Springing Malik

The Pain Game 2011/12 - Part Four

2012-01-31T23:20:00.001Z

Injury stats update – January 2012

This is my fourth look for the 2011/12 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2011/12 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

Alternatively...

Again, for a different indicator of player "value", I've also illustrated a similar metric based on TOI/G alongside the CHIP numbers. Clearly, neither cap charge nor TOI/G are perfect measures of player value, since each have a number of limitations and inconsistencies, but they provide a decent comparison and the results do vary somewhat.

A quick summary of the alternative metric:

TOI/G replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on). [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team over the 2011/12 regular season (through games played up to the All-Star break), as well as the distribution of CHIP by position
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...

Still a two-horse race at the top, though Pierre Gauthier is said to be contemplating pulling his horse up and trading it for a blind donkey who eats four times as many carrots. The words "Columbus Blue Jackets" and "significant rise in the standings" feature in close proximity for the first time in several years, as a few more of their heavily overpaid players get hurt.

Also some separation at the bottom (coincidentally the name of Rick DiPietro's next injury...) as the Wings and Hawks remain relatively healthy, the annual Red Wing All-Star flu apart. The Bruins also pretty much injury-free, if Marc Savard's long-term absence is excluded.

Not sure why the Lightning aren't leading the table by a mile, given Guy Boucher's recent propensity to complain about the number of injuries his underachieving team has been coping with. Maybe they are just hidden so well as to not exist (perhaps...see below).

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

As could be expected, what are tending towards season-long absences dominate these tables now. The Sauer brothers are beginning to sadly display some Lindros-esque attributes.

Where does it hurt?
This is another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

Finally, a look at the Evasiveness Index. This is basically the proportion of injury instances for each team that have been described as either "Undisclosed" or the helpfully pointless "Upper/Lower Body" in the same TSN profiles. I have made no judgement about whether the many instances of "Illness" (i.e. concussion) or "Flu" (i.e. concussion) should also be included.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers (perhaps an arbitrary judgement on my part in some cases) who had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though. Minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR might be included in the man-games lost figures (but can't guarantee I get it right every time)
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

The Pain Game 2011/12 - Part Three

2012-01-04T19:53:00.002Z

Injury stats update – December 2011

This is my third look for the 2011/12 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2011/12 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

Alternatively...

TOI/G replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on). [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team over the 2011/12 regular season (through games played on 31 December), as well as the distribution of CHIP by position
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...

The Canadiens and Penguins are by now seriously contemplating a controversial organ transplant which will see Andrei Markov's knee attached to Sidney Crosby's neck, with Crosby's head being connected to Markov's femur (subject to the resulting mutant speaking an acceptable level of French by the end of the surgery).

Playing in the Pacific or Central divisions is clearly preferable to playing in the Atlantic or Northeast.

The Islanders somehow lead by a distance in the goalie CHIP ranking. Who knew?

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

Predictably becoming Concussion Central here now. The Habs are surely beginning to appreciate the skills of the Rangers' MVP for the last two-plus years, No Gomez.

Where does it hurt?
This is another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers (perhaps an arbitrary judgement on my part in some cases) who had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though. Minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR might be included in the man-games lost figures (but can't guarantee I get it right every time)
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

The Steigerwald Files

2011-12-07T23:21:00.001Z

Those who know me know that there is nothing I like more about the NHL than games being accompanied by the reasoned, unbiased contributions of a Steigerwald.

Not being as plugged in to the wider Pennsylvania media as I clearly should be, I was unaware that I was missing out on the startling journalistic insight of the brother of the more famous ~~loathsome homer broadcaster~~ revered Penguins announcer until the recent firestorm created by this well-researched opus on the struggles of Alexander Ovechkin, a gutsy column in taking a critical view of a hugely popular figure in the Pittsburgh region.

After admirably defending his position in a dominant and rational performance during his radio interview of Puck Daddy critic, Ryan Lambert, more unpublished Steigerwald notes on a selection of Washington Capitals have now entered the public domain...

Tom Poti
Percentage of NHL games missed in seasons prior to Barry Bonds' retirement: 9.5%
Percentage of NHL games missed in seasons after Barry Bonds' retirement: 39.5%

Alexander Semin
The season before the Vancouver Olympics, the guy beats Marc Staal to a bloody pulp, shocking the hockey world with his immense physical gifts. Now tell me, how many fights have you seen him in since then, huh?

Nicklas Backstrom
I hear whispers that he is from Europe. Unlike some of these guys ripping me on their blogs, I'm old enough to be pretty sure that a couple of World Wars started in Europe. Now that doesn't make Backstrom a genocidal maniac, I accept that, but it's not a stretch to think he could've thrown a grenade or two in Poland, right?

Joel Ward
He apparently oversleeps and misses a team meeting. On 23 November. Coincidentally, 200 crimes were committed in the District of Columbia on 22 November and 23 November. I'm told the kid had a tough upbringing. I'm just telling you the statistics. Draw your own conclusions.

John Erskine
Born in Kingston. I've been around a while, met a few Jamaicans. They like a smoke, know what I'm saying? How many of these special smokes do you reckon you can get with a $1.5m contract? Think he might have enough to spare for a few friends? Just putting it out there...

Matt Hendricks
Think about this. His father, Jimi was a successful recording artist in the late 1960s. I was around at that time. A lot of wacky stuff going on, being consumed back then. I don't have any proof of his boy getting involved in funky stuff like that, but he's from that culture, right? Been around the scene. Not outrageous to join the dots on that one.

Dave Steckel
OK, I know this guy's no longer on the Capitals, but my friend Damien Cox tells me he's a great faceoff guy, hard worker. Really admires the guy as a player. But did you hear any mention of this so-called "global financial crisis" before he took Crosby out like he did? Not a single word! None of my production team here have either. That's clearly not just message board talk.

Roman Hamrlik
Guys I speak to in the locker room have told me this guy was born in a place called "Czechoslovakia". Go look on a map for this place. Do it right now. You won't find it. Now I'm not saying I've seen the guy's immigration papers or anything, but I wouldn't stamp his passport if it were my job. If you are an American patriot too, you would do the same.

The Pain Game 2011/12 - Part Two

2011-12-07T20:38:00.001Z

Injury stats update – November 2011

This is my second look for the 2011/12 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2011/12 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

Alternatively...

TOI/G replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on). [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (several examples at this point of the season) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team over the 2011/12 regular season (through games played on 30 November), as well as the distribution of CHIP by position
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...

The Penguins slip from top spot following November's Resurrection, passed by the Canadiens, who should have a decent chance at staying there for a while now Andrei Markov has had a third knee surgery on his second knee surgery.

Four Canadian teams in the top seven - most of the injuries presumably occurring from visor-less players fighting each other in a barn while being hectored by Don Cherry. Calgary's appearance in the bottom four presumably testament to their players' ability to suck it up and play ~~badly~~ hurt.

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

I expected Gomez to be much higher on these lists, since he's not been seen on the ice for two or three years. James Reimer's worth to the goalie-rich Leafs is probably more accurately reflected in his CMIP figure than his more modest CHIP contribution.

Where does it hurt?
This is another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers (perhaps an arbitrary judgement on my part in some cases) who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though. I try to exclude minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR from the man-games lost figures (but can't guarantee I get it right every time)
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

NHL Road Trip 2011

2011-11-10T20:28:00.001Z

More like a homestand than a road trip this year (bar one trip to the minors), but here is my usual comprehensive, analytical coverage of what promised to be the Rangers' six game losing streak.

Game #1: Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 New York Rangers

After finding my seat easily despite apocalyptic warnings about the layout of the partially-renovated Madison Square Garden, I find myself sat right behind somebody with the unfortunate appearance of a homeless Barry Melrose.
I then witness the impressive feat of a man managing to dump a beer over his own head after stumbling on the stairs.
The Rangers controversially opt to introduce the players individually at the home opener - not something that has occurred every year, mostly for boo-related reasons. Accordingly, nobody gets booed (yet).
Apparently, a huge pro-Avery, anti-Tortorella banner is unveiled somewhere in the crowd. Either I completely miss it, or it was behind me. (Apparently, the banner was subsequently banned by the tolerant MSG staff.)
Against type so far this season, the Rangers actually put together a decent first period to lead 1-0, also having two other efforts chalked off for reasonably marginal contact with a very shaky looking Jonas Gustavsson in the Leafs' net.
While I did not feel the need to test any of the new facilities, I can only assume the bathrooms and concessions are of the highest standard since I was seemingly the only person in my section to leave their seat fewer than 18 times a period to visit the concourse while play was in progress.
Entirely not against type so far this season, the Rangers decide to exploit a very shaky looking Jonas Gustavsson in the Leafs' net by giving him practically no work at all the rest of the way, while Henrik Lundqvist allows a few weak goals for the first time in a while, despite also stopping two Phil Kessel breakaways.
Patient and moderate as they are, a sizeable chunk of the home fans use the late third period to start a "We want Avery" chant, seizing the opportunity to remind everyone that a lack of defensive depth and completely dysfunctional start from most of the point producing forwards can only be corrected by the return of a 3rd/4th line forward who scored three goals last year and the coach doesn't trust.
The Leafs' fourth goal from noted sniper Mike Brown with six minutes to go sees the New Transformed Exits brought to you by Chase at Madison Square Garden adequately tested for the first time.

Next up: An afternoon game against hated rival, the superstar-laden Ottawa Senators. I can hear the booing already.

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Game #2: Ottawa Senators 5-4 (SO) New York Rangers

An unseasonal October snowstorm means dangerous conditions have to be navigated on my journey to the game - dopey 5th Avenue tourists wielding umbrellas in the manner of a blindfolded Dan Carcillo.
I'm seated directly in front of one of the press boxes, tonight featuring legendary former Leafs GM, John Ferguson Jr, now scouting for the Sharks. I successfully sell my hot dog to him for $300. Not sure why I need a no-trade clause though.
Line-up news: MSG fan favourites, Erik Christensen and Wojtek Wolski are rewarded for their consistent work ethic and gritty play with the assignment next to Marián Gáborik for at least one shift (and probably one shift).
A predictably terrible first period from the Rangers sees them heavily outshot and 1-0. One relatively quiet and quickly aborted "We want Avery" chant results.
Not for the first time (nor the last), the between periods puck shooting contest sees the participant mercilessly booed for his repeated failures. He still has a better than 50% chance of playing on the Rangers top line for the rest of the game though.
Momentum shifts after Zenon Konopka pleases his many fantasy owners by getting five plus a game for performing his own renovation of the MSG glass using Artem Anisimov's face as raw materials (though the hit was actually not that bad, if at all). The Rangers shock the world by putting away two (two) PPGs on the major penalty.
Despite another patchy performance at best, the Rangers work themselves into a 4-1 lead with eight minutes left in the game, the third goal by Gáborik from a great pass by Derek Stepan being the pick of the bunch.
Despite...something, the Rangers then work themselves into a 4-4 tie with three minutes left as, shockingly, the strategy of panicking and spending the rest of the game chasing the puck in their own end fails to pay dividends.
Milan Michálek scores the only goal in the shootout, the building erupts with joyous emotion.

Next up: An easily winnable game against perennial Western Conference doormat, the San Jose Sharks. Right here on Versus! Let's hope Milbury is in ~~a Swedish prison wearing a visor~~ attendance.

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Game #3: San Jose Sharks 2-5 New York Rangers

Right off the opening faceoff, Brandon Prust and Ryane Clowe "tangle". Approximately 10 minutes of pirouetting and helmet punching ends with the pair almost landing on top of Pierre McGuire in his usual spot ~~licking Mike Richards' shoes~~ between the benches.
News of Sean Avery's impending recall and the Rangers not actually losing at the time make the (mostly failed) attempts to start the "We want Avery" chant more confusing than ever.
Ryan McDonagh: 1-0. Scott Gomezhahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Brandon Dubinsky and Derek Stepan somehow exploit Colin White's legendary footspeed to make it 2-0 in the first; the Rangers looking strangely competent.
However, it's tied midway through the second period, the tying goal by Logan Couture coming at the end of a shift of six or seven minutes of the crack Jeff Woywitka-Steve Eminger pairing being trapped in their own end by the Sharks' top line.
Not tied for long as, befitting of a player who looks like Joe Sakic for one game every two months (Joe Sakic's wife for the rest), Erik Christensen makes two great passes on goals by Ryan Callahan and Artem Anisimov.
In the final minute of the second period, Callahan makes a spectacular stretch/dive from behind the net to poke home a rebound and give the Rangers the unassailable three-goal lead that has not been assailed by a Rangers opponent in, oh...two days.
The third period is largely a non-event. Shame.
In front of me tonight:
- Firstly, your typical MSG BlackBerry Man. Not even a glance towards the ice during the entire first period. Doesn't return to his seat for the third.
- Replaced in the third by a fan in a Patrick Marleau jersey wearing an "Occupy Madison Square Garden" sign around his neck. Loses marks for not sitting with a friend in a Jeremy Roenick costume holding a bag of guts.
After the game, Joe Thornton bizarrely (given he was fairly anonymous in defeat) decides to call the Rangers the softest team the Sharks played on their road trip. With the two teams not meeting again this season (neither team has a chance of winning the Western Conference Final series), this appears to be Jumbo Joe's Halloween equivalent of knocking on the Rangers' dressing room door and running away.

Next up: Logistics and apathy permitting, a two games in one day odyssey spanning a morning (!) AHL clash in Bridgeport, CT - now not featuring the star Avery attraction - and an evening (zzz) dull-fest in tropical Newark, NJ.

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A travel snafu prevented my planned attendance at the Devils-Leafs game in the evening. I hope Marty Brodeur's return performance was as amusing for those in person as it appeared to be on TV.

Game #4: Connecticut Whale 3-4 (OT) Bridgeport Sound Tigers

A 90-minute train journey from Manhattan for an 11am faceoff. Not my usual kind of trip.
The reason for the early start: Some sort of schoolkids promotion. So, a few thousand kids in the stands make the atmosphere one part hockey game, nine parts Justin Bieber concert.
A completely indecipherable P.A. system and unfamiliarity with many of the players will make it tougher than normal to keep up. And to know when the building is being evacuated.
Line-up news:
- The Whale are now Avery-less (must've been publicised somewhere), but still feature recent Ranger demotions Tim Erixon, Kris Newbury and Mats Zuccarello-Aasen. The mini-Fishsticks include Nino Niederreiter and the overwhelmingly talented Trevor Gillies.
- Kevin Poulin versus Cam Talbot in net - no start for Chad "Dos Nueve" Johnson (apparently "Tres Cero" in the minors)
Why does the typeface on Calvin de Haan's nameplate say: dE HAAN?
The Whale's first goal (Jonathan Audy-Marchessault from Mats Zuccarello-Aasen and Tim Erixon) smashes the record for most letters combining on a goal I've seen.
Gillies (who doesn't appear to even get a regular shift at this level) takes an appropriately dumb penalty, leading to the stuff of nightmares: Wade Redden as the PP quarterback.
The between period T-shirt toss produces a painfully shrill noise.
A fight between Micheal (sic) Haley and Stu Bickel is broken up almost as soon as it starts, while doing so, the linesman presumably screaming "Won't somebody please think of the children?!"
The Whale take a 3-1 lead early in the third, the goal (Jonathan Audy-Marchessault from Mats Zuccarello-Aasen and John Mitchell) smashing the record for most letters combining on a goal I've seen, if falling just short on the syllables equivalent.
Showing impressive dedication to becoming Rangers, the Whale then blow their lead over the last 11 minutes and lose in OT, the Tigers' Tim Wallace completing his hat-trick on the winner.

Next up: Back to MSG for yet another intense clash for the Rangers against a hated divisional rival, the Anaheim Ducks.

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Game #5: Anaheim Ducks 1-2(SO) New York Rangers

Back in the ~~cheap~~ moderately less obscenely expensive seats for this one. Hence, not surrounded by corporate no-shows / BlackBerry idiots.
Instead, I'm sat next to somebody who talks loudly non-stop for the entire game, none of which is about the game or hockey generally, except for: "I ****ing hate the ****ing Montréal Canadiens. Not only are they from Montréal, but they are ****ing Canadians."
After a pretty poor game between the two teams in Stockholm four weeks ago, much of this one is similarly uneventful, the Ducks mustering only two shots in the first period.
The Rangers open the scoring through the increasingly Paul Coffey-like Jeff Woywitka, before the moustache-free George Parros is again engaged in a not-at-all-staged fight on the restart, the Bahama Bomber, Andre Deveaux taking the place that Mike Rupp filled in Stockholm and proving less like a Parros punchbag.
It's tied after 40 minutes thanks to Bobby Ryan wiring a screened wrister high past Henrik Lundqvist.
A more eventful third period sees the Ducks carry most of the play, Ryan Callahan missing a shorthanded breakaway with no Duck skater within 60 feet of him (his only breakaway/shootout move failing him), and both goalies playing well.
A fairly crazy OT session somehow ends without a winner, before the completely unexpected sight of Marián Gáborik (2-for-19 career record coming in) scoring in the shootout and Bobby Ryan this time not fanning the final attempt past Lundqvist.

Next up: Having not played a Canadian team for an incredible stretch of two games, the Rangers face the ****ing Montréal ****ing Canadiens. Will the MSG crowd get the chance to shower the usual acclaim on returning hero, Scott Gomez?

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Game #6: Montréal Canadiens 3-5 New York Rangers

Beaucoup trop de partisans des Habitants ici.
I'm surprised to see that somebody actually purchased one of these monstrosities:
(Meaning the style of jersey. Nobody would be stupid enough to pay lots of money for an actual Gomez, right?)
Bad news for the ~~Canadiens~~ Rangers is that Gomez is still injured and will not play. The Rangers do ice the best two players involved in the Gomez trade: Ryan McDonagh and No Gomez.
An interesting start, as Mike Blunden flattens a speeding Brandon Dubinsky by the Habs' bench, sparking a huge get-together. "Clean" hit from Blunden, had it not been for the fact that he jumped off the bench early to make the hit.
After Ryan Callahan and Blunden fight and a separate one between Mike Sauer and Petteri Nokelainen (the latter two receiving game misconducts), we emerge with a 5-on-3 PP for two minutes to the Rangers, on which Erik Christensen capitalises.
Well into the game, we finally see a shift for returning hero, Sean Avery. First time I've heard grown men squeal with excitement at MSG.
The first period ends 3-0 Rangers, the third goal a particularly good one, a shot block by Dan Girardi leading to a rush the other way, capped by a great pass from Derek Stepan to a streaking Michael Del Zotto to beat Carey Price.
As expected, the Habs score early in the second period and pull to within a goal midway through the period on a 5-on-3 PP of their own, courtesy of Brian Gionta's wonky sense of balance as much as anything worth penalising.
After surviving more than one shot off the post and some dangerous rushes from the apparently not-dead-yet Erik Cole, things become more comfortable for the Rangers as Brad Richards wires one past Price late in the second.
The game tightens up considerably in the final frame, but a frantic finish is ensured once Gionta get his customary goal against the Rangers with two minutes to go.
Captain Callahan eases nerves with the empty-netter, the puck amusingly being followed into the goal by Garden crowd favourite, P.K. Subban, spinning on his derrière.

Next up: The homestand and my trip ends with the visit of Dystugien Bufflin and the Jetlanta Thrasherpegs.

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Game #7: Winnipeg Jets 0-3 New York Rangers

Predictably, far fewer Jets jerseys in the crowd than there were Canadiens jerseys last night. The fans must have opted to spend all their ticket money to sit under a leaking ceiling on Long Island. Understandable choice.
During the anthems, somebody unfurls a banner reading: "2012 END FED RON PAUL". I'm not heavily into U.S. politics, but it seems odd that Ruslan Fedotenko's contract status would be such a prominent issue for Republicans.
After the excitement of last night's game, it seems back-to-back games for both teams is showing. The first period is unremarkable, notable only for one crazy sequence in Marty Biron's goalmouth in which the puck is stopped on the goal-line two or three times and ends up with every player on the ice bar Jets goalie Ondřej Pavelec either in or right around the crease. Dustin Byfuglien does a passable impression of an NFL fullback leaping over the pile at the goal-line, but cannot force the football to break the plane.
The second period is almost equally unremarkable, notable only for Derek Stepan's PP goal to open the scoring.
A bit more interesting in the third. Three quick Jets penalties, give the Rangers the opportunity to get booed for failing to score on an extended 5-on-3 PP. (Actually not that bad a PP - Pavelec mostly responsible for the lack of scoring.) Then Marián Gáborik converts on a 2-on-1 rush led by the recently excellent Derek Stepan.
Late Jets pressure is pretty sporadic and Gáborik seals the game in the last seconds with a lob wedge backhand empty netter. Biron earns his first shutout as a Ranger and continues his strong start to the season.
Signs of the tenuous strength of the financial support provided by Winnipeg fans are revealed when two of them duck the fare barriers at the crowded subway station rather than face the outrageous $2.50 cost.

