mc79hockey.com

If all goes as planned, my traffic should start flowing in here today.  Many thanks to my brother for his substantial (and ongoing) assistance.  My sum contribution was pretty much installing the software and doing the header; virtually everything else was him.  He’s also giving me a hand at producing what I hope is a far more readily updated and useable stats side of the whole thing that requires significantly less maintenance on my part.

Also, I’ve heard the odd comment about my language on this site.  My brother informs me that, of the the 250,000 words I’ve written here, only 18 are some variant of the word “fuck.”  That’s not that bad, particularly given the state of the Oilers goaltending and defence for much of that time.

How is it that I follow the Oilers obsessively and it takes me forever to find out that Steve Staios dislocated his fucking knee, that Shaggy has some sort of undisclosed injury and whatever the hell was wrong with Hemsky but, despite actually taking pains to avoid finding out, I now know that Bob Cole is in the hospital for polyp surgery?

I once got in shit for buying a (now ex-) girlfriend the same birthday card two years in a row, something that has led me to campaign for a law that requires card stores to burn all their remaining stock and get entirely new cards on January 1 of every year. Seeing LA on the schedule tonight, with the Oilers reeling, my thoughts immediately turn to a game played three years ago. Edmonton lost on two goals in the last 1:10, the first scored off what I believe was a stupid icing by Ryan Smyth. I don’t know how I remember that, when remembering that has no positive/negative consequences for my life but I can’t remember what cards I give my girlfriend, something that will have much more immediate and negative consequneces. As for that game, I don’t really believe in a single game being a difference or the turning point, because you’ve got 81 other games to blow but that one was painful. We’ll see what tonight brings.

1-0 Oilers. Smyth from Horcoff. Smyth is doing his best to make amends for that night three years ago.

This is a rare looking good start for the Oilers. Three lines have looked good so far.

There’s one of those terrible Torres passes we know and love. LA is looking pretty flat to start this game. Given that it’s a B2B and they presumably flew to Edmonton late last night, the Oilers might be on to something here.

For the sake of argument, let’s make a couple of assumptions. The NW is going to get three playoff spots. Calgary is going to get one of those and choke in the first round. Four teams are competing for the final two. I’ll keep expanding this throughout the game.

Staios skates the puck 100 feet without losing it, falling over or taking a penalty. It’s very, very good to have him back. Heh. I don’t know who is doing the colour tonight but good lord. Is it Remenda? I’d guess it’s Remenda because I saw Millen on the Boston-Ottawa game and I know that Harry Neale was on earlier. He’s talking about how the return of Staios is important and what’s the reason? The Oilers missed his leadership. Yeah. That’s Laco’s problem. He doesn’t bring enough leadership.

Penalty on the Kings. “Powerplay” coming up for the Oil. It’d be nice to get up two here.

That Crosby commercial irritates me, because Crosby is out on the ice wearing a helmet. Does anyone believe that he’d be wearing a helmet? Why not just put him in full equipment? He doesn’t wear a helmet in the All-Star skills competition, I highly doubt he’s going to wear a helmet while owning some kids. Look at the helmet Gretzky wore when he played NHL games. You wouldn’t catch him out there wearing a helmet while screwing around with some kids. In my day, etc. Hey - you kids - get off of my lawn!

I don’t know who it was who had the goalpost stats last year but I’d love to know what they are this year. Edmonton has to be up there.

Andy had some nice snark in a thread somewhere about how some cities have “journalists” who do things like “ask questions that aren’t just opportunities for the team to fellate itself.” How in the name of everything was Dan Hejda having such a hard time getting into games this year? He takes a hit and makes the play to get the puck out. MAB, Smid, Greene, hell even Smith this year - that’s probably giveaway.

Kudos to Mark Lee for calling Joffrey Lupul a passenger. It’s probably not strong enough, but it’s a start.

Interesting that Staios’ injury apparently happened now in the Dallas game. WTF? First he had the flu, then he had a knee (or a kneecap) that was dislocated in practice. Now he injured it against Dallas? Judging by the camera angle, that took place in the second period. Judging by shift chart, it seems pretty unlikely that he hurt himself bad enough in that game to miss another seven - he played the entire game, including minutes in OT.

The CBC late game is just the best thing in the world. I absolutely love it. After Hours is live from Craig Simpson’s rink. Hey - maybe if Craig Simpson wasn’t building such a magical fucking outdoor rink, he could put together a PP. How does he have time to build an outdoor rink when the PP stinks?

I love Kelly Hrudey but don’t tell me that a guy fell over because he was nervous. He’s a good analyst but he can’t read minds.

Good point on Pisani in the comments. I think he’s been fine this year - he’s been about what you’d expect from him. I’m not a fan of Remenda, although to be fair, all colour guys are below average.

1-1, by the way. Kings get a late one, although I’m inclined to agree with Staios that things look ok to this point.

Ok, so I was going on about the playoff spots and all that. Dennis at has pretty clearly written off the season. I’m not nearly so sure. Game’s back. I’ll develop this some more.

2-1 Oilers.94-10-83 with another. MC79 fave Dan Hejda makes a key play down in the corner to chip the puck to Ryan Smyth.

Hideous shift for the Sykora line. Just hideous. Brutal turnover at the blue line by Sykora, which turns things into a 3 on 1 for the Kings. Jussi gets it done with a big save.

Hey Joffrey Lupul blocks a shot. It’s a crying shame that they can’t tear up his deal to give him more money.

Interesting replay of the Markkanen save on the 3 on 1. I’d love to talk to an elite goalie sometime about that. Kopitar was rolling down on the off wing and Staios sprawled out, which basically forced him to his backhand. At that point, the only play that Kopitar had was the backhand across the crease. Looked like Jussi could cheat a bit.

