Monday, March 31, 2008

Opening Day!

...is off to a flying start! Except for the fact that Boston already started their season in Japan (an idea I really don't like) and the Yankees-Jays were rained out. To me, Opening Day, while less exciting than the first game of the NHL season (which should be mid-September, it's cold enough by then), is really the first day of spring. One day signals the shift from basements, pubs, wings and beer to barbeques, lawn chairs, wings and beer. A substantial change to be sure, and for that reason I like the idea of a unified Opening Day rather than sending one team off to Japan to start a week early. Nothing against growing the game internationally of course but Japan likes baseball more than the Americans, so what's the point?

Bad day for the Oilers yesterday. Nashville squeaks out a point against Detroit (IN Detroit!), Vancouver scores six goals in seven games against Calgary. Wait. Six goals in ONE game against Calgary. I know Flames fans would enjoy taking credit for eliminating Edmonton, but they shouldn't be proud the way they're doing it: by LOSING to everyone the Oilers are trying to catch. Right now (and until tomorrow night's action ends) Edmonton's two points back of Vancouver for 8th, one behind Nashville for 9th. Both teams have a game in hand. So, if Edmonton wins their two remaining games, Vancouver only wins one more while Nashville earns three points or less in their last three, the Oilers make the playoffs. Not great odds, but it's possible and would be more possible if Nashville wasn't playing Columbus, St. Louis, and Chicago every night for the last two weeks. So Game of the Year for Edmonton tomorrow night (v. 8.0) against Calgary, hopefully Colorado can keep playing well and beat Vancouver, St. Louis can pull off a miracle against the Predators and Washington beats Carolina because Ovechkin will make the Eastern playoffs worth watching if the Oilers don't make it. That's a lot to hope for. While I'm at it, I'd like twenty wins from A.J. Burnett and Roy Halladay, Frank Thomas to hit fastballs down the middle of the plate instead of watching them in confusion, Scott Rolen to out-perform Troy Glaus, T.J. Ford traded in the off-season (after improving his value during the rest of the season), and a pony.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Edmonton vs. Minnesota live blog

The Bee Movie Keys To The Game:

Minnesota: Score first, work the cycle, force turnovers.

Edmonton: Avoid, at all cost, scoring the games' first three goals in the first five minutes.

7:51 pm update: DAMMIT.

8:18 pm update: 3-1 lead, after the Wild scored their first (another lucky bounce) they clamped down pretty good. Calgary's not doing their part, yet...

8:41 pm update: 4-1, Brodziak off the Josh Harding giveaway. It's lame to say these things after the fact but as soon as the puck came to Harding, on a missed pass to Stortini up the middle, I had a feeling he was going to give it away. Maybe because he'd given the puck away on an earlier shift. Now 4-2 Wild on a long point shot; Roloson isn't getting many shots and while the ones he's getting aren't easy, he has to make some saves. 1-0 Avs too, get your act together Flamers.

9:11 pm update: 5-2 at the intermission, Cogliano off a beautiful pass from Gagner. 1-0 for Colorado over Calgary; Avs have a .862 winning percentage when leading going into the third period. Odds are against the Oilers gaining ground tonight, especially given their cursed three goal lead, but long odds have favored them lately.

I think it's interesting that, for a lot of the year, Andrew Cogliano was the rookie described as having a Todd Marchant-type ceiling, if a little more scoring touch. Cogliano heard that, said Yeah Right, and started scoring overtime winners like Jack Nicolson scores add-on jokes from Oscar hosts. The player who might fit the Marchant comparison better, to me, is Kyle Brodziak. This guy's a player; beautiful play in traffic to accept a pass then splits the defense for a breakaway. Like Marchant though, he's hit-or-miss on those breakaways and yet seems to get them ALL the time. He kills penalties, scores those tack-on goals that matter so much, blocks shots, forechecks well and doesn't get a lot of attention. He's certainly bigger and more physical than Marchant, but otherwise they're pretty similar players. They're not necessarily the same in style or appearance, but I really think their impact on the game is similar.

