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A Theory of Ice’s E has a pretty cool piece in the Walrus, with bonus appearance from occasional Oilogosphere commenter Julian:

It is mid-December now, and I am in Guelph, in an arena that’s as close as Canada gets to the East Asian theory of mall-hockey, where the ice surface is hardly differentiated from the encircling concession stands and souvenir shops: you can easily watch the game while waiting in line for pizza. Along one side, in the bar section where spectators girded by beer and nachos can follow the puck from behind plate glass, an arena employee is providing interested viewers with a brief explanation of the photos that constitute the Cam Janssen Wall of Fame, the then-New Jersey Devil being Guelph’s most recent NHL product. On the ice, Drew Doughty is turning in an atypically unremarkable performance for the local Storm before departing for the World Junior Championships. And in the narrow hall leading to the exit, I am engaging in one of the most unseemly public displays of affection I have ever engaged in with a Mennonite boy from up Waterloo way.

I assume that she isn’t qualifying “unseemly public displays of affection” with “a Mennonite boy from up Waterloo way”, because she routinely engages in unseemly public displays with boys of other backgrounds from Waterloo or with Mennonites from elsewhere but, in any event, it’s a cool piece that provides a look at hockey in Canada through the eyes of someone who wasn’t born into the culture.

And way to go Julian (assuming she’s referring to him and that she wasn’t making out with some other dude and then hanging out with him). There’s nothing more Canadian than unseemly public displays of affection at a hockey rink.

This is a pretty cool story:

Winter, with help from mathematical advisers, has determined exactly how many points a contending team needs from its top-six forward group and top-four defencemen, and the save percentage required from a goalie to become a 100-point team.

For example, if all thresholds are met from the defence and goalies, a team that gets at least 143 goals from its top six forwards will record 100 points. According to Winter, that number has stayed true every year since the lockout. He has calculations like that for every position.

“I will make arguments to teams that they need a little more up front, that they need X, Y or Z and the models prove it out,” he said. “It’s a model we’ve developed using a little bit of Moneyball in hockey.”

When it came time to narrow down Hossa’s possible destinations, there were only four teams that matched the criteria.

Personally, if I ran a hockey team and Ritch Winter told me he’d developed a model that showed I just needed a little bit more of X, Y or Z and that he happened to represent X, Y or Z, I’d be pretty skeptical. At the same time, this is the sort of modelling that teams should be doing because, done properly, it lets them break down their team and understand where they’re deficient. This lets them target their spending a bit better, avoiding moves that cost a lot and add little value because of where the team’s strengths already lie.

It’s an interesting value addition as an agent for a client though. Salaries in the NHL are, increasingly, easy enough to negotiate. It’s hard for me to understand what value agents add that a player couldn’t get by just hiring a lawyer on an hourly basis. If Winter really does have a model - and I’m a bit doubtful of some of the other stuff in the story - well, it’s a good reason to pick him over a different agent.

I’m curious what the teams were - I’d guess Pittsburgh, Washington, San Jose and Chicago, assuming that Detroit was out for financial reasons. I don’t know that you really need a model for that but still interesting.

I’m no student of Arizona constitutional law but I’m interested enough in the Phoenix Coyotes’ situation that I took some time and read what appears to be the leading decision on the interpretation of the Gift Clause in the Arizona Constitution. It seems that both proposals to buy the Coyotes would rely on some form of subsidy from the city of Glendale to the Coyotes.

I’m reasonably certain that the only way the Coyotes are going to leave Glendale is if these subsidies are found to be illegal - I can’t imagine why Glendale would put up $25MM if they didn’t think that there was a deal to be had. There are a number of potential subsidies under consideration at the moment - first, the $25MM guarantee for the 2010-11 season and, second, the various subsidies proposed in the Ice Edge/Reinsdorf deals that are under consideration. The question will be whether subsidies to the Coyotes run afoul of the Gift Clause. It reads:

Neither the state, nor any county, city, town, municipality, or other subdivision of the state shall ever give or loan its credit in the aid of, or make any donation or grant, by subsidy or otherwise, to any individual, association, or corporation, or become a subscriber to, or a shareholder in, any company or corporation, or become a joint owner with any person, company, or corporation . . .

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Joanne Ireland from the Edmonton Journal reported this a few weeks back:

Edmonton Oilers goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin is scheduled to appear before a jury in Scottsdale, Ariz., on July 7 to answer charges of driving under the influence.

Among the charges is the more severe extreme DUI, which was added when the results of his blood test revealed his blood alcohol content measured .164 per cent. In Phoenix, a reading of .15 or higher automatically elevates a DUI to extreme.

…

If Khabibhulin is found guilty, a first-time extreme DUI conviction carries a minimum 30-day jail sentence, montetary fines, as well as the addition of an ignition interlock device, which is breath-test machine that is wired into the ignition. The car will not start until the breath sample is free of alcohol. The maximum jail sentence is six months.

Khabibulin has an evidentiary hearing on June 21.