Staios and Smith in the box for slashing. Great. LA two man PP for 1:45.

Jussi with the nice save after Greene turns it over. Greene got caught not moving his feet, gets eaten up the forward and coughs it up. Defenceman please.

I’ve always thought that calling the TO during a 5 on 3 makes sense, if only because it gets you more time with your best players on the ice, as they get a little rest. Puzzling to me that more coaches don’t do this.

Dan Hejda with another fine play to take away a shot after a cross ice pass left a King alone with an empty net. Lowe should be quietly offering him a two or three year deal at $1MM per right now. I don’t know if he’d sign it but he looks to me like he’s the real deal and really, anything under $2MM for a UFA guy who play top four respectively isn’t a bad deal.

I know it’s LA, I know that they played last night but still…94-10-83 are looking dominant so far tonight.

Edmonton basically had LA’s goaltending last year. As much as I’ve moaned about the D, I’d rather have the good goalie and shaky D.

2-2. Greene-Smid on the PK. I’m off to slit my wrists, although in fairness to Greene, he at least did something. Smid was in no-man’s land - didn’t have a guy and was kind of out in the middle of nowhere screening Jussi on the initial shot.

Mark Lee calling the game, a spontaneous “Let’s Go Oilers”…feels like April.

3-2 Kings. Matt Greene turnover at the offensive blue line. You want your defencemen to take risks but that didn’t strike me as a smart one.

Defensemen screwing up at the blueline…I’m jerked back into an increasingly ugly present.

Crappy call on Smid and I can’t disagree with his comment to the ref: “Fucking bullshit!” Nice to see he’s picking up the vernacular, if not the intricacies of playing defence.

There was a dumb rumour in the Boston Globe today saying that the Oilers would deal Smith and MAB for Stuart and Sturm but I wonder what the price for Stuart is really going to be. Brendan Witt went for a first round pick last year - I can’t believe Brad Stuart would draw any less as a rental. It’s going to be really interesting to see what Kevin Lowe decides to do - assuming that the trade market is rational, there should be other teams who are willing to pay more than he is for a defenceman.

Hey, Cam Ward getting hammered. A god for a month and a half and now he sucks. AWESOME! I loathe him.

Conks does the Oil a solid tonight, I see. Nice loss for Minny. If Edmonton can pull this out, that’s four back with a game in hand.

Simpson is apparently going to be on After Hours tonight. He should be tied to a chair with his eyelids pulled open and forced to watch scenes of the Oilers PP while someone with a Germanish accent screams at him about his failures. I’d watch for two hours.

3-3. 94-83-10. The Oilers will win this game and that line will get the fourth goal. They’re just rolling tonight.

Is there possibly some sort of disease that affects the brains of defencemen and alters their ability to accurately perceive the risk of a given pass? If so, is best described as highly contagious? Staios with a soft one up the middle and picked off.

4-3 Oilers. 94-83-10 on the ice. I might as well have shut off the game and gone to bed after the 3-3 goal. It was obvious that this was coming. These three guys getting hot would go a long, long way towards determining whether the Oilers can make the playoffs.

It’s a shame that Smytty isn’t on After Hours this week. He was so despondent after last week’s debacle that he lapsed into eloquence.

Another just dominant shift for 83-10-94. This is easily, easily the best any Oilers line has looked all year.

Toby Petersen denied on a great chance and the Oilers draw the PP. LA’s PK was -8.56 GD/60 as of the All-Star break, worst in the NHL. It’s entirely possible that Craig Simpson has left the building at this point. We get a TV timeout too. Time for 83-10-94 to stick in the knife in.

I just popped over to the After Hours site to submit my question for Craig Simpson. I see that there’s an advertisement on the side paid for by the government of Ontario, whining that they don’t get enough federal money. Seems like pretty stupid advertising to me - I can’t believe that a signficant percentage of Ontarians frequent the After Hours site; I’d imagine I’m typical: a Western ex-pat who still thinks of himself as a Westerner. Probably not the target market for that ad.

3MM people watched “Little Mosque on the Prairie” when it started? Does anyone know any of these people?

Weird thing on the Oilers faceoff in their own end there. Hemsky. Horcoff. Reasoner? I understand that you want the second centreman out there, but when it comes to breaking out, wouldn’t you rather have Reasoner/Horcoff/Smyth? I assume that this comes down to the fact that Reasoner and Smyth shoot the same hand, but still. Seems odd.

Smyth just barely misses a chance to finish the hat trick on another fine, fine shift for 83/94/10. Incidentally, I’d heartily approve of MacT calling a timeout to get Smyth a shot at the open net.

That’s all she wrote, as the Oilers get it done 4-3. Jussi displays some visible emotion. All is right in the world.

Smyth on the HNIC post-game interview. The cliches are flowing like wine. Ryan’s a happy, happy man.

I’m profoundly biased, but my sister’s blog just kills me. It’s tough to say with family members, whether it’s funny because I can imagine the intonation when I’m reading it but stuff like:

In other news, when I threw my garbage in the dumpster today, i am pretty sure I hit a dumpster diver. very unsettling for various reasons, but dumpsters have now been added to the list of things I am afraid of, almost as high as being attacked by a bear while on an outhouse toilet.

is funny shit. If Little Mosque on the Prairie is the Canadian standard for funny, I can’t see any way she’s not funny.

I’m going to be switching my host shortly - the site may be down for a day or too. I’m flipping over to a blog software and something that’s got PHP/MySQL. My idea is to eliminate some of the technical work I do and hopefully get something assembled with some PHP code interacting with a MySQL database that makes updating the stats a lot easier for me - I vaguely envision just exporting something from Excel that I can import into MySql - no coding, other than intially. If any techies think that sounds insane, speak now and save me some trouble.