So, another winning record for the Rangers during my trip. They look a far better team than the one that struggled throughout the majority of the seven-game international road trip that preceded the homestand, if still a bit fortunate to earn as many points as they did.

Still a few questions to be answered too, such as:

When will Marc Staal recover and return to the line-up?
Will Dan Girardi die of exhaustion if that doesn't happen soon?
When will "Sausage Boss by Andrew Carmellini" finally open at MSG?

The Pain Game 2011/12 - Part One

2011-11-08T17:39:00.000Z

Injury stats update – October 2011

This is my first look for the 2011/12 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2011/12 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

Alternatively...

TOI/G replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on). [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (several examples at this point of the season) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team over the 2011/12 regular season (through games played on 31 October), as well as the distribution of CHIP by position
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...

No great surprise to see the Penguins again lead the way, though I've still got no idea who they've been missing. Their CHIP figure so far is a full $1m ahead of the highest figure at the same point last year, for comparison.

The old men of Detroit have had the first injury-free month that I can remember. (Note: I'm not counting Jan Muršak's current IR stint as he's arguably not an established NHLer - see below for tenuous reasoning.)

Also worth noting that the top three team CHIP figures have already surpassed Carolina's 2010/11 figure for the whole season.

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

The usual goalie bias is evident in the CMIP figures. Regular fixtures Markov, Connolly, Poti and Hemsky already making their mark this year.

Where does it hurt?
This is another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers (perhaps an arbitrary judgement on my part in some cases) who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though. I try to exclude minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR from the man-games lost figures (but can't guarantee I get it right every time)
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

NHL Premiere 2011 in Stockholm

2011-10-09T20:20:00.001+01:00

My usual précis (French word, meaning "list compiled by lazy writer unable, unwlling to construct paragraphs") of the NHL's latest Europansy expedition, following on from my attendance at games in Stockholm in 2009 and Prague last year. This year, a team I'm actually bothered about!

New York Rangers 2-3 (OT) Los Angeles Kings, 7 October 2011

What is Swedish for "Far too many Crosby jerseys?"
In contrast to the policies put in place by the draconian concourse police in Prague, again I am actually free to enter the lower bowl during warmups without creating a major security crisis.
Unlike last time in Stockholm, there is no game night presentation to speak of and no sign of the internationally acclaimed Bullet or Backyard Babies to provide live music pre-game, presumably victims of the European financial crisis. A scheduling clash with his Unicef humanitarian endeavours in a foreign land again robs us of an appearance from Scandic beats colossus, Basshunter.
An wholly unreasonable 100kr once more secures me (suckers me?) a match(es) programme, once more almost entirely in Swedish, bar what will stay unread forewords from the charasmatic Messrs Bettman and Fehr.
Despite the language barrier, I'm fully on board with the sentiments of the Canadiens' season preview:
For the player introductions, large crowd reactions for Henrik Lundqvist, Tim Erixon and Mats Zuccarello-Aasen on the Rangers side, only really anything for former SEL player, Anže Kopitar for the Kings.
Notionally a Kings home game in the record books, but despite the presence of the team mascot, the Rangers' P.A. announcer and a significant disparity in fans make it sound otherwise. There are even a couple of half-hearted airings of the "Potvin sucks" chant.
Among the crowd and featured on the big screen at various points: Mats Sundin (similar ovation to two years ago), Markus Näslund (similar strangely disinterested expression as two years ago), Ulf "Reason why Potvin sucks" Nilsson, Kent Nilsson, Anders Hedberg and Mattias Norström.
As far as the game goes...the Kings dominate the first period completely but the Rangers somehow escape at 1-1, mostly thanks to Lundqvist. Kopitar, the best skater all game, scores off a Callahan giveaway ending up with roughly 27 Rangers face down on the ice, our glorious leader tying it up from a bad angle.
Marián Gáborík shovels one home in the third at the end of a great shift by Brad Richards, earning him an assist and already the title of most successful UFA signing in franchise history.
As is customary, NHL Commissioner of Respect and V.P. of Public Sobriety, Mike Richards scores against the Rangers to tie it up late, mostly thanks to Michael Del Zotto failing to tie him up late.
Ryan McDonagh takes a slightly careless offensive zone penalty in OT, with more than a little help from a world class dive from Willie Mitchell, whose leg functionality is somehow directly and completely related to the muscles in his left shoulder. Jack Johnson scores the winner, Brandon Dubinsky and his obliterated stick express mild consternation at the referee's penalty call. Meh.

New York Rangers 1-2 (SO) Anaheim Ducks, 8 October 2011

A more visible and audible block of Ducks fans in attendance than was seen from the Kings contingent, but still a heavily blue colour to the crowd.
Clear from the player introductions that even Swedes like Teemu Selanne.
After the Zambonis exit prior to the start and the teams line up for the anthems, from above, the wide expanse of gleaming white surface reflecting the house lights is always an impressive sight. Then Ryan Getzlaf puts his helmet back on and we're ready to go.
As well as some of the ex-players we saw yesterday, we see former Ranger Jan Erixon (father of current Ranger Tim Erixon, who is son of former Ranger, Jan Erixon), the bloke out of Roxette, who earns a surprisingly enthusiastic response, and the Swedish soccerball squadron, apparently fresh off a rivalry match-up against Findusland in the EuroSoccerPansy play-in tournament.
I'm sat a mere three rows behind the Swedish TV announcers, including Calle Johansson (Washington Capitals fans: Google "Calle Johansson").
As advertised, the Ducks top line of Andrew Cogliano, Andrew Gordon and veteran Devante Smith-Pelly prove tough to stop, Cogliano opening the scoring off a well-Emingerneered rush.
Getzlaf and Gáborík manage to upset each other off the play for some reason. One benefit of the relatively benign atmosphere in the arena is the unexpected ability to hear from the second tier Getzlaf call Gáborík a "pizza shed" (I think) across the benches.
Not much at all to note from a pretty useless game - nice to hear a couple of awesome Lundqvist saves elicit a big crowd response, but probably a sign that the game is going the wrong way.
Brad Richards saves a point late in the third after a quiet game, before opting to leave the puck at center ice for his SO attempt. The Ducks win in sudden death thanks to Bobby Ryan majorly whiffing on the puck, the change up beating Lundqvist.

Burning Questions - Western Conference

2011-09-18T22:45:00.000+01:00

Arriving unexpectedly within a week of the Eastern Conference preview - timing Matt Cooke would call "a damn hurry" - presenting...er, the Western Conference:

Anaheim Ducks
Why is there all this talk about the anticipation over the long-awaited return of the veteran winger with the $4m cap hit to the Canadian city where he was so beloved, when the schedule says that the Ducks and Jason Blake don't even play in Toronto this year?

Calgary Flames

Does the close proximity of the words "no movement clause" to the words "Curtis Glencross" elicit the same confusion in everyone else as it does with me?

Chicago Blackhawks

Will universally popular new recruit Dan Carcillo finally prove that he is not dumber than he looks in the only possible way - by tattooing "Nah, I looks dummah" on his forehead?

Colorado Avalanche

Might there be one or two flaws apparent in Greg Sherman's strategy of adding Shane O'Brien to Ryan O'Reilly and Ryan O'Byrne in the hope of making the Colorad O'Avalanche the most attractive destination when much-coveted Irish sniper, Alex O'Vechkin, hits free agency in 2021?

Columbus Blue Jackets

Will James Wisniewski seize the opportunity to be a #1 defenseman, or will he blow it?

Dallas Stars

Will the suffering of the fans through an almost-inevitable non-playoff season be compensated to some degree by the optimism given by the bushel of prospects and picks acquired in the Brad Richards trade at last year's deadline?

Detroit Red Wings

Is Mike Commodore's sentiment in not cheapening the game by associating his jersey with a consumer electronics brand shared by newly-named team-mate Jakub Kindle?

Edmonton Oilers

OMG RNH > MPS LOL WTF?

Los Angeles Kings

Is the Drew Doughty contract impasse due to Dean Lombardi's unwillingness to pay him more than Anže Kopitar or his nagging doubt that Mike Richards' offer to take him to a Christian book reading evening to celebrate the eventual contract signing isn't all that it seems?

Minnesota Wild

Can we assume this was the trade to a non-contending, cold-climate NW Division team that Dany Heatley has been looking for his whole career?

Nashville Predators

Should the NHL fear another lockout when Brian Burke relents and accepts Ryan Ellis as a sweetener for having to take on Shea Weber's contract in exchange for Jay Rosehill, Joey Crabb and a napkin autographed by Lonny Bohonos?

Phoenix Coyotes

By replacing Ilya Bryzgalov with Mike Smith, can we expect reports on the Coyotes to feature the phrase "huge losses" even more than normal?

San Jose Sharks

Can Doug Wilson continue to pry the most successful parts out of the Minnesota franchise by acquiring the rights to Jacques Lemaire and the year 2003?

St. Louis Blues

Does Nikita Nikitin possess the best smoking-related name in the NHL since Zdeno Ciger?

Vancouver Canucks

What will the fans' reception be like at the home opener, when the team shows up there for the first time since Game Five of the Cup Final?

Burning Questions - Eastern Conference

2011-09-13T21:07:00.000+01:00

The month of September means it's Burning Questions time in the NHL (except for Vancouver fans, where questions about burning stuff get asked in June). So, here is the Eastern Conference - with a guarantee that somewhere less than 100% of last year's material has been re-used.

(Publishing note: As is customary, due to time-zone differences, the Western Conference equivalent will likely not follow for another 2-3 months.)

Atlanta Thrashers

How is the season ticket drive going?

Boston Bruins

Is Brad Marchand hampering his chances of being signed before training camp by his insistence on repeatedly punching Peter Chiarelli in the face during contract negotiations?

Buffalo Sabres

Will Terry Pegula be forced to hire more personal security staff to deal with the daily onslaught of individuals wanting to shake his hand and express their overwhelming joy about his ownership of the team, or will Ville Leino and Christian Ehrhoff eventually leave him alone?

Carolina Hurricanes

Will the notoriously potty-mouthed Paul Maurice be able to find a more acceptable way of shouting Justin Faulk's name on the bench if he makes the team?

"FAULK, OFF!"

Florida Panthers

Will Matt Bradley have a higher opinion of Alexander Semin's playoff production once he discovers every one of his new teammates suffers a 100% drop off in scoring after the regular season ends?

Montreal Canadiens

After closing their case against Zdeno Chara's size, will the local police find something more worthy of investigation, such as the theft of $51.5m by Scott Gomez?

New Jersey Devils

What are the chances coach DeBoer misinterprets Marty Brodeur's usual request to "put mousse in the goal every night"?

New York Islanders

In the unlikely event of Trevor Gillies missing 19 games through suspension again, which player(s) will seize the opportunity to make up the deficit of 38 seconds of aggregate ice-time?

New York Rangers

Is the start of the multi-million dollar renovation of Madison Square Garden connected in any way to Bruce Boudreau's complaints about the building during the playoffs, or was the Dunkin' Donuts stand integrated into the away bench in the original construction plans?

Ottawa Senators

Is the holding of 20th anniversary season celebrations just an elaborate ruse to ice a more competitive line-up by inviting members of the stellar 10-win team of 1992-93 back to Ottawa?

Philadelphia Flyers

Will ECHL 2nd Team All-Star Michael Leighton make his season debut in Game One or Game Two of the Flyers first round playoff series?

Pittsburgh Penguins

Will the headaches, nausea and irritability eventually subside, or will I still be subjected to Steigerwald and Errey broadcasting on far too many occasions?

Tampa Bay Lightning

Can evil genius Guy Boucher again create the illusion that Dwayne Roloson is a dominant NHL goalie in the second half of the season by playing the entire first half of the season with five sheets of slightly damp toilet paper dangling from the crossbar instead?

Toronto Maple Leafs

Should fans be worried by Brian Burke's comment that iron-man Tim Connolly is "going to get new legs" in Toronto, given the historical lack of success for amputees at the NHL level?

Washington Capitals

During games against the Islanders, will Tomáš Vokoun attempt to distract Evgeni Nabokov by burning ~~$50~~ $10 bills in front of him?

Winnipeg Jets

Does the franchise risk tarnishing its proud association with the military by promising Dustin Byfuglien a test-drive in a nuclear submarine?

Stanley Cup Final 2011: A Viewer's Guide

2011-05-28T23:36:00.000+01:00

So your team has (yet again) not made it as far as the Stanley Cup Final? So jaded by the long grind of playoff hockey that you can't summon the energy to write an intro different to the one you used last year?

If you have nothing better to do, why not use my viewer's guide? Score along at home during the series and if you break 30 points, a multi-million dollar prize will head your way. At least that's what Chris Drury and Shawn Horcoff told me...

(I accept no responsibility for the consequences if you instead turn this into a drinking game. Watching a few playoff games is no excuse for drunken debauchery. At least that's what the Montreal Police Department told me...)

Man in garish, fluorescent green outfit performing tired, attention-seeking act next to road team penalty box during game (2 pts)

Man in garish, fluorescent green outfit performing tired, attention-seeking act next to Ron MacLean during Coach's Corner segment (1 pt)

Versus or NBC displaying on-screen graphic to illustrate where Canada is (5 pts)

Versus or NBC displaying on-screen graphic to illustrate where Sidney Crosby is (10 pts)

Denis Leary dropping F-bomb accidentally-on-purpose during mid-game interview with rink-side reporter (6 pts)

Mike Emrick failing to mention which US college was attended by Ryan Kesler, Jeff Tambellini, Chris Higgins, Rich Peverley, Tim Thomas, the goal judge, his hotel receptionist etc... (8 million pts)

Eddie Olczyk's forced chuckle (2 pts)

"Good active stick" (-5 pts)

Jeremy Roenick clearly articulating a thoughtful, rational point during post-game coverage (100 pts)

Jeremy Roenick scribbling "JR needs a wee wee" using his virtual crayons during post-game coverage (40 pts)

Each CBC shot of Bruins President of Looking Angry in Executive Boxes, Cam Neely (1 pt)

Each CBC shot of Maple Leafs President of Looking Angry in Executive Boxes Even Though My Team Isn't Taking Part, Brian Burke (0.1 pts)

Tom Brady watching the game while holding a goat (7 pts)

Funny looking bald guy shouting and getting up close to Bruins players during timeout (10 pts)

Claude Julien struggling to muscle past Pierre McGuire and/or Darren Pang to diagram a play for Bruins players during timeout (20 pts)

Coach Julien is not usually happy to be interviewed during the game

Adrien Plavsic (0 pts)

Jim Hughson or Mike Emrick calling the winning goal in OT to clinch the 2011 Stanley Cup (1 pt)

Jim Hughson or Mike Emrick finally calling the winning goal in OT to clinch the 2010 Stanley Cup (88 pts)

Andrew Ference raising the Cup over his head in triumph (5 pts)

Andrew Ference lowering his pants around his ankles in triumph (15 pts)

After the final game, Mark Recchi immediately bringing the end to a long, dinstinguished career, by announcing the retirement of the patch of hair above his forehead (43 pts)

Throwing games in the NHL

2011-05-26T22:50:00.001+01:00

[If the title led you to believe this would be an analysis of the team-building strategy of the Pittsburgh Penguins, I apologise. It's not.]

The aftermath of the post-game torrent of giveaway paddles/clappers/rally drums launched by Tampa Bay fans onto the playing surface - and ever so accidentally in the general vicinity of one or two Boston Bruins players - last night has brought with it the usual furious, yet measured and consistent, response from NHL HQ today.

The Lightning organisation and the retaliating Nathan Horton have both been left reeling from the respective heavy fine and suspension laid down by the league.

Far from being rare, of course there have been many instances of unusual objects being discarded onto the ice at hockey arenas over the years. Here is just a small selection:

Octopi

As every hockey fan knows, Detroit Red Wings fans have been lobbing octopi on the ice during the playoffs since the 1950s, the eight arms originally signifying the number of wins necessary to win the Stanley Cup. Recently the NHL has begun to frown upon the ritual, a crackdown on eight animal limbs hitting the playing surface first instituted by Colin Campbell in response to Sean Avery spilling the contents of Martin Brodeur's KFC bargain bucket during the 2008 playoffs.

A wooden bench

In January 2000, irate at a missed call, New Jersey Devils coach Robbie Ftorek opted to throw part of the team bench onto the ice. The Devils' well-established run-and-gun system allowed the bench to seamlessly fit in on a line with John Madden and Jay Pandolfo, chalking up a creditable +12 rating over the balance of the season, before signing a lucrative but ultimately disastrous free agent deal with the New York Rangers that summer.

Plastic rats

In one of several short-lived crazes aping Detroit's octupus tossing, during one of their team's regular marches to the Stanley Cup Final in 1996, Florida Panthers fans took to littering the ice with plastic rats whenever the Panthers scored, apparently instigated by the story of Scott Mellanby killing a (real) rat in the dressing room. The practice is also thought to have inspired the recent throwing of plastic dogs after every Michael Vick touchdown in Philadelphia.

Confetti

The Vancouver Canucks faced criticism this week for allowing confetti to be showered onto the ice after clinching the Western Conference championship, the sight of players consequently being forced to skate very slowly to avoid injury only bringing back bad memories of Mats Sundin's time in the city.

Waffles

After famously throwing waffles onto the Air Canada Centre ice to express his displeasure at the Toronto Maple Leafs' loss to the Atlanta Thrashers earlier this season, die-hard fan Joe Robb avoided criminal charges but was forced to carry out five hours of community service and is now banned from ever again watching the Atlanta Thrashers play at Air Canada Centre.

Rubber snake

Following an internet-led campaign, a Keith Yandle goal in a 2010 playoff game against Detroit resulted in one Phoenix Coyotes fan flinging a rubber snake onto the ice. Originally believed to be motivated as a riposte to the Red Wings' octopus tradition, it later emerged that the sacrifice of a hairless, predatory and cold-blooded object merely symbolised the rejection of Jim Balsillie's as the team's potential owner.

Hats

The throwing of hats on the ice after a player scores a hat-trick goal has long been embraced by players and fans alike, a tradition only threatened by league spokesman Sidney Crosby's complaints during a 2009 playoff game about the sheer volume of hats being thrown in his direction by the Capitals' Dave Steckel.

A glove

In the final minute of a tied December 2008 game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Tampa Bay Lightning, popular Flyers forward Scott Hartnell attempted to thwart a breakaway by Ryan Malone by throwing his glove towards the Lightning player, resulting in a penalty shot being awarded and missed, thus astonishing Flyers fans under the age of 40, who had never before seen the glove of a Flyers player prevent a goal.

Tennis balls

The annual college match-up between Dartmouth and Princeton includes the ritual of Dartmouth fans hurling tennis balls onto the ice after their team's first goal of the game. The continuation of that tradition at Madison Square Garden for each goal scored by star New York Rangers forward and Dartmouth alum, Hugh Jessiman, is believed to have extinguished the entire stock of tennis balls in Manhattan.

NHL Awards - meet the contenders

2011-05-02T13:15:00.000+01:00

Somewhat lost in the excitement of the playoffs over the last couple of weeks have been the announcements about the nominees for the various NHL awards (those that are voted on).

Once again, these are to be handed out in a ~~faintly embarrassing~~ lavish ceremony in Las Vegas in June attended by ~~whoever comes up first on Bettman's "Best Rock of the 80s" iPod playlist~~ some of the entertainment industry's biggest names and ~~Eric Weinrich and Darcy Wakaluk~~ many legends of the game.

Here is a quick rundown of the main awards and those in the running:

Hart Memorial Trophy

Supposed to be awarded to: The player adjudged most valuable to his team
In practice, normally awarded to: The player with the most points and/or who happened to get hot in the last month of the season

Corey Perry (Anaheim)
Aiming to become the first MVP since Bobby Clarke in 1975/76 to rack up 100 penalty minutes in the season, thus creating the instant quiz question: "How the hell did Chris Pronger go a season without getting 100 penalty minutes?"

Daniel Sedin (Vancouver)
There is simply no other player like him.

Martin St. Louis (Tampa Bay)
Put the team on his shoulders and carried them, the team promising to return the favour during a planned off-season trip to Disneyland.

James Norris Memorial Trophy

Supposed to be awarded to: The defense player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position
In practice, normally awarded to: Nicklas Lidstrom

Zdeno Chara (Boston)
Neutralised the offense of Max Pacioretty and Ryan Callahan more effectively than any other player in the league could manage.

Nicklas Lidstrom (Detroit)
Continued to defy conventional wisdom by putting up the first minus season of his career despite playing much less often in front of Chris Osgood.

Shea Weber (Nashville)
First Norris Trophy nomination for a player with an Irish name since Sandis O'Zolinsh in 1997.

Vezina Trophy

Supposed to be awarded to: The goaltender who is adjudged to be the best at this position
In practice, normally awarded to: The goaltender who is adjudged to be at least as good as Jim Carey and Jose Theodore turned out to be

Roberto Luongo (Vancouver)
Strong performance attributed to playing 12 inches deeper in his crease and Dustin Byfuglien playing 600 miles deeper in the Eastern Conference.

