of Ron Hextall discussing the finer points of a point of law with Chris Chelios. I agree with Mike’s comments at CiO myself - Philly should look outside the traditional pool of recycled ex hockey players in filling Clarke’s job.

A comment on the whinging about the Oilers offence. So far this year, they’ve played Calgary (2), San Jose, Colorado, Vancouver (2) and Detroit. All top 15 defensively last year. I wouldn’t say for sure that any of them have got worse. I think Vancouver is definitely better. It’s probably possible that all but Colorado finish top 10 defensively. Even with the PP firmly in neutral, Edmonton’s still around the middle of the league in offence. The goals will come.

I’ve kind of figured all along that ES was going to make or break the Oilers this year. I figure that the PP is too talented not to succeed, the PK should be alright with Roli…the question was at ES. The early results are pretty promising, I think. The schedule has been rough - tons of games against good ES opposition so far. Edmonton has been holding it’s own though - +4 so far. The early caveat applies to good signs as well as bad ones but these were tough, tough games against quality ES opposition, I think. Nothing to complain about yet. It’s not being done purely on save percentage or anything either - the Oilers have done well but nothing that’s unsustainable.

Everyone writing off Detroit…it’s still early. This was the end of a brutal road trip in E-town: three games in four nights against Anaheim, SJ and Edmonton? It doesn’t get much worse. They’re going to be fine.

LeGG returns tonight. I’m told that coyotes will frequently crawl into the woods to die. I suspect Morrison is going to get the start tonight - I say Edmonton wins 7-1 or something like that. It’s going to be an asskicking.

If any media guys read this and are looking for something to ask Gretzky post-game, I suggest asking about Laraque’s home +/- versus his road +/-. Georges is even at home and -5 on the road. Players who’ve been on the ice to score against Laraque on the road include Keith Tkachuk, Paul Kariya, Jason Arnott and Robert Lang. Throw out the Detroit goal because it was garbage time. How in the hell is Georges Laraque playing against these people? The Nashville game was particularly ugly - Trotz managed to get Kariya/Arnott/Erat out against Laraque on at least three separate occasions. What in the hell are they doing?

Ah well…I look forward to seeing how Georges’ line handles Hemsky/Sykora/Thoresen. I’m sure it will be something to see.

S/60 = Shots per 60 minutes in a given state (ES/PP/PK)
RK = Rank
G/60 = Goals per 60 minutes in a given state (ES/PP/PK)
S% = Shooting percentage
SA/60 = Shots against per 60 minutes in a given state (ES/PP/PK)
GA/60 = Goals against per 60 minutes in a given state (ES/PP/PK)
SV% = Save percentage
GD/60 = Goal differential per 60 minutes in a give state (ES/PP/PK)

I’m basically a crank about this but it drives me nuts reading doom and gloom pieces about teams five or six games into the season. It’s such a small sample of the year that you’re bound to get crazy looking results. I threw together the various rates so far so that those interested can take a look. Pick a surprising team, whether good or bad and the odds are that there’s something crazzy going on with their rates. Since it seems that everyone and their brother is determined to scream that the sky is falling for some teams or that another team might as well start printing the Cup tickets now, I thought I’d offer the numbers as a sanity check. If your team is way off the average…they won’t be for long.

Even Strength

Power Play

Penalty Kill

IOF’s Dennis pointed out something to me last night. Check out the shift chart for the first two periods in Phoenix for Georges Laraque, Ladislav Nagy and Mike Zigomanis. How in the name of God does Nagy have Laraque attached to him? What, if anything, are they trying to accomplish?

Judging by last night’s event sheet Phoenix has adopted an “everyone gets to play” policy for their forwards. While that’s admirable if you’re coaching a bantam house team, it’s perhaps not the wisest of policies in the NHL.

You can really pick your thing to stare at and shake your head about with the Coyotes. Tonight’s TOI leader amongst the forwards: Joel Perrault. Perrault, who played all of 45 games of hockey last year, 3 of which were in the ECHL, plays more minutes than Ladislav Nagy? More minutes than Shane Doan? Really? Did Janet have the family fortune on LA or something? That’s nuts.

It’s seemingly common though - Perrault has played five games this year. He got hurt in one of them. In the four that he’s played, he’s played more minutes than Doan and Nagy in three of them. It’s possible, I suppose, that this guy just really developed but I can’t imagine that a guy who playing in the ECHL last year is now better than both Doan and Nagy. It seems pretty bloody implausible.

It’s entirely possible that Gretzky is trying to send a message to his team with this stuff. My money is on: “I don’t want to be here.”

I’ve kind of laughed at all of the “Trade Brad Winchester for Zbynek Michalek, a first and a magic stick” suggestions but with what they’re doing there…anything seems possible. You wonder if the fans there realize just how bad they have it.