In honour of what I suspect is going to be kickass episode of the Colbert Report tonight, here’s today’s moment of truthiness. First, NHL VP Kojack during the buildup to the lockout:

We believe that a new economic system will further lessen the pressure on ticket prices and will lead, on an overall League-wide basis, to lower prices.

If leaguewide ticket prices are down now (and I’m almost certain that they aren’t), it’s only because the current crew running the show destroyed interest in the game in some markets by taking a year off.

Fast forward to today. Here’s Oilers President and CEO Patrick Laforge on one of the problems with Rexall Place:

It causes us to have to increase ticket prices because we don’t have that bottom-end price at the top end of the bowl like a lot of other buildings do.

I was curious, so I went and took a look at LaForge’s educational background. I note that his Oilers bio says that he attended, as opposed to got a degree, from the University of Western Ontario School of Business. If he believes what he’s saying, my guess is that he failed an economics pre-req.

The CiO guys suggested that CP is doing the Oilers work for them. No shit.

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On the topic of truth, the Rory Fitzpatrick scam drew some attention from The NHL’s All Star voting irregularities attracts some more significant media attention on Slate today. Given that there are going to be a bunch of hockey writers looking for things to fill column space next week and that Gary Bettman will presumably be relatively available to the media, I’m quietly hopeful someone might take it upon himself to ask some questions.

No Hemsky tonight. I see all the talk about needing a tough guy and all that - I don’t see how having Georges Laraque in the lineup alters any of that. I’m firmly in the “run their good players” camp.

Another night with the Russian Roulette D. Smith, Bergeron, Hejda, Greene, Smid and…I’m not sure. Gilbert might be the smart pick here, since they can hide him at home.

Mike Brophy’s Wardrobe Provided By Al Strachan.

Stoll/Torres/Pisani start for the Oilers against the Selanne line, with whom we’re all familiar - we heard a lot about them when they weren’t doing anything in the Conference Finals last year.

Oilers go two men down after Roloson shoots one over the glass. Interesting that Smyth gets sent to serve it - I can’t believe that happens to him all that frequently.

Roli draws a penalty to make up for the one that he just took. There cannot be a goalie in the NHL who draws as many penalties.

Typical brutal looking Oilers PP.

Ooooh. It looks like Joffrey Lupul might be playing motivated tonight.

1-0 Ducks. It’s a Carolina special. Bergeron’s gonna get a lot of the blame for that while Matt Greene doesn’t get much at all.

Can anyone think of a player with a career path like Selanne, someone who’s just pulled his game out of the gutter like Selanne has? I laughed this summer when there was talk that Jeremy Roenick would be this year’s Teemu Selanne - I can’t imagine this takes place very often.

Jan Hejda made a fantastic looking play a few minutes back, on the shift where Lupul showed signs of having a soul. He made a nice read on the point to beat a guy and then found Lupul in the slot. I don’t know what he was like in wherever the hell he played before Edmonton, but you have to wonder if he might be able to add something to the PP - he’s shown some flashes of offensive ability.

Terrible looking giveaways from the Oilers early on. They aren’t supporting the puck well as they breakout.

How in the name of God is Jason Smith the Oiler who ends up being the furthest up-ice on a breakout? That’s pretty much a once every couple of years kind of event.

Roloson is unusually active playing the puck tonight. On many occasions, it’s looked like the D are just focusing on holding up the oncoming Anaheim forwards while Roloson deals with moving the puck.

Wow. You see something new every time you watch a hockey game. I’ve never seen the “two guys kicked out of the faceoff = a delay of game penalty” penalty before.

Stoll got absolutely cheapshotted earlier in the period - a very dangerous hit from behind into the boards. He has yet to make a return to the ice.

I am so sick of seeing Oilers get injured. I don’t really buy into the tough guy thing, as I said above. I’d just like to see Raffi force some people to pay the price for this sort of stuff.

The Oil are looking for the cross ice pass down low on the PP tonight, which is a real change - I have a hard time imagining any other PP in the league is built more on shots from the point.

Bryzgalov, who was talking some trash about Edmonton with his ridiculous voice a few weeks back, has looked a bit uncomfortable with his glove hand tonight. He’s bobbled more than a few shots. Something to keep an eye on.

Jan Hejda is just having an excellent looking game. It absolutely baffles me that he wasn’t able to crack the lineup until recently. Edmonton is getting their chances, they’re just not burying them. I count at least three cross-ice passes that are goals 75% of the time so far for the Oilers.

Less time for Fernando tonight so far than for Thoresen. I wonder what’s wrong with him?

Fractured nose for Jarret Stoll. All things being equal, that’s not so bad.

Wow. The Oilers show signs of life with two big hits on one shift. Mathieu Roy just destroys a random Duck and then fights one of the crappy Thorntons (Billy? Stephen?).

1-1. A fine, fine shift for the Oilers. Fourth line rolls it into the Ducks end and Horcoff sets the screen while Smith blows one by the goalie. Yep, Smith.

2-1 Oilers. Toby Peterson pops one, from Pisani and Torres. Not too pretty but the Ducks have looked shaky in their own end tonight and Peterson ended up all alone in front with the puck. He broke out the nine iron and the Oilers lead.

Lupul with a ballsy little play to end the period. He knew that he wasn’t going to get to a loose puck, the period was effectively over…so he held back and drilled Moen. Nice to see.

Brophy gets in a shot at Rory Fitzpatrick. What a big man.

Another cool play by Jan Hejda in traffic - he just reaches out and pokes the puck up to the Oiler forward in stride.

3-1 Oilers. Smyth scores a ridiculous goal and the Oilers stretch it out a bit. It is amazing how much different Anaheim is without Pronger. Just amazing.