10:04 pm update: 5-3 final in Edmonton, 2-0 final in Denver. Stupid Flames. Oilers now three back of Colorado and Vancouver (Canucks have two games in hand) and they're in 9th place. Pretty good night, short of great but winning is always Super Terrific Good!

Friday, March 21, 2008

Sigh...

Yeah, thought so. It's not that Roloson played badly, but it was a game that he would've needed to steal with Luongo at the other end. At this stage in his career, he's just not likely to elevate his game to that kind of level, though very few can. Garon has done that this year, though with him it's a question of whether he can do it for very long. They lost because their powerplay, one whose performance against Phoenix on Tuesday would have been the envy of any team in the league, looked much more like the powerplay of earlier this season. Credit to the Canucks too, their penalty killing was more aggressive than the Coyotes', a smart tactic since the Oilers didn't show much pace or quickness on any of their powerplays. Last chance on Saturday night, a loss then at that's really it. Let's not forget the main goal of this season though, a slogan that might not sell season tickets or generate optimism but certainly has some urgency: Make Anaheim's Draft Pick Worse. The 2007-2008 Oilers, feel the excitement!

Thursday, March 20, 2008

I WANT this to be the right call, but...

Game of the year for the Oilers tonight, and HERE'S the starting goalie. Rollie had an incredible weekend against Phoenix and San Jose but looked, I thought, rather ordinary against Phoenix on Tuesday. This a pure MacTavish decision, a people decision rather than a hockey one since Garon has better numbers and has beaten Luongo three times already this year. Still, MacT's people decisions got them to the finals so maybe this works out. I hope it does obviously and success with Roloson for me is far more encouraging than with Garon just for the fact that until this season, Garon's been an average goalie while Roloson's been an All-Star and won a Stan OH WAIT, no he didn't because Marc-Andre Bergeron hates the Oilers, pushes over the elderly in the street and mugs Girl Scouts. With the Canucks icing a goon squad, maybe MacTavish is counting on the fact that Rollie can draw more goaltender interference calls than Garon. A good guess, since Rollie can draw those kinds of penalties whenever he feels like it, even in July if he wants. With talk of an 84 game schedule and an Olympic year on the horizon, he might have to do that for the Oilers to win a Cup.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A Child's Laughter!

Last week, on a lark, I wrote an email question to Hall of Fame sportswriter Jim Matheson of the Edmonton Journal as part of his weekly Q and A thingy. I still get unduly excited by the hockey celebrity culture in Edmonton, surely as a result of moving away when I was thirteen. I guess my fandom is frozen at that age. Even at twenty-six, an autograph from 18-year-old Sam Gagner would make me unreasonably excited. I still carry that sense of a large, impenetrable barrier between fans and players/media, even though the reality is that you can run into an Oiler pretty easily in this town. I can't, but others seem to. Anyways, it was with great excitement that today's Journal saw my question published and answered by the great Mr. Matheson. A pretty bland question on my part, but I wanted to get published so I tried to sound like the 13 year-old I still act like. Mine's the last question.

Not one of my deeper NHL thoughts, but his answer is pretty long. He mentions that Wade Belak, Todd Fedoruk and Darcy Hordichuk might be players the Oilers look at for some, you guessed it, MUCH NEEDED GRIT! No, he doesn't actually say that but "toughness," "character" and "nuclear deterrent" are the same thing. Phrases like "nuclear deterrent" are why Jim Matheson is a Hall of Fame writer.

I also flipped to Sportsnet.ca this morning and looked under the "The Wire" section when what did I see? A link titled "Belak could be on Oilers' wish list" and linking to the Matheson article. I can now truly say that I've gone beyond my own blog to contribute to the superfluous self-referencing nature of the internet. So, when the NHL's free agency period starts on July 1 and the big news is Wade Belak's signing with the Oilers, you'll know which no-longer anonymous fan broke the story. Or rather, which no-longer anonymous fan wrote a bland, simplistic, childlike email to his local newspaper which PROMPTED Hall of Fame sportswriter Jim Matheson to break the story on his own.

