Sisu Hockey

A Little Ditty

2009-04-06T12:27:00.001-03:00

Dear Ron MacLean.
Dear Coach’s Corner.
I’m writing in order
for someone to explain
to my niece the distinction
between these mandatory pre-game group rites of submission
and the rallies at Nuremburg.
Specifically the function
the ritual serves in conjunction
with what everybody knows
is in the end a kid’s game.
I’m just appealing to your sense of fair play
when I say she’s puzzled by
the incessant pressure for her to not defy
the collective will,
and yellow ribboned lapels,
as the soldiers inexplicably rappel
down from the arena rafters
(which, if not so insane, would be grounds for screaming laughter).

Dear Ron MacLean,
I wouldn’t bother with these questions
if I didn’t sense some spiritual connection.
We may not be the same
but it’s not like we’re from different planets:
we both love this game so much we can hardly fucking stand it.
Alberta-born and prairie-raised.
Seems like there ain’t a sheet of ice north of Fargo I ain’t played.
From Penhold to the Gatineau,
every fond memory of childhood that I know
is somehow connected
to the culture of this game. I can’t just let it go.
But I guess it comes down to
what kind of world you want to live in,
and if diversity is disagreement,
and disagreement is treason,
well don’t be surprised if we find ourselves reaping
a strange and bitter fruit
that sad old man beside you
keeps feeding to young minds as virtue.
It takes a village to raise a child
but just a flag to raze the children
until they’re nothing more than ballast for fulfilling
a madman’s dream
of a paradise where complexity
is reduced to black and white.
How do I
protect her from
this cult of death?

A Swing and a Miss?

2008-07-02T14:58:00.001-03:00

If you take last year's club, subtract Streit, Ryder and Smolinski and add Tanguay, here is the lineup we'd be looking at:

Pencil in a combined $3.5M for Halak, Gorges and O'Byrne and we're sitting at a cap number of $49.3M for 12 forwards, 7 defensemen (including Dandenault) and 2 goalies.

The bad news is this team is not obviously better than the one whose season ended in early May. Tanguay boosts one of the top lines, and that is significant. However a lot of that gain will be offset by the losses of the #3 centre in Smolinski and a solid PP contributor in Streit.

The good news is the hard part of acquiring a top-flight forward is already done and there is still ~$7M in cap space. Even if none of Gainey's big UFA plans pan out - and as of 1:30pm EDT, that's how it appears to be shaking out - bolstering the bottom of the lineup should be a snap.

The minimum needs are:
- top 9 forward, preferably a C
- A #4-7 RS defenseman. May already have this in Dandenault.

Optimally, we're looking at a top-notch C who can play at EV and doesn't carry a huge cap hit into 2009-10. If this fantastical creature exists, it's name is Sundin. The big guy has said that he would take it year by year. To me, that sounds like a one year contract. If he's willing to take less money to join a good club and commit to one year, the Canadiens are still in the running.

Since the end of the season Gainey has said the top priority is a centre. When he took on Tanguay, is it possible he misjudged the market for Sundin? Without Tanguay's $5.25M, a top dollar offer for Sundin would have been possible. Now a $7M will have to suffice. I think Sundin is still a possibility - he may pull a Hossa and go for the 1-year deal for less than he could get elsewhere. Then again he might take $500k to join the Wings, or stay in Toronto or retire.

Looking at other centres to occupy a the #3 slot, Vasicek (RHS like Smolinski) looked OK last season and would come cheap. An inexpensive option at C leaves room for short-term upgrades on a wing and/or defense. Think Naslund, Vyborny, Satan...

~

I was dead wrong about Ryder being a bargain. Chiarelli unbelievably gave him a 35% raise. He would have been a great addition at $2M. Instead, his cap hit will be the same as Derek Roy's over the next three years and double that of Trent Hunter's. Ryder would be the highest paid skater on the Canucks, Panthers or Kings.

~

Here is an early look at some notable expected UFAs for 09-10:

Both Sedins
Ohlund
Antropov
McDonald
Gionta
Gaborik
Boynton
Cole
Horcoff
Zetterberg
Samuelsson
Franzen
Zubov
P. Boucher
Havlat
Cammalleri
Afinogenov
Connolly
Kotalik
Spacek
Beauchemin

Plus the Habs' own Tanguay, Koivu, Kovalev, and Komisarek.

Loading Up

2008-06-21T01:22:00.003-03:00

Interesting draft day for the Canadiens - At first glance, I like the Tanguay deal. There is only one year left on his current contract at $5.25M (making him the highest-paid forward on the team). Check out these posts from BoA . The price may be steep but the guy is a star EV player - just what the doctor ordered. Now Gainey has a year to get him signed to a value contract after 2009.

Sundin is looking like a real possibility, if he's interested. You'd think he would cost at least $7M. Counting in Tanguay's $5.25M, and $12.25M is a lot to add without removing any salary. I wonder what this means for Andrei Kostitsyn. It took $5M per over 3 years for the Flyers to sign Carter, so is $4M an unreasonable number for AKost's cap hit? Adding Sundin at $7M and AKost at a generous $3M, they're sitting at $52.6M with two or three depth defensemen and a backup goalie yet to sign. That's tight.

Incidentally, check out the Canadiens contracts at nhlnumbers. Only four players are signed for 2009-10. Sundin or no, Gainey is swinging for the fences in 2009.

In the draft, the player I was watching was Jordan Eberle - a top goal scorer in the tight checking WHL at 17. I'm glad he was snatched before the #25 spot, and I think the Oilers got a great pick.

With the Jokinen move the Panthers now have too many defensemen - expect another trade there.

Crosby. CrosbyCrosbyCrosby.

2008-06-07T09:19:00.002-03:00

Call this a backlash against a backlash.

After the first two playoff rounds, a lot of very reasonable people were suggesting that Malkin might actually be a better player than Sid. Crazy talk, that was. Crosby was the best player in the final - quite a feat for a 20-year-old whose team went 2-4.

When both Crosby and Zetterberg were on the ice at EV, the Pens outscored the Wings 3-1 over the six games. When both Crosby and Lidstrom were on it was also 3-1 Pens. Crosby and Datsyuk: 2-0 Pens. Whenever Crosby was on the three next best players on the ice were usually Red Wings, making his performance all the more impressive. I mean, how many chances did Dupuis botch?

When it was all said and done, the top Wings did a pretty good job containing the best player in hockey. Detroit's next tier of players beat the lesser lights of the Penguins, and beat them badly. Especially on defense, where the Wings' top four were miles better than the Pens'.

Some Numbers

2008-05-30T10:14:00.002-03:00

Back when the Zednik incident occurred, there was a lot of commentary about how dangerous the NHL game could be and some lobbying for steps that should be taken to make it safer. Out of curiosity, I did a little math and did a little googling.

There have been ~35,500 games played in the post-expansion NHL. Figuring 40 participants per game, that is 1.4 million man-hours of hockey. In that sample, we've seen one accidental death: Bill Masterton way back in 1968. The death rate is 0.7 per million hours of NHL hockey. He is the only player in NHL history to die as a direct result of an on-ice incident, and he'd probably still be alive today if he had been wearing a helmet.

Here are some other rates for the general public, taken from this article:

Bicycling: 0.26 deaths per million hours
Driving: 0.47
Motorcycling: 8.8

Motorcycling is at least 12.5 times deadlier than post-expansion NHL hockey.

Over its entire history, NHL hockey has been about as dangerous as driving a car in this crude measure of deaths per hour. When you consider how many more hours a player spends travelling than playing, it would make a lot of sense to invest in greater transportation safety than on-ice safety. I don't think I need to type out a list of deaths in motor vehicle accidents to make that clear.

And this probably doesn't need to be said: you and I spend far more time travelling in motor vehicles than we do playing NHL hockey. There are bigger issues out there than mandatory neck guards.

What is the number needed to treat for neck guards? For the cost of equipping every hockey player in the country with one, how many motorcycles could we throw into compactors?

Playoff Numbers

2008-05-23T10:33:00.003-03:00

Discovered via Mirtle, the playoff stats are up at Behindthenet.

Only ten games are listed for the Habs. I'm not sure which two are missing.

Quality of Opposition

In such a small sample, the QUALCOMP measure can be misleading. The Bruins' 4th line blew away the Lapierre line. That means the QUALCOMP algorithm thinks Shawn Thornton, Vlad Sobotka and Jeremy Reich are Boston's best players and the Lapierre line had the tough assignments in round 1.

For that reason, this table is sorted by TOICOMP - the mean EV icetime of the players' opposition. You assume the best players get the most EV icetime (not necessarily true if the coach thinks the player's icetime is best spent on special teams - see Markov and Hamrlik).

At any rate, this order looks OK and contains no surprises. From top to bottom you can see the 1st through 4th lines and 1st through 3rd D pairs (Bouillon is a blip due to fewer GP).

Shots For/Against

Plekanec/AKost destroyed their opposition, outshooting them 2:1. Wow. The huge gap is partly due to them getting to play against 2nd calibre opposition when Koivu and Kovalev were together. This is the duo to watch next year.