Ferraro makes the excellent point that Edmonton is down five guys at the moment: Shaggy, Staios, Stoll, Hemsky and Moreau. Two top four D, a key special teams guy in Stoll, the straw that stirs the PP in Hemsky and another top nine forward in Moreau. That’s a lot of minutes missing out of the lineup. I just said it in the comments but I can’t buy into LT’s vision of doom.

4-1 Oilers. Oilogosphere whipping boy Joffrey Lupul makes a nice play to start the play and Horcoff throws a dynamit pass over to Smyth as the Oilers pop another one off the rush. Earl Sleek did a post a while back about Pronger’s importance to the Ducks - I know that they have other injuries but this isn’t exactly discrediting his comments.

This one’s over. Beat Calgary tomorrow night please, Anaheim.

Mirtle notes that the Coyotes want to sign Mikael Tellqvist and Yanic Perreault. James says that he’s generally not in favour of such moves after such limited auditions. Leaving Yanic Perreault aside, it’s the desire to sign Tellqvist that baffles me. I mean, the guy is 27 and has a lengthy track record of mediocrity. His best AHL season was a 1005 RELSV% as a 25 year old, which sucks. This isn’t a guy like Miikka Kiprusoff who just couldn’t get a chance. His NHL resume is limited - basically 41 games of .895 hockey prior to going to Phoenix. It’s hard to criticize a deal that hasn’t been made yet where we know none of the parameters but the mere fact that they think this is something that they should do should raise red flags. Roman Turek had a better track record and was hotter when Calgary signed him to the fat contract way back when. This won’t be, financially speaking, as large as of a mistake but considering that it’s just been death by a million cuts in Phoenix the past few years, if they get him signed at $1MM or so, it will just be another mindless slice.

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Eric Duhatschek has a comment up about what the Panthers should do with Todd Bertuzzi on the Globe’s site:

It was Martin’s predecessor, Mike Keenan, who made the Bertuzzi trade, but if the Panthers let him walk after this season as an unrestricted free agent, what kind of a message would that send to their fan base, as small as it is? For that matter, what sort of loyalty does Bertuzzi owe to the organization that made an important investment in him … not just in terms of the players they surrendered to get him, but also in the hefty salary that they’re paying him this season?

What sort of loyalty does Bertuzzi owe the Panthers? Maybe I’m cynical, but my answer would be “As much loyalty as the Panthers care to purchase.” Why does Bertuzzi owe the Panthers anything? They pay him to play hockey. If he’d scored 100 goals this year, the Panthers wouldn’t be giving him more money. They paid their money and they took their chances. Moreover, I’m not even sure that they should try to bring him back. Bertuzzi’s two seasons of dominance are further and further in the past and, although Duhatschek notes that Bertuzzi was scoring a point a game for the Panthers, it was in all of 7 games and he was -4 in that time. Barring a huge deal on the price, Florida would probably be well advised to just let him walk. They’ve got a lot of good young players coming forward and they’re having a respectable season considering that they’ve basically lost Roberto Luongo for nothing. I’d take the money that Bertuzzi was paid this year and take a run at JS Giguere in the off-season.

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The New York Times ran another ridiculous stats article. This time it’s about Perseverance Index, which combines save percentage and shot volume in a six/one ratio. The formula is ((save percentage X 600) + shots faced per game)/.6. I’m critical of their failure to include the phase of the moon.

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You don’t see enough of this. Jack Todd is upset that Pierre McGuire said that he’s a liar and absolutely trashed him. Also, Jack’s friend Stacy says that Pierre was talking to Jack’s boyfriend and if Pierre doesn’t watch it, he’s going to get it. Who would have thought that Pierre McGuire isn’t consistent in his opinions?

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Quite the little Fitzpatrick storm on Friday. For the full story, go and take a look at what Mirtle and Eric McErlain had to say today. I’m going to jump in at the point that Mirtle gets a statement out of Bill Daly:

There were no changes made to the vote counting process at any point in time from the start of the voting to the end. But there were procedures and safeguards in place from the start to prevent automated or other fraudulent voting methods.”

This is ridiculous. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that up to some point, they were counting votes cast by bots. There may well have been procedures in place from the start but that doesn’t mean that they were being followed. A process is only as good as it’s application. If you go look at Scott Hannan’s votes, particularly those from Week 3, it looks an awful lot like he was the beneficiary of some heavy bot voting. Fitzpatrick’s vote totals up to that point appear to have been fueled in large part by bots. The NHL didn’t care and did nothing to stop it then. I regard the Week 5 voting for Niedermayer and Lidstrom as being pretty damned suspicious as well - after two weeks of treading water at 60K votes or so, they both vault into the 95K range. Every other player except Zubov (+1,319) fell that week in votes. Niedermayer and Lidstrom are up 35K each. It just seems damned unlikely. How did that happen?

Steve Schmid, the creator of Vote For Rory really hits the obvious issue though when he writes:

The fact that the votes are only missing from the Western Conference Defensemen shows that it has nothing to do with them throwing votes away due to automated bot voting, because if that was the case they would have chucked the votes for the other 11 players and not given us anything to talk about.

Exactly. This is the crux of the whole thing - not only do they appear to have selectively applied their rules but they’ve applied them only to votes cast for certain players.

It appears from the rules that the NHL has the discretion to count or not count whatever votes that they want, provided that they can establish that those votes were the result of robotic or automatic voting. If they want to eliminate a whack of Fitzpatrick votes, then so be it. That’s their right. It really looks to me though that they sat in the bushes on this and just took the publicity by letting the votes count until they decided that they didn’t want him to make it. Whatever you might think about the power that they reserved for themselves in the rules, it appears to have been exercised in an unbelievably cynical manner.