My own thoughts are that the Oilers toughness issues this year, completely forgotten now and seemingly conquered earlier this year just before Moreau got hurt, were largely a result of who's missing. Torres and Souray represent a lot of missing hits and cycle-breaking and Horcoff, while not in that category, contributes more of a sacrificial toughness: blocking shots, taking hits to make plays, comes out of the corner with the puck. Moreau's presence seemingly made everyone tougher since this team got a lot harder to play against when he came back, though that took time to grow. As a result, Kevin Lowe, I'm guessing, is more likely not to add any "nuclear deterrents" this summer. If he does then somebody, maybe Torres as part of a package, will be gone to clear roster and cap space. I'd love to see Georges Laraque come back, and if not him then another heavyweight because in this division "nuclear deterrents" should be taken literally: Minnesota has THREE heavyweights in their lineup, Calgary and Vancouver have pushed Edmonton around this year, and Colorado has, um, Ian Laperriere. Unless Lowe makes a splash and gets Hossa (unlikely), Naslund (foolish, too old) or pries Sakic or Sundin out of their cushy captaincies, the team you see now is the one going forward. Given the last few weeks, that's a pretty good thing.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Stupid Oilers II

Pretty good, have to say. There's hope now! No, no. Settle down. Five points out still, nothing to get excited about yet. Now, a win against Vancouver...

Stupid Oilers

First intermission, Oilers lead Phoenix 3-2 after scoring two powerplay goals in the last two and a half minutes. I say they're stupid because they've done it, they've made be believe they're going to be in this playoff race. I mean they are, kind of, but not really. A win tonight would put them five points back of Colorado for 8th, still a ways back except for this: Vancouver, Colorado, Minnesota, Minnesota, Colorado, Calgary, Calgary, Vancouver. That's their schedule after tonight so yeah, they can make up some ground. They could also get hammered and finish back in the bottom 5 but at this point, up a goal with Gagner, Cogliano, Grebeshkov, Gilbert and Nielsen leading the way (and I do mean lead, the Kid Line is the Number 1 line BY FAR right now), they've made me think it's possible. And I hate that, because all my dispassionate analysis says they won't make it. And this isn't a jinx because I didn't have a good feeling about this game going in and don't think they'll win now. There's pretty long odds against beating any team four times in one year, let alone a decent Coyotes team. I'll say this though, if they did the impossible and made the playoffs, you can't give the Jack Adams to anyone else but MacT: down Horcoff, Torres, Souray and Moreau, that's quite an accomplishment. One they won't do! Or can they? No dammit, they can't.

2nd period...

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Skategate II

Cool. Could have been more, I was guessing 12 games, but at least they did something.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Skategate

It's a rule that you have to add "gate" at the end of any kind of prolonged controversy, even though in the original Watergate scandal, "Watergate" was of course simply the name of the hotel. How "gate" became the mandatory suffix in such things is curious.

Chris Pronger steps on Ryan Kesler's heel during the Vancouver-Anaheim game on March 12th. Initial replays certainly show him stepping down but due to insufficient evidence, the NHL did not issue any disciplinary action. Now, two days later, a better replay has surfaced showing more clearly how Pronger engaged in a stepping motion. Will the NHL reverse its decision?

There's three reasons why this is a really, REALLY big deal. First, kicking or stepping is pretty well accepted as the worst thing you can do in hockey culture. It's a cardinal sin, for pretty obvious reasons. The NHL set a precedence showing they're on board with this, since earlier this year they suspended Chris Simon 30 games, the longest in NHL history (for an on-ice incident), for deliberately stepping on Jarko Ruutu (*cough*whoprobablydeservedit*cough*. Second, Chris Pronger has been suspended seven times in his career already, meaning any disciplinary action taken would be pretty severe for a player with his rap sheet. Third, Pronger may not have been as good last post-season as he was in 2006 with Edmonton*, but without him the Ducks don't win the Stanley Cup. So the stakes on this are pretty high; a top 10 NHL player on a top 3 contending team commits a heinous act in a league already with a reputation of double standards in their disciplinary measures (not just with players, but apparently with teams as well).

