(From @hockeymemes)
Disclaimer: if you’re a fan of say, not the New York Rangers, your team may not have actually been given an outdoor game.
Last night TSN and ESPN both shared the news that NHL is going to have (queue Lebron James) not one outdoor game. Not two. Not three, not four, not five. But six, yes, six outdoor games next season.
Six. Six outdoor games.
Here’s what we’re looking at:
* Leafs / Red Wings will still be held on January first in Michigan at the Big House
The NHL schedule is officially in the home-stretch, with a few teams having as few as seven games left to play before the clock stops on the regular season. Only two teams have a full ten games left, and that’s the St. Louis Blues, and unfortunately for them, the Calgary Flames.
What that means in these tight tables, is that a winning streak can go a huge way to getting a team into playoffs or into the playoff spot they want, and a losing streak can see a team freefall out of contention.
A good number of teams are mid-streak right now, and the standings reflect that. Here are those teams, and starting with the hot ones, and working down towards the Carolina Hurricanes, who are as cold as the ice they play on.
***
Washington Capitals – 5 straight wins
Victims: Caronlina, New York Islanders, Florida, Tampa Bay, Montreal
Commentary: It’s not just a five-game win streak, they’re 9-1-1 in their last 11. This was supposed to be the season that the Southleast division dropped the “l,” and used it to spell legit. The Hurricanes made some deals to contend, the Caps are still the Caps, the Panthers won the division last year, the Lightning have high-end talent, and the Jets weren’t all that terrible, except…they were all terrible. Every last one of them. All it was going to take for some team to claim the division was to put together a streak and roll over some weak teams, and the Caps, the team with the most real talent in the division, got it together first.
I’m a believer in Adam Oates, and I’m impressed with the way he’s pulled this team together after their rough start.
St. Louis Blues: – 5 straight wins
Victims: Minnesota, Chicago, Colmbus, Detroit, Nashville Read the rest of this entry »
This is not Jagr-face so much as the exact opposite.
Most athletes have a Try Face. Your Try Face is what naturally comes across your face when you’re at your most intense, your most concentrated, your most focused. We all have one. Michael Jordan was famous for rocking the tongue-out Try Face, for example.
Jaromir Jagr’s Try Face is not so cool.
I noticed this a little throughout the season when watching Jagr play, but when sifting through some of my images it became more apparent and harder to ignore. He goes full Grumpy Cat when he’s trying hard.
Actually, maybe he goes more grumpy fish: Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this morning I was talking with my boss about a Systems Analyst post I’m working on when he made an interesting observation: hockey analysts seem far more prone to point out errors and tear down players than build them up, which they do in other sports. You’ll often see an NHL team score a goal, and the immediate reflex of the talking head is to highlight where the breakdown happened. I’ve also heard people complain that our analysts are quick to shred our stars when they’re struggling (Mike Milbury on Alex Ovechkin comes to mind here), whereas other sports see their announcers and writers go to great lengths to prop them up.
In basketball, if a player naps on his coverage and LeBron gets a break and throws down a dunk, all you ever see, all you ever hear about, is that dunk. “The athleticism!” The blown coverage gets swept under the rug.
But there’s a reason why in hockey we’re far more likely to point out that an opportunity was a direct result of an error on defense: from an offensive standpoint, hockey is kind of about making the other team f***-up as much as possible, and finishing when that happens.
The intense defensive scrutiny isn’t because hockey analysts are more vindictive or don’t want players to get credit or are jealous of the guys’ wives or something. For the most part, our analysts just know what they’re looking for. Not that other sports’ commentators don’t, but consider: hockey simply doesn’t have the indefensible shots that other sports do. A perfectly executed fade-away jumper in basketball basically can’t be stopped, so credit to the shooter. You can make a great pitch in baseball and it can still get hit out of the park, so credit to the hitter. A perfectly thrown-and-caught quick slant in football is just about impossible to stop from happening, so hey, nice pass and catch.
In our sport, you have to make people miss. There is no even-strength goal without an oops, or at the very least, a That Could’ve Been Done Better. Read the rest of this entry »
This was one of the more telling quotes of the day in the wake of Doug Wilson trading Douglas Murray to the Pittsburgh Penguins for two second round picks (the second being a conditional one based on Murray re-signing in Pitt).
Wilson:
“We have tremendous respect for Douglas as a hockey player and a person. He has been a warrior for our hockey club for the past eight seasons and he has been in the Sharks family for the past 14 years. This deal places Douglas in a quality situation which he deserves.”
He was happy to get Douglas Murray somewhere where he’d, y’know, have a chance to win.
Mark Purdy on the Mercury News wrote a post today implying this could be the start of some major changes for the Sharks, who really haven’t been very good lately: Read the rest of this entry »
Mike Smith has taken his goaltender right of contact immunity too far.
When the puck goes behind the net and the opposing team is going to be first on it, Smith likes to leave his net to play the puck away from them, but then he likes to take away any conceivable lane for the forechecker to skate through to avoid plowing him. And when they do take a piece, holy smokes, it looks like Scott Stevens himself headed behind the net with ill will and trucked him Lindros-style.
I will say: it’s not like guys are fully trying to avoid him or anything (he’s out there and a goalie, so…yeah), just funny that it continually happens to him, no?
Here’s what happened last night, Alex Edler edition:
Hey, remember Andrew Shaw in 2012? Read the rest of this entry »
I’m not setting out to trash Anaheim or anything, because frankly, the Ducks are really freaking good. They’re second overall in the NHL with 46 points, they’re 7-0-3 and their last 10, and they’ve only lost three games in regulation this entire season. They just re-signed Getzlaf and Perry, they have some young talent, good goaltending, you get the picture.
But they’re not the Chicago Blackhawks.
I was looking at where they ranked in some statistical categories in the NHL given that the first place Blackhawks are heading into their rink to play them tonight, and as great as they’ve been, they just can’t touch ‘em. Read the rest of this entry »
Jo Innes, Ryan Lambert, Daniel Wagner, Cam Charron, Ellen Etchingham, Jake Goldsbie, Darren Kritzer