Pekka Rinne (Nashville)
Hoping to become the first Finnish goalie to pick up some hardware since Brian Burke sent Vesa Toskala to Canadian Tire to collect his new lawnmower.

Tim Thomas (Boston)
Rewarded for breaking Dominik Hasek's long-standing NHL record for most saves made while looking like an inebriated octopus playing Twister.

Calder Memorial Trophy

Supposed to be awarded to: The player selected as the most proficient in his first year of competition in the National Hockey League
In practice, normally awarded to: The player selected as the most proficient in what might be his third year of competition in the National Hockey League after what might be no or several years of competition in another professional league

Logan Couture (San Jose)
Consistent scorer over the long NHL season after being a less consistent scorer over the 40 NHL games he played last year.

Michael Grabner (New York Islanders)
Impending impressive season and his many suitors triggered Dale Tallon to start the Panthers' annual fire sale before Game #1.

Jeff Skinner (Carolina)
Highly promising rookie campaign means Jim Rutherford will surely look to re-acquire his services from other teams three or four times over his career.

Frank J. Selke Trophy

Supposed to be awarded to: The forward who best excels in the defensive aspects of the game
In practice, normally awarded to: The forward who best excels in the defensive aspects of the game while having the offensive ability to score at least 50 points

Pavel Datsyuk (Detroit)
Incredibly, was not on the ice for a single goal conceded by the Wings during any of the 26 games he missed through injury.

Ryan Kesler (Vancouver)
Strong in all the areas the voters look for in determining the best defensive forward, most importantly in scoring a lot more goals than last year.

Jonathan Toews (Chicago)
Credited with significantly reducing the Hawks' goals against over the course of the season due to his suggestion to the coaching staff that Marty Turco should maybe start fewer games.

Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy

Supposed to be awarded to: The player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey
In practice, normally awarded to: The player who missed the most games through injury the season before

Ray Emery (Anaheim)
Despite showing up for his first practice a personal best four months late, beat enormously long odds to become the more sympathetic character of the Ducks' goalie tandem alongside Dan Ellis.

Daymond Langkow (Calgary)
Displayed remarkable commitment, bolstering Calgary's lack of depth at center during his 78-game absence by matching Matt Stajan's production.

Ian Laperriere (Philadelphia)
Showed huge determination in his personal quest to prove that the Masterton Award is not a "Comeback Player" award by not coming back at all.

Lady Byng Memorial Trophy

Supposed to be awarded to: The player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability
In practice, normally awarded to: The player adjudged to have had the fewest penalty minutes when the voters quickly skim down the list of top 20 scorers five minutes before the deadline to send in their ballot

Loui Eriksson (Dallas)
Only 8 penalty minutes for the Swedish forward, meaning he only lost patience and speared Steve Ott once every 20 games.

Nicklas Lidstrom (Detroit)
Six-time winner, perennial All-Star and future Hall of Famer demonstrated admirable restraint by not throttling Versus reporters referring to him as Nicholas Lindstrom at the All-Star Game.

Martin St. Louis (Tampa Bay)
Voters were apparently convinced by his claims that he had nothing to do with Guy Boucher's scar.

Jack Adams Award

Supposed to be awarded to: The coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team's success
In practice, normally awarded to: The coach adjudged to have coached a team to a position somewhere between 5th and 8th in the conference

Dan Bylsma (Pittsburgh)
Led the league in the all-important media-friendly statistical category of Most Appearances in High-Profile Documentary While Swearing Fewer Times Than Bruce Boudreau.

Barry Trotz (Nashville)
Steered an offensively-challenged line-up to a playoff berth and calmly handled controversial mid-season addition of Randy Moss.

Alain Vigneault (Vancouver)
Coached his team to a 54-19-9 record in undoubtedly one of the American Hockey League's strongest divisions.

General Manager of the Year Award

Supposed to be awarded to: Brian Burke
In practice, normally awarded to: The top National Hockey League General Manager

Mike Gillis (Vancouver)
Backed his belief that extra goalscoring was not necessary for his team by acquiring the likes of Dan Hamhuis, Keith Ballard and Chris Higgins.

David Poile (Nashville)
Veteran GM has refused to waver in his position that Coach Trotz's neck has never been on the block.

Steve Yzerman (Tampa Bay)
Earned high praise from the Canadian media for showing superb prowess in the areas of being Steve Yzerman, not being associated with the previous ownership and somehow managing to find a better goalie than Mike Smith.

The Pain Game - 3-year analysis (2008/09 - 2010/11)

2011-05-01T20:14:00.001+01:00

Nothing much more than a data dump of aggregate figures here, having compiled three years' worth of stuff now.

Analyses of individual seasons (including explanations of the figures and their limitations) are at the following links:

2008/09

2009/10

2010/11

Firstly, a ranking of teams by aggregate CHIP over the last three seasons (click to enlarge):

The same figures grouped by division:

The largest ten and smallest ten CHIP figures by a team in a single season over the last three:

The largest ten CHIP figures accumulated by a player in a single season over the last three:

The Pain Game 2010/11 - end of season wrap

2011-04-23T00:22:00.001+01:00

Injury stats update – end of season awards

This is the final update for the 2010/11 regular season looking at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness. (Last month's analysis is HERE.)

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2010/11 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

Alternatively...

TOI/G replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on). [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (several examples at this point of the season) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below (playoff teams highlighted in yellow) shows:

Total CHIP for each team over the 2010/11 regular season
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

For a further breakdown, the following table also shows the distribution of CHIP by position for each team:

10 second analysis...

After a late surge that surely nobody could have seen coming, given the scandalous lack of media coverage, the Penguins clinch the title of ~~Most Benign Videos of a Player Appearing at Practice Released to the Public~~ Most Injured Team in the NHL 2010/11.

The plucky Rangers saw their chance of an unprecedented worst-to-first run dashed by Ryan Callahan's inability to break himself on a Zdeno Chara slapshot quite early enough in the season and Glen Sather's unfathomable decision not to tack another million per year on Derek Boogaard's bargain contract.

At the other end of the table, Carolina's rather massive separation from the field only made my amusement at their Game 82 wipeout increase, when their colour analyst (colour: orange) Tripp Tracy decided to claim injuries were a major factor in the team's failure to make the playoffs within two minutes of the game ending.

Despite the cluster of non-playoff teams towards the top of the CHIP table, I'm still not that convinced there is much of a correlation with performance overall - of those teams, only really the Devils' failure could be argued as being much of a surprise.

Not sure how the injured Penguins forwards have been rated as having more value than the long Drury/Boogaard absences for the Rangers, but then I never claimed the system was perfect. And where would the Senators, Leafs, Wild and Islanders have been without the costly injuries to Leclaire, Giguere, Harding and a bunch of minor league goalies respectively?

Now I have three years' worth of the data (2008/09 analysis and 2009/10 analysis), I will consider doing a post with some sort of wider annual comparisons. For now, worth noting that the league-wide aggregate CHIP figure of around $234m is higher than each of the last two years - though increases in average contract size may well play a part in this.

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

Andrei Markov follows up a strong 13th place finish in 2009/10 to just hold off Captain Clutch for the individual CHIP title. Surely cause for celebration in Montreal. Stay away from parked cars, Andrei.

Mark Streit's season-long presence in the press box would have been a crushing blow for the Islanders. Had he not had his credentials revoked by the team in November, of course.

Players who missed all 82 games: Sauer (Phoenix), Mueller (Colorado), Harding (Minnesota), Sheppard (Minnesota), Salvador (New Jersey), Streit (NY Islanders), Laperriere (Philadelphia), Bitz (Florida).

Where does it hurt?
This is another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

And as an extra, further final bonus, a final look at the Evasiveness Index. This is basically the proportion of injury instances for each team that have been described as either "Undisclosed" or the helpfully pointless "Upper/Lower Body" in the same TSN profiles. I have made no judgement about whether the many instances of "Illness" (i.e. concussion), "Flu" (i.e. concussion) or even "Boogaard Shoulder" (i.e. concussion) should also be included.

Carolina uncharacteristically blew their chance of victory here by deciding to disclose a couple of injuries down the stretch. Greg Sherman clearly has a lot to learn, or too much time on his hands, managing to disclose each one of 46 different injuries to 29 different players. Not including Peter Forsberg.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though. I've tried to exclude minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR from the man-games lost figures
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

The Pain Game 2010/11 - Part Five

2011-03-12T01:01:00.001Z

Injury stats update – February 2011

This is my penultimate look for the 2010/11 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness. (Last month's analysis is HERE.)

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2010/11 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

Alternatively...

TOI/G (through games played on 28 February) replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on). [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (several examples at this point of the season) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team for the 2010/11 regular season (through games played on 28 February)
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

For a further breakdown, the following table also shows the distribution of CHIP by position for each team:

10 second analysis...

The horrendous travel schedule in the Atlantic Division is clearly the single biggest contributing factor in the presence of 80% of the division in the top four slots, now that the Penguins have risen (somebody should really have publicised their recent injuries - I'd never have noticed otherwise...)

The recent emergency call-ups of Dave Babych and Adrien Plavsic by the Canucks prompted my thought to break down the CHIP figures by position. Somewhat more instructive to see, therefore, the Canucks and Canadiens 2nd and 3rd in defensemen CHIP (CHID?) as you might anticipate. Less instructive to see them still lagging behind Mark Streit and a plethora of minor-league D-men in first place.

And the Islanders, Leafs and Senators can clearly point to injuries as being a huge factor behind their goaltending performances falling behind their normally impeccable standards. Or something...

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

Does Sid the Kid have enough time and remaining cap hit to catch long-time favourites Drury and Markov? Sure, I could work it out, but where is the tension in doing that?

And as an extra, further final bonus, a second look at the Evasiveness Index introduced last month. This is basically the proportion of injury instances for each team that have been described as either "Undisclosed" or the helpfully pointless "Upper/Lower Body" in the same TSN profiles. I have made no judgement about whether the many instances of "Illness" (i.e. concussion), "Flu" (i.e. concussion) or even "Boogaard Shoulder" (i.e. concussion) should also be included.

It will be mildly interesting to see if teams become more evasive down the stretch. Pittsburgh for one, seem to have suddenly clammed up when it comes to injury disclosure. A policy that sadly has not yet extended to its TV broadcast team.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though. I've tried to exclude minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR from the man-games lost figures
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

The Pain Game 2010/11 - Part Four

2011-01-30T16:44:00.001Z

Injury stats update – January 2011

This is my fourth look for the 2010/11 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness. (Last month's analysis is HERE.)

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2010/11 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

Alternatively...

TOI/G (through games played up to the All-Star break) replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on). [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (several examples at this point of the season) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team for the 2010/11 regular season (through games played up to the All-Star break)
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...
The Rangers' injury-fest continues, with Christensen, Girardi, Dubinsky, Fedotenko and Frolov all going down in January for varying lengths of time. Of the bigger movers elsewhere in the table, Chicago's remaining big-ticket players have stayed healthy recently, while Detroit (Datsyuk, Cleary, Holmstrom, Stuart) and last year's #1 CHIP team, Edmonton (Hemsky, Horcoff, Whitney, Eberle) are moving in the other direction.

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

As could be expected, both lists are now starting to be dominated by players out all year, including some likely to remain out all year. Chris Drury's clutch 10 minutes per game contributions since his return should help him slip down the CMIP list rather rapidly.

BONUS
Finally, another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

And as an extra, further final bonus, I introduce the Evasiveness Index. This is basically the proportion of injury instances for each team that have been described as either "Undisclosed" or the helpfully pointless "Upper/Lower Body" in the same TSN profiles. I have made no judgement about whether the many instances of "Illness" (i.e. concussion), "Flu" (i.e. concussion) or even "Boogaard Shoulder" (i.e. concussion) should also be included.

Arguably, we can see a weak correlation between the higher ratings and some of the smaller, southern markets with presumably less voraciously investigative media and fans, while two NY teams (OK, the Islanders perhaps a bad example...) and a cluster of Canadian teams are rated lower.

Clearly, a small sample size for Carolina so far, but a quick check back to last year shows the Rutherford/Maurice tag-team went a strong 23-for-37 then too (EI of 62.2), so maybe not just a freak number this year.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though. I've tried to exclude minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR from the man-games lost figures
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

The Pain Game 2010/11 - Part Three

2011-01-09T21:09:00.001Z

Injury stats update – December 2010

This is my third look for the 2010/11 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness. (Last month's analysis is HERE.)

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2010/11 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

Alternatively...

TOI/G (through games played on 31 December) replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on). [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (several examples at this point of the season) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games, I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team for the 2010/11 regular season (through games played on 31 December)
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...
It's now a metro area sweep of the top three positions, thanks to a December upsurge in Islander absences (both on and off the ice, no doubt), including this year's first sighting of the very rare DP knee tweak.

The Rangers may well slip down the rankings once their captain finally returns to the ice. Oh, it says here he played six games in December...strange that nobody noticed.

Conversely, the Devils players must be at increasing risk of injury from having to skate over the huge ruts in the ice directly between the goal crease and the players bench at Prudential Center that seemingly get worse after the first five minutes of every game.

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

So, I'm thinking using Michael Leighton's TOI/G from last year probably isn't quiiiite the best measure of the value of his absence to the Flyers, compared to his true current value of roughly minus zero.

BONUS
Finally, another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though. I've tried to exclude minor-league conditioning stints immediately after/during a period on IR from the man-games lost figures
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

The Pain Game 2010/11 - Part Two

2010-12-05T17:53:00.001Z

Injury stats update – November 2010

This is my second look for the 2010/11 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness. (Last month's analysis is HERE.)

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2010/11 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

Alternatively...

TOI/G (through games played on 30 November) replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For* - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on). [*Actually, "Games Played by Team - Games Missed by Goalie" - I'm not inclined to disentangle any three-goalie systems or minor-league conditioning stints.]
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (several examples at this point of the season) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games (e.g. Chris Drury), I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team for the 2010/11 regular season (through games played on 30 November)
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...
The Rangers continue to surge way past the CHIP numbers they recorded the last two years. Has the absence of Chris Drury's clutch face-off wins and shot blocking really been the devastating loss that the numbers here suggest? In a word: You must be kidding.

The Devils have not seemingly coped well with the absence of a handful of players during games this year. Puzzling, given there are normally around 10,000 men missing from most of their games, so you'd think they were used to it.

Colorado's figures suggest they must have faced an epidemic of injuries to minor league defensemen and are not paying Craig Anderson enough

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

As Captain Clutch is apparently not too far away from a return from the NHL's longest ever finger-related absence (at least until a certain Leafs D-man completes a few more weeks in the minors), expect long-term absentees Langkow and Markov to lead the way soon.

BONUS
Finally, another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers (Ryan Stone?) who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though.
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

NHL Road Trip 2010

2010-11-17T23:23:00.002Z

*Technically, featuring no roads

A few brief observations from each of the games I attended while on the wrong side of the Atlantic recently. Written at the time (or close enough), explaining any tense tension.

Game #1: Chicago Blackhawks 2-3 New York Rangers

I'm sat a few rows behind a group of Swedish-looking people wearing matching red "I ♥ Hjalmarsson" T-shirts. Stockholm branch of the Jason Pominville fan club on vacation?
Generally seems to be a fair few more Hawks fans than were at MSG for the same matchup two years ago. Hmm, why could that be?
Tomáš Kopecký scores to give however many Slovakian fans might be in attendance something to savour, since the two Marians are both on the shelf
As is ritual, the guy doing the intermission puck shooting contest gets a special MSG boo each time he misses the target
Duncan Keith apparently played 27:23, but it seemed more like 57:23
Odds on a Ryan Callahan jersey purchase have dropped further still
Why can't the Rangers play like this more often? Pretty damn solid defensively, some timely scoring and Lundqvist making big saves when needed (I'll excuse him a soft looking second goal)
Duuuuuuuuuuuubbbbbbbbbiiiiiiiii

Game #2: New York Rangers 1-4 Philadelphia Flyers

On the main concourse, former NHL ref Kerry Fraser is signing copies of his new book. A fairly healthy line suggests that Flyers fans are generally prepared to spend an extra $29.95 to abuse an official from closer range than normal
Some fairly obvious yapping between Carcillo, Avery and Boogaard during warm-ups. Carcillo in particular appears to eschew any involvement with the pucks on the ice the whole time, preferring to skate repeatedly along the red line past the two Rangers, even long after they give up paying attention
The Flyers' PA announcer still has a voice that makes me want to slice my ears off with a blunt spoon
Parents of ginger-haired children in the Philadelphia area: Your kids will have things difficult enough. You should really buy them the road white jersey instead.
Jeff Carter's work ethic and ability to avoid cheap penalties are questioned by more than a few home fans in my section
Unusual first intermission entertainment, as we get to watch ex-Flyer and celebrity moustache, Bill Clement, officially become a US citizen (despite messing up one of the oaths). Not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do with myself when the crowd is then asked to rise and join in a recital of the Pledge of Allegiance
Fairly ridiculous pass from Claude Giroux to Mike Richards on the Flyers' first goal
Despite rarely getting tested, Sergei Bobrovsky receives rapturous applause for even the most basic 50-foot wrister at his chest. Maybe the fans really aren't used to seeing such things...
Carcillo with a dangerously cheap headshot? Really? I'm shocked. Shocked!
The officials completely missing/ignoring said dangerously cheap headshot? Really? I'm shocked. Shocked!
Generally a fairly even game until the Rangers opt to aim both barrels at their lower extremities to make it 3-1 - Michael Del Zotto with a horrendous giveaway in front of his net for Blair Betts to score; Henrik Lundqvist somehow deflecting a Nik Zherdev shot taken from the corner of a rink somewhere in Delaware into his own net
The Rangers missed Marián Gáborík more than other recent games - some decent work down low, but hardly any good scoring chances created and practically nothing off the rush
Maybe finally inserting Alex Frolov into the line-up after missing the first 12 games will inject some offense. Oh, wait a sec...