At the other end of the scale, Streit/Lapierre were a horror show on the 4th line. Why did they continue to get icetime? It would have been soo easy to beef up the bottom three forwards at the trade deadline.

It's becoming evident that Koivu's role should be reduced. Bringing in a real top-notch centre who could bump everyone down a line would be the best move Gainey could make for next year.

Production

Sergei continued to be a rabbit's foot in the postseason. This is beginning to look like a pattern. Maybe there is more to this kid than meets the eye.

Plekanec and Andrei continue to prove that they score in spite of Kovalev, not because of Kovalev. It's a travesty that Kovalev gets the most EV minutes among forwards.

Streit/Lapierre's production doesn't make up for their goals against.

What's up with Komi outscoring Markov 3-0 at EV?

Goal Differential

Though this is less telling than the shots for/against, it's still worth noting who outscored/got outscored.

Although Pleks/AKost outshot opponents 2:1, they were even in GF/GA. Goaltending was a factor.

Projecting Gorges

2008-05-22T13:28:00.001-03:00

Josh Gorges is an interesting case. Passed over in his draft year of 2002, he attended the Sharks camp that fall and they signed him. Since then he's been on an above average track in his NHL career.

Gorges appears to be ahead of Rivet, Rivers, Dykhuis and Lukowich at 23.

A couple of Bruins - one past and one present - seem very similar to Gorges. Both Sweeney and Ference are undersized defensive guys, OK puck movers, and late round draft picks. They both logged reasonably big minutes, though Sweeney spent a lot of them next to that Bourque fella. Last year Ference signed a UFA deal for 3 years at $1.4M per.

Gorges looks a lot like Ference, but with less PIMs. Should be a solid #4-5 defenceman.

Projecting Komisarek

2008-05-21T15:33:00.003-03:00

We're verging on blindfolded darts here - this one is even less exact than Chipchura.

Komisarek is quite clearly a defensive defenceman. I thought it would be hard to come up with similar players but I'm pleased with these lists of past and present defensive defencemen. Rather than points, I used games played and ATOI.

Regehr and Hannan are way ahead of Komi in terms of development. They're among the cream of the crop of shutdown defencemen. Hannan's cap hit is $4.5M. Next season Regehr starts a 5 year extension worth $4M per.

Mitchell and Schultz are a tier down, and still appear to have progressed more rapidly than Komisarek. How much of that can be credited to playing on top defensive teams? Mitchell signed for 4 years at $3.5M two years ago. Schultz just signed for 5 years, also at $3.5M.

Colin White cracked a deep New Jersey blueline at a younger age than Komisarek. Two seasons ago he signed for $3M over 6 years.

I think Volchenkov is the best comparison among Komi's contemporaries - a top pair, right-side hitter/shot blocker. Their development curves are pretty close too. He signed his final RFA contract last season, for $2.5M over 3 years.

Sarich is a RHS whose development might be a little behind Komi's. He got lots of minutes on the AHL-calibre defense in Tampa. Last summer he signed for $3.6M over 5 years as an UFA.

Commodore and Vishnevski are a rung or two below Komisarek. Vishnevski got $1.8M per as an UFA and we'll see how Commodore fares this summer.

These are some players whose early seasons were similar to Komisarek's, just to get a feel for how his career might play out. Jason Smith and Brendan Witt progressed at a rate similar to Komi.

Being paired with the team's best defenceman gives his numbers a boost, so the potential is there for an overpayment on the UFA market next summer.

Projecting Perezhogin

2008-05-15T13:14:00.003-03:00

He's still technically Montreal property.

His NHL numbers say '3rd liner,' which is about as much as you can expect from a #25 draft pick. His RSL numbers say 'sniper.' Last season at 24 he was the top scorer for Ufa. And get this: during the lockout year he put up 0.77ppg in Omsk as a 21 year old - compare that to 26yo Pavel Datsyuk's 0.74 with Moscow Dynamo in the same season.

A good chunk of the stats discrepancy is the quality minutes he gets in Russia - top line and PP time. That still doesn't explain how he can outscore Datsyuk. It's disturbing for sure. I suppose you have to take his NHL/AHL numbers at face value and assume he'd be a bottom six forward here. It's hard to argue with his decision - he gets triple the money and star status in his homeland.

Interesting that the Russian National team included Perezhogin's Ufa teammate Alexei Tereshenko but not Perogie.

Projecting Grabovski

2008-05-15T12:06:00.000-03:00

Grabovski scored in his limited icetime to the tune of a respectable 1.94 EVPTS/60. He also gave up lots of scoring chances against.

In his defense, Grabovski is a Jan 31 birthday, making him as young as possible and still qualify as 23/24 in his NHL seasons on hockey-referece. Why are so many Habs clustered right around Feb 1? It's a nuisance. Nevertheless, he's still older than the players he's competing with for icetime.

At 23/24, tiny Oleg Petrov was dominant in the AHL but not quite good enough to permanently crack a pretty good lineup in Montreal. In his second stint he was in his prime (28 to 31) and made a bad team slightly better.

The story appears to be the same for Grabovski. He's not going to crack the lineup of a contender. Most pundits say he's bound for a European league next season. It sucks to lose a good depth player but that's the way the league works these days.

Projecting Chipchura

2008-05-14T14:25:00.003-03:00

With a skater like Kyle Chipchura, point totals aren't going to tell us a whole lot. He wasn't drafted to score. That forced me to dig a little deeper into Chipchura's record, so this might be a more indepth look than previous posts.

A severed achilles tendon that cost him half a season in Prince Albert has to be considered a major setback in his development. Prior to the injury he was producing at over a point per game (1.14). The following season he produced 0.93ppg as a 19yo on a bad Raiders team, and his AHL production has been a little underwhelming.

Generally speaking, players who are defensive forwards in junior and the minor leagues don't become defensive forwards in the NHL. They remain minor leaguers. Players who become defensive forwards in the NHL are usually those who were dominant in junior and the minors but aren't quite good enough to be scorers in the NHL. As a 20 year old, Chipchura posted 0.51ppg in 102 AHL games. At 21 he posted 0.54ppg in 39 games.

The route taken to the NHL by some other successful defensive forwards:

- Gainey played junior in Peterborough and was an exception to the rule. His scoring numbers were less than half that of his contemporaries (Lanny, Middleton). He was a defensive winger through and through.

- Carbonneau put up 2.5ppg in his final year in the QMJHL, and 1.17ppg in 155 AHL games before his callup. He did alright when it came to scoring in the NHL, for that matter.

- Madden took an unconventional path, playing Jr B, Jr A, then four years in college before taking a leap in his second pro year, leading his AHL team in scoring at 25. Made his NHL debut at 26 and hasn't looked back.

- Dirk Graham put up gaudy scoring numbers in the IHL, if you can believe it.

- Joel Otto learned to play ice hockey in some faraway land of giants called Bemidji State. He scored a little bit in the AHL too.

By and large, famous defensive forwards put up solid scoring numbers at the level just beneath the NHL. Even if you look at a guy like Steve Rice who was expected to become a solid checker (and, like Chipchura, has WJC cred), he scored in junior and the AHL and still wasn't an NHL success. Chipchura's AHL production looks modest, though he played behind some good talent in 06-07 and on a below average Bulldogs team in 07-08.

On to some numbers...

As mentioned earlier, points aren't going to tell us which of these guys are better than others or which comes the closest to Chipchura.

On the whole it seems like a lot of players slapped with the defensive label took the college route. When looking for WHL examples, it was tempting to toss a handful of Sutters onto the list just to bulk it up, but Chipchura doesn't really look like a Sutter.

Craig Ramsay was drafted 19th overall. Chipchura went 18th. He was a plus player for 14 straight seasons.

Brian Skrudland is an obvious choice and a good one, I think. He went undrafted and was signed as a FA. The fact that he was halfway down the depth chart on a stacked Saskatoon team in junior may have something to do with this. His pro numbers are very close to Chipchura's, they're very similar players, they're LH centres, they both have some size, and they're from out West. What more could you want?

Lapierre is Chipchura's biggest obstacle to a pivot role on the 08-09 Habs. Lapierre's advantages are an extra year of experience and he's right handed.

Draper had modest minor league production for awhile before earning a permanent spot in Detroit.

As Topham has noted, Chipchura probably has his sights set higher than 'career plugger,' though a career like Skrudland's would be nothing to sneeze at.

Give 'til it Hurts

2008-05-14T00:17:00.002-03:00

After a bit of back & forth, the chaps over at PPP have donated $120 to the Saku Koivu Foundation.

I'm impressed.

In response, I'd like to see if readers here can match that in donarions to the Geneva Centre for Autism. It's a charity supported by the Leafs Fund.

If you can swing it please chip in to help make a difference in the lives of a growing number of kids with autism. Post your donation in the comments.

Donate here.