I’ve emailed Jamey Horan, the NHL PR guy who responded to Eric McErlain and said that he didn’t understand the argument in order to clarify things. I’ve also asked him whether the NHL eliminated any votes pursuant to their discretionary power to do. We’ll see if he answers or not.

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The Score has given me a some webspace; if you’re so inclined, take a look at my comparison of the Oilers position at the moment to the position to the position Jack Bauer found himself in on 24 tonight.

Prompted by an absolutely amazing thread on the Something Awful forums, I figure it’s time for me to comment on Rory Fitzpatrick missing the All-Star game. I’ll admit, I was rooting for him to make it and even threw him some votes. When he missed, I just figured that, like Ralph Nader running for President, it’s not about whether you win or lose, it’s about playing a role and shaping the debate. The problem with this is, there is some pretty compelling evidence that Fitzpatrick actually made it.

The Something Awful thread contains an absolutely fabulous post put together by a guy posting as Rusty Krustyman (incidentally, I think it’s time for everyone on the internet to adopt real sounding handles). The argument is very straightforward once you wrap your head around it but it requires a bit of explanation. Basically, it appears that there was something really weird that happened in the week prior to Christmas.

Here’s a chart of the defenceman voting. Neither Fitzpatrick nor Mathieu Schneider were listed in the leading vote getters in the first week - I’ve just inserted a placeholder one vote below the guy with the fewest votes. Fitzpatrick had at least enough votes to win the second week.

Player	1	2	3	4	5	6
Scott Niedermayer	233,522	96,135	60,371	57,474	92,878	51,277
*Rory Fitzpatrick	31663	113,156	124,229	159,784	58,010	63,335
Nicklas Lidstrom	214,789	102,584	53,664	56,327	94,981	50,724
Chris Pronger	134,185	85,187	63,156	58,413	48,401	44,630
Scott Hannan	34,867	73,890	168,105	56,748	24,009	20,587
Dion Phaneuf	110,544	98,401	65,737	42,894	41,495	36,097
Mattias Ohlund	43,340	66,806	78,365	75,081	33,715	29,410
John-Michael Liles	38,146	33,214	80,625	35,508	27,957	19,148
Robyn Regehr	34,552	42,653	76,025	30,437	25,351	14,045
Sergei Zubov	59,269	51,293	32,740	29,032	30,351	22,409
Mathieu Schneider	31663	56,786	29,069	27,264	25,893	15,756
Lubomir Visnovsky	31,664	26,264	37,730	43,354	23,338	15,300
Rob Blake	51,584	32,230	23,555	28,632	27,658	24,293

It’s interesting stuff - you can see that Fitzpatrick wins 3 out of the next 5 weeks, although he got hammered by Scott Hannan one week. What’s really glaring though is the stuff pointed out in the Something Awful thread. Take a look at the week where Fitzpatrick lost - he doesn’t just lose, he gets blown away, by about 40,000 votes. What the hell happened?

Well, some would have you believe that the Fitzpatrick people bought into the hype, figured it was in the bag and eased off the throttle that week. There’s a twist though - an amazing, amazing twist. What Rusty Krustyman figured out is the number of “unaccounted” votes. He’s just figured out the minimum number of ballots required to produce the results that the NHL released for each position. For instance, based on the results that the NHL released for Week 2, there had to be at least 433,985 ballots based on the Eastern forward results, 431,858 ballots for the Eastern defencemen results and 455,395 ballots for the Eastern goalie results. From this, he’s come up with the “unacounted” votes. There are some differences and quirks that he’s explained but one thing leaps out - in the fifth week, where Fitzpatrick got buried by Niedermayer and Lidstrom, there are 108,775 votes for Western Conference defencemen unaccounted for. The second highest number of unaccounted for votes for defencemen? 47,074 in Week 2 in the East. Week 2 seems to have been something of an anomoly - there are high numbers of unaccounted for votes at all positions that week, possibly because the NHL switched it’s method of reporting votes that week.

When you look at it by percentage, it’s even more stunning - nearly 20% of the votes for Western Conference defenceman that week were unaccounted for. The next highest week of unaccounted for votes for Western Conference defencemen comes in with just over 4% of the votes unaccounted for.

I think I’ve got a pretty good guess as to what happened, one that explains at least part of the mystery. I think that the NHL came up with a way to disregard votes cast by voting bots at that point. Why do I think that? Look at the other big losers that week - Mattias Ohlund, Scott Hannan, Lubomir Visnovsky and Rob Blake. It was pretty widely speculated that Hannan was the beneficiary of voting bots earlier on - in Week 3, he came from nowhere to win the week, and not just win the week but crush everyone. The other three guys who experienced falloffs greater than 10,013 from the previous week were Canucks defenceman Mattias Ohlund and bottom feeders Rob Blake and Lubomir Visnovsky. All three suffered declines of greater than 20,000. All three were natural likely matches for Fitzpatrick on the ballot - Ohlund for Canucks fans, Blake and Visnovsky for pragmatic Fitzpatrick supporters.

It’s the presence of Hannan that’s the giveaway I think - otherwise, it could just be Fitzpatrick fans relaxing, which would explain the fall in support for the three most likely beneficiaries of Fitzpatrick votes. The fact that Hannan took such a huge fall as well strongly suggests to me that they were tracking and discarding bot votes for Western Conference defencemen that week.

The huge surge for Niedermayer and Lidstrom in Week Five makes no sense either. They’re both basically sliding in terms of votes since Week One - Lidstrom bumped up 3K votes but that’s it. All of the sudden, they each go up by 40K votes? It just doesn’t seem plausible. Neither of those guys had been anywhere 90K votes the previous two weeks.