Game #3: New York Rangers 3-0 New Jersey Devils

Perhaps not the most salubrious surroundings and it's never close to being full, but Prudential Center is a really nice building
Lots of Rangers fans in the house as normal. Personal welcomes limited to one old guy muttering "scum" under his breath as I walked past. Slightly disappointing lack of commitment to the insult there...
A lot of injury absences on both sides (most notably, Gáborík, Callahan, Captain Clutch for the Rangers; Brodeur and Parise for the Devils). Olivier Magnan-Grenier's appearance in the Devils' starting line-up produces a "Who the hell is that?" comment from a Devils fan behind me
Not a whole lot to report from the game, as it's mostly pretty (s)crappy throughout. The second period is perhaps the most poorly played 20 minutes of NHL hockey I've seen in person
The man Duuuuuuubbbbbbbbbiiiiiiii is on fire - Stamkos Schmamkos...
Hello, Ilya Kovalchuk? You there? Still, not all his fault or that of Uncle Lou - a lot of the blame needs to go to the Devils' owner (who is, of course, Henrik Lundqvist)
Always a satisfying win, but it doesn't feel the same without a Maaaarrrrrrtttttyyyyyy chant

Game #4: St. Louis Blues 2-0 New York Rangers

A real buzz in the building as everyone anticipates the much-hyped, marquee goalie match-up of...er, Ty Conklin versus Marty Biron
If you like having people walk across your line of sight repeatedly, including vendors carrying large objects above head height, then try and get tickets two rows back from the internal concourse at MSG. (Alternatively, just watch a Red Wings home game on TV.)
Beer Pong has a strong first period to keep the game goalless, as the Blues dictate most of the play
A break - aided by the fleet-footed Derek Boogaard stranding himself in the offensive zone looking for a pointless hit - sees Alex Steen open the scoring early in the second
From that point, the Blues sit back and watch the Rangers painfully flounder for the rest of the game
I was hoping for a disallowed goal from the Blues' #64, so I could say it was nixed as Nikita Nikitin kicked it in, but no joy...
The only serious threat comes from a five-minute powerplay in the third period after B.J. Crombeen tries to decorate the boards with the contents of Derek Stepan's skull. The "threat" mainly one of being deafened by the booing of the practically impotent Rangers PP
My view of the empty-netter is blocked by a few hundred people leaving - not that I care by that point. A pretty rancid game all round

Game #5: Washington Capitals 5-3 New York Rangers

A smattering of Caps fans / Ovechkin fanboys in evidence during warmups - including one confused kid wearing a Caps jersey and Rangers hat
The guest anthem singer is apparently the former frontman of Barenaked Ladies - US/Canadian diplomatic relations become strained as he botches the lyrics
A fast, physical start as Ryan Callahan dumps Semin in the corner
Brandon Dubinsky and Mike Green discard helmets and square off - more grabbing than punching going on though. Smart move by Green to take the more talented, dangerous offensive threat off for five minutes...
Despite the 24/7 efforts of some of the finest minds in the hockey world, nobody has yet found a way of stopping Brian Boyle scoring goals
John Erskine is revealed as tonight's winner of the "Player Who Never Scores Or Is In A Horrendous Slump Until He Plays The Rangers" Lottery
That is soon surpassed by the frankly astonishing sight of Derek Boogaard channeling his inner Pavel Bure, as he blazes a path down the left wing (slight exaggeration) before unleashing a laser of a slapshot (no exaggeration) over Michal Neuvirth's shoulder - I struggle to surpress laughter for the rest of the period
Despite playing much better than the last few games and containing the Caps reasonably well over the last 40 minutes, the crushingly inevitable tie-breaking goal from a fourth line scrub, followed by the crushingly inevitable total inability to control the puck with the goalie pulled kills off the Rangers

Game #6: Buffalo Sabres 5-4 (SO) New Jersey Devils

Despite spending most of the day in bed or on the toilet and feeling like I've lost about 10lbs in five hours (the "Reverse Brodeur"), the lure of seeing two bad teams that I don't support proves too much, so I make the late decision to head out
Surprising to see the box office lobby so full of people. Is it Tommy Albelin's jersey retirement tonight? Ken Daneyko's TV make-up crew having a meeting? Whatever it is, precisely one other person is actually there to buy a ticket, which makes more sense
More backup goalie dueling tonight - Enroth and Hedberg are filling in for the injured Miller and Brodeur respectively
My section is jam packed with annoying fans tonight:
1. Your typical sports radio idiot sat right behind me. He yaps away constantly (sample: "I hate all Canadians except one. Spezza. And Rick Nash.") and is well on pace to smash the records for most instances of saying "Just shoot the puck!" and calling Mattias Tedenby "Tanabe", until he is moved on by someone actually having tickets to sit there
2. His replacement is a kid unfortunately prone to greeting any routine clear or two foot pass with an exclamation you would perhaps hear had Marv Albert starred in "When Harry Met Sally" and smoked 100 a day from birth
3. A Sabres fan rhetorically asking why Drew Stafford (#21, right-hand shot, not playing due to injury) was still in the NHL every time Rob Niedermayer (#20, left-hand shot, actually playing tonight) touched the puck. For the whole game.
I'd like to be able to describe the first two Sabres goals, but I was too busy projectile vomiting a bottle of orange juice across the nearest bathroom floor. Should be more embarrassed by that than I really am...
Having regained control of my stomach, I get to see four more second period goals as the Sabres and Devils both do a pretty good impression of teams with bad defense, which (against type and reputation) they actually seem to be
After the Sabres tie it up again in the third, they have most of the chances the rest of the way with Hedberg somewhat fortunately surviving several scrambles in his crease
His confidence up after missing the net by roughly 30 feet on a partial breakaway late in the third, Ilya Kovalchuk then caps off the shootout in sudden death by amusingly flubbing the puck slowly into the corner

Game #7: Buffalo Sabres 2-3 (OT) New York Rangers

Just because I haven't seen enough backup goalies this trip, Henrik Lundqvist is a late flu victim (late pull out rather than it being fatal...) so Marty Biron gets another MSG start. Lundqvist not even in warmups, but he'll have to be on the bench
The returning Marián Gáborík gets crunched into the boards on an early shift. I (and probably most of MSG) ignore the rest of the shift to instead see if he's hurt on his return to the bench - he seems OK
Rob Niedermayer misses on a breakaway as he exits the penalty box - further proof, if it were needed, that Drew Stafford does not belong in the NHL
After a shaky looking first period from Jhonas Enroth in the Sabres goal, the Rangers take advantage by pummeling him with four shots in the second, which ends tied at two as the Rangers obligingly let Mike Grier stand in the crease untouched to score with 2.9 seconds left
I even manage to watch the whole second period without painting the floor of an MSG bathroom vivid orange
The crowd becomes mildly incensed when Ruslan Fedotenko has a goal chalked off in an "intent to blow" scenario. Especially odd for a quick whistle (at least an intended one) to come when two earlier goals came from similar situations that were allowed to play out
Things look bleak for the Rangers when Brian Boyle takes a penalty with six minutes left shortly after yet another PP failure - a circumstance that has not produced favourable results on roughly 300 other occasions this year already. However, the PK holds firm
Alex Frolov's third period contribution includes another slam dunk chance missed from right in front of goal and a sensible decision to ice the puck late in the game rather than take two strides in open ice to reach the red line first
In OT, a Vanek/Roy 2-on-1 is survived by the Rangers (not the first such mess up by Vanek the last two nights) before Artem Anisimov secures the two points with his second goal of the game

All in all, a satisfying end to the trip and another strong showing by Beer Pong, which hopefully earns Lundqvist the lighter workload this year that the Rangers are looking for. A 3-3 record for the Rangers in my presence, just about maintaining my streak of non-losing records (19-9-1 overall for those scoring at home...)

The Pain Game 2010/11 - Part One

2010-11-04T03:13:00.010Z

Injury stats update – October 2010

This is my first look for the 2010/11 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

[For more up-to-date analysis, look HERE.]

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2010/11 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

Alternatively...

TOI/G (through games played on 1 November) replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on)
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (several examples at this point of the season) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games (e.g. Chris Drury), I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...
The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team for the 2010/11 regular season (through games played on 1 November)
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season) [Editor's note: At least it would if I'd remembered to include it...]

10 second analysis...
Pretty striking that the Rangers are already approaching $2m in CHIP when you consider that their totals for the entire season in 2008/09 and 2009/10 were $1.3m and $2.5m respectively. This is largely due to the long-awaited semi-serious Gaborik injury and Drury's double-clutch finger breakage.

Brian Campbell's almost singlehanded contribution to Chicago's CHIP total (helped by the Hawks' relatively busy schedule in October) bears comparison to some of the much lower CHIP totals for teams also with around 20 man-games lost.

The three games missed by minute-munching Jamal Mayers may have irretrieveably derailed the Sharks' season already.

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

Again, the AMIP figures perhaps inflate the worth of goalies somewhat. The Flyers and Senators have certainly shown they can find even more mediocre-to-poor goaltending pretty easily whenever injury hits the incumbent.

BONUS
Finally, another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures exclude a few minor-leaguers / marginal NHLers (Ryan Stone?) who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season. Generally, if a minor-leaguer gets called up and then injured in an NHL game, his games missed will then count towards the CHIP though.
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I do the best I can with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of capgeek.com

NHL Premiere 2010 in Prague

2010-10-11T22:47:00.007+01:00

An incoherent bullet-point list of observations complemented by a handful of scratchy photos of non-action? Two teams I have no interest in playing in a strange, foreign land? Why, yes...

Phoenix Coyotes 5-2 Boston Bruins, 9 October 2010

Not sure why the people selling souvenir scarves outside the metro station were all stereotypical cockney wideboys, but not that surprising all the same.
The arena staff stationed at every entrance to the lower deck seating area really don't like hearing reasons for somebody with an upper deck ticket needing to get to the lower deck seating area an hour and a half before the game starts.
Too many Flyers fans in attendance.
The sound system from the upper deck is louder than the suit Don Cherry wore to Doug Gilmour's 40th birthday party (theme: loud suits).
Throughout the evening, we hear from ("hear" only for me, since it was all conducted in Czech for some reason) several "Czech Legends" in attendance: Petr Nedvěd, Martin Straka, Jiří Hrdina, Robert Reichel and Jiří Šlégr. Hrdina didn't seem outwardly upset about the big screen video showing a clip of the entirely different and much younger Jan Hrdina.
My initial thought of "that little kid is way too short" for the intermission "Circle to Circle" puck shoot contest proves slightly off, as he puts all three efforts within eight feet of the diagonally-opposite face-off dot, destroying his much taller and older opponent.
A woman sat within my earshot wearing a Flyers jersey - against type - appeared to be cheering for the Bruins and - entirely not against type - shouted "Let's see a fight!" as the puck was dumped out the zone during one penalty kill.
Nice handsy (if it's not a hockey analyst term yet, it should be) goals by Radim Vrbata and Taylor Pyatt.
Having seen rookie pro Mark Recchi get away with a horrible blind backhand pass across the blueline leading to a short-handed breakaway earlier in the game, Daniel Paille repeats the dose later, allowing Scottie Upshall to score.
Not wishing to miss out, the newly-minted Zdeno Chára also sees his pocket picked on the point during a powerplay to a pressuring Petr Průcha. Sadly, the true Czech legend is stopped by Tuukka Rask on the breakaway.
The third period sees the long awaited, much-hyped Vernon Fiddler-Gregory Campbell fight. Plenty of flailing, not much landing.
Decent game all-round. Bruins need to improve a lot defensively. Ilya Bryzgalov looks particularly sharp.

Boston Bruins 3-0 Phoenix Coyotes - 10 October 2010

The escalators at Českomoravská metro station outside the arena must be among the top five fastest in Europe. Surprised not to see a pile of old people on the floor at the end of them.
The programme for the games is considerably cheaper at 50 Kč than that for the 2009 games in Stockholm. I can understand considerably less of it though.
Smaller crowd at the second game (around 12,000 compared to 15,000). Noticeably fewer Flyers fans.
We ae treated to the same Jiří Šlégr interview. Either it was the same or he needs to change the outfit from time to time.
They were giving away Panini NHL sticker albums at the gate after the games. Must...resist...buying...stickers.
Daniel Paille is rewarded for his Game One gaffe with a seat in the press box, his place in the line-up being taken by Jordan Caron. Tim Thomas starts in place of Tuukka Rask. No changes for the Coyotes.
The opening goal by Milan Lucic sees one fan wearing his jersey in my section get slightly excited, rushing to the bottom of the steps and almost bouncing over the safety barrier.
Tyler Seguin nets what Brian Burke genuinely hopes is the first of several hundred NHL goals with a nice breakaway move.
A fairly uneventful game in comparison to the previous night - more like what I was expecting from these teams. Thomas isn't heavily tested during the shutout by the flat Coyotes.

The Ranger Movie Series - new release

2010-09-25T21:38:00.002+01:00

Emphasis on the word "release"...

(Full collection remains HERE)

Tales of ineffectual relationships, wasteful spending and
a fight against the ravages of time, (once) set in Manhattan

Burning Questions - Western Conference

2010-09-19T22:48:00.002+01:00

While I could break down the East a week or two ago without a problem, obviously I had to scrutinise carefully training camps out West for a couple of days before being able to pose these key questions...

Anaheim Ducks
Can George Parros and Paul Mara spare enough of their surplus facial hair to complete Ryan Getzlaf's long-awaited hair transplant?

Calgary Flames
Will Olli Jokinen again wear out his welcome by regaling Ian White and Jay Bouwmeester with tales of his infinitely greater playoff experience?

Chicago Blackhawks
Has the signing of Hugh Jessiman finally brought closure to the Hawks' 2003 draft fiasco that saw them embarrassingly end up having to select Brent Seabrook two picks later in the first round?

Colorado Avalanche
Can David Kočí repeat his three-minutes-per-game, six shot season of 2009-10 and parlay it into a Boogaard-esque free agent deal?

Columbus Blue Jackets
How much is Nikita Filatov looking forward to hearing the Special Advice that newly-appointed Special Advisor, Ken Hitchcock, will be bringing to the organisation?

Dallas Stars
Is being one Kari Lehtonen injury away from owning a team relying on Andrew Raycroft for wins more or less worrying to Tom Hicks than his reported financial "issues"?

Detroit Red Wings
Can fresh-faced rookie Mike Modano crack the line-up and finally bring down the average age of the Wings' roster?

Edmonton Oilers
With a shutdown defense corps led by the likes of Ryan Whitney and Tom Gilbert, does the freewheeling coaching style of Tom Renney mean Hall, Eberle and Pääjärvi-Svensson don't even need to consider learning to playing a two-way game in their rookie years?

Los Angeles Kings
Did the Kings see Alexei Ponikarovsky's two goals in 34 career playoff games and mistakenly think they were still looking at Ilya Kovalchuk's bio?

Minnesota Wild
Did the Wild front office think persuading an aging NFL legend out of retirement was the only way to bring national publicity to the area, or did they actually sign the John Madden they wanted?

Nashville Predators
Will David Poile's experience in suspending moody eastern Europeans when they don't show up for work help Sergei Kostitsyn to settle in?

Phoenix Coyotes
Can Paul Bissonnette round up enough homeless people to fill the lower bowl for the team's home opener?

San Jose Sharks
Will the Sharks going cheaper in goal result in Dan Boyle's playoff goal tally only increasing further?

St. Louis Blues
Is Roman Turek feeling a bit bemused about how feelings have changed in St. Louis towards goaltenders who can take teams as far as the Conference Final?

Vancouver Canucks
Did Mike Gillis only take the "C" off Roberto Luongo's mask because he didn't want Keith Ballard's stick to do it first?

National Hug-a-tree League

2010-09-11T14:26:00.005+01:00

If you've visited the homepage of nhl.com recently, you might have noticed links to the league's "NHL Green" sustainability initiative.

The limited public reaction to the initiative that I have seen appears to consist of the accusations of one or two climate-change deniers that it's all part of a global left-wing conspiracy (for the record, it's nothing to with me...)

However, the NHL community has already made an impressive number of pledges to support the initiative. Here are just a few:

The Minnesota Wild to reduce energy use by drying players' equipment using the heat from a naked flame

Don Cherry and Mike Milbury to continue their media campaign to limit trans-Atlantic air travel by European players

The lifetime of red lightbulbs at Madison Square Garden to be extended by up to 200% due to policy of employing one scoring forward

Jim Rutherford of the Carolina Hurricanes to continue his policy of repeatedly recycling players

Fans in Vancouver to organise collection of used beer cups on the ice surface after every home playoff loss

Fans in Montréal to flip over any car parked downtown that is not electric or a hybrid after every playoff victory

Charles Wang to reduce the Islanders' carbon footprint significantly by having the team play out of a "virtual" new arena

Joe Sakic to promote the use of shovels instead of electric or gasoline powered snow blowers

The Devils, Coyotes and Panthers organisations to reduce the use of paper by printing 10,000 fewer tickets than arena capacity for each game

The NHL to establish the "Green Trophy" to be awarded annually to the defenseman considered by voting fans to have expended the least energy in the defensive zone during the season

Air conditioning in all luxury suites in the Air Canada Centre to run on the hot air produced by Brian Burke

The scoreboard at the Pengrowth Saddledome to be powered entirely by Darryl and Brent Sutter's electric personalities

All lighting at the new CONSOL Energy Center to be provided by the sun shining out of Sidney Crosby's lower body

Nikolai Khabibulin to travel to work by public transport for an entire season

Dan Carcillo to fit a draft excluder to the door of his trailer

Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr to commit to a league-wide 100% reduction in air and road travel to games and arena energy usage on game nights during the 2012-13 season

Dan Ellis to use unleaded fuel in at least half of his sportscars

Burning Questions - Eastern Conference

2010-09-06T23:45:00.003+01:00

In the time-honoured tradition of stealing the lazy concepts of NHL writers and rehashing my own work from sometime around this point in the off-season a year ago, here are this year's incandescent posers for the Eastern Conference.

(Publishing note: The Western Conference equivalent may not appear before the first year Ilya Kovalchuk is forced to beg for food.)

Atlanta Thrashers
Will Byfuglien, Sopel, Ladd and Eager have a Cup-winning goal flashback every time a goal is scored and elicits virtually no crowd reaction?

Boston Bruins
Following the acquisition of Gregory Campbell, will the Bruins benefit or suffer from his father having no power to serve suspensions on players who maim Marc Savard, after several years of having no power to serve suspensions on players who maim Marc Savard?

Buffalo Sabres
Will Tyler Myers be grateful for the extra 25 cents saved towards his contract extension from the team buying out Tim Kennedy?

Carolina Hurricanes
Will the campaign to repeal the law that prevents Anton Babchuk playing even-numbered seasons in the state finally bear fruit?

Florida Panthers
Can anyone score after Grabner-Bitz?

Montreal Canadiens
Will the lavish ceremonies held to celebrate the first anniversary of the lavish ceremonies to celebrate the club's centenary distract from on-ice performances?

New Jersey Devils
Might the league again challenge the Devils' management after finally wising up to their strategy of paying players for the vast majority of the year but then tacking on five or six worthless games in April at minimal to no cost, that they have no intention of competing in?

New York Islanders
Could this be the year that the pressure of being the team's two highest-paid players finally tells and leads to declining production from Alexei Yashin and Rick DiPietro?

New York Rangers
Will the ceaseless intimidation of Rangers players stop with the presence of Derek Boogaard, or will Tortorella still treat them the same way?

Ottawa Senators
By what date will lazy headline writers run out of candle puns if Roman Wick makes the team?

Philadelphia Flyers
Were the "loose bodies" removed from Chris Pronger's knee:
(a) Stolen game pucks from the Stanley Cup Final?
(b) A couple of Scott Hartnell hairballs?
(c) Fragments of the front wing of a Montreal-based writer's car?

Pittsburgh Penguins
What will replace the "young player is now better at faceoffs than he used to be" on-screen graphic as the obligatory #87-based go-to conversation filler during Versus/NBC broadcasts?

Tampa Bay Lightning
Which Canadian journalist will be the first to break ranks and describe an especially mundane roster move by the new GM as anything other than "an outstandingly savvy demonstration of understated management"?

Toronto Maple Leafs
If last season's storming run caused performance bonuses to reduce this year's cap space by $1.4m, will missing the playoffs by something less than 14 points make the Leafs' cap negative in 2011/12?

Washington Capitals
Can Jeff Schultz follow in the legendary footsteps of the previous three defensemen to lead the league in +/-, Marek Malik, Wade Redden and Michal Rozsival, in getting regularly booed at MSG within three years?

The NHL Dictionary - fresh new content!

2010-08-22T02:19:00.002+01:00

In the usual August absence of anything of consequence going on in the NHL, instead of biting commentary on the potential long-term impact of the R&D camp or the devastating aftermath to the Blue Jackets signing of Ben Guite, I can only offer another weak update to my existing collection of hockey lexicography (found HERE).

The concept again - take any word or phrase from the dictionary, add/subtract/change one letter, supply new definition. So, much the same as the process as that the Devils will be using to turn an invalid contract into a valid one anytime soon.

Boogey - to sign for something higher than it was supposed to take, typically achieved while on golf course

Kab fare - the cost of being taken for a ride by a driver who provides endless running commentary, promising to take you away from your current location but ending up going round in circles

Kessellation - identical pieces fitting together exactly, e.g. the 2nd overall pick in 2010 fitting together with the 2nd overall pick in 2011 in a future line-up

Kovenant - a formal agreement of only temporary legal validity

Maximeize - to increase to the greatest possible amount or degree Penguins' fans blind, devoted enmity towards an opposing player

Salei of the Century - game show featuring Ken Holland's ongoing attempts to construct a defense pairing with a combined age under 100

Ysermon - exhortation on seemingly trivial issue, such as minor league trade or signing of free agent fourth-line grinder, delivered by higher power and re-told by enraptured Canadian media

NHL "cheat" contracts

2010-07-21T23:40:00.004+01:00

Taking a (likely brief) break from Sather-Boogaard bashing, I figured I'd instead return to posting a table of numbers.

Wherever you read about the Kovalchuk contract signing/rejection ("Me? Lou Lamoriello? Employing dubious cap management practices to wriggle through loopholes in the CBA that I had a hand in creating? Never!"), there are references abound to some of the other heavily front-loaded, long-term deals handed out in recent years to other players, that tested the NHL's patience before it finally decided to crack down.

Expanding slightly on the analysis at Behind The Net, the table below (click to expand) summarises the salary progression and resulting cap hit for each of the contracts in perhaps the seven most contentious deals. [Source: capgeek.com]

Notes/observations

The "real" part of each contract is highlighted in yellow, the "dead" money/years in orange. I've slightly arbitrarily chosen salaries under $2m to be the "dead" money, though there's clearly some argument as to where to draw that line in some cases - and the numbers would accordingly look somewhat different.
Adjusted cap hit (1) represents the total contract value divided by the number of "real" years
Adjusted cap hit (2) represents only the contract value within the "real" years divided by the same number of years
In both cases, I've shown the annual cap saving made from structuring the contract how it was compared to either paying the same total value within the shorter "real" term (1) or eliminating the "dead" years entirely (2)
It's fairly evident that the Kovalchuk deal is pushing the envelope more than its comparables by a number of measures, though clearly $1m of cap savings for one team may well be of more value in a sense than $3m to another team
Interesting that the Savard deal could be considered as the next most contentious, while acknowledging that the term is shorter than most and whether you regard the $1.5m in Year 5 as "real" or "dead" makes quite a difference in this case
Of course, the Pronger deal is distinguished from the others by it being classed as an "over-35" contract, meaning ~~Pronger will be suspended for over 35 games during the lifetime of the contract~~ the Flyers will be stuck with the cap hit (barring trade) even if Pronger retires before the "dead" years are reached - just as Paul Holmgren intended (ahem)

Boo Hard With A Vengeance

2010-07-09T17:45:00.008+01:00

More from the file marked "Dead Horse: Flogging"...