Latendresse II

2008-05-13T16:37:00.002-03:00

There is a post by MC79 from back in December, and it is an interesting one. It looks at recent players' 20/21yo seasons and where they stand in a percentile ranking of their EV points. Go read it then come back. I'll wait.

So Guillaume Latendresse just completed his 20yo season, posting 1.07 ESG/60 and 1.75 ESP/60 in 788 ES minutes. Judging from seasons by other players in the post (which, it must be noted, is restricted to players who landed between 20th and 60th percentiles), his goal rank would be at least 80th percentile and his points would be close to 60th (these are guesses because MC79's post on percentile rankings doesn't include 07-08).

Lats would be near the top of the 20yo list in the post, alongside Devereaux, Fisher, Morrow, Perry and Antropov. He's well above a lot of impressive names, like Hartnell, Erat, Roy, Sedins and M. Richards.

It will be interesting to see if Latendresse finishes next season over the magical 60th percentile marker as a 21yo. Looking at his season in this light makes me want to reconsider the Pyatt Plus label I stuck on him below. Maybe we should upgrade him to Antropov-ish.

Addendum: In Andrei Kostitsyn's 21yo season (06-07) he posted about 2.3 ESP/60, albeit in limited icetime. He would have close to 85th percentile. AKost looks like a player.

Projecting Latendresse

2008-05-13T12:36:00.003-03:00

Early this year Latendresse was tried on the 3rd line ahead of Begin/Kostopoulos but couldn't stick. When Ryder was demoted Gui was surpassed by Sergei (who is actually older by two months) for a job on the top 6. His chances have been scarce but he's still showing some progress.

On the surface it might look discouraging. He followed a rookie season of 29 points (.36ppg) with a sophmore effort of 27 (.37ppg). In year two his PP icetime was diminished which accounts for the flat totals. If you look at EV points per 60, he had 1.33 at 19 and 1.75 this year. That's solid progress.

Cam Neely's 19 and 20yo seasons came at a time when there were 7.8 goals scored per game. In Gui's first two seasons the number was 5.6. Scaled to the scoring rate, Gui's numbers are pretty much identical to Neely's. Seriously.

Corson was more physical but had less skill.

Pyatt might be the best comp. I tried to choose guys with size but so many of them play a much more physical game than Latendresse. Pyatt is close to Gui in style and numbers. Interesting that he's playing on his 3rd team.

Brown and Frolov, being in LA, are two guys I can't say much about. The lockout year is listed for both: Brown was in the AHL at 20 and Frolov was in Russia at 22. Frolov's numbers at 20 are a little better than Gui's, but he had more icetime.

Brent Ashton is another Pyatt-like comp in that he was big but had few PIMs. He was a useful player and had a long career. Gui's numbers are better.

Kvasha is an interesting comparison because he's both bigger and softer than Lats and has better puck skill. Sanipass is listed just because it's so rare that I have an opportunity to mention a player from NB.

Graves and Doan were far behind Latendresse at the same age. Both took a long time incubating.

Most guys that look like Gui have big PIMs, that's what makes Pyatt such a good comp. Looking a little closer, Pyatt's OHL numbers were .53, 1.10 and 1.31 ppg at 16, 17 and 18. Latendresse had .92, 1.20 and 1.63 in the higher scoring Q. Gui also played on the U-18 team and the U-20 team as an 18yo.

As you can see from the list, the error bars are huge when trying to predict the future for guys like Latendresse. For now I'll go with 'Taylor Pyatt but a little bit better.'

Projecting Lapierre

2008-05-12T01:47:00.002-03:00

In his 21yo season Lapierre was .26ppg in the NHL and .29ppg NHLE in the AHL. At 22, he was .34ppg in the show and .32ppg NHLE in Hamilton. Pretty consistent. We should have a bead on his abilities at this stage in his career.

Vermette was in the AHL at 22 due to the lockout. At 23 he was a little ahead of Lapierre at 22 with less icetime but also shooting 17%. It's tempting to call him a good comp but I think Vermette shows more offensive potential. We'll see.

Stajan's .34 is really similar to Vermette's 23yo season - it came with less icetime than Lapierre but with a sky-high shooting% of 18%.

Cooke is probably the best comp, minus the debilitating cheap shots. Lapierre's dirty, just not put-you-in-the-hospital dirty. His production and role at this stage are very similar.

Yelle's numbers are from a higher scoring time. Lapierre is doing better than him.

Devereaux, being an early pick, got chances to play at 19 and 20. His drop at 22 coincides with a move to Detroit and the consequent drop in icetime. He might be a good comp, although his good sportsmanship doesn't match Lapierre at all.

On the whole, Lapierre seems like a mix of Vermette and Cooke, only not as good as Vermette and not as vicious as Cooke. Less optimistically, he might be Yelle or Shantz or Bassen. To be frank, guys like those three just aren't worth developing. They can be bought dirt cheap and fully developed - no growing pains.

~

I'm watching the CBC rerun of game 5 of the '86 final. The '89 final game was on a few weeks ago and I think the '89 team would have demolished these guys (though Richer is out with an injury tonight).

It's remarkable how similar the hockey is to today's game. The players are smaller (esp. the goalies) and the shots are weaker. The speed doesn't seem to be too far off 2008 levels, but that's not easy to pick up on a TV broadcast.

The Habs #1 PP was Smith-Naslund-Lemieux-Robinson-Gingras. Gainey-Carbo-McPhee were a helluva checking line. There's a dead man skating in Kordic. Chelios credits the Moose Jaw Canucks with giving him the career start he needed. Rick Green was a fine defenseman.

Projecting Sergei Kostitsyn

2008-05-11T01:08:00.003-03:00

There is far less of a track record here, so anything said should be taken with a grain or two of salt. Also, Sergei shot an unrealistic 18.4% so we should dock him about three goals when looking for comparisons. Doing so would put his ppg at .46 rather than .52. Lastly, like Anrdei, he is an 'old' 20 in the chart because he's a March 20 birthday. I compensated a little for this by including some young 21yo seasons in the 20yo column below.

Sorted by their ppg at 20, italics are NHLE.

Koivu's .89 in the SM-Liiga was way back in 94-95. He was only 4 months older than Sergei in 95-96, when he put up .55ppg over a whole season. I think Kostitsyn is short of Koivu.

Weight began in a high scoring era, making his .57 pretty close to a modern .45.

Comrie's numbers are a little better and include more goals. Time will tell whether the problems afflicting Comrie are present in SKost.

Druken had a nice 20yo season and might be retired at 29. There is a sign in Shea Heights, Newfoundland saying "Home of Harold Druken."

Hemsky's ahead of Kostitsyn. He had a better 19yo season (a young 19, mind you, with less icetime) than Sergei did at 20. No real comparison here.

Mike Richards had a better 18yo OHL season than Kostitsyn (1.24 to 1.53), but Kostitsyn blew him away (1.35 to 2.22) at 19 when he played with Kane and Gagner. Their NHL starts were comparable.

Derek Roy is probably the closest comp statistically. At 20 he had similar NHL icetime, and .39ppg in 49 games. In the AHL at 20, both had 1.00ppg.

Nilsson also put similar NHL numbers in a partial season and 1.00ppg in the AHL at 20. Henrik Sedin's numbers look to be behind Kostitsyn's.

So where big brother looks like a poor man's Hossa, little bro uses an interesting blend of skill and chippiness that reminds me of Mike Richards. His scoring numbers look closer to Roy's for now. Being such a late draft pick, he'll need to put up more solid numbers before he's accepted as the real deal.

Hard Luck & Horseshoes

2008-05-09T15:44:00.003-03:00

Here is a list of players whose opponents shot at least 4% better than his team did while he was on the ice:

I pulled out anyone who played less than 40 games, anyone who played under 8 minutes and anyone whose name I'd never seen before.

Some of these guys just aren't very good and contribute to the shooting% imbalance. Others spent many minutes in front of terrible goaltending. Others just had cold streaks. There are a lot of players who kept shots flowing in the right direction but didn't get the results to prove it. It might be a good place to start if you're looking for good value next year.

If I was Bob Gainey, I'd be discteetly inquiring about Goc and Carle. Our old friend Radek Bonk makes an appearance. He was outshot 26.6 - 23.3, but was outscored by more than 2 to 1. Ellis led the league in sv% but somehow didn't do Bonkers any favours.

The Horseshoe club:

These guys out-percentaged their opponents by more than 3.6 % or something. Again, removed are the players who were in fewer than 40 games, limited minute guys (oops, I missed Cote).

I also removed the players who are obvious drivers of big % differences (Crosby, Malkin, Lidstrom, Getzlaf, Iginla etc). No point in including them - I'm looking for the guys who are due for a fall, guys you might want to avoid trading for.

There are four Habs: the top line plus Sergei. Hmmm.

This list also explains the mystery of Doug Murray. I've also just noticed that there are several players who reaped the benefit of playing with star players - Conroy, Malone, Setoguchi etc.