While I’m not versed in the intricacies of Arizona criminal procedure (or Canadian criminal procedure, for that matter), if I had to venture a guess, I’d guess that Khabibulin is challenging the admissibility of some or all of the evidence against him, something that seems to be confirmed by this link. Impaired driving law is notoriously technical, in Canada at least, probably in part because it’s the rare area of criminal law that frequently has wealthy defendants who can afford highly skilled lawyers to put the prosecution to proving its burden. It’s also, generally speaking, a more technical offence than something like assault, where you either hit the guy or you didn’t. Presumably, Khabibulin’s criminal defence lawyer thinks he has some argument to get some of the evidence ruled inadmissible. Where he was barely into the extreme DUI level, the science behind the reading of .164 becomes important.

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Commenter Paul Owen forwards his observations on the Windsor Spitfires-Calgary Hitmen game at the Memorial Cup. I don’t really have a dog in this fight, other than the tribal desire to see the Oilers regain the distinction of having drafted the best Tyler of all-time. His observations after the jump:

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Olivier of En Attendant Les Nordiques tracked the scoring chances for the Pens-Habs series. There were a pair of articles that prompted me to take a look at the quantity and quality of chances that the Pens and Habs were getting when Sidney Crosby was on the ice in that series. Roy MacGregor had an article in the Globe and Mail on Friday about what he sees as the silliness of the obsession with systems at the NHL level:

“We’ll be all right,” the player smothered in a scrum of cameras and microphones will say, “so long as we stick to our system.”

It has a heft unlike so many other meaningless hockey phrases – “Our best players have to be our best players”; “We can’t get too high and can’t get too low”; “We have to take it one game at a time”; “It is what it is” – in that the mere word “systems” has the air of a secret handshake, or else could conceivably be some plan so complicated that the pickled brain of the average hockey writer could not possibly comprehend its intricacies.

…

Coaches speak of “time and space” as if it were quantum physics not merely a goofy new phrase for checking. They speak of “gaps” as if they could be as finitely measured and set as those on spark plugs.

Pittsburgh Penguins coach Dan Bylsma actually said last week that he wanted his team to be playing “north of the puck” – whatever that means.

The truth is that these so-called systems are about as complicated as going to the fridge for a beer between periods.

“Let’s fact it,” says Bob Hartley, who coached the Colorado Avalanche to a previous Stanley Cup, “there’s not 25 ways to play hockey.

“It’s really pretty simple.

“You show me a good system and I’ll show you a good goaltender.”

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Having been to a game in Pittsburgh, I can assure you that the fellow in the white dress shirt with the finely coiffed hair and fashionable blue jeans is not a creature native to that part of Pennsylvania. Note also, the frequency of moustaches on the Habs fans pictured to the frequency of moustaches on the Pens’ fans.

There was a fine debate in the comments a few posts back about where Backstrom’s salary ends up. I said:

I would expect that Backstrom comes in at somewhere between $7.5MM and $8.25MM annually on a five year deal.

Rajeev said:

If the Caps were willing to do that, the contract would have been signed and announced long ago. That contract is simply not happening.

Since the time the parties started negotiating (sometime in the fall is our best guess), Backstrom’s play, the effects of OV notwithstanding (which I think everyone on the planet realizes that his numbers are inflated playing with OV), has certainly upped the ante from the 6M x 6yrs the Caps probably initially optimistically penciled him in at before the season, but I imagine they’re still thinking just south of 7M on a 5-7 year deal, and closer to 6.5 on a long term deal (10-13 years) that is heavily front loaded and provides good present value financial return to Backy and a nice cap hit for the team.

Rajeev’s position sounds so damned reasonable but I just cannot believe that Backstrom comes in at under $7MM annually. Here’s the scoring leaders amongst players who’ve played their first three years in the post-lockout era, sorted by points/game:

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From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“Here is an example of the type of successes that I’ve had,” [new Thrashers GM Rick] Dudley said. “Dan Boyle was a smallish defenseman. Mike Keenan was the coach of Florida and he wouldn’t play him much. I talked to Chuck Fletcher, the interim GM there, and he was very honest. He said our coach won’t play him. I said what do you want for him. He said I don’t know. I said I’ll get back to you. I watched him play seven straight games. He played about three minutes a game. In those three minutes for seven straight games I had to make an evaluation as to whether this guy could help us. I came to the conclusion he could. I had to fight like hell with my bosses in Tampa, but we made the trade for a fifth-round draft pick.

Well, you look at the player now, and I could not have done that on someone else’s say so. That comfort level wouldn’t have been there for a smaller D-man. The natural assumption is that he can’t play for the Florida Panthers so why would you be so excited about this player. The truth is he was in a circumstance. I’m not discrediting the coach. Mike liked big defensemen. He did not like small defensemen. Danny was a smaller defenseman. But I saw enough for our team that I felt comfortable that he could play for us. Those are things you have to do. I don’t know how you do it elsewise. There are GMs that do it [differently] and they are successful. But I don’t know how you rely on someone else’s opinion to build a hockey team. I just don’t.”

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