I probably write more about Phoenix than any team other than Edmonton or Calgary (3 points back of Edmonton, Oilers have a game in hand) but I’m honestly amazed by the Coyotes. The only saving grace for Gretzky is that this can’t tarnish his reputation because no one pays any attention to Phoenix.

Frequent poster Doogie posted a link to a cool story in the comments to my lengthy list of observations from the first Canucks game. The story, available here, discusses the efforts of Chris Snow’s efforts to dig up some new and relevant statistical data on the Wild. Some interesting bits and comments:

While the league employees were keeping track of things such as hits, time on ice per shift, turnovers and blocked shots, Wild director of hockey operations Chris Snow was tracking some of what he said will eventually be roughly 10 new statistics never previously compiled.

I’d be curious as to what this is. Any guesses? Off the top of my head, I’d guess that they’re looking at who draws penalties, splits of assists (mentioned later in the story)…tough to say other than that. There’s tons of stuff that could be tracked - I’d like to know how many times a game Martin Brodeur plays the puck, myself and how that compares to other goalies.

“You used to always hear from a scout, ‘He’s a good player’ and that was it. But what did that really mean?” Risebrough said. “That didn’t tell you a whole lot, really.”

Amen. There’s a guy over at CalgaryPuck who says that he wrote the coaching manuals for Hockey Canada. He talks a great game “Phaneuf is a generational talent” and all sorts of organizational behaviour gibberish but I’d be interested in knowing how many wins a player adds to a team. I did some back of the envelope math in 2003-04 and concluded that the Oilers should have dealt Staios - I think I figured that the reward in terms of picks would blow away the games that he helps you win. Logically, if you figure that .250 is about as bad as a hockey team can be (a replacement level team), a 100 point team has 59 points above replacement to be divvied up amongst 20 players. When you think about it, it becomes hard to conclude that any players except absolute elite stars are going to be real losses for teams.

“That’s one stat, for example, I’ve been frustrated by,” Risebrough said. “I don’t think that stat has been very accurate. You’ll see some guy credited with a lot of hits, who you know isn’t a very physical player. So maybe the question should be: What kind of a hit was it? Did it have a big impact at a particular time of the game? Those are the kinds of things, in hockey, that are harder to quantify but maybe with more analysis, we can gain something from it.”

I’m a relatively well known stats guy on the internet and I always find it amusing that people will take shots at me and others interested in stats based on this. Or they’ll make arguments about the worth of a player based on his hits or blocked shots or something. Risebrough is kind of getting it in that he’s asking if the hit has value in terms of when it occurs; I think he’d find that by and large, hits are overrated. Some teams hit a lot and win a lot; others don’t. The NHL tracks a ton of shit that nobody has ever shown has any connection to winning hockey games.

At the beginning of the 2002-03 NHL season, the league discontinued keeping expanded statistics. The feeling among general managers was they were losing too much money in salary arbitration cases because of newly created statistics.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody ever tried to put together a solid argument that none of these stats correlated with winning hockey games. Why they didn’t, I’ve got no idea. It may be that it’s irrelevant, in that arbitration is supposed to ensure that similar players are played the same, but it still strikes me as a very valid argument. I’ve learned bits and pieces here and there about what goes in arbitrations and what submissions look like and I’ve not been impressed.

While Snow said he is still in the infancy stage of trying to determine new statistical values, one area he wants to study is the kind of assists players receive. Up to two assists are awarded on a goal, but “first” and “second” assists are not officially tabulated for each player.

The Wild are stealing my material. I think that it’s a great area for study though. There are a ton of things that can be done with it, in terms of studies like Bill James used to do with matched sets of players etc. Personally, my guess is that in splitting up the credit for a goal amongst the players on the ice, the difference in value between a second assist and a guy who just gets a + is negligible. Snow’s asking good questions though.

Snow will keep a list of all first and second assists on the Wild and as many other teams as he can.

This is pretty much the saddest thing I’ve ever read about hockey. I’ve heard a bit about the NHL’s information tracking programs and they’re archaic. Check out this story on MLB.com and it’s obvious how behind the times the NHL is. What’s worse is that they apparently don’t care and don’t understand the potential value of this data.

Anyway, Chris, if you should happen across this, there’s an Excel script in the Summer 2006 archive. You can fiddle around with it and suck this information off of NHL.com. Easy as pie. You can have this information for every NHL team. You shouldn’t need some bozo with a website to tell you this.

Unless of course, he was just bullshitting the reporter, which seems entirely likely. I’m stunned to learn that this is apparently something that he doesn’t have the resources to do for all teams.

Former Toronto and Chicago GM Mike Smith recently started a statistical analysis company that he is trying to sell to NHL teams.

For those who don’t know about Stats Inc., it was a company that Bill James started that grew out of Project Scoresheet. They started tracking and selling this type of information in baseball. I’ve no doubt that there’s a market for it in hockey as well. The key is figuring out what information is relevant. As a bonus, if teams just buy access to this information as opposed to generating it themselves, my recollection of the CBA is that they don’t have to give it to the players. This will happen, whether it’s Smith’s company or someone else who makes the concept work.