The Sean Avery of the Blogosphere

2008-05-09T13:53:00.001-03:00

I read a lot of hockey blogs. If you do the same, you'll eventually become familiar with some of the commenters who frequent multiple blogs. One regular commenter at the Battle of Ontario was the most negative Sens fan I'd ever seen. There would be post after post after post, all berating his team.

So I was quite surprised to find out yesterday that this guy, PPP, is not a Senators fan at all. Despite only ever talking about the Senators, he is actually a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. Of course, once Ottawa was eliminated from the playoffs his sights were set on your Montreal Canadiens. There are few things that are a sadder commentary on our culture than the negative ad campaign.

This behaviour reminds me of Chris Cooper's character Frank Fitts in American Beauty (a fantastic film, btw). I'll try to explain without spoilers: Fitts is a man who demonstrates a consuming hatred for the Ottawa Senators. Only after this hatred destroys his family is it revealed that Fitts is a little bit of an Ottawa Senators fan himself. His past is a painful one, and his repressed desire is the source of his rage.

~

Schadenfreude: The most overused word in hockeyblogtopia. Being a Habs fan means never having to cope with the guilt associated with hoping to witness the misfortune of another. You never need to get your schadenfreude jollies from watching rivals lose. Just by winning - against anyone - the Canadiens unleash across the nation a tidal wave of agony that miraculously only affects jerks. It's a nice feeling to simply watch your own team and enjoy their successes, even when they are of a limited variety.

When you've got a solid lead and are cruising to an easy victory, you can always count on some pre-splenectomy Sean Avery type on the other side to start yapping. The ~~best~~ only response is, "Take a look at the scoreboard," because the only thing worse than a sore loser is a sore winner.

1st 3rd vs. last 2 3rds

2008-05-08T16:58:00.003-03:00

A few things happened with the Canadiens about 1/3 of the way through the season. The biggest thing was a changing of the guard on the top line - it was early December when Koivu/Higgins/Ryder gave way to Plekanec/AKostitsyn/Kovalev for the top role. This is also when Ryder first became familiar with the 3rd/4th lines and the press box. Lapierre and S. Kostitsyn were called up from Hamilton, while Grabovski was sent down and Chipchura soon followed.

So it's interesting to look at what happened to players' stats before and after this point. I regularly saved copies of the behindthenet stats throughout the season just for this purpose. Here are the EV numbers:

Click for an image you can actually see, and my apologies for the lack of logical sorting.

From these tables, we can spot some team wide trends:

The shooting% started out ridiculously low, then changed to ridiculously high. Part of that is the switch to the Plekanec line which definitely produces higher shot quality, but I think a lot of it is just dumb luck.

Getting outshot at EV by 4 shots per game is bad. The Habs made up for that with shot quality this season. A 12.5 team-wide shooting% is probably not sustainable. Bump it down to 10.5% and we're looking at an EV goal differential of 0. That won't win them the Conference next year, and thet's why Gainey needs to look at solid EV free agents.

Now onto some individual players.

Tough minutes
First 1/3rd
QUALCOMP for D, toughest to easiest: Komisarek, Markov, Hamrlik, Streit, Brisebois, Bouillon, Gorges.
QUALCOMP for F, toughest to easiest: Smolinski, Koivu, Dandenault, Higgins, Ryder, Begin, Plekanec, Latendresse, A. Kostitsyn, Kovalev, Chipchura, Kostopoulos.

Last 2/3rds
QUALCOMP for D, toughest to easiest: Markov, Komisarek, Hamrlik, Gorges, Bouillon, O'Byrne, Brisebois.
QUALCOMP for F, toughest to easiest: Begin, Kostopoulos, Plekanec, Kovalev, A. Kostitsyn, Higgins, Koivu, Ryder, Smolinski, Streit, S. Kostitsyn, Lapierre, Latendresse, Dandenault.

On D, the only major change was the leap in minutes and quality by Josh Gorges.

Among forwards, the Plekanec line started to face good opponents and shutdown defensemen. Dandenault went from toughest to easiest minutes, and rightly so. Begin and Kostopoulos gained responibility. Smolinski lost the #1 checking role for awhile, I think due to some hard luck. He had the 2nd worst save% behind him, giving him more minuses than he deserved.

Shooting and Scoring
First 1/3rd
Dandenault was being eaten alive. The Plekanec line was doing well against weak opposition, and the Koivu line was holding it's own against tough opp. The goals for/against numbers were ugly due to a team-wide scoring slump. Hamrlik quickly made us forget 'ol whatsisname.

Plekanec was clearly the teams top EV forward.

Last 2/3rds
Dandenault was still losing the battle against 4th line opposition. Facing tougher opposition after game #26, the Plekanec line was outshot but definitely not outchanced. Koivu and Higgins were outshot despite playing softer opposition, partly due to their ever changing parade of weaker linemates. Looking at the numbers this way is not kind to Ryder, who was outshot by 11 per 60 minutes. Ouch. He was still facing moderate opposition, so I still think he would have been a better option than Dandenault, Latendresse and maybe even Sergei in the playoffs. Later in the season Kostopoulos earned Guy's trust and performed well.

The team's best EV forward was either Plekanec or A. Kostitsyn. I lean toward the latter. He got better upon the arrival of his little bro and continued to improve as the season progressed. His 2.6 EVP/60 would place him in the top 40 in the league, amid the likes of Lecavalier, Horcoff, Havlat and Arnott. Plekanec put up 2.4 EVP/60 and Kovalev 2.0. We should scale back our expectations for next year because of the unsustainable 15.5 shooting%.

In his 52 games played, Sergei enjoyed a team shooting% of 14% while he was on. He's not really a 2.0 EVP/60 player - yet. Ryder made a pretty good comeback from his early slump, putting up a team high 1.3 goals/60 and 1.9 EVP/60. I must admit I'm surprised by Streit's 2.2 EVP/60. Most of that was done whle playing forward, I'm sure.

~

Since I worked out the EV shooting% for and against for everyone in the league, I reviewed the players in the UFA list. If players are awarded contracts based on their 2007-08 numbers, the following players look like potential good values:

Vyborny
Naslund
Nagy
Fedotenko
Rissmiller
Satan

And these guys look like potential poor values:

Malone
Brunette
Demitra
Pandolfo

UFA Cup Half Empty

2008-05-08T00:45:00.002-03:00

Gainey says:

"I think that we want to play a fast game. We don't want to be vulnerable to (tough play). We have big guys. Perhaps we can be bigger and more rugged, but I think our philosophy is: We're quick, we're exciting, we're on the attack, we play to score, we're going to play to beat you within the rules. We just need to do it a little better."

Tom Benjamin wrote something a while ago (can't find the post now) stating something to the effect of this: Teams that win by playing tough don't get better by adding speed. They get better by getting tougher. Teams with speed don't get better by adding size, they get better by adding more speed. I think that's true. Play to your strengths and don't try to be everything to everyone.

Gainey also said:

"We'll be open to trying to find another forward. Our defence, we have some long-term sustainability."

Taking his comments as a whole, they suggest he might try to add a forward of a type we already have on the team. Beyond that, I have no idea what he's scheming. Could be a centre, left wing, right wing, could be a top liner, secondary scorer, checker or depth player. Any move that bumps a current 3rd liner down to the 4th would be an improvement.

A blockbuster long term signing is unlikely. With Plekanec, Higgins, Komisarek all expiring in 2009, a big ticket UFA might make for a tight squeeze to get under the cap. Koivu and Kovalev are expiring too, but even if they re-signed neither would take up any more proportional cap space than they do now. Anyway, this is a weak UFA year and it would make sense to save 2010-2015 cap space for a better player down the road.

I like the idea of going out West for a FA. The better conference translates to better value when contracts are based on counting numbers. Also, this is certain: he should be seeking a solid EV player, not a PP specialist.

TSN's Scott Cullen put together this list of impending FAs. I don't trust his judgement - an awful lot of the "next best" group of players appear to be better than a lot of the "top" group.

Below, I've picked all the players from Cullen's list that might just be pursued by Gainey, even if the chance is extremely remote.

Marian Hossa, RW, Pittsburgh
2.07 EVP/60, top line competition
Depending on what the Rangers do with Jagr, he may be a possibility. He's going to get big bucks despite his off year. The upside of the limited number of UFAs this summer is that a lot of the usual suspects have funds tied up in other players. Still, Hossa should have a few offers to juggle. I think the 'winning' contract will be a cripplingly long one. If Sather throws his hat into the ring, MTL will probably have to outbid them by a substantial margin.

Mats Sundin, C, Toronto
2.74 EVP/60, top line comp.

Daymond Langkow, C, Calgary
2.08 EVP/60, #2 line comp.
Solid player with numbers bolstered by Iggy. He won't be a bargain.

Kristian Huselius, LW, Calgary
2.11 EVP/60, #2/3 line comp.
Numbers took a jump, making him risky.

Sean Avery, LW, N.Y. Rangers
2.25 EVP/60, top line comp.
Not on my team.

Ryan Malone, LW, Pittsburgh
1.94 EVP/60, top line comp.
Not many players like him available this year, he'll get a whopper of a contract. Stay away Bob.