The biggest problem with this, and the one I really want to highlight here, is why the NHL announced no suspension was coming before having all the available video. What was the rush? If the reason for no suspension was insufficient evidence, shouldn't the NHL have made absolutely sure that no more evidence was out there? It's not like it took weeks or months to subpoena Time Life to get this video, the improved version came out the very next day. To me this is incredibly careless and mismanaged. By rushing a "no suspension" verdict, the NHL has emboldened those who ream them out for their double standards and weak follow throughs. At lot of the time those voices are pretty obnoxious and holier-than-thou, but they're gaining a lot of legitimacy with foolish decisions like these. Of course I'm biased because I hate Chris Pronger, but for the sake of the league's integrity they have to come down hard here. Suspensions create precedences, there has to be disciplinary consistency for an inherently violent sport to maintain any control over itself. Otherwise, get ready for every prosecuting attorney to jump all over the next high-profile on-ice attack. Keep an eye on those Ducks.


*Obvious fan bias, but probably true.

Update: On Primetime Sports on the Fan 590 today their news update mentioned that the league is taking a second look at the incident. We'll see what happens.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Some interesting findings

I was puttering around on NHL.com, which has a pretty nice stats page actually, though due to the nature of the sport no stat page ever produced by anyone associated with the NHL will ever approach Baseball-Reference.com. Just looking at the numbers and the logical conclusions you can draw is an interesting exercise because of how often those conclusion defy common sense, both our own and those of the team/players/coaches/media.

"We have to get pucks to the net," "They outshot us badly, that's why we lost," "Man, the Leafs SUCK, they've been outshot 20-2 so far!" Each is a phrase we've heard endlessly and, in the case of the last one, will continue to enjoy hearing as long as that defence is in place. But is outshooting the other team a determining factor in winning hockey games? Common sense and anecdotal evidence support this, as this equation shows: more shots=more scoring chances=more goals, right? Plus, how many overtime games have you seen that were decided by a fluke goals, lucky deflections, and rebounds off scrums? Exactly: ALL of them. Yet if you look at team shooting percentage records, it's a little less clear.

Shooting percentage is a limited stat of course, it doesn't account for shot quality or frequency, but over the course of a season its reasonable to think shot quality will even out and that breakaway chances, counting for one shot, will even out with dump-in shots than happen to hit the net. So, assuming shot quality does even out over the course of the year, here's the top 5 winning percentages for teams outshooting their opponents, with their overall league points ranking in brackets, as of March 11/08:

1. Atlanta .750 (27)
2. Detroit .707 (1)
3. Dallas .667 (2)
4. Anaheim .667 (5)
5. Pittsburgh .654 (6)

So that's pretty representative actually, except for Atlanta who got lost and wandered to the top of the list. The Thrashers are actually third last in the NHL in terms of shots against average per game, so yeah, they should shoot ALL the time at anything that moves. What's interesting isn't the rankings, the list tends to more or less reflect actual league standings, but the actual winning percentages. So far, the mean winning percentage in the NHL this season for teams outshooting their opponents is .532, a coin toss in other words, with a median of .538 and a standard deviation of .108. That's a pretty small deviation, meaning that most teams are pretty damn close to the average winning percentage of .532. THAT means if your team outshoots the other teams, it's basically 50/50 if they'll win. What's amusing is the team with the worst record on this list, the Leafs of course. When outshooting their opponent, the Leafs have a winning percentage of .333. When outshot, it's .552! What the hell?! What a great team. Not at hockey or scoring or playing defense or getting traded or anything, but certainly at putting up funny stats. Oddly, the team with the worst winning % when outshot is the Red Wings. Here's the top 5 winning %'s when teams are outshot, just for interest:

