mc79hockey.com

Yeah, apparently there was a hockey game tonight. That’s not what’s on my mind. This has absolutely nothing to do with hockey but it’s another signpost on Western civilization’s continuing descent towards a society in which nobody can read, communication is impossible and nobody has the attention span to accomplish anything above the first level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I feel some sort of a moral obligation to point it out.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Ducks in 6.
2. Chris Pronger wins the Conn Smythe.
3. Brian Burke will be detained entering Canada but released after Customs officials determine that he was not acting suspiciously but is simply a pompous asshole.
4. The Senators will be derided as chokers by the Toronto media and fans.
5. The Leafs, who did not make the playoffs, will sell out every game next year and their fans will talk about how “This is the year!”
6. Pierre McGuire will not have the balls to make an actual pick for fear of offending anyone, because they’re all such monsters.
7. Bryan Murray will continue to remind me of Porky Pig.
8. It will be a loooooooong summer waiting for Edmonton to get another game.

Raffi has his name tattooed on his foream.  With the proliferation of digital cameras, we’ve learned an awful lot about the Oilers that we previously would have been stuck simply speculating about - Schremp has odd choices in undergarments and weird tattoos on his back and Joffrey Lupul likes to get down with tarts in the bar.  I’m not at all sure that this is a positive development.

Canada has its third shot at a Stanley Cup in as many seasons, starting tonight. I’m not nearly as sure as seemingly everyone in Canada that Ottawa’s shot is going to end any more happily than the runs Edmonton and Calgary had. It’s not really fair to lump this Senators team in with the Oilers and Flames, other than in the fact that all three teams were probably underrated. Edmonton and Calgary were seen as miracle runs to the finals, which, as I’ve explained here before, kind of ignores some fundamental facts about both teams. The Senators are kind of seen as the Charlie Brown of the NHL - they can’t figure out how to work the expansion draft (”Ottawa apologizes”), they build a stadium in the middle of nowhere, they go bankrupt and every year that they are in the position of favourite in the playoffs, they lose in a stunning, humiliating fashion in a situation in which they should be favoured. There are so many aspects of the Senators franchise that have been just a touch off kilter that the phenomenal success that the team has enjoyed, the sheer dominance of the Sens in the regular season has been obscured.

Read the rest of this entry »

Update: Thanks to the folks at edmontonoilers.com for providing me with the team’s banner celebrating Anaheim’s trip to the Stanley Cup finals.

You’ve done it again. Joffrey Lupul, Ladislav Smid and TWO first round picks for Chris Pronger? AND we get to pick at number six this year?

Well done, sir. Well done. Of course, none of this would have happened if Steve Yzerman was alive. It must be shocking, yet somehow unsurprising to the Detroit fans to see their string of twenty two Stanley Cups with him leading the Red Wings come to an end. Now they probably won’t win again until End Days, when he returns to Earth to smite his foes and, well, whatever else it says in Revelations. I’m pretty sure that Flames third jersey figures it into somehow.

Anyway, main point here: even with that second first round pick, this trade is still worse than an abomination. I never thought I’d think longingly about Jimmy Carson…if you live long enough, you’ll see everything, I guess.

By the way, I wholeheartedly encourage this thread turning into a cheapshot Kevin Lowe and the Oilers thread. I was kicking this around with Dennis on MSN and so far there’s “I think it’s very impressive that the Ducks could win without Lupul and Smid…speaks to their depth” and “Kevin Lowe has now built two contenders: the 2005-06 Oilers and the 2006-07 Ducks.” Further suggestions are wholeheartedly encouraged.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every so often you see one of those stories out of Brazil or England where some person has won some contest that involves seeing who can eat the most babies in ten minutes with a prize of soccer tickets to some third division game and you shake your head at the degree to which soccer permeates their societies. Then your sister points out this in the leading Canadian property law textbook:

Even something as ostensibly worthless as season tickets to see the Calgary Flames play hockey can be the subject of a trust.

A tip of the hat to U of A law professor Bruce Ziff for sneaking that into his textbook. A wag of the finger to my sister for reading her property law textbook. It’s people like her who wrecked things at law school for the rest of us.

I’m having a lot of fun looking at percentiles - it provides a useful sense of scale. In a related story, I’m a dork.

Read the rest of this entry »

Elliot Friedman did an interview over at the Big Lead.  For obvious reasons, there was one part that leaped out at me:

For me, there are five or six blogs that are daily must-reads. (That doesn’t include hockey-specific blogs. I check out 20 or so of those a day.)

I’ve commented before on the odd piece of HNIC that seems directly lifted from blogs - see here and here for examples, and of course, CBC seems to have developed a serious infatuation with who plays against who that corresponds roughly to Vic Ferrari introducing his time on ice site.  If it’s a coincidence, it’s a strange one - I’m not saying that they do, only that people from CBC admittedly read hockey blogs and ideas from hockey blogs show up on HNIC from time to time.  If it’s not, they really ought to credit it - if you’re going to say that Larry Brooks reported some item that you’re discussing on the Satellite Hotstove, you really ought to extend the same courtesy to bloggers when you borrow their thoughts.

Joffrey Lupul came to Edmonton with the reputation of a shooter. His shots were way down this year, as was noted by Robin Brownlee in a story I read during the course of the season. Interesting note: while his ESS/60 of 8.8 puts him at the 80th percentile amongst forwards who played at least 120 minutes this year, his PPS/60 of 5.5 puts him below the 10th percentile for forwards who played at least 120 minutes of PP time. It sure is a shame that the Oilers GM and scouts didn’t clue in prior to dealing for this guy that acquiring a right handed shot to play on a power play quarterbacked by a right hand shot who likes to play the left side might not be the greatest idea in the history of the world. They’re now apparently looking for another right handed forward to join in on the PP. May God have mercy on us all.

As an aside, Horcoff and Hemsky were hovering around the 10th percentile in terms of PPS/60 as well. The only Oiler forwards of note to crack the fiftieth percentile were Smyth, Stoll and Sykora. Of course, two of those guys generally played up high on the point and so they weren’t taking high percentage shots and the third was traded because he wouldn’t smile and take what he was given.

It seems to be common wisdom amongst hockeymetrician types that the reason you see coaches limit the ice time of elite PP players who are also elite ES types is that these players are necessary at ES.  The assumption seems to be that it doesn’t make sense to trade time at ES for time on the PP for some of these players.  This is, as far as I know, the commonly accepted explanation for Shawn Horcoff’s puzzlingly low PP TOI.

Read the rest of this entry »