Radim Vrbata, RW, Phoenix
2.06 EVP/60, 3rd line comp.
Had ok scoring numbers against weak opp. in the PHX shooting gallery.

Brian Rolston, LW, Minnesota
1.42 EVP/60, #2 line comp.
Hard to imagine him leaving Min. If he does, he'll be in such demand that a good value deal is unlikely.

Jason Williams, RW, Chicago
2.06 EVP/60, top competition
Limited track record, but good production this year when he played. The most often mentioned UFA in the blogs this year? Is there too much buzz to get a good deal?

Vaclav Prospal, LW, Philadelphia
2.36 EVP/60, top line comp in Tampa
OK looking numbers, but was more of a passenger on the lines he was on in TB and Phi.

Michael Ryder, RW, Montreal
1.35 EVP/60, #1/#2 line comp.
He will be a good bargain somewhere, if someone can find a good home for him (secondary scoring line with a good centre).

Markus Naslund, RW, Vancouver
1.79 EVP/60, #3 line comp.
Old, but there is a good opportunity for value here. His stock is low, partly due to the defensive style of the Canucks. He would be moving into a higher scoring situation here. If he finds his way to Montreal I'm afraid Gorges will have to give up his sweater number.

Andrew Brunette, LW, Colorado
2.56 EVP/60, #2 line comp.

Pavol Demitra, LW, Minnesota
2.34 EVP/60, #3 line comp.

Cory Stillman, LW, Ottawa
1.93 EVP/60, #2 line comp.

Martin Straka, LW, N.Y. Rangers
2.17 EVP/60, #2 line comp.

Miroslav Satan, LW, N.Y. Islanders
1.65 EVP/60, #2/3 line comp.
Skated with the likes of Vasicek and Bergenheim. His dip in production might mean good value, but some nutty GM will probably be willing to overpay.

Niklas Hagman, LW, Dallas
1.91 EVP/60, #2 line comp
He had an unfortunate (for us) production spike in a contract year, which will raise his price. He played top 6 difficulty minutes for DAL, looks like good 3rd liner.

Jay Pandolfo, LW, New Jersey
1.99 EVP/60, #1 line comp

Chris Kelly, C, Ottawa
1.68 EVP/60, #2/3 line comp
Didn't look quite as good this year with less depth in OTT. Possible 3rd line C.

Bryan Smolinski, C, Montreal
1.54 EVP/60, top line comp
Did an adequate job for his role. Had a bad sv% behind him, making his +/- uglier than it should have been.

Antti Miettinen, RW, Dallas
1.94 EVP/60, #3 line comp
Not quite as good as Hagman. There are better bottom 6 options out there.

Jaroslav Hlinka, C, Colorado
2.28 EVP/60, #2 line comp.

David Vyborny, RW, Columbus
1.1 EVP/60, #2 line comp
His numbers took a nose dive on Hitchcock's Bluejackets. Could be a bottom 6 steal.

Ladislav Nagy, LW, Los Angeles
1.95 EVP/60, #3/4 line comp
Had some decent linemates, faced weak opp and had poor production. Like Vyborny, he is a gamble.

Pascal Dupuis, LW, Pittsburgh
1.46 EVP/60, #2/3 line comp
OK 3rd/4th liner inexplicably playing on Crosby's wing this Spring. He's the kind of guy the Habs should have picked up in February.

Ruslan Fedotenko, LW, N.Y. Islanders
1.5 EVP/60, #1/2 line comp
Not much in the way of counting numbers. Played pretty tough opp. Could be a bargain and produce with better players.

Matt Cooke, LW, Washington
1.17 EVP/60, #3 line comp

Randy Robitaille, C, Ottawa
1.83 EVP/60, #3 line comp

Niko Kapanen, C, Phoenix
0.91 EVP/60, #3 line comp
Weak opp in the desert and did nothing.

Chris Gratton, C, Tampa Bay
1.54 EVP/60, #3 line comp
Bottom 6 in Tampa, did little at EV, takes penalties.

Matt Bradley, RW, Washington
1.36 EVP/60, #4 line comp
4th liner on a team without a lot of depth.

Patrick Rissmiller, LW, San Jose
1.2 EVP/60, #2 line comp
With Grier/Mitchell, he played some tough mins in a tough division. He would cost peanuts and is a prime candidate to do a good job in a bottom 6 role. This year's Kostopoulos?

Georges Laraque, RW, Pittsburgh
1.35 EVP/60, 4th line comp

Josef Vasicek, C, N.Y. Islanders
1.57 EVP/60, #2 line comp
Not bad EV shot numbers, and only 27.

Mark Streit, D/W, Montreal
1.57 EVP/60, #3 line comp
PP numbers inflate his value. If he's paid market value for his counting numbers, it's bad value.

That's it?? So this is why Brunnstrom is such a hot commodity.

~

"Junior hockey phenom John Tavares has fired his agent and will now be represented by his mother, the Toronto Star reported in Tuesday's editions"

Remember the last Next One?
The Oshawa Generals phenom?
Who was ready to play in the NHL at 17, draft be damned?
Who was represented by a family member?

Yeah, that worked out well.

Projecting Higgins

2008-05-07T00:37:00.004-03:00

Chris Higgins got off to a relatively slow start. Not many guys that produced at his level at 22-24 scored as little as he did in the AHL at 20 (.72ppg, or .32ppg NHLE). His 21 y.o. AHL season was even worse (.67ppg, .29ppg NHLE), but that happened in the 2004-05 lockout year when the AHL was stacked.

Looking for comparisons, I focused on Higgins' 22, 23, and 24 year old seasons.

Points don't tell the whole story with any player, even less so with a guy like Higgins. For that reason I tried to pick some guys whose contributions go beyond scoring: Peca, York and Sturm. Like Higgins, responsible players and fine skaters. He's behind Peca but a fair bit ahead of Sturm's ppg.

Higgins has been used in more of a scoring role for the last couple of seasons (including some good PP time) so we might as well throw in Deadmarsh, Parrish and Dumont. Stylistically there aren't a whole lot of similarities there but goals are goals, right?

Dawe is a warning.

Lehtinen makes the other comparisons obsolete. His numbers are spot on, and then there is Gainey's famous endorsement:

"[Higgins] has talent on top of having discipline. He has a good sense of the game. He can play in all the major situations and in that sense, he reminds me of Lehtinen."

He's never going to line up next to a player like Modano so Higgins' numbers may never have quite the Selke trophy glint of Lehtinen's. But he looks like he has the tools to be that kind of player.

Dallas won the Cup in Lehtinen's 25 y.o. season.

Projecting A. Kostitsyn

2008-05-06T00:21:00.004-03:00

An ideal comparison would be a recent Eurpoean (preferably Eastern) top 10 pick who started out in the NHL at 21/22 and there just aren't many guys like that. The lockout year further muddied waters.

Kostitsyn was in the AHL for his 20 y.o. season, AHL/NHL at 21 (I averaged his NHL ppg and AHL equiv. ppg) and had a full NHL season this past year at 22.

It is important to note that the hockey-reference.com age numbers are "player age on February 1 of the given season." Kostitsyn is a Feb. 3 birthday, meaning he's as old as a player can be and still qualify as 20/21/22 in the three seasons listed.

Finally, his production this year was inflated a bit by a remarkably high shooting percentage by his line. His 0.68ppg might be overstated slightly.

The numbers are from hockey-reference.com. Italics mean NHL Equivalent ppg.

Hossa's development appears to have happened a full year earlier than Kostitsyn. But guess what? He's a Jan 12 birth, meaning it actually occurred two full years earlier. You could move his ppg numbers one column to the left. Hossa is not a fair comparison for Kostitsyn - he's listed just to demonstrate what Kostitsyn is not.

On the other hand, Andrei is ahead of Bondra's NHL numbers by a year and Bondra started out in a much higher scoring era. There is a lot if similarity with Elias at 21/22, but Kostitsyn got more PP time. Langenbrunner is very similar too.

Looks like Kostitsyn may be ahead of Dumont, Satan, Straka (who was injured a lot, I think), Cammalleri, Nagy and Audette.

Niklas Sundstrom is a cautionary tale of a player whose early numbers were propped up with high shot% and good linemates. I don't think Andrei is Sundstrom, because I think he drove results as much as anyone on his line at EV.

Naslund isn't a fair comp at all because he played behind Mogilny and Bure in Van, and behind an entire wing of the Hall of Fame in Pit. It's still nice to see Andrei's numbers look good in comparison.

Higgins makes a nice touchstone that we all know pretty well. Kostitsyn is ahead of him by a fair bit.

With his limited body of work, it's not easy picking one player as a good comparison. Looking at some other recent products of the Russian system, he's ahead of Afinogenov, Fedotenko and Ponikarovsky but behind Frolov.

At the absolute top end if-he-sells-his-soul-to-Miro-Satan, Kostitsyn may turn out to be Elias. We can be pretty sure he'll pan out better than Dumont. I'm not confident enough to project anything more specific than that.