By now, the sports world has had time to digest the ever-so-mature response from Cleveland Cavaliers owner, Dan Gilbert, to the decision of LeBron James to shift his jersey/shoe-selling business to another state.

With the time set aside for signing a big paycheck with LeBron's name on now vacant, MSG big cheese, James Dolan, was then free to keep the neglected New York Rangers fanbase updated with the background to their team's recent work in free agency:

Dear New York City, All Of New York State (apart from that stinky Long Island bit and that cold bit near Canada) and New York Rangers Supporters Wherever You May Be Tonight;

As you now know, our future hero, who grew up in the very region whose name is taken from his ancestry - Sasquatchawan - is no longer a Minnesota Wild. No, I don't know what a "Wild" is either.

This was announced with a several hour, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up on TSN's "Free Agent Frenzy" - a national (in Canada) TV special of his "decision". This led to something unlike anything ever "witnessed" in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment - stunned silence from Pierre McGuire.

Clearly, this is bitterly disappointing to all of you.

The good news is that the ownership team and the President/General Manager (if we have some hard-working, loyal, and driven staff, I'll let you know when I meet them) over here at your hometown Rangers have not cared about you nor NEVER will care about you.

There is so much more to tell you about the events of the recent past and our more than exciting future. Over the next several days and weeks, we will be referring you back to the transcript of the President/General Manager's sole scheduled conference call for 2010, rather than telling you any more about these events.

You simply don't deserve this kind of unfathomable free agent signing. You've been spoiled enough with this kind of thing for the last 15 years.

You have been given so much and deserve so much higher ticket prices.

In the meantime, I want to make one statement to you tonight:

"I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE MISLEADINGLY-TITLED CURRENT ‘HALL OF FAMER’ GETS FIRED"

You can take it to the bank. And we all know how respected and trustworthy the banking industry is.

If you thought we were motivated before tonight to bring the hardware to New York...well, clearly, you're nuts. I can tell you that this shameful display of over-reactive ignorance and unnecessary largesse by one of our very own has shifted our "motivation" to previously unknown and previously never experienced depths.

Some people (looking at you, Chelios) think they should go to heaven but NOT have to die to get there.

Sorry, but that's simply not how it works.

This shocking act of incredulity from our home grown "tomato face" sends the exact lesson of what we would want Messier to learn. And "who" we would want them to grow-up to become.

But the good news is that this heartless and callous action can only serve as the antidote to the so-called "running" of Henrik Lundqvist.

The self-declared "King" will be taking the "running" for a whole six minutes per game less than ever before. And until he does "right" by Philadelphia and Carcillo, Derek (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own the dreaded spell and bad karma left by that Brashear guy last year.

Just watch. If you can see past the guys in suits standing up and checking their Blackberries for the half hour they show up for in the row in front of you.

Sleep well, New York. Don't fear the Boogeyman.

Tomorrow is a new and much brighter day....

I PROMISE you that our energy, focus, capital, knowledge and experience will be directed at one thing and one thing only:

DELIVERING ME the corporate ticket sales and zero to two home playoff dates I have long deserved and is long overdue....

James L. Dolan
Chairman, Madison Square Garden

New York Rangers

Boo Hard 2: Boo Harder

2010-07-06T01:44:00.005+01:00

Five days into the free agency period, there's still a lot of interest in discovering where one free agent in particular - one who's been stuck on a team in a crummy market, with very few capable team-mates and has experienced nothing but playoff disappointment in his career to date - will end up, having been seeking an outrageously lucrative long-term deal.

But as well as Ilya Kovalchuk, I hear that the decision of some NBA player has been attracting a modicum of media interest. Apparently, the clamour to sign this guy has been so intense that even hugely successful franchises like the New York Knicks have taken to commissioning a study from a firm of marketing consultants to present the case for playing in Madison Square Garden next season and beyond. The report is now in the public domain, having been leaked to Forbes.

You might think such a study is a one-off, a unique expense by a high-profile franchise to attract a Hall of Fame talent at the peak of his career. But in fact, I can reveal the other MSG tenants always apply similar rigour to their summer recruiting process - witness the study pulled together to lure in a much sought-after forward from Minnesota just last week:

Boo Hard

2010-07-01T22:53:00.002+01:00

You know you can rely on Glen Sather on 1 July when almost three hours in, you are thinking to yourself:

"Wait, we're almost three hours in and he hasn't done anything insanely and criminally asinine like signing Derek Boogaard to a bigger, longer contract than Jody Shelley just crowbarred out of the Flyers yet. I'm nervous."

...and only have to wait a matter of minutes for the cigar-chomping genius to flourish an almost uniquely ridiculous deal on a zero-dimensional tough guy who "earns" five minutes of ice-time per game.

But having had time to consider the details of the signing, against all odds and conventional thought, there are in fact several worse ways the $6.6m could have been used:

Set up a construction company in partnership with Chris Neil

Buy Nassau Coliseum...twice

Buy two platinum seat tickets at Air Canada Centre for that key Maple Leafs - Thrashers game on a Tuesday night in November

Use it to pay off Sather's contract and immediately hire Darryl Sutter as his replacement

Give it to Mike Modano to invest on your behalf

Increase the annual Versus budget for its NHL coverage by a factor of 6,600

Sign Wade Redden to a four-year, $6.6m contract extension

Is there a draft in here? (2010 Edition)

2010-06-26T04:11:00.015+01:00

The 2nd Annual LW3H "not really live" live blog of the NHL Entry Draft: 2010 in Los Angeles, California

Following my efforts last year, this is...er, this year's crack at a totally after-the-fact commentary / cutting critique of the draft that you almost certainly could have already read elsewhere on your favourite social media platform as it was happening.

Once again, TSN's coverage of the event is being shown live here at the peak viewing time of midnight...Once again, they open with a risibly over-dramatic montage of the contenders for the first overall pick, Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin...It features Seguin commenting that he's "not going to be all depressed and crying" if he goes #2 - no, you can leave that to watching Leafs fans

Host James Duthie immediately "throws it downstairs" (technical media term) to scoophound Darren Dreger, who fills us in on stories that the Oilers have been trying to secure the #2 pick to go with their #1...Apparently not looking likely, since Ales Hemsky clearly isn't the talented yet slightly flaky and injured winger it takes to obtain such a pick...A Canucks/Panthers trade, featuring Keith Ballard for Steve Bernier and the #25 pick is expected though

Elsewhere in Staples Center, Gord Miller is in his customary spot next to draft doyen Bob McKenzie and daft annoyance Pierre McGuire...B-Mac opts for the pronunciation "Seg-winn" as opposed to Duthie's "Say-gun" or "Say-gan"...P-Mac states he will be shocked if Hall is not taken by the Oilers

After last year's highly-entertaining miking up of Brian Burke on draft day, there's little sign of the same happening tonight, which is both a huge personal disappointment and understood to be the first recorded instance of Burke not wishing to offer his thoughts to the media...Taylor/Tyler are/is interviewed briefly - Hall revealing that they are not yet famous enough in La La Land to avoid being shunted away by photographers at a movie premiere

We cut to the draft party at Rexall Place in Edmonton...We learn that a local poll resulted in a 50/50 split of opinion between picking Taylor or Tyler - who knows how many of those polled just got the name the wrong way round anyway?...The fans there seem to be waving silver pom-poms for some reason - either that or there was a job lot of John Muckler fright wigs still lying around from last Halloween

The ritual Bettman boo suggests we are about to be underway...the commish appears to be suffering from a sore throat...as is now custom, he thanks all viewers everywhere...as is custom, "everywhere" excludes Europe

#1 - Edmonton Oilers select Taylor Hall (Windsor Spitfires - OHL)
GM Steve Tambellini gives the usual empty platitudes to the host city and the watching fans at the team's draft party (no French needed this year) and picks Hall...We soon hear the sound of the Rexall Place goal horn, for roughly the 12th time since last October...A few words with new coach and noted lexicographer, Tom Renney - most notable Rennyism: "the net is the end point"

#2 - Boston Bruins select Tyler Seguin (Plymouth Whalers - OHL)
Seriously, still nothing from Burke?! I reckon this would be a great point to hear his thoughts...No shock as Seguin is taken...A lot of depth at centre for the Bruins now - P-Mac and B-Mac concur that Marc Savard could be headed out of town (after Matt Cooke's unsuccessful attempt to elbow him out of town)...Duthie mentions that Seguin and his dad have matching tattoos...No further details of what/where though, intriguingly

Draftees will be getting jerseys with a number "10" on the back tonight...A quick check shows that the number has been retired by the Red Wings (Alex Delvecchio), Hurricanes (Ron Francis), Canadiens (Guy Lafleur) and Jets (and Coyotes?) (Dale Hawerchuk) - does this mean those teams will offer something else to display?...The Canucks/Panthers trade is fleshed out by TSN - it's Ballard and Victor Oreskovich for Bernier, Michael Grabner and pick #25, but the trade is still conditional

#3 - Florida Panthers select Erik Gudbranson (Kingston Frontenacs - OHL)
Another good Canadian boy, good Ontario boy, good Kingston boy (i.e. high Cherry marks)...Fluently bilingual with a Canadiens-supporting father (i.e. lower Cherry marks)...P-Mac notes that Gudbranson dwarfs everybody on the podium - true, but then Bettman got dwarfed when Brian Gionta was drafted...Miller suggests that GM Dale Tallon favours North American players, adding for emphasis: "Canadian and American"...I must confess that the Mexican impact on the NHL has been somewhat negligible (and yes, I am including Scott Gomez in that)

#4 - Columbus Blue Jackets select Ryan Johansen (Portland Winter Hawks - WHL)
Steve Yzerman is apparently desperately hoping for a defenseman to fall to #6 for the Lightning...Columbus GM Scott Howson decides to move things along swiftly by engaging in a lengthy conversation with Bettman on stage before moving to the podium...The selection of Johansen is "excellent news" to an uncharacteristically positive P-Mac...Someone should tell Pierre that he didn't actually get the Tampa gig...It then takes Johansen roughly ten minutes to reach the stage...Something tells me I'm not getting to bed any time soon

Back to Dreger for an update from the floor...The conditionality (yeah, it's a word) of the Canucks/Panthers deal is that the trade seemingly won't take place or will be subject to change if the player the Canucks want at #25 is still available

Everything still seems a bit quiet and predictable so far...Something is missing - I think it's the lack of a constant, loud and invasive noise that serves little or no purpose...Oh yeah, no ~~Burke interview~~ vuvuzelas! (I'll tip my hat to acknowledge the 10 millionth use worldwide of a variant of that joke)...Duthie livens things up - a chat with big-hitting NHL analyst Alyssa Milano...We learn that her dad was/is a Rangers fan...Miller throws in a needlessly gratuitous Wayne McBean reference

#5 - New York Islanders select Nino Niederreiter (Portland Winter Hawks - WHL)
Shoulderpad legend Garth Snow and the Wang entourage, including what seems to be a slightly large Wang Jr, take to the stage and select the first gutless Euro puke of the night...This affords the opportunity for P-Mac to bring out a couple of terrible Swiss cheese puns...El Nino is the highest ever Swiss draftee, beating the Oilers' selection of Michel Riesen at #14 in 1997...Riesen of course was a bust in North America, before returning home to the family business...Stevie Y is presumably smiling right now

Dreger informs us that the Oilers are still looking to acquire a second high first round pick

#6 - Tampa Bay Lightning select Brett Connolly (Prince George Cougars - WHL)
The TSN team are strongly expecting Cam Fowler or Brandon Gormley to be taken here, but after stepping up to warm applause, the new GM instead picks a forward...A graphic compares Connolly's injury-plagued draft year to those of former picks Gord Kluzak, Rocky Trottier, Drake Berehowsky and Andrei Kostitsyn - all first ballot Hall of Famers, so no worries there for Lightning fans...Yzerman demonstrates in his interview that he has quickly mastered the vital GM skills of the NHL cliché and stonewall response

A quick feature on expected first rounder Jeffrey Skinner's figure skating background is shown...At least if the NHL career doesn't pan out, he can look forward to featuring on CBC's Battle of the Blades in 25 years time (surely still a staple of CBC's output in 2035, alongside the voice of Bob Cole, the suits of Don Cherry and the losing teams of the Toronto Maple Leafs)

#7 - Carolina Hurricanes select Jeffrey Skinner (Kitchener Rangers - OHL)
Right on cue, Skinner's name is called by Ron Francis...Still no Fowler or Gormley, unexpectedly...Francis does pass a #10 jersey to Skinner to wear and seems OK with it..."Last time you're wearing that, kid. Enjoy it while it lasts."

#8 - Atlanta Thrashers select Alexander Burmistrov (Barrie Colts - OHL)
Just before the Thrashers pick, a clip of Fowler features him saying: "You've got to be used to a lot of people watching you"...Might not be anything to worry about if you're heading to Atlanta, Cam...However, new Thrashers GM Rick Dudley - taking time out from Inside the Actors Studio to attend the draft - takes another forward...TSN's graphic cruelly states Comparable: Scott Gomez...Being known as the Russian Scott Gomez is possibly among the worst insults possible for a player in some parts of North America

Dreger chimes in with his first Leafs/Kaberle update...It's merely white noise without input from Burke though

#9 - Minnesota Wild select Mikael Granlund (HIFK - Finland)
As another forward is taken ahead of Fowler/Gormley, it's noted that D-men have slipped to the Rangers' spot before in recent times, when Marc Staal and Michael Del Zotto were chosen...Not particularly paying attention for a moment...Er, Granlund is not a Finnish goalie (I never said you should come here for thorough analysis, OK?)

During a commercial break, I read that the Rangers staff are "huddling at the table"...Clearly, everyone is still trying to physically disguise the fact that Glen Sather died in 2003

#10 - New York Rangers select Dylan McIlrath (Moose Jaw Warriors - WHL)
As Sather's corpse is routinely and rightly booed onto the stage, P-Mac and B-Mac are smelling a Russian (and it's not Ovechkin's Cologne for once)...Hmm, don't think anyone was expecting McIlrath to go while Fowler and Gormley were still on the board...B-Mac is "blown away", P-Mac similar...Obviously way too early to cast judgement on these players, but Jessiman recent Jessiman history Jessiman gives Jessiman Rangers Jessiman fans Jessiman an Jessiman uneasy Jessiman feeling

#11 - Dallas Stars select Jack Campbell (US NTDP)
P-Mac is a bit confused by this one given the Stars' recent acquisition of Kari Lehtonen, though he (obviously) likes Campbell...B-Mac notes that Fowler and Gormley are "falling like Iraq" (or maybe it was "a rock" or "Laraque" - it's getting late...)

#12 - Anaheim Ducks select Cam Fowler (Windsor Spitfires - OHL)
Spirited booing from the LA crowd for the Ducks representatives...P-Mac is by now almost reaching in-game NBC shouting levels as he implores Bob Murray to pick Fowler or Gormley...As Fowler is finally taken, P-Mac then goes for the damning with faint praise approach by asserting that Fowler could be "as good as François Beauchemin"...Aiming high there

#13 - Los Angeles Coyotes of Glendale select Brandon Gormley (Moncton Wildcats - QMJHL)
Before getting picked, Gormley has a "**** me, I don't want to play in Phoenix" face going...He seems to cheer up a little by the time he gets to shake hands on stage though

#14 - St. Louis Blues select Jaden Schwartz (Tri-City Storm - USHL)
John Davidson leads a well-deserved tribute to draft favourite and stone-faced legend Jarmo Kekäläinen, who is soon leaving the Blues to dominate the Finnish hockey landscape...Jarmo calls up Schwartz...Noticeable that nobody drafted has handed his jacket to Bettman this year...There is some mention of similarity to Zach Parise in Schwartz - P-Mac somehow resists unleashing his latent Jessiman/Parise anger (check back in seven years for a similar McIlrath/Fowler rant?)

TRADE: Dale Tallon and Dean Lombardi are seen talking...Bettman then announces that pick #15 has gone to the Kings in return for #19 and #59 from the Panthers - a popular move with the home crowd

#15 - Los Angeles Kings select Derek Forbort (US NTDP)
P-Mac snaps out of his earlier mini-depression to raise some enthusiasm for the selection of Forbort...It seems to be a popular move with the LA crowd - we see an applauding Tobias Fünke lookalike in a Kings jersey

Bryan Murray is shown taking an important call: "No, Burkie. You can't screw me over this year. Congrats on picking Seguin and on your playoff run this year, by the way..."

TRADE: It's now a trade frenzy as Murray ships the #16 pick to the Blues for one of the dark-haired Swedish invasion from the 2009 draft, David Rundblad

#16 - St. Louis Blues select Vladimir Tarasenko (Sibir Novosibirsk - KHL)
More Jarmo! All business, as usual...On Tarasenko (who clearly has hockey teeth already), P-Mac says "all skill", B-Mac responds with "Balmochnykh"...No need to be so rude to Pierre, Bob. It's just an opinion

Time for a brief Bryan Murray interview...He reveals that the player he wanted (an unnamed forward) had gone, hence the trade...Nothing much to say about Jason Spezza trade talks...I seem to remember he said similar about Dany Heatley at the draft last year, so let's hope it drags on as long as the in-no-way-excruciating Heatley saga did

#17 - Colorado Avalanche select Joey Hishon (Owen Sound Attack - OHL)
The first "off the board" pick of the night according to B-Mac...The shock causes the normally smooth B-Mac to flap about searching for his notes on Hishon...I've still no idea what Greg Sherman looks like or if he was even on stage just then...Wouldn't recognise him if he got Darcy Tucker to scream "That's Greg Sherman!" in my face repeatedly from an inch away while sporting a Greg Sherman: That Way> tattoo on his forehead

#18 - Nashville Predators select Austin Watson (Peterborough Petes - OHL)
Watson is one of nine kids in his family, with a tenth on the way...Nervous laughter breaks out in the Sutter and Staal households (joke obviously - Sutters are physically incapable of human emotion)

BURKE! He's with Duthie, looking like a man 12 hours into a wedding reception...He defends the Kessel trade (shock) with no perceptible nasal growth and talks about offers for his D-men - not just Tomáš Kaberle, apparently...Throughout, Burke stares directly into the camera in a faintly menacing way, which I think has pierced two dark holes in my plasma screen

#19 - Florida Panthers select Nick Bjugstad (Blaine HS - USHS)
Minnesota's Mr Hockey for this year is selected by Director of Amateur Scouting, Scott Luce, who is forced to stoop over the microphones like everybody seems to - clearly they are not adjustable from the default Bettman setting...Bjugstad is said to have also been a skilled tennis player

#20 - Pittsburgh Penguins select Beau Bennett (Penticton Vees - BCHL)
Miller notes that Pittsburgh set the post-lockout model for success (tank long and tank hard?)...Bennett looks pleased at the prospect of being traded at the deadline in 2012 for impending UFA #467 to play on Crosby's wing...Bennett eschews tennis in favour of being a terrific piano player, we learn

The latest Dreger-flash is that Sergei Gonchar wants a three-year contract at upwards of $5m per, while the Penguins are sticking at two years...This programme is due to end in 12 minutes...Can we get through 10 picks in 12 minutes (known as the Jay Cutler ratio, I understand)?