“It’s not just strictly a numbers game like baseball,” Andrew Brunette said. “But you can’t just take goals and assists now to know how good a player is to a team. In ‘Moneyball,’ one of the concepts was, ‘What’s undervalued?’

“In our sport, maybe it’s penalty killing or something in the league that nobody’s paying for and you need. It’s an interesting concept, and I think hockey’s going more that way.”

Smart comments from Brunette. The question that needs to be answerwed here is simple. We know that what teams need to buy is goal differential and they need to do it as cheaply as possible. What they need to figure out is what contributes to goal differential in the various aspects of the game, what is overrated in terms of contribution (my guesses include: big hits, guys who look unreal but don’t produce great numbers and fighters) and what’s underrated.

Lowetide mentioned in another post on this topic that these sorts of stories seem to be popping up more and more frequently. It’s good for hockey I think - baseball has certainly benefitted from this sort of examination and I strongly believe that hockey teams are even more ineptly run now than baseball teams were 25 years ago.

In a related story, Bobby Clarke has apparently waived half of his team. Good use of money there. I guess I shouldn’t be too rough on him - how could someone be expected to figure out that a soft Czech who’d made his career as a perpetually underachieving scorer wasn’t a good fit for a checking role?

The West is now 9-1-3 against the East. The East sucks, hard. I’m telling you, of the best 15 or 16 teams in the NHL, 11 of them are Western Conference teams.

Hey,

I’m still not over you rigging the Hot Off so that MacT got screwed but so be it. Now, running a public contest to identify the hottest Oiler is a fine public service and all but if the search strings that lead people to my site are any indication, what a certain segment of Oilers fans really wants to know is not who the multitudes think is hottest, but who is taken. Seriously. I just looked at my list of referring links and I had one from Ask.com that was “Does Joffrey Lupul have a girlfriend?”

I don’t know the answers to these sorts of questions. I don’t even really care, unless it’s somehow salacious or entertaining. Jarret Stoll hooking up with Rod Stewart’s wife is both - if I was playing the music in opposing arenas and he scored, I’d crank Maggie May. I really don’t care if Matt Greene has hooked up with some woman from Slave Lake but it’s become increasingly evident to me that the public thirsts for this knowledge. With so many newcomers this year - Sykora, Laco, Shaggy, Lupul…there’s work that needs to be done.

I’ll even toss you the few that I’m aware of: Roloson, Smyth, Pisani and Staios have wives.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to provide female Oilers fans with some vital information: which Oilers can be chased in bars without fear of becoming the subject of an email that makes the rounds after our next hero leaves town?

Please do this. I’m telling you - it’s damned popular information.

I was discussing last night’s yawner with someone online and I suspect that the reviews in the paper today are going to be scathing, despite the win. The bar has been raised in Edmonton - it’s ok to critique wins at this point. The expectations at this point aren’t just that the Oilers win, they need to look good doing it.

I have a suspicion that Grabia’s about to go off on a rant about the PP but it’s been something of a strange animal so far. It has looked terrible - rarely getting setup, there’s been what looks like a huge churn of personnel to me…just terrible looking. It looks to me like the coaches are overthinking a bit to be honest.

That the PP has sucked is backed up by their shots: they’re at just 27.7 PPS/60 right now; last year’s team was getting 48.8 PPS/60. The worst team in the league last year in this regard was LA; they were at 42.14 PPS/60. I think it’s safe to say that things are going to get significantly better on the PP and there’s no point getting concerned about it at the moment - PP’s aren’t this bad, period.

The interesting thing is that the PP is getting results so far. 6.15 PPG/60 at the moment, which certainly isn’t great but they haven’t given up any shorties yet either; by last year’s stats, it’s an average PP in terms of goal differential.

So, I think that the PP is going to start looking better - it pretty much has too; I’m not worried about that. I’d guess that they’ll see somewhat better results than they’re seeing now - I think that this collection of talent can come close to 7 PPGD/60, which would be one of this best marks in the league. For the moment though, the results that they’re getting with nothing happening are pretty good.

If I was running the show right now, I’d just try to simplify things. I’m sure that it’s been difficult for the coaches, trying to keep guys fresh with the volume of early season penalties but they need to pick the five guys who they think will be best on the PP and let those guys get into the flow of things. Get Hemsky back working on the left side of the ice where he’s most comfortable. Look into getting him one of those electric shock collars so that he can be zapped when he skates into the slot and doesn’t shoot. Easy fixes.

It’s going to start looking better no matter what. I’d think that with some good coaching, they can be very, very good. In any event, it’s not really worth complaining about yet - they’re still getting respectable results. It’s something that needs to be fixed but it’s not what concerns me the most about this team at the moment.

The volume of stupid penalties, on the other hand…