Projecting Plekanec

2008-05-05T14:18:00.003-03:00

We're looking at a relatively young team. It looks like there are more names trending up (Price, Plekanec, Kostitsyns, Higgins, Komisarek, Gorges, Latendresse) than trending down (Koivu, Kovalev, Dandenault, Hamrlik). I'm going to do a series of posts in an effort to project the talent level for the near to slightly less near future.

At hockey-reference.com, the Player Season Finder is a fantastic tool. I used it to find past player seasons that are comparable to the early years of the Canadiens' youngsters. This should give us a ballpark idea of the career potential of each. I tried to restrict comparisons to the last dozen years or so for a few reasons (dead puck era, European invasion, clearer memory of players etc). I also tried to compare somewhat similar players. And obviously it would be preferable to see everything broken down into PP and EV situations, but that's just not possible.

The franchise's cautiousness with prospects and the lockout season make it difficult to find perfect matches, so sometimes we'll have to settle for pretty good matches.

First off, Tomas Plekanec.

The names following Plekanec are sorted by their cumulative ppg in the first three columns. The italicized cells are NHLE.

Pleks is clearly behind where Sykora, Koivu and Tanguay (not listed) were at this point in their careers.

The most tempting comparison is Datsyuk, a late bloomer whose numbers grew at a rate similar to Pleks' (albeit a little earlier). That has to be considered a far upper boundary. Or a pipe dream. Pleks hasn't exhibited anything like Datsyuk's flashes of brilliance early in his career.

The Sullivan/Briere numbers look similar to Pleks' on the surface, but remember those guys had unconventional development curves. For whatever reason (usually attributed to size/softness) they didn't get the chances they should have early on. These guys are probably at or above the absolute ceiling of Plekanec's potential.

Brendan Morrison - now this guy looks like a good comparison. His style, strengths, numbers are all similar to Pleks. Morrison has never been considered a true #1 centre, but he didn't exactly hinder that dynamite Naslund-Bertuzzi line.

Plekanec is definitely ahead of the rest - Stillman, Arnason, Cullen, Prospal, McDonald and Horcoff - making them look like lower-end projections (although there seem to be a disproportionate number of late bloomers in there - if an under contract Pleks morphs into Horcoff in his late 20s I'll be durn pleased).

Going a little further back in time, some other comparables might be Nylander, Stumpel, Cassels, Craven, Pivonka, Ridley.

So there we have it. He may not be a dominant #1 guy, but as long as checking lines are the norm in Montreal he doesn't need to be. Plekanec should have a good career.

Season Ending Bullets

2008-05-04T14:41:00.001-03:00

- Bloody goalposts. Three more last night. The series count was 7-1 (not counting the one by Prospal in g4 that landed on Upshall's stick for a goal). "In a playoff series between closely matched teams, the team that hits less iron usually wins."

- In 2006, "After two rounds of the playoffs the teams that had been helped out by the posts the most were EDM(12) and CAR(10) and BUF(9). If the nets were a couple of inches bigger each way ... none of these three teams would have still been alive by that point... In the four game winning streak vs the Habs, Ward got help from the posts and crossbar 5 times, Huet only once."

- RJ Umberger isn't a career 40% shooter. The Flyers weren't saved by 80+ more goalposts than they hit in the reg. season. Biron is not 70 sv% points better than Price. By the numbers, it looks like the Pens might devour these guys like they did the Senators.

- Did they outsource the Bell Centre music to Spectrum Audio Services Ltd., Philadelphia PA?? The song they played just before the puck drop in the 3rd was "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

- Unlike most of this series, Flyers came to play in game 5. When you outplay a team in three straight and lose them all, it's hard to expect a win when the play is even.

- A 30 year old Briere for a cap hit of $6.5M over the next 7 years?? The fans should have been cheering this guy for choosing Philly. He scores on the PP and against 3rd stringers at EV. Valuable contributions, no doubt, but not #1 centre material by a long shot.

- Would Huet have made a difference? Probably not in games 2, 3 and 4. The Canadiens scored two goals in each of those three losses. Huet wouldn't have helped in that department, as evidenced by his 0 goals in the regular season. I don't think it's fair to assume he would have stolen a game either.

- It is fair to second guess Gainey's deadline inactivity. I've been over this before. The 4th line was killed all through the playoffs. A solid, cheap vet or two could have remedied this, but Gainey chose to give the kids experience instead.

- On the upside, it's hard to be too disappointed with the season. They were 10 points better than I expected in the reg. season. They faced two weak teams in the playoffs and outplayed both. It bodes well for the future. These guys are built to compete for the title of Penguins' bridesmaids for the next 4-6 years.

Some Numbers

2008-05-02T13:29:00.003-03:00

Even Strength (click for a clearer view):

- On the whole, these numbers look pretty damn fine for such a mediocre EV team in the regular season. A lot of that is because Boston and Philly are not exactly powerhouses.

- One of these days, everyone is going to realize that Kovalev just isn't a good EV player. It will never happen, but I wonder what he would fetch in a trade now that his stock is sky high.

- In a just and fair world, AKost would be eating into Kovy's EV minutes. I've got a post in the works looking at the career trajectories of him and Plekanec.

- The Streit/Lapierre/Dandenault line made a compelling case for dressing nine forwards in round one.

- SKost caught a lot of breaks in the reg. season. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but he just keeps drawing aces.

Power Play:

- He's been slowing down the last couple of seasons. What happens if Koivu falls off a cliff next year?

- Streit was on fire on the PP down the stretch but has had a rough playoff.

- Kovy still producing at half his reg. season rate on the PP. Maybe if he laid off the 90 second EV shifts he's have a little more oomph on the PP.

- Let's plant Gui in front of the net.

~

Seems Gainey is courting Brunnstrom. Anytime a guy is hyped this much, the 'winner' is going to overpay. We already had a good long look at Niklas Sundstrom, Bob. Just say no.

A quick look at the SEL on hockeydb turns up Per Svartvadet as a fair comparison. Svartvadet put up 9-23-32 in 50gp at age 23. Brunstrom: 9-28-37 in 54gp. The SEL is chock full of 23 year old 3rd/4th/5th round picks with numbers similar to Brunnstrom's but with far less hype.

Great Expectorations

2008-05-01T11:43:00.004-03:00

If you can believe it, the Expected Goals in this series favour the Flyers 13.3 to 10.5. That just can't be right.

Not including the subjective but universal opinion that MTL has dominated on scoring chances, I believe there are two factors in play here that incorrectly tilt the EGF toward PHI.

1 - Leads. According to Javageek, shots while leading are higher probability chances. In a way that makes sense because the trailing team is more likely to take chances. However, breaking down shot probabilities by leading/trailing situations adds bias to the data. Good teams take leads more often than bad teams, and bad teams trail more often than good teams. When a bad team has a lead their EGF will receive an unfair boost on all shots, and vice versa for good teams that are trailing. Montreal has not had a shot on goal while leading for the entire series.

2 - Shot angle. This is not accounted for in the EGF calculation. Only distance matters, and that is a distance to the back boards - not the direct line distance to the net. Not only does the number of shots heavily favour Montreal, but I think the shot locations are on their side too.

Here are the shot charts from ESPN for all four games:

The Flyers are being rewarded in terms of EGF by taking bad angle shots from along the goal line.

Now, Gabriel Desjardins of Behindthenet fame actually plucks this shot information (see this post, which even mentions Ryder) and builds some outstanding goal probability charts. Here is the chart for 5 on 5 play.

The 5 on 4 situation chart can be found here.

Driven to the brink of insanity by the last three games, I actually went to the trouble of cutting a little pentagonal hole in a piece of paper and held it over the ESPN charts to count dangerous shots. The lines in the charts above are an approximation of my cutout.

Now for the totals.

7 - 6 in g1
14- 4 in g2
10- 5 in g3
11- 7 in g4
-----
42-22 total.

Shots within the pentagon are 35-16 in the 3 losses. This would be a rout if it weren't for Biron. And his big fat goalposts.

Game 4

2008-04-30T23:32:00.005-03:00

Looking for a review? I won't waste my time. Just go look at the last two games. It will have to suffice to say the Habs smoked them again everywhere but in the crease.

So they're down 3-1. Historically, the road team has gone on to win the series 70 times out of 80, or 87.5%. The upside for the Habs is their odds for a comeback have to be a little better than the historical rate because they've demonstrated in three straight games that they are the better team by a fair margin.

~

Biron has allowed 10 goals on 142 shots for a sv% of .930. Price/Halak's sv% has been .854. At that rate they'd allow 19 goals on an equal number of shots. Even more, actually, because those save% numbers don't take into account the greater number of more difficult PP shots Biron has stopped.

Obviously, this is not sustainable. No NHL team has goaltending that is 75 points better than any other NHL team.

Montreal's goaltending is an organizational strength. They've just run into a helluva hot streak by Biron in this series. Combined with a poorly timed cold streak by Price, that means trouble. I should note, hot streaks/cold streaks in this context are the same as hot streaks/cold streaks with coin tosses or dice. Dumb luck.