#21 - Detroit Red Wings select Riley Sheahan (Notre Dame - CCHA)
Seemingly in reference to the absence of Wings Euro über-scout Håkan Andersson, P-Mac notes there is "no hocking on the podium" - this of course, a reaction to the unsavoury spitting incident between Ken Holland and Don Maloney at last year's event...Jim Nill eventually settles on "Shee-han" before being immediately corrected by P-Mac who is sure it's "Shay-han"...Scouts are said to be unconcerned at Sheahan's involvement in an underage drinking incident

We move to an interview in the stands with draft-eligible Jarred Tinordi and his ex-NHL father, Mark, who has clearly been strictly following the Brett Hull diet since his retirement

TRADE: Bettman - now starting to sound like Dave Manson - announces a flip of the Coyotes' #22 and #113 picks for the Canadiens' #27 and #57

#22 - Montréal Canadiens select Jarred Tinordi (US NTDP)
The Habs duly select Tinordi Jr...B-Mac says his leadership ability is "off the scale" - much like his dad's weight then...A big tug-of-war is expected between Notre Dame and the London Knights for the services of Tinordi next year...My money is on Notre Dame comfortably winning the tug-of-war before Dale Hunter severs the rope and blindsides the Athletic Director while the officials aren't looking...During his Duthie interview, GM Pierre Gauthier also looks into the camera while talking, but unlike Burke, he doesn't produce homicidal urges in me while doing so...The Rangers' selection of McIlrath now looks even more risky, considering Tinordi Sr has just eaten him

#23 - Buffalo Sabres select Mark Pysyk (Edmonton Oil Kings - WHL)
Pysyk is your typical solid, no-frills late first rounder, by all accounts...Presumably, he has a certain amount of mental toughness too, given the abuse his name must have attracted while at school

Certainly, there hasn't been the expected level of trade action so far...Dreger is spotted refereeing an impromptu sumo bout between Wang Jr and Tinordi Sr to kill time

#24 - Chicago Blackhawks select Kevin Hayes (Noble/Greenough - USHS)
With the pick aqcuired from the Devils via the Thrashers in the Byfugalchuk trade chain, the Hawks take a reach down the draft rankings...Hayes was a star of the draft combine, so we see shots of him bench pressing...No shots of him with his shirt off though - guess we'll have to wait until his first limo ride with Patrick Kane to see that

TRADE: Confirmation of the Canucks/Panthers deal from the commish, now sounding like Macy Gray

#25 - Florida Panthers select Quinton Howden (Moose Jaw Warriors - WHL)
Howden faced some adversity to get here - we see shots of him in a body cast as a kid...So he has the chance of being the first NHLer to overcome almost total immobility since Hal Gill

#26 - Washington Capitals select Evgeny Kuznetsov (Traktor Chelyabinsk - KHL)
Only George McPhee plus one other on the stage for the Caps, unusually...Has Burke acquired the rest of their staff to fill out the Leafs' rather bare looking front office?...Kuznetsov has two years left on his KHL contract, so no risk attached to this pick then...And a KHL contract is, of course, nothing if not synonymous with being water tight and a cast-iron guarantee of continued remuneration for Kuznetsov

#27 - Los Angeles Coyotes of Glendale select Mark Visentin (Niagara IceDogs - OHL)
Off the board pick number two, says B-Mac...We see a great "I wasn't expecting to hear my name before Saturday" face from Visentin replayed

As this thing drags on, we learn that John Isner and Nicolas Mahut just turned the coverage off because "it's just taking way too long"

#28 - San Jose Sharks select Charlie Coyle (South Shore Kings - EJHL)
Getting hazy now...Big body, bit of a project, extrapolated scoring...Balmochnykh...

Miller explains how the upcoming pick for the Ducks (via the Flyers in the Pronger trade) slipped from #10 to #29 as the evil Flyers sneaked into the playoffs and then ended up in the Cup Final...Thanks, Olli Jokinen!

#29 - Anaheim Ducks select Emerson Etem (Medicine Hat Tigers - WHL)
Conflicting feelings for the California crowd as the local SoCal product goes to the hated Ducks...Surely Etem was named after former Kings stalwart, Nelson Emerson?...In his interview, Etem says getting drafted was "almost like a blur" - I know the feeling...

TRADE: The Hawks deal pick #30 to the Islanders for #35 and #58...Bettman now sounds like Marge Simpson swallowing a jug of gravel

#30 - New York Islanders select Brock Nelson (Warroad HS - USHS)
Team Fishstick select the first round's 11th US-born player, which is a new record...Always slightly unnerving for the rest when the US starts taking an interest in a sport - next they'll start being successful in sah-ker or something crazy like that

Only time for a quick recap by TSN now, since this has taken just over four hours to complete...In a superb piece of spinning, the record selection of Americans is summarised in a table headed Canada Leads Way...Finally a promo for next week's main event, Free Agent Frenzy (subtitle: "It's a pile of crap this year!")

Hungry for hockey?

2010-06-19T17:12:00.004+01:00

Taking a lead from (OK, shamelessly ripping-off) the ever-excellent Down Goes Brown, and considering the kinship between fellow big-market NHL success stories, the Leafs and Rangers, I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to envisage a Ranger-themed menu.

So...

(Click to enlarge. Graphic design skills admittedly lacking...)

For crying out loud

2010-06-10T21:24:00.002+01:00

The hockey world is today still reeling from last night's shocking and unprecedented event. Yes, the moment when millions of TV viewers across the US (OK, a few hundred thousand in Chicago and Philadelphia) witnessed Jeremy Roenick being lost for words.

Of course, as retired NHL cyborg Mark Messier would attest, crying simply is not tolerated in and around hockey. So what really caused JR's momentary eye-dampness?

Patrick Roy's Stanley Cup rings were in his eyes

Standing in close proximity to Mike Milbury for ~~two months~~ thirty seconds will do that to even the strongest of men

The sudden realisation that 95% of NHL news for the next four months will feature the thrilling words: "Phoenix Coyotes ownership saga"

"That bitch Chrissy Pronger was wearing the SAME outfit as me! And she knew it!"

The vapours from Scott Hartnell's post-game hairball fumigation had just wafted into the NBC set

The waning but beautiful memory of Dan Carcillo's graceful, languid skating and dextrous stickhandling in Game Three just wouldn't stop lingering in his mind

Michael Leighton getting repeatedly beaten between the legs brought back nostalgia for the antics of his old teammate, Ed Belfour

Hiding those pucks from Ben Eager exactly where Pronger told him to was starting to cause some physical discomfort

Stanley Cup Final: A Viewer's Guide

2010-05-29T16:31:00.005+01:00

If your team has (yet again) not made it as far as the Stanley Cup Final, watching the games can clearly get somewhat tiresome. So what can you do to spice up your interest in a series between two small-market expansion teams that inexplicably does not feature the great Crosbechkin?

If you have nothing better to do, why not use my spotter's guide? Score along at home during the series and if you break 30 points, a multi-million dollar prize will head your way. At least that's what Chris Drury and Shawn Horcoff told me...

(I accept no responsibility for the consequences if you instead turn this into a drinking game. Watching a few playoff games is no excuse for drunken debauchery. At least that's what the Montreal Police Department told me...)

Dysugtien Bufflin successfully parking himself within three feet of the goal without getting slashed by the guy in a #20 Flyers jersey (2 pts)

Chicago writer successfully parking his car within three miles of Wachovia Center without it getting trashed by 20 guys in Flyers jerseys (15 pts)

Each use of the following words by Mike Emrick: squib/waffleboard/careen/Brodeur (1 pt)

Visual evidence of a living, wild animal in Scott Hartnell's hair (excluding Hartnell himself) (5 pts)

NBC or Versus getting through an intermission without any mention of Sidney Crosby (25 pts)

Mike Milbury making any kind of wilfully controversial/idiotic/xenophobic statement (1 pt)

Pierre McGuire saying the words: "I have nothing to say about Mike Richards. Back up to you , Doc and Edzo." (20 pts)

Each shot of Vince Vaughn looking mildly confused in his rinkside seat (3 pts)

Each shot of Bob Clarke looking mildly constipated in his luxury suite (2 pts)

Each on-screen graphic of a completely inaccurate statistic or statement shown by Versus ("James van Riemsdyk is just the second Latvian to play in the Stanley Cup Final") (1 pt)

Eddie Olczyk not attributing a routine play to a "good active stick" (1 pt)

Bob Harwood (8 pts)

Dan Carcillo drawing a high-sticking penalty (1 pt)

Dan Carcillo legitimately drawing a high-sticking penalty (25 pts)

Marian Hossa putting in a trade request before Game Seven (5 pts)

Brian Burke surviving the whole series without seeking a slice of publicity by holding a press conference, proposing a rule change or trading away several lottery picks (15 pts)

Each minute of time Joel Quenneville or Peter Laviolette spends complaining about the officiating (2 pts)

Each minute of time Ron MacLean spends complaining about the officiating (0.2 pts)

Gary Bettman being received by warm applause as he takes to the ice to present the Cup (50 pts)

Anybody at all being received by warm applause as they take to the ice in Philadelphia (51 pts)

Now Hiring!

2010-05-12T20:54:00.003+01:00

It had escaped my attention until today that job vacancies with NHL teams were advertised on the official league website.

Obviously, the primary purpose of my visiting every day from now on will be in the (forlorn) hope of seeing the words "President and General Manager - New York Rangers (Manhattan, NY)" on the list.

Until that great, great day, I can content myself with breaking down some of the current advertisements, reading between the lines to get past some of the typical management jargon that infests these things.

Case in point, this vacancy with our friends on the Island:

Administrative Assistant - Part Time - New York Islanders (Uniondale, NY)

"...meeting and greeting visitors."
Sometimes up to 8,000 in one night!

"Must be proficient with...Excel..."
So you can work out exactly which decade we can stop paying Alexei Yashin.

"The ideal candidate will have three or more years experience..."
i.e. Approximately three or more years more experience than Garth Snow had.

"...excellent verbal and written communication skills..."
No applicants from the Milbury family, please.

"Candidate will work with team members..."
Every chance you will be playing wing next to Tavares by November.

"...between 25-30 hours a week."
Or the same as DiPietro works in a year.

"No relocation assistance available..."
You'd better live close to Kansas City already.

"Please send cover letter with salary requirements..."
...which Mr Wang will multiply by 20 over a period four times as long.

The Pain Game

2010-04-13T00:09:00.005+01:00

Injury stats update – end of season awards

This is the final update for the 2009/10 regular season looking at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

(The corresponding analysis as at the end of February 2010 can be viewed HERE.)

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his 2009/10 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

Yes, I'm still doing the extra bit ...

Again, for a different indicator of player "value", I've also illustrated a similar metric based on TOI/G alongside the CHIP numbers.

While acknowledging cap charge is a less than perfect measure of player, with a number of limitations and inconsistencies, I'm not totally sold on TOI/G as being any better overall (I'm guessing Mike Mottau isn't a significantly more important player to the Devils than Zach Parise) - it does provide a decent comparison and the results do vary from the CHIP rankings somewhat.

A quick summary of the alternative metric:

TOI/G replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on)
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (e.g. Mike Van Ryn) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games (Kurt Sauer), I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...

The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team over the 2009/10 regular season
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
Movement in CHIP ranking since 28 February
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...

Rather predictably, the Oilers manage to hold on to their big lead and easily claim the much-coveted title of The Most Injured Team in the NHL 2009/10.

Interestingly, despite a clearly horrendous run of injuries this year, neither the Oilers' total man-games lost nor CHIP figure would have ranked #1 last year (see HERE for the 2008/09 rankings).

Also, while the aggregate CHIP figure league-wide was just shy of $200m, this is still $25m lower than the corresponding figure for 2008/09 - perhaps unexpected given all the conjecture earlier in the season about an injury epidemic and the effect of the Olympic break.

At the other end, largely thanks to a late injury to Ryan Malone, the Rangers clinch an unprecedented (OK, only two years of compiling this doesn't give much opportunity for precedent...) second consecutive 30th place finish. Something the esteemed GM of the team has seemingly been straining to achieve in the real NHL standings for the last 10 years, without success. Not for want of trying.

Again, there doesn't appear to be much more than a weak correlation between the extent of injuries and a team's position in the standings - the three healthiest teams all missed the playoffs, for example. (The dubious sanity of the GMs in question has not been allowed for here.)

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

P-M Bouchard's virtually season-long concussion results in his leading of the CHIP table. Ricky DP's "flu" - yes, that's "flu" - not quite emerging soon enough to trouble the podium. There's always next year, eh Rick? And the next 12...

I suspect next year's figures will no longer be distorted by the impact of Mike Rathje's unretired corpse. This may or may not be due to Paul Holmgren re-signing him to be the Flyers' next saviour in goal.

BONUS

Finally, another update of the crude injury-by-location analysis. Again, I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures include (and are arguably distorted by) some players on long-term IR, such as Mike Rathje. They do exclude a few minor-leaguers who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I did the best I could with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery, Randy Jones), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of hockeybuzz.com and capgeek.com

The Ranger Movie Series

2010-03-14T13:48:00.007Z

Apparently it was the Oscars last week. I didn't watch - as a Rangers fan, I spend most of the year seeing someone spend a ridiculous amount of money on a load of people in blue only to end up losing, so there was no need to get another fix of that. (Edmonton fans - insert "Hurt Locker" gag here...)

Anyway, as a tribute to (in no particular order), the Rangers, a string of cinematic epics that I've never seen and my penchant for bad puns and pretty ropey Photoshops, I present the New York Ranger Movie Series: in association with Subway $5 Footlongs.

Brian's dilemma: Should he pay Vinny $1.1m to play around with somebody else?

"Because Chris Drury is Chris Drury. Two thumbs up" - Roger Ebert

Adapted from the popular comic book series "2014 No D"

Ales escapes an abusive relationship with John by travelling across
North America in order to seek a better life

Now playing on Broadway after initially coming to prominence at Arizona Film Festival

A violent hit-man's struggles to gain acceptance in New York "family"

Two men investigate the disappearance of a 20-goal scorer
at a hospital for criminally insane GMs

Tales of ineffectual relationships, wasteful spending and
a fight against the ravages of time, (once) set in Manhattan

The Pain Game

2010-03-06T16:29:00.006Z

Injury stats update – February 2010

[Looking for more up-to-date figures? For my latest update, try HERE.]

This is my penultimate look for the 2009/10 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

(The corresponding analysis as at the end of January 2010 can be viewed HERE.)

Yes, I'm still doing the extra bit ...

Again, for a different indicator of player "value", I've also illustrated a similar metric based on TOI/G alongside the CHIP numbers.

A quick summary of the alternative metric:

TOI/G (through games played prior to the Olympic break) replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on)
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (e.g. Mike Van Ryn) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games (Kurt Sauer), I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...

The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team for the 2009/10 regular season (through games played in February, i.e. before the Olympic break)
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
Movement in CHIP ranking since 31 January
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...

As teams only played six or seven games in February, like Hal Gill at the end of shift, there's obviously not a huge amount of movement.

With the Red Wings now looking relatively healthy, it's looking pretty clear that the Oilers have an insurmountable lead (a phrase not heard by anyone this season). I don't have the figures, but I suspect they are also way ahead if I rank the teams by DUIIP.

The Lightning equally have a nice cushion at the other end of the ranking, which may widen thanks to the long-awaited outbreak of Gabby Groin in Manhattan. Based on limited personal observation, their good health can probably be attributed in large part to an extreme reluctance to get in the way of opposition players as they head towards goal.

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

Again, not a huge amount of movement here, but after a personal best 10 straight minutes of good health, the apparent return of Ricky DP's knee-knack gives him a slight chance of threatening the leaders once again.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures include (and are arguably distorted by) some players on long-term IR, such as Mike Rathje (still seemingly unretired, despite being out for three years and 27 Flyers goalies). They do exclude a few minor-leaguers who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I did the best I could with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery, Randy Jones), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of hockeybuzz.com and capgeek.com

Olympian NHL Shootout Records: Part II

2010-02-20T20:56:00.008Z

After looking at the NHL shootout records of forwards and defenseman (HERE) featuring in the Olympics, now for the goalies.

Again, the tables show both overall records in NHL shootouts and records in facing "clutch attempts", defined as those attempts that either clinch a win or keep a shootout going.

Obviously, pretty small sample sizes all round, so nowhere near being anything that could be predictive to any useful degree (Will Russia yank Nabokov before a shootout to put Varlamov in? No. Oh, wait this is Russia we're talking about...) However, mildly interesting to note that Finland's dangerous shooters aren't matched by the records of their top two goalies (perhaps completely counter to the strengths and weaknesses of the team in regular play). The reverse is the case to some extent for Sweden.

Olympian NHL Shootout Records

2010-02-20T00:26:00.009Z

Having seen a breakdown of the NHL shootout records of Team Canada's skaters HERE - following the startling revelation that a coaching staff actually thought looking at career shootout records might be a good idea - I figured it would be worth a look at how the other countries' players have fared.

The usual fascinating tables follow, showing both overall records in NHL shootouts and records in "clutch attempts", defined as those attempts that either clinch a win or keep a shootout going.

Obviously, this isn't a definitive list of which players might be the most dangerous in an Olympic shootout - apparently some players not heavily featured here (or at all) might have taken shootout attempts in some distant land called "Europe" on occasion. And Russia's coach clearly has a different set of statistics to everybody else.

Similar figures for the Olympic goalies with NHL shootout experience may follow at some point...

Stats courtesy of nhl.com and nhlshootouts.com

The Pain Game

2010-02-02T23:15:00.010Z

Injury stats update – January 2010

[Looking for more up-to-date figures? For my latest update, try HERE.]

This is my fourth look for the 2009/10 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

(The corresponding analysis as at the end of December 2009 can be viewed HERE.)

Yes, I'm still doing the extra bit ...

Again, for a different indicator of player "value", I've also illustrated a similar metric based on TOI/G alongside the CHIP numbers.

While acknowledging cap charge is a less than perfect measure of player, with a number of limitations and inconsistencies, I'm not totally sold on TOI/G as being any better overall (Tom Poti is as valuable to the Capitals as Alex Ovechkin. Discuss.) - it does provide a decent comparison and the results do vary from the CHIP rankings somewhat.

A quick summary of the new metric:

TOI/G (through games played on 31 January) replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on)
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (e.g. Mike Van Ryn) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games (Kurt Sauer), I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...

The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team for the 2009/10 regular season (through games played on 31 January)
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
Movement in CHIP ranking since 31 December
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...

The Oilers predictably keep top spot as the "conundrum of our physiological synapse" as Tom Renney would describe it continues as fast as "our f***ing brutal losing streak" as Pat Quinn would describe it. The Red Wings, however, are still doing a fine job keeping a close pace.

Teams with improved positions include Les Smurfs (pre-Cammalleri injury at least), the Islanders and the Flyers. Rumour has it there has even been a healthy DP sighting! (Note that his CHIP number has also been adjusted down somewhat - blame various boring IR/AHL conditioning stint complications...)

The Rangers continue to have a second straight season of remarkable good health - only missing an average 14 minutes per game. Not to be confused with Chris Drury's very average 14 minutes per game. The question I have posed in the past as to the reason why the Rangers have stayed healthy has almost certainly been answered by now (yes, they do play an extremely soft game).

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

The return to health of last month's top three CHIP leaders sees Monsieur Bouchard take top spot, with surely (and unfortunately) a strong chance of staying there. Kari Lehtonen now has a huge lead in the CMIP table, thanks to DiPietro actually showing up for work (and his value in minutes being adjusted accordingly), but Lehtonen is also apparently on the way back now.

BONUS

And finally, an update of my crude analysis of maladies by body part. The results (again covering games played through 31 January) are in the table below. I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them (a special shout out to the Carolina Hurricanes, seemingly league leaders in the upper/lower body description junk). It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

Pretty sure watching the Rangers that I've seen plenty more players with "heart" problems than this analysis seems to indicate...

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures include (and are arguably distorted by) some players on long-term IR, such as Mike Rathje (there’s a fair argument that Rathje shouldn’t be on here, since I can’t imagine he’ll either play again or that the Flyers are missing him - and his TOI/G number from 1973/74 when he last played is clearly overstating his value a touch). They do exclude a few minor-leaguers who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I did the best I could with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too (see DiPietro, Rick)
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery, Randy Jones), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com - man-games lost info more than likely does not exactly match up with the "official" figures released by individual teams
Cap info courtesy of hockeybuzz.com and capgeek.com

The NHL Dictionary - fresh new content!

2010-01-23T19:03:00.003Z

So, here's another ultimately pointless update of declining quality to my existing collection (found HERE).

The concept (for newcomers and the forgetful) - take any word or phrase from the dictionary, add/subtract/change one letter, supply new definition. Et voilà, as José Theodore would say (four or five times a game).

Ballard - wild duck, as in manoeuvre performed by goalies in Florida to avoid stick-swinging team-mates

Carcilogen - dangerous substance or agent that tends to cause invasive and destructive disease

Carnivoros - characterised by destructive or predatory behaviour, exhibited by players having the fortune to face the Rangers' #34 in a fight

Demonsterate - to present by experiments, examples or practical application that a terrible defense does not help the statistics of Swedish rookie goalies

Inaugeration - formal induction of a player in the official bad books of all NHL officials

Make It Steven - media campaign instigated by Jim Balsillie, designed to promote the repatriation of Mr Stamkos to southern Ontario from the hands of evil sun-belt franchise

Payn threshold - the upper limit of John Davidson's tolerance for Andy Murray's coaching

Reddline - to discriminate against by refusing to make significant financial commitment to, as practiced by 29 NHL GMs

Redd line - stationary marker on a hockey rink, not featuring in the offensive and defensive zones

War broom - implement used by NHL Hockey Operations department to sweep controversy under the carpet

Point Efficiency Rankings: Decade's Best

2010-01-03T01:36:00.008Z

Which players made the most of their ice-time in the last decade?

As a pretty insignificant follow-up to the Best of the Decade series of analyses on the excellent Behind The Net, today's endlessly fascinating set of figures looks at the WPEF rankings over the last decade of (regular season) play in the NHL. As per those analyses, I've taken "decade" to mean the all games from the start of the 1999/2000 season through to the end of 2009 (plus a couple of games in 2010...because I was late starting on this).

[For the full, more-complicated-than-it-needs-to-be explanation behind WPEF, follow the LINK to the original blog on this.]