1. New York Rangers
2. Minnesota
3. Toronto
4. Calgary
5. Washington

Exactly, three bad teams and two good teams. We've learned nothing. The mean winning % for teams outshot is .469 with a standard deviation of .107, once again showing that most teams are pretty close to average. Further proof then that any given game in the NHL, the team with more shots did themselves no favors. Overall though, the average NHL point percentage* is .555, standard deviation of .060, which means the average team wins only slightly more than they lose, and is pretty close to a coin flip too. Nothing was learned today except that outshooting your opponent means very little over the course of the season, unless you're Atlanta. However, the team that scores more goals than their opponent in a game wins about 65% of the time.

Having said all this, I still want my team to outshoot their opponent every single night because I am a stupid irrational fan.


*The percentage of points derived from the number of games they've played.

Monday, March 3, 2008

That's a BOLD statement

Now the Leafs are playing their way back into playoff contention. Maybe the problem really was Belak, Gill and Kilger. Maybe Leaf fans have been right all along... a chilly thought, isn't it?

I'm tired of writing about the Leafs, this isn't a Leaf blog, I'm not a Leaf fan and I don't particularily care how they do except that I picked them to finish 8th in my hockey pool that isn't for money. I'd write more about the Oilers but really, using what has become a truly ubiquitous cliche, their season "is what it is." They're rebuilding, they've played well lately, their fourth line is cheap and awesome and everybody's hurt. If they can finish 6th last or higher and stay out of the draft lottery, the season's, well it's not a success, but "it is what it is." Expectation will be high next year, not so much because of what the team will be like but just because of how bad the last two season will have been. Right now they don't have the cap space to sign any high-end free agents so unless the draft produces substantial changes (unlikely since the trade deadline is the best place to dump salary and acquire draft picks), the team they have now is the team they'll have next year. That's promising, since this year's team was derailed by injury and youth. That youth will be older and more experienced next year (especially considering how much they'll have played in the latter half of this season) and if the injury virus can possibly find its way three hours south and ten hours southwest, they should be able to compete for the division.

The Northwest division is a weird one, no dominant teams and no real weak links either, at least on paper. Certainly the Oilers this season have been substantially weaker than the other four teams, but that gap would be less if they'd been healthier. I'd even say that Edmonton, given it's youth and injury issues this season, will improve more than any other team from this season to next. The Flames have Huselius, Conroy and Langkow as UFA's for next season and won't be able to sign all three, if even one. The Canucks, barring any substantial change to their offence, will still rely on the Sedins and Luongo for all their wins, though Ryan Kesler should finish with twenty goals this year. They're also in pretty good shape going into next year, with only Markus Naslund and Brenden Morrison set to be UFA's. Colorado has Joe Sakic, Andrew Brunette, John-Michael Liles and Adam Foote to re-sign next year, though Sakic and Foote probably won't go anywhere. They have a good set of young players as well but in the goalie-rich Northwest (Garon, Luongo, Backstrom, and Kiprusoff) they won't be able to leap out front. Minnesota has to re-sign Demitra, Rolston and Keith Carney next year and still doesn't have a ton of scoring (18th in the NHL in total goals and goals-for average, not apalling but when it's always been a problem...). I don't think any of these four teams will fall off the map next year, but none seemed poised to break into the stratosphere with Anaheim, Detroit, Dallas and San Jose.

Edmonton won't make that kind of jump next year either but certainly has the highest upside going into next season. Of course, while being the worst team in the division might mean their upside will carry them to greater growth than the rest, it won't likely carry them beyond. Next year should end up like last season was, at least for a long time: all five teams competing for the division until one team flinches and trades an impending UFA at the deadline (Who'll be next season's Ryan Smyth? Gaborik? Ohlund? Tanguay?). So no bold predictions for next year, not in this division anyways. I'll try to do a set of predictions for next year at the end of the season, then maybe another set just before next season starts. If I remember. Baseball starts soon!