~

Anyone else remembering Begin's high sticking double minor in game #82 last year?

~

If a mistake was made on the Mtl bench tonight, it was not playing the 46-14-74 line enough. Those guys dominated but saw way less icetime than 21-11-27.

News Flash

2008-04-30T11:26:00.002-03:00

The PP is just fine and not at all to blame for being down 2-1 in this series.

Applying the regular season rates to the PP icetime in round 1, they should have scored eight goals, not three. If you figure in a 20% drop in PP rates for the playoffs, they still should have scored seven. No question, the lack of PP production nearly cost them the series.

That attitude seems to have carried over into the 2nd round. It's not justified. They've scored four goals. Applying the regular season rates to the round 2 TOI, they should have scored... four goals. Only three if you figure in a 20% drop for the playoffs. The 2:00 5 on 3 gave us all a bad impression, but they made up for it in 5 on 4 situations. It's all in the bounces.

If you want to find a culprit for this series, blame the goalposts. The official count (in the nhl.com play by plays) is 4-1, although none were recorded in game 2 I swear I counted at least one.

The skaters are not to blame - they've played well enough to be up 2-1 but just haven't had the puck luck. And the difference in goaltending hasn't helped. If they dominate the play in game 4 like they did in games 2 & 3 *and* the Flyers don't dominate on bounces again, the series will be tied.

~

Bad news: Knuble should be back tonight. If he's 100% (can you really recover from a muscle tear in 10 days), he will be a substantial upgrade over Thoreson on the Richards line and a big PP threat.

Game 3 Review

2008-04-29T00:19:00.002-03:00

Two more posts. Helluva lot of near misses. That's two games in a row that the Habs thoroughly spanked them on posession, shots, chances... everywhere except in the crease (more on that next paragraph). For a fan of a team that got their fair share of luck this season, I suppose you gotta admit that thems the breaks.

Goaltending. Price was awful again. Halak played the 3rd. So how's that Huet trade looking now? Below average playoff goaltending on a 1st place team is a steep price to pay just to give the kid experience. If he turns into a brick wall next season (particularly in the playoffs) then it may be worth it. So I won't call for Gainey's head until we see what happens next year.

~

Thanks Derian! Your meatheadedness didn't quite hand us the game, but you sure as hell tried. Hatcher may be a dirty slug, but I believe he can be rehabilitated. You know, with the right combination of drugs, tough love and drastic brain surgery, he can once again become a productive member of society. Possibly as a pro wrestler or a trash barge.

~

Millen Math: 3.5 - 2 = 0.5

~
Lines:

Higgins / Koivu / Kovy (13 min EV)
AKost / Pleks / SKost (10 min)
Begin / Smoke / Kostpls (10 min)
Streit / Lapierre / Dandy (8 min)
Markov / Komi (12 min)
Hamrlik / O'Byrne (15 min)
Bouillon / Gorges (14 min)

Umberger / Carter / Upshall (12 min)
Prospal / Briere / Hartnell (10 min EV)
Thoreson / Richards / Lupul (10 min)
Kapanen / Dowd / Downie (8 min)
Coburn / Timonen (15 min)
Hatcher / Jones (14 min)
Kukkonen / Smith (12 min)

Koivu vs. Carter, Plekanec vs. Briere, Smolinski vs. Richards, Begin vs. Dowd.

Timonen/Coburn vs. Koivu.

The shake up on the 3 and 4 lines had some good results. Particularly Begin taking Lapierre's place at centre. The kid's chance trading tendencies are a bad fit for a player with a centre's responsibilities.

Shots, from timeonice:

You can't really fault the team's play. Right now, the worst thing Carbo could do would be to take drastic action. They're beating the Flyers in every way except the score (and goaltending).

Bonus Game 2 Material

I was at a charity auction and missed the first 30 minutes of the game. Our bidder number? 74.

The 30 minutes I saw were frustrating for sure. The Canadiens had chance after chance and were either robbed by Biron or the goalpost. Judging by the numbers, it looks like the first half of the game went the same way. We can take solace in knowing that if the remaining games of this series go the same way except the goaltending, the Habs are pretty much a shoo in for the Conference finals. Biron was lights out, Price was disturbingly poor. Again.

Higgins / Koivu / Kovy (12 min EV)
AKost / Pleks / SKost (12 min)
Begin / Smoke / Kostpls (14 min)
Streit / Lapierre / Dandy (6 min)
Markov / Komi (15 min)
Hamrlik / Brisebois (13 min)
Bouillon / Gorges (15 min)

Kovalev and SKost switched placed in the 2nd half.

With Hartnell back on Briere's line, Markov/Komi were matched against them more tightly. Incidentally, once saddled with Lupul the Richards line became brutal.

Koivu saw Briere and Carter, Plek saw Richards and Carter, Smoke saw Briere and Richards, Lapierre faced Dowd.

Prospal / Briere / Hartnell (13 min EV)
Umberger / Carter / Upshall (11 min)
Thoreson / Richards / Lupul (11 min)
Kapanen / Dowd / Downie (9 min)
Coburn / Timonen (15 min)
Hatcher / Jones (17 min)
Kukkonen / Smith (12 min)

It looks like Timonen's assingment was Koivu/Higgins, not Kovalev. Hatcher's assignment was to lumber off the ice as fast possible when Koivu was on.

Shots, from timeonice:

The shot numbers really say it all. Chances were 20-9, says Millen.

Round 2: Game 1 Review

2008-04-25T01:26:00.003-03:00

In the pregame, Friedman mentioned that Stevens gave his players a task. They were each assigned a player from the Canadiens similar to themselves and were asked to provide an analysis to the rest of the team of their tendencies, strengths/weaknesses etc. Friedman said Timonen did Markov and Richards did Koivu. I'd sure like to see the rest of the list.

This game reminded me a lot of game 2 in round 1. Two goalposts early on, the Flyers got some breaks on a couple of goals, Markov puts a puck in a second after the buzzer, a missed penalty shot. A lot of breaks went the wrong way. In the end, Javageek's expected goal numbers favour the Flyers but I'd swear the home team had the better chances. That's observer bias for you.

Lines were pretty much as advertised.

Higgins / Koivu / Kovy (19 min EV)
AKost / Pleks / SKost (14 min)
Begin / Smoke / Kostpls (13 min)
Streit / Lapierre / Dandy (7 min)
Markov / Komi (18 min)
Hamrlik / Brisebois (18 min)
Bouillon / Gorges (17 min)

Match ups were loose. Early on Carbo wanted Koivu vs Briere, but as they fell behind it looks like he ran the top two while Stevens reacted. The top line wound up with an even split against the Flyers top 3. Elsewhere, I think Carbo preferred Smoke vs. Richards and #4 vs #4. Now that Koivu's back in game shape, he's eating up some of Lapierre's (and Plek's) minutes.

The defense were handled very differently than we saw in round 1. They must have been tired, beat up or both because they just rolled the three pairs. The top two pairs saw slightly more Briere and Carter and the #3 pair saw slightly more Richards. Here is their total icetime:
HAMRLIK, ROMAN 21:56
MARKOV, ANDREI 21:53
BOUILLON, FRANCIS 20:04
GORGES, JOSH 19:28
KOMISAREK, MICHAEL 17:46
BRISEBOIS, PATRICE 17:20

Canadiens shots from timeonice:

Bad stuff happened when the #5/6 D were on. Might want to reconsider the balanced icetime, Carbo, unless fatigue is worse than we know. That 4th line is going to cost the team before the playoffs are done.

Flyers:
Prospal / Briere / Lupul (16 min EV)
Umberger / Carter / Upshall (15 min)
Kapanen / Richards / Hartnell (16 min)
Thoreson / Dowd / Downie (6 min)
Coburn / Timonen (19 min)
Hatcher / Jones (19 min)
Kukkonen / Smith (14 min)

Flyers shots:

The Briere line was utterly destroyed, but through dumb luck managed to keep opponents off the scoreboard. This bodes well. Timonen was dominant but through some bad luck wound up -2. That bodes less well. If the Flyers are banking on Jim Dowd and company for offense, this series will be over in a hurry.

The Value of Blueliners

2008-04-24T16:46:00.002-03:00

Koivu and Timonen are buddy-buddy, but not for the next two weeks.

Last Spring, I thought Timonen would be the ideal replacement for Souray (though I underestimated his - and Markov's - salaries by long shot). The guy was tasked with containing Ovechkin in round 1 and did as good a job as could be expected. I wonder if Hamrlik would have done that well.

Timonen is 32, and signed in Philly for 6 years at a cap hit of $6.333M. Hamrlik, 33, signed for 4 years at $5.5M per. If you add Harmlik's salary to the cap hit for the buyouts of Cullimore and Salmelainen, it's pretty much the same as Timonen's salary. Just sayin'.