As I alluded to above, it’s the unaccounted for votes that are the real thing that just doesn’t seem legit. Remember that you couldn’t complete partial ballots. Assume for a second that there were no write-in candidates whatsoever and the NHL reported every player’s votes. There should be 3 Western F votes for every 2 Western D votes. 2 Western D votes for every 1 Western G vote. Due to the presence of wildly successful write-in candidates (Fitzpatrick and Milan Michalek), it didn’t work out perfectly. For five of the six weeks though, it’s pretty close. For every 2 defence votes in Weeks 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 there were 2.91, 2.86, 3.03, 2.97 and 2.97 forward votes respectively. That all seems very reasonable to me - I’d expect more forward write-in votes, just because there tend to be more forwards who get hot or who are highly touted guys who don’t do anything. It seems to me that there are more famous forwards.

In Week 5 though, there are 3.53 F votes for every 2 D votes. Suspiciously, there are only 2.95 F votes for every G vote. The ratio of F/G votes is pretty normal - the ratio of F/D votes is wildly skewed. If they counted all the votes that week, that means that, for that week only, more than 100,000 votes went to players who weren’t on the ballot. That’s the only week that things were so skewed.

I don’t know what really happened but the whole thing is incredibly suspicious. Now, the real irony is that one of the purported motivations of this whole thing was showing the NHL how dumb internet voting was, as it lets a small group of people manipulate the vote. The NHL did a nice job of of showing them that the system can be fixed. It’s tough to have sympathy when people who are showing a purported flaw in the system find out that the flaw isn’t quite as big as they think. That said, if you’re going to do a vote, you ought to be willing to live with the consequences. It’s a little unseemly to sell sponsorship for something like All-Star balloting that leaves voters wondering afterwards if the votes cast were actually counted or if they were only counted if they were for players that Wayne Gretzky thought belonged at the All-Star Game.

Good game for the Oilers to run a PPV: hopefully the terrible production values distract the eye from the defence.

Maybe the anthem singer will distract the eye from the horrible production values.

Three rookies tonight on the Oilers defence: Hejda, Roy and Tom Gilbert. Then you’ve got Matt Greene, who isn’t a rookie because he played 2 games more than the limit last year. This is terrible.

1-0 Oilers. Dennis said it today over at IOF but the key for the Oilers tonight is going to be staying out of the box. PP goals for will obviously help as well. The PK was

Tom Gilbert breaks out the first giveaway of his NHL career. He looks like an Oiler defenceman already.

Ugly, ugly shift. Thornton is having a tough year - he just had a Horcoffian chance and Horcoffian finish in front of the net.

Whoever is doing colour on this broadcast just said that Roloson is going to be in the league for another 5-7 years. I’m thinking maybe Kevin Lowe is the colour guy tonight. That contract looks pretty good if you think he’s got 5-7 years left.

Today’s question Jim Matheson should have refused to answer on principle: “s Boyd Devereaux, now playing for the Maple Leafs, the same guy who played in Detroit?”

Greene gets in a fight. Mathieu Roy is now a top 4 NHL defenceman.

We’re at the 7 minute mark. The Oilers have probably spent 20 seconds in the SJ zone. They somehow draw another penalty and go back to the PP.

Nedved makes his first brutal play on the PP, failing to stop a puck from getting by him and out. Apparently they don’t have video technology in SJ - the Sharks are just giving the Oilers chances to set-up the one timer from the point, which is pretty much their entire PP.

This Mark Shultz guy…wasn’t he on the A-Channel Big Breakfast? Is this an upward career move? Lateral? I keep expecting him to do something zany.

Rob Brown is just terrible - he’s talking about how having a local WHL team will let local Edmonton boys play their junior at home. Apparently the WHL has done away with the draft.

2-0 Oilers. Mathieu Roy pops his first NHL goal. He’s on the ice with Tom Gilbert. Literally, there’s no way Edmonton has even spent a minute of ES time in the SJ zone so far.

3-0 Oilers. Hemsky sets up Stoll after the Oilers draw a penalty. Not only have the Sharks apparently seen no video of the Oilers but they can’t learn from what they’re seeing. 3 goals on 5 shots so far for the Oilers.

3-1 Oilers. Former Flame Ville Nieminen benefits from a fluky bounce off the endboards that comes out, hits Roli and ends up in the net. Terrible.

Heh. Mark Schultz is doing a promo for some contest the Oil are running where you can show how you celebrate hockey. He suggests sending in “Your best impressionation of Rod Phillips.” I’d say that’s one in and of itself.

Thornton off to the box for cross-checking and then punching Stoll. Rob Brown offers this analysis: “Jarret Stoll didn’t do nothing.” That really says it all.

The Sharks are onto Hemsky being the man on the PP - two Sharks immediately move towards him as he has the puck on this PP.

Boy, a between periods feature on kids getting dressed to play hockey. It’s not a wonder that the Oilers can’t afford a defenceman, what with the bottomless pit their TV production costs must be. As a whole, the organization should be embarrassed about virtually everything they show other than the game during the PPV’s.

What’s worse is that none of this has the slightest bit of a point. It’s just aimless time filler. Surely to god, there are NHL teams doing PPV broadcasts that are doing something better.

Pat LaForge says 54 consecutive sellouts for the Oilers. I’ve been wondering about that - ESPN doesn’t have the Oilers at 100% attendance, so who knows. Dennis says “Pat Laforge is in SJ…must be there to rob Sally Ann kettles.” LaForge says that the Oilers and EIG are interested in a new stadium but only if it’s right for Edmonton. I was watching carefully and he said it with a straight face.