As a simplified explanation, WPEF (Weighted Point Efficiency Factor) is a measure of how well a player scores points taking into account:

Number of minutes that player gets to play
How those minutes and the points the player gets are split between even-strength, powerplay and short-handed situations (PP points being less valuable or well-earned than ES points, which are in turn less valuable than SH points)

You could see WPEF as the number of points per game a player achieved if they had played exactly 20 minutes per game all at even strength.

The numbers
The list below shows the ranking of all players with a WPEF in the decade of 0.65 or above (as a fairly arbitrary cut off point). I've excluded anyone who played fewer than 82 games over the period – it gets a bit distorted for low points, low minutes players.

The usual caveat - it's not perfect or complex by any means, but gives a pretty decent picture of a few players who picked up the tougher points with relatively limited minutes though.

Observations

Although there have been several examples of players having an individual season with a WPEF above 1.00 (the best individual seasons from 1997/98 through 2007/08 are helpfully illustrated HERE), nobody managed to maintain it above 1.00 for the whole decade, though Peter Forsberg came especially close.
As you might expect, the top end of the list is dominated by star offensive players. Where the single-season lists occasionally highlight relatively strong offensive performances from a few role players who don't receive as much ice-time (especially on the PP), sustaining this over several years seems unlikely (perhaps showing the performance to be anomalous in the player's career or the player develops into more of a star offensive player over time).
Noticeable that several of the better offensive talents who have only been in the league two or three years make the list - will they sustain this as they get more playing time?
Vladimir Tsyplakov receives due recognition for being the highest-ranked oddity, though his performance was barely over one season in the decade. Though if Rich Peverley drops off the NHL radar as quickly and unexpectedly as he emerged, he could arguably steal that award.

The Pain Game

2010-01-02T01:46:00.010Z

Injury stats update – December 2009

[Looking for more up-to-date figures? For my latest update, try HERE.]

This is my third look for the 2009/10 regular season - and we're now roughly at the mid-point - at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

(The corresponding analysis as at the end of November 2009 can be viewed HERE.)

Yes, I'm still doing the extra bit ...

As last month, for a different indicator of player "value", I've also illustrated a similar metric based on TOI/G alongside the CHIP numbers.

While acknowledging cap charge is a less than perfect measure of player, with a number of limitations and inconsistencies, I'm not totally sold on TOI/G as being any better overall (Tom Poti is more valuable to the Capitals than Alex Ovechkin. Discuss.) - it does provide a decent comparison and the results do vary from the CHIP rankings somewhat.

A quick summary of the new metric:

TOI/G (through games played on 31 December) replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on)
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (e.g. Pavol Demitra, Mike Van Ryn) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games (Kurt Sauer), I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...

The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team over the first three months of the 2009/10 regular season (through games played on 31 December)
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
Movement in CHIP ranking since 30 November
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...

The Oilers have now forged "ahead" in the standings pretty significantly. While Vancouver's problems have eased somewhat with the return of Daniel Sedin, Edmonton has continued to rack up the cap hit and minutes lost, with the long-term absences of Hemsky and Pisani being added to by Khabibulin's injury throughout December.

Injuries to several big names on the Red Wings roster see them take over second place. I hear Chris Chelios is still available...

Again, inflated AMIP numbers relative to the CHIP ranking can largely be attributed to where starting goalies have been out for the whole year (or a significant period). And I can confirm that calling Lehtonen and DiPietro "starting" goalies did indeed win the 2009 Nobel Prize for Use of an Oxymoron.

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

Markov's return should see his lead of the CHIP race end soon (provided he doesn't get a bad back from bending over to pat the heads of his team-mates after every goal). Again, goalies dominate more on the CMIP basis.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures include (and are arguably distorted by) some players on long-term IR, such as Mike Rathje (there’s a fair argument that Rathje shouldn’t be on here, since I can’t imagine he’ll either play again or that the Flyers are missing him - and his TOI/G number from 1973/74 when he last played is clearly overstating his value a touch). They do exclude a few minor-leaguers who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I did the best I could with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery, Randy Jones), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com
Cap info courtesy of hockeybuzz.com and capgeek.com

Red Wings - Rangers: Disappointment Pending

2009-12-07T23:43:00.003Z

Yes, another in-game blog for no good reason

This week’s subject: Detroit Red Wings @ New York Rangers in the latest instalment of this highly-competitive (the Rangers roughly 1-for-the-last-145) Original Six match-up.

Pre-game

Thanks to unresolved televisual hardware issues chez LW, tonight’s clash is to be watched via (legit) online stream…As is customary, it turns out I’m getting the non-Rangers broadcast (grr), so I’m faced with FSN Detroit’s Ken Daniels and Mickey Redmond

A handful of 3rd/4th liners are highlighted in the preview…As if the Rangers would ever let a few no-name grinders dominate the game…The Wings are apparently 10-1 against the Rangers since 1999, so much better than I thought…Damned if I can remember anything about that “1” though

1st Period

Goaltending match-up: Jimmy Howard vs Henrik Lundqvist…Howard’s idol growing up was apparently Mike Richter – a fine choice…Coincidentally, Lundqvist’s bedroom as a child was covered with posters of Tim Cheveldae…Due to the Titanic NBA clash between the Nets (1-18) and Knicks (5-15) at MSG earlier in the day, bad ice is expected at MSG for possibly the first time in history

Quiet start…Abdelkader takes a roughing penalty six minutes in…A caption shows that we will be watching the best home PP against the worst road PK (the Wings somehow running at less than 70% away from home)…Of course, the penalty is killed off easily, the 2008/09 Rangers PP again appears to be gracing the ice tonight

A huge scramble in Lundqvist’s crease somehow ends up with the puck squirting right across the goal-line, avoiding several waiting sticks and skates…Few decent shots are reaching either goalie though…The Datsyuk/Zetterberg line keeps the puck in the Rangers’ end for what seems like a shift of around 8-9 minutes at even strength…The shift ends with a hooking call against popular ex-Wing, Sean Avery

Redmond wonders if any Swedish is being spoken between Tomas Holmström and Lundqvist as they are inches away from each other during the PP…Hmm, possibly…

“Hej, Henke. Tycker du om Basshunter?”

“Nej, Homer. Jag hatar honom. Men Roxette är jättebra. Jag kan inte se pucken!”

Lundqvist stands firm against several chances, despite now playing so deep in his goal, he is positioned behind the net-cam…The penalty is killed off

GOAL 1-0 Rangers (15:56)…Behemoth Brian Boyle tips in a centering pass from Chris Higgins…Against type, a strong drive to the net from Boyle gets rewarded as Abdelkader can’t get position on him

1st Intermission

Studio analyst Larry Murphy blames Ericsson for poor coverage and a lack of communication for the goal…Try a different network before blaming your phone, Larry…More references to the bad ice, just in case the 19 minutes of game-time spent by Daniels and Redmond in the first period weren’t quite enough to get the point across…Some brief NBA highlights reveal that the Pistons have a Swedish player!…Is there some sort of special tax break for Swedes in Detroit?

2nd Period

As we come back, a clip of an ovation for the watching Brendan Shanahan is shown…Possibly the only NHL executive to ever get that kind of treatment at MSG…At an early face-off, Avery bumps fellow fan-favourite Todd Bertuzzi a couple of times, saying little but flashing his familiar black gumshield grin…Maybe Sean should pick on somebody who is far more likely to take an undisciplined penalty than the notoriously placid Bertuzzi

Ericsson hooks a streaking Ryan Callahan from behind on a clean breakaway – penalty shot given…Callahan makes a pretty good move on the penalty shot, but Howard extends his left pad just far enough to save at the post…In a rare shift, Enver Lisin gets three shots off, but this merely shows his usual lack of finish…Apparently it is soon the 60th birthday of the Zamboni…of course, rinks were resurfaced in the 1940s by Chris Chelios dragging a metal bar behind him during pre-game warmups

FSN Detroit remind their viewers of the Rangers’ glorious recent history by showing a flashback to the 1994 Cup win…Still no doubt lagging behind the 20 times this will have been shown already tonight on the home MSG coverage (“The MSG Network: Where it’s 1994 every year!”)…Lundqvist makes a big stop on Zetterberg, but still a very quiet game overall, with a lot of offsides…Marc Staal takes a roughing penalty on Holmström (no prizes for guessing the location of the offence)

GOAL 1-1 (11:59)…A pretty routine kill, but four seconds after the penalty expires, Datsyuk squeezes a rebound through Lundqvist

Mike Del Zotto springs Higgins on another clean break, but Howard comes up with a big save…Still few great chances at either end as the period winds down…Marián Gáborík, in particular, has not been able to show much so far

2nd Intermission

Murphy suggests that Ericsson is lacking in confidence at the moment…Certainly, nobody would be stopping him in the street to ask for an autograph on the evidence of the first two periods…We are treated to a brief Shanahan interview…He says he starts his new job in the morning – no word on how long he has to fetch coffee for Gary Bettman and Bill Daly before progressing onto bigger things

3rd Period

Back-to-back stops early in the period by Lundqvist on Zetterberg and Datsyuk…Brad Stuart crushes Artem Anisimov with a clean hit at the blue line…As much as I think the blame on head shots that typically goes to the victim is way overblown, Anisimov really has to keep his head up in those situations…Zetterberg sticks his knee out a bit and catches Avery…sold a little bit by Avery, but clearly a penalty (it must be if the refs call something in Avery’s favour), despite the odd claims from Daniels and Redmond that it was a hip-check

During the PP, Aleš Kotalík misses a wide open goal on a broken play…Again, no success on the PP, but soon after, Bertuzzi comes through with the expected undisciplined penalty, clipping MDZ in the face with his stick…Another PP, another missed open goal – this time, Avery failing to finish by the crease following a rare passing play by the weak second unit

After a whole 28 seconds at even strength, the Wings go short again, Kris Draper called for tripping…by now, Redmond is railing against the inconsistency of the calls…On the bright side, the WIngs’ road PK is now running above the 70% mark…It increases further after another 2008 PP retrospective from the Rangers

Redmond remarks that the players “are playing like they have brooms in their hands”…I think it’s another reference to the effects of the bad ice, but he won’t know that the Rangers forwards always look like that…Avery drives hard to the net from the left-wing, leading to some confusion over where the puck ended up, as Avery claims a goal…A good time to go to commercials then…As we come back, the replay shows that the puck just bounced into the side netting from the outside

GOAL 2-1 Red Wings (17:57)…A pretty sickening blow as Cleary flings one into Lundqvist’s pads from a horrid angle, the puck somehow pinballing between his feet into the goal…We’ve seen far too many of these from Lundqvist this year – so this is what it’s like to be let down by your goalie…The play was started in the Wings’ end by a typically smooth defensive play and breakout pass by Nick Lidström

The Rangers soon empty the net, but Michal Rozsival is quickly forced into taking an interference penalty to prevent a breakaway and likely ENG for the Wings…Chances over?

GOAL 3-1 Red Wings (19:53)…Draper pots an empty netter on the PP, an assist going to the linesman blocking a Ranger pass up the boards for Draper to pounce on

Summary

A dull game in all…not a whole lot going on for long stretches

Another reasonable effort from the Rangers, much improved from the mess of the games a week or two ago, but they remain a team without an identity…They needed to tighten up and have (and now look much more like Tom Renney’s outfit than Team Torts), but pretty much nobody is scoring and they are getting killed by soft goals

The Wings finally win a game that I watch at the fourth attempt this year…Still not hugely impressive, aside from the defensive job they did on Gáborík and the performance of Howard, who is looking like an NHL goalie now (or at least filling the Ty Conklin role until Chris Osgood gets past this season’s regular season troubles)…Too many turnovers and a game that would have been lost to any number of teams with some better scorers

The Pain Game

2009-12-02T23:11:00.012Z

Injury stats update – November 2009

[Looking for more up-to-date figures? For my latest update, try HERE.]

This is my second look for the 2009/10 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

(The corresponding analysis as at the end of October 2009 can be viewed HERE.)

Exciting new developments...

Following up on one or two suggestions that time on ice per game could be a better (or at least a different) indicator of player "value", I've made an attempt at illustrating a similar metric based on TOI/G alongside the CHIP numbers.

While acknowledging cap charge is a less than perfect measure of player, with a number of limitations and inconsistencies, I'm not totally sold on TOI/G as being any better overall (Tom Poti is more valuable to the Capitals than Alex Ovechkin. Discuss.) - it does provide a decent comparison and the results do vary from the CHIP rankings somewhat.

A quick summary of the new metric:

TOI/G (through games played on 30 November) replaces cap charge as the measure of value in the calculation
For goalies, TOI/G has been worked out as Total Minutes Played / Games Dressed For - i.e. a goalie playing every minute of 75% of the games, zero in the rest, would end up with a TOI/G of 45 minutes (or close to it, once you factor in OT and so on)
This arguably overstates the worth of starting goalies somewhat, but it's simple and you could equally argue that a workhorse goalie is the hardest position to replace, so it's fair for them to have a much higher TOI/G figure
Where a player hasn't played all year (e.g. Pavol Demitra, Mike Van Ryn) or where a player fairly clearly has a reduced TOI/G figure due to getting injured in their only game or one of very few games (Andrei Markov, Kurt Sauer), I've used TOI/G from last season (or further back if necessary)
For each player, multiply games missed by TOI/G to get (for a more palatable name) Cumulative Minutes of Injured Player (CMIP)
Take the aggregate of CMIP for the team and divide by games played by the team to arrive at AMIP (Average Minutes of Injured Players) - it feels more understandable expressing this metric as an average per game (whereas CHIP is a running total)

The figures...

The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team over the first two months of the 2009/10 regular season (through games played on 30 November)
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)
Movement in CHIP ranking since 31 October
AMIP for each team over the same period (e.g. an AMIP of 40:00 could be seen as the team missing two 20-minute per game players for every game this season)

10 second analysis...

Something in the water in Canada this year? The Flames are seemingly immune from the troubles afflicting their western Canadian brethren - being first in line at the clinic does have some advantages, it seems.

As bad as the Oilers and Canucks have had it, both teams are still behind the pace of the worst hit teams from last year - the Blues ended up with a CHIP figure for the year in excess of $16m. While the CHIP figures are pretty close for the two teams (the Canucks are actually marginally ahead on a per-game basis), the AMIP figures show a much bigger "win" for the Oilers. This appears to be largely due to a greater number of minute-munching defensemen getting hurt compared to the Canucks, whose biggest CHIP contributions come from Demitra and Daniel Sedin, who play less than top-four D-men.

Two teams that stand out as having inflated AMIP numbers relative to the CHIP ranking are the Thrashers and Islanders. Both of these teams have had starting goalies out for the whole year - though trying to find a season where Lehtonen and DiPietro have some sort of consistent appearance history to base a reliable TOI/G on is a task in itself...

Conversely, the Rangers fall down the rankings on the AMIP basis - perhaps suggesting some of their players have grossly inflated cap numbers. Who knew?

The Panthers will surely rise up both tables quickly if Keith "Slasher" Ballard can't remedy his directional anger issues.

The next lists are the top 30 individual CHIP and CMIP contributions:

Markov continues to lead the CHIP race but the brotherhood of injury-prone goalies leaps ahead of him on the CMIP basis.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures include (and are arguably distorted by) some players on long-term IR, such as Mike Rathje (there’s a fair argument that Rathje shouldn’t be on here, since I can’t imagine he’ll either play again or that the Flyers are missing him - and his TOI/G number from 1973/74 when he last played is clearly overstating his value a touch). They do exclude a few minor-leaguers who are or had been on the NHL club’s IR since pre-season
There are undoubtedly a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I did the best I could with the information out there. Some corrections are picked up month-to-month too
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery, Randy Jones), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP/CMIP numbers by each player on the web HERE
Injury/games/TOI info courtesy of tsn.ca and nhl.com
Cap info courtesy of hockeybuzz.com and capgeek.com

Six hours on Sunday

2009-11-08T20:23:00.005Z

Another in-game blog

In what was possibly just a mechanism to ensure I stayed awake long enough to watch the game I wanted to watch, I made the rash decision to add to my highly irregular series of posted-after-the-fact in-game blogs.

On the slate: CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada doubleheader from last night – or really, Sunday morning for me. (Two games, from midnight to 6am? Not done it for a while, so why not?)

First up, Detroit Red Wings @ Toronto Maple Leafs in the Hockey Hall of Fame game, followed by New York Rangers @ Calgary Flames in the “Sean Avery Returns To Where He Said Bad Things” game.

Pre-game

As is common, the start of my broadcast is delayed by some thrilling college football action…Fortunately, the final 3 1/2 minutes of the game is actually completed within 10 minutes of real time, which is at least 20 minutes fewer than normal

Eventually we join the start of the ceremony at the ACC honouring the impending Hall of Fame inductees…A series of now-hobbling veterans slowly take to the ice…And after the Red Wings have finished skating on, we are introduced to the Hall of Famers in attendance tonight [cheap gag #1 out of the way]…this year’s inductees are then brought out: Brett Hull, Lou Lamoriello (I think the crowd were shouting “Lou”, but hard to tell), Brian Leetch (*bows down*), Luc Robitaille and Steve Yzerman (clearly the most popular with the home crowd)…All the ex-players look like they could still hit the ice, except for Hull, whose appearance suggests he’s glad to be free from the dietary restrictions of his playing days

The game is to be called by Jim Hughson and Craig Simpson in the booth, with shy, retiring Glenn Healy in the Pierre McGuire Memorial Shouting Zone between the benches

1st Period

Chris Osgood and Jonas “The Monster” Gustavsson between the pipes…A caption reveals the Leafs to have “White Finger” on defense – a nasty condition, that might explain some of the bad giveaways we see from the home team

A couple of early Leaf chances – Jason Blake, in a rare moment of non-goalie-running, hits the post from a bad angle with the net open…The Wings begin to exert some control with a few strong shifts towards the 10-minute mark, but…

GOAL 1-0 Leafs (10:34)…Wayne (not Keith) Primeau beats Osgood from the off-wing after Kris Draper tripped over himself at the blueline…Primeau’s first goal in 45 games…First point of the year for Colton (definitely not Bobby) Orr…Sometimes you just have to accept it when superstar players beat you on a goal…Also the first time the Leafs have scored first in a game since around 1983

A decent pace and no penalties through 15 minutes…Healy mentions that the Swedish Olympic orientation camp consisted of a trip to a U2 gig rather than the days of on-ice stuff the Canadians put themselves through – no Basshunter?! [Obligatory Basshunter reference out of the way]…Todd Bertuzzi takes a holding penalty – I’m guessing that isn’t his first in 45 games…Reference is made to Tomáš Kaberle’s impressive points haul this year – he must be making some genius look good for picking him up in the 15th and 16th rounds of his fantasy drafts

GOAL 2-0 (19:34)…Phil Kessel nets his first as a Leaf, tapping home from 1” out after Blake pokes a shot through Osgood’s legs…Kessel’s deadly wristshot on display there

1st Intermission

A more sombre Coach’s Corner than usual…Don Cherry presents his 5-point plan to reduce injuries from hitting then leads into an extended tribute to fallen Canadian troops (being the day before Remembrance Sunday)…Link HERE

2nd Period

The Leafs return to an ear-splitting roar from the heaving throng in platinum seats (er, perhaps)…A dodgy holding the stick call on Cherry’s favourite Ukrainian, Alexei Ponkahonksy…The Leafs PK is running at 70.7%! And it’s “getting better”, according to Hughson…I’d hope so…A good job Brian Burke’s teams always play so disciplined then, eh?…It’s killed off, but the Leafs right away get called for too many men on the ice

GOAL 3-0 (5:21)…As the penalty expires, Jeff Finger roofs one on a 3-on-2 rush…Another first goal of the year – Messrs Schenn, Wallin, Komisarek and Orr smell blood

Jason Williams goes down in ugly fashion at the end boards…Replays show his leg getting mangled right under him…He’s helped off the ice – looks very nasty…The Monster is playing well, but he’s not been under huge pressure…A clip is shown of Brad May coaching his 13-year-old son on his shot – May Jr might have to be in the line-up if Wings keep falling at the same rate…Bertuzzi has a son called Tag?!

Interference call on Draper…Nothing doing on the Leafs PP…Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk are now taking regular shifts together…Hughson and Simpson refrain from shouting “Two-Headed Monster!” every five seconds like those idiots Steigerwald and Errey do whenever Crosby and Malkin play together [obligatory shot at Penguins out of the way]…High-stick call on Mikhail Grabovski within the last two minutes…Williams has apparently been taken for X-rays and won’t return (no surprise there)

2nd Intermission

Mike Milbury due up! Joy!…He’s with David Shoalts and Pierre LeBrun with Ron MacLean on popular rumour mill, The Hotstove…Entertainment is provided by LeBrun’s demonstration of a prototype helmet-within-a-helmet (think a 70s, Butch Goring-style lid underneath a present-day model)…noted progressive Milbury simply laughs at it and is entirely unsympathetic…Milbury’s contribution to the regular headshot debate also largely boils down to: “Why are we talking about this again? It’s done. It’s not an issue.”

