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I’m just fooling around with this stuff at this point but a couple of interesting numbers popped up that I thought I’d throw out. Shawn Horcoff, exhausted by the heavy load foisted upon him by Craig MacTavish and whiffing on every puck lovingly tossed his way by Ales Hemsky…improved his ES shooting rate from 6.5 ESS/60 last year to 6.7 ESS/60 this year. Shooting percentage went from 15.9% to 7.0% though and that’s pretty much all you need to know.

*As was expected by many, Andrew Cogliano’s ES shooting percentage took a huge hit, as he fell from 19.8% to 14.1%. He made up for it on the PP, going from 1/13 to 4/14, which kept his shooting percentage near where it was last season. His ES shooting rate was up, from 5.5 ESS/60 to 6.1 ESS/60.

*Ryan Smyth’s decline continued unabated, as his ES shot rate rose to 10.4 ESS/60 from last year’s 9.2 ESS/60. He had a bit of an off year in the ESS%, falling from 9.4% to 7.3%. His PP shooting percentage was through the roof again after a bad year last season, as he scored on 21.2% of his shots.

*Alex Burrows is the subject of some discussion at Lowetide’s. He sort of had the anti-Horcoff season, going from an ES shooting percentage of 6.7% to 15.2%. His shooting rate was actually up significantly as well, from 6.5 ESS/60 to 8.2 ESS/60. Whether that’s to his credit or to the credit of the Sedins is an interesting question.

*Joe Thornton took just 4.6 ESS/60 this year, which I’m certain is a new low for him. He was at 5.3 ESS/60 and is almost certainly below the tenth percentile now in ESS/60.

*Todd Bertuzzi is down at around 5.5 ESS/60 at this point in his career. I suspect that he’ll get another contract somewhere but he’s pretty much finished as a useful ES player.

*Raffi had a much better year percentage wise but his shot numbers were down significantly, from 8.2 ESS/60 in his last year as an Oiler to 5.8 ESS/60 in Columbus. He was coming back from a couple of major surgeries, so it’s probably not fair to put too much stock in that, but it’s a considerable drop.

There’s more there but that’s the stuff that caught my eye right off the bat.

If a contract that pays Shawn Horcoff an average of $6.5 million over the next four years — that’s right, Shawn Horcoff — sounds like something an owner would offer to a favourite son, that’s mighty logical.

…

Lowe deserves better, despite the fact that — with Dustin Penner’s and Horcoff’s deals — the Oilers now own two of the 10 worst contracts in the NHL.

The above is from Mark Spector’s column in the aftermath of Darryl Katz’ text message supporting MacTavish. I’ve never been particularly impressed with Spector - he wrote one of the more sexist things I’ve even seen in a mainstream newspaper in the 21st century and, during the lockout, was sort of a blind supporter of the owners on the general bsais that the players make too much money, a position that I found to be awfully weak.

His view on Horcoff’s contract is pretty widely shared amongst Oiler fans and media. Everyone seems to agree that he’s going to be wildly overpaid in the coming season. What I haven’t seen anybody do yet is look at Horcoff in the appropriate context and compare him to centres who are actually unrestricted free agents.

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

Columbus’ forwards for G2, sorted by TOI

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

Columbus’ defencemen for G2, sorted by TOI

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

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

Guy Flaming’s been running a series at his site, Coming Down the Pipe! that evaluates the job that Kevin Prendergast has done over the past few years. It’s pretty entertaining stuff - click here for Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

As most people reading this will know, Flaming has written about Oilers prospects for a long time at Hockey’s Future. He has worked and achieved access to Oilers scouts and, as a result, Oilers fans have benefitted from commentary that most fans don’t get about their teams. On the other hand, access has a price and I’ve never really been wild about Flaming’s stuff because I’ve always found his views to be more than a little bit breathless and, reading it, I’ve always thought that he let his sources get away with expressing some views that didn’t make any sense if you thought about them.

I could never quite understand whether Guy was giving us his views or the Oilers’ views and I always had the sense that, in any event, his views were pretty heavily coloured by those of the team. Every piece seemed to have a passage that screamed for some sort of a reality check. Access to the Oilers staff is great, but if what you get is press release-type stuff to the effect that Schremp is more talented than Ovechkin, I’m not sure how valuable it is, other than it helps set you up with some writing gigs and keeps you in guests for your radio show. There’s a reason Larry King gets such great guests.