Marleau gets a four minute high sticking penalty and Edmonton gets the chance to maybe, just maybe, stick the knife into the Sharks. Torres is cut up. According to Rob Brown, this is just how you draw it up in the dressing room. If Rob Brown played for a lot of teams that planned on getting about 10 minutes in PP to the opponent’s 2 and having leads despite a) essentially four rookie D in the lineup and b) getting owned at ES, it’s not a wonder that Rob Brown played for some shitty teams.

Nedved, with the patented terrible giveaway on the PP. Edmonton is struggling to get anything going on the PP here - this is a real battle between SJ’s apparent refusal to prepare and Craig Simpson.

Edmonton, worst in the league in PPS/60, gets 1 shot on the 4 minute PP.

Tom Gilbert does a nice job of moving into the play on an Oilers rush. He looks like he’s got a nice feel for the offensive side of the game.

Gene Principe just showed us Ryan Smyth’s brace…and then did a thumb war while wearing it. I long for the subtle humour of Mike Toth.

On the one hand, Edmonton’s had a ton of power plays. On the other, Hemsky just got mauled on a partial breakaway with no call.

I completely agree with Rob Brown on the mystery of throwing Thornton and Co. out against Smith and Hejda. Joe Thornton was terrifying every time he had the ice against the Oilers young D last year.

Wow. Seeing Ron Wilson on the bench, screaming at the referees, I’m reminded of how much I hated that smug bastard last spring.

Nedved. Atrocious giveaway on the PP. The techie types who read this…can one of you remind me again, how do I set this up as a hotkey, so I can just have a Hemsky, atrocious giveaway button?

Hey, wow. Another feature on minor hockey. Awesome. Anyone reading this know whether the Oilers actually control the video feed when they do this on the road? I suspect that they’re just riding the game feed from the Sharks, supplemented with a couple of cameras they control? That might explain why we so rarely see any freaking replays.

Edmonton sneaks through a Sharks PP. San Jose is wicked awesome on the PP - the NHL has three dominant teams on the PP this year that are about 1.5 GD/60 better than the fourth place team. SJ is one of them.

Petr Sykora wired tonight. He seems like a supportive teammate. Interesting to see earlier, when they were showing some highlights of guys miked up, a lot of guys warn others when they have the mike. I imagine that there’s some pretty good stuff in the vault.

Here’s Thornton’s ice time, along with that of Horcoff and Smith tonight. This strikes me as either a great job by the Oilers coaches or a kind of crappy one by the SJ coaches. The Oilers PP’s are a bit of a blessing I suppose - Thornton probably comes out right after opposition PP’s and it’s not like Smith is pulling PP time or anything.

3-2 Oilers. Bergeron and Greene on the ice, puck coming towards the net from Roloson’s right, Bergeron takes down the Shark and crashes into Roloson along with him. Puck goes to Cheechoo and he scores. I suppose something worse could have happened.

Thornton’s line is out against the fourth line and third D pairing. Things are ugly, ugly.

Another feature on minor hockey and how it makes families happy.

Edmonton weathers the PP and Smyth draws a penalty.

San Jose kills it off. I’d want to watch replays of the earlier PP’s to be sure but it looks to me like San Jose got a lot tighter on Hemsky after the first on the PP. Nedved makes a rarely seen play for a guy running the Oilesr PP off the halfboards, setting up a chance down low.

The Oilers survive another fourth line shift against San Jose. These shifts are absolutely fucking terrifying.

1:21 left and Lupul draws a penalty. This one is over.

Hemsky has an EN breakaway and gets skated down. Ominous but the Oilers get away with it. Huge, huge win - SJ is kind of the Oilers punk at the moment.

I love the post game Gene Principe interviews in the room on the PP. We’re getting the rarely seen Matt Greene interview - rarely seen for a reason. Heh - the Oilers are in a hurry because there’s a curfew to get out of the SJ airport. Someone yells “Get the fuck out” at Principe. Stoll can barely keep a straight face during the interview because of the yapping in the background. Dennis believes he may have seen a nude Petr Sykora. Hopefully the hot-oil girls have access to this stuff.

I’ve done some graphs of goal differential before. I like them because as the season goes on, it’s nice to be able to look and see where teams made their move and where they were just kind of gliding along. I find the visual makes all of this easy to see. These are all current as of games Friday.


One surprise, to me anyway, in the Pacific Division - Dallas has kind of been just sliding along for quite some time now. They’re -5 for their last 30 games since that time period, something that seems to have escaped general notice. In regulation + OT (which is what’s relevant to me, since I care about hockey as opposed to skill competitions), they’re 12-14-4. For all the discussion about the Oilers’ slide of late, that’s a pretty long period of suck for Dallas, although they’ve been down some guys.

I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting some hits from a Phoenix fan site lately - some guy seized on something I wrote way back when suggesting that Gretzky was obviously trying to get fired and others thought it’s funny. The Coyotes are +15 in their past 7 games and their tens of fans are getting excited. Nice for them, I suppose but I wouldn’t be getting too worked up myself. For one, there’s a ridiculous 8-0 win in there. As Phoenix fans should know, sometimes everything just goes wrong. One of the wins was an SO win against LA. Another a 2-0 win over ANA at home. They beat the Sharks 3-2. Then they’ve had a couple of wins against the SE. Western Conference teams shouldn’t be getting a full two points for beating Eastern Conference teams - the East is horrible, as I’ll discuss below.

Hmm. Nashville and Detroit well clear of Columbus, Chicago and St. Louis. Is that a surprise to anyone, outside of those employed by the Bible of Hockey? Probably not.