3rd Period

Two big stops by Monstret as the PP continues…Luke Schenn takes a penalty for interfering with Tomas Holmström (shockingly, in front of the Leafs goal), giving a brief 5-on-3 PP to the Wings…Another huge save on Zetterberg on the PK – the natives become restless and clamour for Vesa Toskala

GOAL 3-1 (5:59)…Dan Cleary scores his 100th career goal after being sprung clear by a nice saucer pass from Brian Rafalski…Comeback on?

GOAL 4-1 (9:22)…No comeback then…After a too many men call on the Wings, John Mitchell tips in a Kessel wrister on the PP, right after Kessel is stoned by Osgood after a perfect set-up from the Wings’ Darren Helm

No Mike Komisarek on the Leafs bench, according to Simpson, speculating that he was injured blocking a shot…Niklas Hagman is taken down while driving hard to the net – penalty on Brett Lebda

GOAL 5-1 (12:44)…Ponkahonsky shovels a backhand through Osgood’s five-hole…Lebda (now out of the box) not impressing Healy tonight

Mitchell takes a slashing penalty…not important enough for a replay to be shown, but Mitchell’s reaction in the box suggests he is not effin’ pleased with the call…Again, the penalty is killed off by the All-World Leafs PK unit…Update on Komisarek: a clip of a missed hip-check from the second period is shown – Healy surmises that his hip or tailbone (?) is hurt…The game drifts to its conclusion…FINAL SCORE 5-1 LEAFS

Summary

The Leafs actually looked like an NHL team – waaaay better than the team I saw implode in New York a few weeks ago…Conversely, the Wings are still struggling at both ends of the ice…The Monster was very good and will get the attention, but he didn’t have to steal the game

Post/pre-game

Before the real game of the night, there’s just enough time for Cherry to (a) state that New Jersey’s 100% road record is due to them having hardly any European players (yawn); (b) call Leafs fans that were booing a couple of weeks ago “jerks”; and (c) give grudging credit for the Leafs' change in fortunes to “Gufterson”

Disappointingly quiet on the Avery front so far…Usually CBC spend at least 45 minutes bemoaning his existence…A confirmed broken leg for Jason Williams…In other injury news, Cam Ward is said to be in hospital after taking a skate to the groin…Will there be any players left in the league by April? Maybe only cockroaches will survive…Avery versus Steve Ott for the Stanley Cup then?

The Rangers-Flames “tilt” (© Joe Beninati) is to be called by Mark Lee and legendary former Rangers starter-cum-backup-cum-outcast, Kevin Weekes

1st Period

Steve Valiquette is in again for the Rangers, with Henrik Lundqvist resting a (hopefully) minor injury…Miikka Kiprusoff in nets as usual for the Flames

Second shift of the game and Captain Clutch (to the hockey world at large) / Captain Invisible (to Rangers fans), Chris Drury is suddenly face-down on the ice…The replay shows that he was blindsided away from the play by a pretty cheap looking hit by Curtis Glencross…Drury gets up looking very woozy…New-found goal-machine, Chris Higgins is stoned by Kiprusoff

GOAL 1-0 Flames (3:56)…An Adam Pardy point shot is deflected by Daymond Langkow’s leg past a screened Valiquette…Game over already then, so I’m off to bed

OK, I’ll persevere…A Glen Sather sighting!…Looking confused? Check. Eating a cigar? Check. Yep, it’s definitely him…Pantomime villain Avery is predictably booed as he gets a touch of the puck…Weekes says that he looks tentative and (because?) he has changed to using white tape on his stick blade…The Rangers are actually carrying much of the play, against expectations – I’m still going for a 5-1 loss at this point though

GOAL 1-1 (17:16)…Another screened point shot finds its way into the net, this time from Dan Girardi…Good job I scrapped my planned earlier comment about how Girardi struggles to get his shots past shot-blocking forwards

An amusing moment, as Lee innocently says to Weekes (who lost his starting and backup jobs with the Rangers to the current incumbents): “Valiquette is the perfect backup for Lundqvist, isn’t he?”…The action resumes before Weekes has a chance to respond, sadly

1st Intermission

In an interview, Langkow says: “We were sloppy in our own end.”…a fine choice of words in the circumstances…More Milbury! He’s joined by Kelly Hrudey, clearly only working the West game, despite being in the studio in Toronto…Hrudey gives props to Prospal – liking Vinny’s surprisingly effective defensive play…The guys take another look at the Glencross/Drury incident…Hrudey calls it “dirty” before squirming out of it somewhat as MacLean and Milbury unsurprisingly defend it over subsequent viewings…Milbury, of course, calls it an “innocent” play

2nd Period

No return for Drury, as reporter Scott Oake notes he has had at least three concussions in the last five years…Lee gets excited by a clip of an almost-hit by Phaneuf on Avery in the first period…Er, nothing there at all, Mark

Enver Lisin breaks René Bourque’s stick with a slash and sits for it…On the PP, Brandon Dubinsky blocks a hard shot with his hand/wrist – once he can get off, he goes straight to the room…Great…Wade Redden takes a typically lazy interference penalty, putting the Rangers down two men for the 1,394th time this season…Ryan Callahan immediately breaks his stick on the 5-on-3, but the Rangers survive, in part due to a great shot-block by Girardi

The Flames’ David Moss picks up a weak interference call (like I care)…Big-shooting Aleš Kotalik crashes one off the crossbar…No PPG on this occasion for the Rangers – almost surprising when they don’t score these days, which is faintly unnerving…Robyn Regehr heads to the room after taking a shot to the foot – Don King starts making arrangements with the agents for Avery and Ott…Craig Conroy gets cut by a stray stick, but the refs miss it and play continues until Bourque takes a cross-checking penalty around 30 seconds later…Wait, now they call the high-stick too? Can the linesmen call that? (Apparently so, but it came across like they only called it after Conroy complained enough and/or they’d seen it on replay.)

GOAL 2-1 Flames (16:47)…Jarome Iginla wrists a PPG past Valiquette from a nice centering feed from ex-Ranger midget, Nigel Dawes

Kiprusoff makes a big stop on Lisin after a bad giveaway by Phaneuf in his own zone, then two more quickly on Higgins…Langkow gets called for slashing in the last two minutes…Yet more stops by Kipper during the PP…Weekes shows that Valiquette took a big snow-shower in the face right before Iginla scored

2nd Intermission

Just a brief highlights round-up, Milbury’s participation mercifully ending, with ex-Ranger midget P.J. Stock putting a shift in from his CBC cupboard

3rd Period

Confirmation that Dubinsky is not returning…I’ll be surprised if his hand isn’t broken…Brian Boyle as a #2 center? Great…Another interference call on Moss after Langkow’s return…Again, several good chances for the Rangers on the PP, but more key saves by Kiprusoff…A 200ft bouncer gives Valiquette some trouble, but hardly the near-miss that Lee seemed to see in his excitement

A feisty shift at last from Avery…He ends up taking a fairly decent hit from Phaneuf, but again not the massive collision that Lee described (which he acknowledges after a second look)…Olli Jokinen hits the post as the puck bounces back to him after a botched 3-on-1 break…A rare attack by the Flames at this point…Kotalik fails to convert a 2-on-1 rush with Higgins as Moss backchecks strongly (and avoids taking an interference penalty this time)…Girardi is “putting on a clinic” according to Weekes…The Flames immediately check into Girardi’s clinic to get priority vaccination against cancer and HIV

GOAL 3-1 (16:35)…A Marc Staal giveaway leads to another 3-on-1 the other way and an exchange of passes results in Bourque putting the game away…Dawes racks up his third assist of the night (24 assists in 121 games as a Ranger…grrr)

Valiquette is pulled with 2:30 left in the game…one last big save from Avery by Kiprusoff, but no major scares for the Flames…FINAL SCORE 3-1 FLAMES

Summary

A surprisingly strong effort from the Rangers in the circumstances…Just couldn’t get anything by Kiprusoff…If Drury (despite his ongoing invisibility) and Dubinsky (despite his ongoing inconsistency) are gone for any length of time – and it looks like they will be – big problems down the middle for the Rangers…Not that impressed by Calgary (unlike Lee and Weekes), but a good thing to win when not doing much…They’ve clearly been (re)Sutter-fied a great deal since last year

Ow, that really hurts! - an addendum

2009-11-07T16:23:00.002Z

Further to the October update on CHIP numbers (HERE), I figured it wouldn’t be that difficult to produce some sort of basic analysis on where all these NHLers have been getting hurt. Er, obviously meaning what part of the body, not the location of the game in which the injury occurred (of course, the latter would merely confirm that the vast majority occurred in Philadelphia…)

The results (again covering games played through 31 October) are in the table below. I’ve just used the descriptions found in the player profiles on tsn.ca, so the figures will encompass all the inaccuracies and vagueness within them. It should give a broad indication, if nothing else, though.

I’m no doctor, so I’m not really sure what conclusions can be drawn from this, other than:

Confirming the general evasiveness of NHL teams when it comes to detailed injury disclosure
Suggesting groin strains are at least as contagious in NHL dressing rooms as H1N1 or outrageous facial hair

Ow, that really hurts!

2009-11-02T00:52:00.010Z

Injury stats update – October 2009

[Looking for more up-to-date figures? For my latest update, try HERE.]

This is my first look for the 2009/10 regular season at which teams have been hit hardest by injuries by trying to place a value on the games missed by players due to injury/illness.

(My most recent piece on this, for the end of the 2008/09 regular season, can be viewed HERE.)

The table below shows:

Total CHIP for each team over the first month of the 2009/10 regular season (through games played on 31 October)
The player who has contributed most to the team's CHIP figure
The number of players with a CHIP contribution of over $250,000 (think of it as being equivalent to a $1m player missing 20 games or a $4m player missing five games)

Some familiar players feature (Hello, Messrs DiPietro, Modin and Gaborik!), but at this stage, the teams worst hit aren’t too similar to those that ended up at the top of the table last year.

Interesting to note, however, that the four healthiest teams from 2008/09 (Rangers, Coyotes, Kings and Ducks) are again towards the right end of the table so far in 2009/10. WIll this last, or will certain factors – Gaborik, agoraphobia, tripping over Ryan Smyth’s hair and a robust style of play, respectively – hinder these teams’ efforts to remain healthy all year?

The second list (as usual) is the top 30 individual CHIP contributions:

Markov is gone for a while, so expect him to lead this race for some time. Elias and Kessel (among others) are said to be on their way back. DiPietro? I reckon the Islanders might yet acquire three or four more goalies this year, just to make sure.

Notes/Disclaimers

Figures include (and are arguably distorted by) some players on long-term IR, such as Mike Rathje (there’s a fair argument that Rathje shouldn’t be on here, since I can’t imagine he’ll either play again or that the Flyers are missing him). They do exclude a few minor-leaguers who seem to be on the NHL club’s IR
There's probably a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies in there - I did the best I could with the information out there
The cap figure doesn't really correlate very well to the "worth" of a player in some cases, e.g. where rookie bonuses are included this year, where players are seeing out an old (underpaid or rookie) contract or where players are horrendously overpaid
Also, for any player who was acquired on re-entry waivers (e.g. Sean Avery, Randy Jones), the cap hit will only reflect that for their current team, i.e. 50% of the player’s full cap hit (shared between his current and old teams)
I've once again stuck a full team-by-team listing of games missed and CHIP numbers by each player on the web HERE - knock yourself out...
Injury/games info courtesy of tsn.ca
Cap info courtesy of hockeybuzz.com and capgeek.com

NHL Premiere 2009 in Stockholm – Day Two

2009-10-04T17:00:00.000+01:00

St. Louis Blues 5-3 Detroit Red Wings, 3 October 2009

Friday night’s season opener saw the Blues withstand some early dominance by the Wings to overturn a two-goal deficit in the second period with some opportunistic finishing, then hold on with some comfort in a more defensive third period. Game two on Saturday featured…well, pretty much the same thing in the end, strangely enough.

As before (see HERE), the following is merely a fairly unfocused stream of observations and highlights plus a fairly unfocused stream of amateur photographs. (I did manage to venture down to the glass – or near to it, at least – for warm-ups this time. I happened to be at the Wings’ end, hence the uneven spread of shots. No anti-Blues bias intended.)

Expert planner that I am, meal time is once again spent in the Arena. A 77kr hot dog/drink combination providing far greater VFM than Friday’s caviar and pheasant.

A second Håkan Andersson interview still doesn’t illuminate me any. Still seems like a decent bloke though.

Culture vulture that I am (ahem), I should note that pre-game entertainment came courtesy of Swedish 80s rock throwbacks Bullet, an example of whose work can be found HERE. (Friday saw the not dissimilar Backyard Babies take the stage.) The crowd again are left mystified and disappointed by the absence of native Eurodance leviathan, Basshunter.

An brief appearance by Mats Sundin in one corner of the rink, for a TV interview, starts a mild commotion in the crowd. A subsequent Darren Pang sighting in the same place does not.

The newly-decisive Sundin later carries out the ceremonial puck drop, receiving a huge standing ovation from the crowd, who are clearly expressing relief that the next three months will be free of “Where will Mats play?” speculation.

Battle of the backups tonight, as Ty Conklin and Jimmy Howard start.

The Wings almost overwhelm the Blues in the first few minutes, taking a 2-0 lead and having another negated by a high-stick call. Conklin is quickly getting reacquainted with Tomas Holmström’s (and Dan Cleary’s) rear end.

A much more physical game than Friday’s – Backes, Tkachuk and Stuart prominent playing the body.

A big PP goal late in the first by Tkachuk keeps the Blues in the game.

The game turns on two quick goals in the second period for the Blues – both clear scoring chances, but as the cliché goes, both efforts Howard “would like to have back”.

A rare cheer for a Blues player when Patrik Berglund’s goal is announced.

Again, the Blues aren’t put under huge pressure in the third period, this time adding an insurance goal (again on the PP – the Wings’ PK still looks a weakness).

As one final chance passes, Johan Franzén demolishes his stick against Conklin’s goal. The typical impassive Swede.

NHL Premiere 2009 in Stockholm – Day One

2009-10-03T16:40:00.008+01:00

Detroit Red Wings 3 – 4 St. Louis Blues, 2 October 2009

I’m both incapable and too lazy to (a) do some sort of informative travelogue thing illustrating the delights of Stockholm, or (b) provide an insightful write-up of the game itself, so…

The following is merely a fairly unfocused stream of observations and highlights from my attendance at Friday night’s game at Globen Arena in Stockholm, plus a fairly unfocused stream of amateur photographs. (Yes, I wasn’t sat that close. I will see if I can get closer to warmups for game two.)

It was probably a mistake to take my chances by waiting to eat once I was inside the Arena. A ropey burger, a huge vat of crisps (potato chips, for the hard of English-speaking out there) and a Coke is standard Arena fare. Not really worth 153kr though – I might rethink my strategy on Saturday…

The 100kr programme is nice enough, but I’m a few decades away from being able to understand most of it. Who could argue against it saying Roman Polák “är stark som en oxe” though?

Similarly, I’m not sure I followed much of the pre-game interview with Red Wings über-Euroscout Håkan Andersson, but he seemed like a decent bloke.

Interviews throughout the evening were conducted by a coach-turned-TV host (apparently) Niklas Wikegård, who couldn’t resist poking fun at the American announcer’s pronunciation of his name (Why-ker-guard rather than Vee-ker-gord).

There’s some sort of huge luxury box/restaurant area on my left in the Arena, with a curtain that can be pulled across to cover it. Not in use tonight, but sure to be used when New Jersey and Columbus play here next year.

Hearts in mouths for Blues fans as injury-on-skates Carlo Colaiacovo performs a slow-motion stumble into a team-mate and down to the ice during warmups. He turns out to be OK though.

Very pro-Wing crowd (a lot more Wings jerseys in evidence around the city before the game too). Lidström and Zetterberg win the popularity contest by a long way.

On the Wings’ first goal, referee Bill McCreary sets a perfect pick (maybe throwing in a slight hold too) on the ox-like Polák, allowing Kris Draper to burst to the net untouched.

The Wings’ second goal is a short-handed breakaway for Kirk Maltby, nicely finished. These kids Draper and Maltby have some good speed. They could stick in this league.

Ville Leino should score some goals this year if his wrist shot is that good.

Chris Mason keeps the Blues in the game in the first period then completely robs Johan Franzén in the third to preserve the lead.

Markus Näslund is among the celebrities shown in the crowd at one point – he strangely looks bored out of his mind, chewing gum. An expression no doubt honed while playing on the Rangers’ powerplay last year.

Burning Questions - Western Conference

2009-09-19T01:05:00.002+01:00

Following from my recent Eastern Conference run-down (HERE), yet more smouldering queries, this time (shockingly) covering the Western Conference:

Anaheim Ducks

Which writer will first produce an article featuring the Ducks and Bob Murray without using the phrase "retooling on the fly"?

Calgary Flames

Will controversy ensue if/when Darryl Sutter's wife beats out Curtis McElhinney for the backup goalie position?

Chicago Blackhawks

If the Hawks reach the Stanley Cup Final, are they allowed to trade Marian Hossa to their opponents before it starts?

Colorado Avalanche

How many months will pass until Greg Sherman and Joe Sacco can get into Pepsi Center without having to convince the security staff that they really do work there?

Columbus Blue Jackets

Is it some strange Canadian thing that makes all announcers say Monsieur Vermette's first name as "Ann-twon" rather than "Onn-twan"?

Dallas Stars

How long until Sean Avery isn't the sole reason for every game the team loses?

Detroit Red Wings

Has Ken Holland already scouted the foetuses that will be the future team-mates of Zetterberg and Franzén when they hit the final year of their new deals?

Edmonton Oilers

Will the Renney/Quinn good cop/bad cop routine eventually lead their players to break down and confess that none of them want to play in Edmonton either?

Los Angeles Kings

Can Quick and Brown lead the Kings out of their dire era?

Minnesota Wild

Will Don Cherry realise before either retires than Owen Nolan isn't called "Olin Nolan"?

Nashville Predators

Is Alexander Radulov determined to stay in Ufa until he becomes an UFA?

Phoenix Coyotes

Can Jim Balsillie fill the chasm felt by so many Canadian fans by bringing a third non-playoff team to Ontario?

San Jose Sharks

Did Doug Wilson put an appropriate degree of fear into his players by suggesting that Dany Heatley would "give the whole team a lift"?

St. Louis Blues

With a T.J., a B.J. and a D.J. on the depth chart, is a trade for Umberger in the works, or will the Blues entice Axelsson or Stock back to the NHL?

Vancouver Canucks

Will an irreparable hole be torn in the space-time continuum if the Sedins ever have career scoring totals more than two points apart at any time?

Burning Questions - Eastern Conference

2009-09-17T01:19:00.004+01:00

So, it seems like the done thing is for your average NHL writer/columnist to do some sort of "Burning Questions for the 30 NHL Teams" feature (example HERE).

These things rarely ask the questions that I would be asking, were I to be to sitting at home posing rhetorical NHL questions to myself. So, here goes for the Eastern Conference (the West will follow if I feel like it):

Atlanta Thrashers

When will somebody notice that Don Waddell still has a job?

Boston Bruins

Will the Bruins miss Zdeno Chara while he recovers from injuries sustained when hitting his head on the scoreboard during an off-season tour of the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium?

Buffalo Sabres

Is this the year Tim Connolly reaches the landmark of 20 career NHL games?

Carolina Hurricanes

Will Jim Rutherford ever move on?

Florida Panthers

Will somebody actually paying to attend a Panthers game be the first sign of a turnaround in the global economy?

Montreal Canadiens

Will the annual team bonding trip to Disney World be ruined when half the players are not allowed to go on the rides?

New Jersey Devils

Will Newark's infrastructure cope with the impending stampede of hockey fans desperate to catch a glimpse of the second coming of Lemaire's Devils?

New York Islanders

Is Marty Biron the backup goalie or the backup GM?

New York Rangers

What will snap first: Avery's leash, Gaborik's groin or Tortorella's patience?

Ottawa Senators

Have they cleared enough cap space to take Wade Redden back yet?

Philadelphia Flyers

As both a cheap, stop-gap goalie and a violent nut-job, is Ray Emery the ultimate Flyer?

Pittsburgh Penguins

Has Sid still living in Mario's house yet crossed the line that separates "slightly creepy" from "moderately disturbing"?

Tampa Bay Lightning

Can the signing of 23 new defensemen possibly come close to replacing the mammoth contribution of Marek Malik?

Toronto Maple Leafs

Will Brian Burke and Ron Wilson ever manage to overcome their chronic shyness in front of the media?

Washington Capitals

What will be greater in number: Alex Ovechkin goals or Semyon Varlamov name changes?