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Section 8.7 of the CBA reads as follows:

8.7 Age 18 and 19 Players

(a) During the first two seasons next succeeding the draft of an age 18 Player, the Club he signs an SPC with must first offer him to the club from which he was claimed before it may Loan him.

(b) During the first season next succeeding the draft of an age 19 Player or a Player who reaches his 19th birthday between September 16 and December 31, inclusive, of the year of the Entry Draft, the Club he signs an SPC with must first offer him to the club from which he was claimed before it may Loan him.

“Loan” is a defined term under the CBA.

“Loan” means the transfer of a Player from a Club’s Active Roster, Non-Roster, Injured Non-Roster or Injured Reserve List to the roster of a club outside the NHL.

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Bob Stauffer keeps beating the drum that if everyone knew the Ryan Smyth story, the city would be perfectly unified behind Lowe and the Oilers. He praises the Oilers for not trashing Smyth after he left town. The thing of it is, when a team employee goes on the radio and says this, the team’s kind of having it both ways. Stauffer’s story might be true, it might not be, but a team employee going on the radio and saying that the organization was blameless doesn’t mean a hell of a lot.

In addition, it’s awfully curious that Stauffer is so sure about this when, in the days following the trade, LaForge & Co. were happy to say all sorts of things about Smyth without mentioning something like this. We all know that they were less than forthcoming in painting it as a hockey trade and not about money. I don’t know who Stauffer’s sources are, and they’re obviously good, but he’s not too good or too smart to avoid being used by someone else. Without having the opportunity to evaluate what he says the facts are, I don’t know how anyone can take an Oilers employee seriously when he says that the secret story would prove the Oilers right.

Eastern Conference
8. Mtl/ 1. Bos - Bos in 5

7. Nyr/ 2. Wsh - Wsh in 6

6. Car/ 3. NJ - NJ in 7

5. Phil/ 4. Pit - Pit in 6

4. Pit/ 1.Bos -Pit in 6

3. NJ/ 2.Wsh -  NJ in 6

4. Pit/ 3. NJ - Pit in 6

Western Conference

8.Ana/ 1.SJ - SJ in 6

7. CBJ/ 2.Det - CBJ in 7

6. Stl/ 3.Van - Van in 5

5.Cgy/ 4. Chi - Chi in 6

7. CBJ/ 1. SJ - SJ in 7

4. Chi/ 3.Van - Van in 6

3. Van/ 1. SJ - Van in 7

Pit/ Van - Pit in 6

Against Los Angeles, the Flames got caught looking ahead to Round 2 and the Oilers. In 1988-89, while the Oilers wallowed in self-pity over Wayne Gretzky’s being traded to L.A. the summer before, Calgary rolled to the Cup. Last season, “the sense of urgency to win, the total commitment to go to the well, just wasn’t there,” says Flame general manager Cliff Fletcher. Coach Terry Crisp’s periodic tirades had little effect on his players, and he was fired despite a 144-63-33 record over three seasons. His replacement is Doug Risebrough, Fletcher’s heir apparent, who was a forward on four straight Stanley Cup championship teams with the Canadiens in the late 1970s.

-Sports Illustrated, Oct. 8, 1990

As we all remember, acquiescing to the players’ dislike of their coach has since been recognized as the spark that ignited the Flames’ run of six Stanley Cups in a row. With the Flames’ dominance and the Oilers’ decline, Edmontonians turned to cheering for Calgary, leading to the Oilers’ move to Houston, where they are owned by Michael Largue.

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This is something that I’ve kind of been wondering about, given that Steve Tambellini is about to make a decision about the appropriate price to pay Ales Kotalik, assuming that he wants him to come back. In order to understand how valuable Kotalik’s skill at putting the puck in the net during the shootout is, you need to understand how often NHL players as a group can do this. The particularly relevant group are the players who a coach will be choosing as his options in the event that he doesn’t have Kotalik available.

David Staples linked to a piece on NHL.com the other day with some quotes from Tambellini and Jim Rutherford about the shootout that’s worth taking a look at. There were a couple of paragraphs in particular that caught my eye:

NHL General Managers are in agreement that if a player wants to keep his job in the League, he can’t only excel as a shootout specialist, but it sure helps his market value if he can score consistently in the breakaway competition.

In most cases, shootout prowess has become a small part of the player evaluation process.

“I think you could carry a guy on your fourth line that you consider a specialist, a real solid fourth-line player that can be a difference-maker in the end,” Rutherford said. “It would kind of be like in baseball where you have the pinch-hitter. He doesn’t play every day, but he’s a guy that can come off the bench and make a difference in the game.”

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