Three of the teams in the division have already changed coaches. Chicago gave Trent Yawney 21 games in which the Hawks were -17. Denis Savard is at +3 so far through 20 - a healthy turnaround, although one would also suspect that the Hawks probably weren’t a -70 team overall, particularly in that division. More time, please. Columbus was -14 in 15 games under Gerard Gallant, -7 in 5 games under his nameless interim replacement and +4 so far in 21 games under Ken Hitchcock. Again, it looks to be a marked improvement. You can break that one down a little further though - they were +16 in their first 9 games with Hitchcock (amazingly, seven of which were on the road) and -12 in their most recent 12. I still think that this team sucks and figure that Hitchcock will end up with a minus for the year when all is said and done. Hopefully for Columbus fans though, the MCConnell’s decide that they like him a lot, fire Doug MacLean and let Hitchcock run his own little fiefdom. Finally, Andy Murray is +6 in 12 games as head coach of the Blues. Interesting that all of the teams have seen improvement since switching their coaches. In all three cases, I think none of the teams were as bad as they were playing and they were likely to improve anyway - we’ll see what the second half brings.

The NW is fascinating because all of the teams are so close - nobody over +20 or below -10 as of game 615. The SE Division is very similar but I think that the NW is decidedly better than the SE: it’s the NW 48 and the SE 30 for a 9-3-2 record so far this year. All of those games are played in the NW, so you’d expect the NW to have the better record but still - that’s by a lot.

The Calgary Flames probably are who we thought they were, unfortunately. A slow start, which drew “Fire Playfair” threads at your usual gathering spots for those who look longingly at family members and cheer for Calgary. They’ve been pretty much kicking ass since about G12 and are a nice +20 since that point. Colorado threw up a nice little +11 in five games a little while ago - other than that, they’ve been a thoroughly consistent 0ish type team. I figure that they’ll get cold sooner or later - I’m in the (shrinking) group of people that thinks Colorado is at the end of their run. The Wild started very strong - +12 through 12 but have followed that up with a -12 in 29 games. I’m rooting against Marian Gaborik’s groin and looking with some excitement at the fact that the Oilers get them seven more times this year. Vancouver has nicely turned things around since they couldn’t score but they’re not as good as their record indicates - too many one goal wins. The Canucks are +9 in their past 12, which is great, but not 9-3 great. More like 6-3-3 good. They’ll cool off again or stop getting breaks like Mathieu Roy being on the ice in OT.

The Oil have been on a bit of a rollercoaster. +9 through their first 8. -7 through their next 8. +5 through their next 8. -1 through their next 8. -7 through their next 8. -1 so far in their sixth 8 of the year. There’s lots of complaining in the usual places about how they’re -10 or so in their last 17; the +7 in their first 24 tells us something about the team as well. I’m a relatively positive Oil fan - indeed compared to the Oilogosphere, I’d say I’m definitely more positive than AG, VicF, Dennis and Lowetide so far this year. We’ll see how things play out for this team but they’ve paid for some of the luck that they had earlier in the year on the PK. I think that they’ll get the problems on the PP fixed and they’ll find enough scoring to slide into seventh or eighth. There’s five years of evidence saying that Craig MacTavish teams don’t play as irresponsibly as the Oilers forwards were playing in the recent bad eight game stretch. They’ll be fine and I’d bet on a playoff appearance with any member of the Oilogosphere that cares to bet on it.

Time to blow up the Flyers. I’ll take a look at them at some point - I can’t believe how bad it’s gotten in Philadelphia. It’s been a pretty consistent slide as well. To a certain extent, I still don’t believe that they’re this bad. N.J. has had a good 20 games to take the lead in the division. Other than that, lots of blah - teams have just kind of consistently been mediocre. Other than Philly, they’re all between +9 and -10. Aggravatingly, NJ looks to be pulling away with the decision despite this - the Rangers are the only team that’s still reasonably close. They’ve benefitted from a 5-1 record in the SO. I’m so sick of the Devils - if there’s a god, something will happen. Marty Brodeur is carry a .930+ PP SV% at the moment; surely that will fall.

Three clear breaks in this division. First, you’ve got Buffalo, running away with the division. Then you’ve got Montreal and Ottawa. Then you’ve got the Leafs and Boston, who I’m lumping together because I happen to think the 16 goal swing between the two teams the other night doesn’t really tell the whole story. Montreal’s GD is a bit misleading - they’re +8 with the empty net. It’s been two separate seasons for Buffalo so far: +31 through their first 22, +5 through their next 19. Ottawa has been a mystery: -6 in their first 6, +31 in their next 25, -20 in their next 8 and then +6 in their next 6. Who knows what this team is all about, although I’m inclined to think that they’re good.

There’s an interesting idea in there, I think. Bill James has written about the idea that an individual can do something so dominant in a single game that, even though it’s an incredibly small sample, you know something about the athlete. The classic example is pitchers and high strikeout games. If you take a look at the list of players with 19 or more in a nine inning game, it consists of Randy Johnson (certain HOF), Kerry Wood (great start, scragged his arm), Roger Clemens (arguably the greatest ever), David Cone (great pitcher, arguably the best in baseball for a time), Nolan Ryan (HOF), Tom Seaver (HOF) and Steve Carlton (HOF). If you expand it to 18, you can add Bob Feller and Sandy Koufax to the list. Ottawa has put together at least one dominating stretch this year. It’d be kind of cool to go and look and see if there’s a threshold that a team passes that indicates that they’re a solid team. Montreal and Ottawa have the same goal differential right now; I don’t think Montreal is anywhere near Ottawa’s calibre.

Finally, the SE. Arguably the worst collection of teams in the NHL, Phoenix just wrapped up a road trip where they gutted the SE. Phoenix. Does anything else really need to be said? Probably not. The NHL should be a little embarassed that two NW teams will miss the playoffs while two of this collection of jokes will be collecting playoff money.