~

Here is a very interesting post from Behindthenet Blog: if you take the numbers at face value, losing a top 2 defenseman is 2.5 to 3 times worse than losing a top 2 forward due to injury. That's surprising.

Speculating on a reason for the difference:

- perhaps it's easier to compensate for the loss of a forward by redistributing minutes. On average, a defenseman will play 20 minutes while a forward will play less than 15. Your five remaining NHL defensemen making up 21 lost minutes will be spread thinner than 11 remaining NHL forwards making up the lost 19.

- the talent curve could be a lot steeper for defensemen - there are fewer elite defensemen who can step in and replace a top player.

- others reasons?

Know Your Enemy

2008-04-24T12:22:00.003-03:00

Here are the Flyers numbers from behindthenet:

Sorted by QUALCOMP. Prospal is at the top because he spent most of the year in Tampa. Looking at his role in Philly, he should appear down around Briere/Hartnell.

Knuble is out with a torn hamstring (sounds uncomfortable), and Gagne is out with his year-long concussion. The injury reports say both are day-to-day. I'm guessing it's unlikely that we'll see either, and if we do thay will not be near 100%.

Looking at their last couple of games, it's hard to say for sure how the Flyers lineup will be arranged in this series. Knuble's loss made a large hole at EV and top unit PP which shuffled up the lines. In their game 7 we saw:

Umberger / Carter / Upshall
Kapanen / Richards / Hartnell
Prospal / Briere / Lupul
Thoreson / Dowd / Downie
Timonen/Coburn
Hatcher/Jones
Smith/Kukkonen

Expect Modry to be in for Kukkonen. Downie shouldn't be a factor (read: risk of injury due to cheap shot). He only played 6.5 minutes in game 7.

Going back to Flyers/Caps game 4, Knuble (his last home game) was on Carter's RW and that line was Stevens' preferred against Ovechkin. They used Timonen/Coburn against Ovechkin all series. In Caps home games, it looks like Boudreau tried to get Ovechkin away from Carter/Knuble. After Knuble went down, Boudreau gladly went with Ovechkin against the Carter line shown above.

I think we can expect to see Timonen/Coburn on vs. the Habs #1. If the lines stay the same as above, Stevens will probably prefer Carter vs. the top line, Richards vs. the nominal #2 and Briere vs. Smolinski. At least he went that way in game 7 vs. Caps.

From Montreal's perspective... I have no clue who the defense pairs will match up against. Stevens seems to prefer balance across lines (although the Briere line will be, by definition, a softie). That makes it hard to pick a match for Komi/Markov. Let's just say the top 2 pairs will get almost all the EV icetime against the top 3 lines. Up front Carbo will probably prefer #1 vs. Carter, #2 vs. Richards and the Smoke line against Briere.

Without Knuble, the top PP will probably be Briere, Prospal, Lupul, Timonen and Richards. It's a PP nearly as good as the Habs'. On the upside, Philly's EV play is even worse than Mtl's.

In round 1 the bookies said Montreal 75% likely to win over Boston. This time they're only around 64%. Javageek says 59%, though I'm not sure if that figure takes home ice into account. Considering the loss of their #1 RW, I'd say the Flyers' stock has risen considerably since the start of the playoffs.

~

In round 2, it's Habs, Pens, Wings, Sharks.

Great Expectations

2008-04-23T13:52:00.003-03:00

It happened awhile ago, but Game 2 really got me thinking a lot about shot quality.

The perception persists that the Habs stole the game, that they were outplayed by Boston. Boston held the edge in shots, 39-31, and 21-14 at EV. That's where the positives begin and end for the Bruins.

There were two breakaways (Kovalev and AKost) stopped by Tim Thomas. The Bruins had none. Letting highly skilled opponents skate in alone on Thomas was probably not part of the Bs game plan. Hamrlik and Brisebois both hit goalposts. The Bruins had none. This was a game in which the Bruins got all the breaks (perhaps excepting penalties, which were atrociously called on both sides), but still lost in overtime.

Obviously, the scoring chance quality was not equal for both clubs. This is where Javageek's nifty little tables come in.

The expected goals in game 2 were 5.6 for Montreal, 2.0 for Boston. Expected goals are defined in Alan Ryder's Shot Quality study. Basically, he figures out an average probability that a shot will find the net for shots of different types at different distances in different situations. He finds that tip-ins, shots off rebounds, shots made close to the net and shots on the PP are all more likely to go in than normal. That sort of stuff. Adding up the goal probability for all of your shots in a game gives you an expected goal total. It's far from perfect, but it's better than just counting shots.

This table from Hockey Numbers shows a lot of interesting pieces of data for the 30 teams' performance at even strength this season.

The columns are, in order: Expected Goals For per 60, Expected Goals Against per 60, Expected Goal Differential per 60, Shot Quality Neutral Save%, Actual Goals For per 60, Actual Goals Against per 60, Relative Shot Quality For, Shots For per 60, Relative Shot Quality Against, Shots Against per 60, Actual Goal Differential per 60, Expected Total (season?) Goals For, Expected Total Goals Against, Expected Total Goal Differential.

I'm not sure one season is enough data to be able to draw conclusions, but I will anyway.

Scoring Goals

Correlation between SF (shots for per 60) and GF (goals for per 60): 0.33
Makes sense. The more shots you take, the more goals you score.

Correlation between SF and SQF (team average shot quality, relative to league average): -0.19
Small, but negative. It looks like there is a trade-off between shot quality and number of shots.

Correlation between SQF and GF: 0.32
This surprised me. The SQF number is just an average - it doesn't take number of shots into consideration at all, and it's as good a goal predictor as number of shots.

Correlation between EGF (expected goals for, product of SQF and SF) and GF: 0.53
Strong correlation. EGF is a better predictor of GF than shots-for or shot quality alone. Makes sense.

Correlation between SF and SA: -0.26
'The best defense is a good offense' rings true. When you're getting chances, the other guys aren't.

So, EGF is better at measuring offense than simple SF. This is a step toward the elusive measure of scoring chances without having to resort to counting them subjectively.

Preventing Goals
Correlation between SA and GA: 0.57
Strong - the more shots you allow, the more goals you're likely to allow. But why so much stronger than the correlation between SF and GF?

Correlation between SA and SQA: 0.41
Bad defense is bad defense: teams allowing more shots tend to allow better shots. If there are clubs who defensively rely on allowing a greater number of lower quality shots, they aren't the norm.

Correlation between SQA and GA: 0.38
Teams allowing better chances allow more goals against, but it's not as strong as simple shots against. More ammo against the low shot quality team defense.

Correlation between EGA and GA: 0.57
Expected goals against is no better a predictor of GA than simple SA. Still more ammo against the low shot quality team defense.

On defense, EGA and SA are equally good at predicting GA. That's not good news for proponents of the high-SA/low-SQA theory of defense. Ryder's paper says pretty much the same thing. In the season he studied, it looked like team defense (or lack thereof) could drive shot quality up or down by ~10% tops. It's the guys on offense who are driving most of the shot quality. Good defense and good offense both shift shots out of the SA column and into the SF column.

Javageek has posted the expected goal numbers for 46 of the 1st round games. Small sample, but nevertheless:

Correlation btw Expected Goals and GF: 0.44
Btw Shots for and GF: 0.28
Btw Shots directed at the net (incl attempts blocked and misses) and GF: 0.07

The team with the higher EGF won 35 of the 46 games.
The team with the higher shot total won 31 of the 46.
The team with the higher shots directed total won 26 of the 46.

The team with the greater EGF series total won all eight first round series.
The team with the greater SOG total won six of eight.
The team with the greater shots directed series total went 4-4.

It's not an entirely fair comparison because EGF has PP factors built in while the shot totals don't.

I'm liking this EGF number. As a measure of a team's offensive potential, it has a greater predictive value than shots. Looking at boxscores, it provides an OK scoring chance count that is 100% objective.

The Round One Riot

2008-04-22T23:05:00.001-03:00

I won't bother with the game 7 review. We all saw it. Let's talk riot.

Since the focus of all this seems centred on 5/10/15/whatever police cars, lets put things into perspective in terms of cars. According to Stats Canada, there is a car stolen every three minutes. If you apply that national rate to Montreal, you get a car stolen in the city every 30 minutes. Realistically, it would be more because Montreal is urban. It would be even more on April 21 because the weather was nice enough for people to be outside at night. That adds up to a lower limit of 50 cars stolen in Montreal on April 21. I'll leave the vandalism and petty theft rates as an exercise for you to do at home.

So 50 cars are stolen every day. That's way more than five. So... where is the outrage?

I'm not saying this riot was not newsworthy - the circumstances and unusual nature make it news. I'm not I saying that these actions should be tolerated, although I'll go out on a limb and suggest adding more cops with batons and plexiglass shields is probably not a recipe for success. I am saying the outraged reaction is misplaced, maybe even hypocritical.

Stuff was burned, smashed and stolen. The arsonists, vandals and thieves are unquestionably compete assholes. However, unlike some of the roughhousing that had taken place in other cities, no one was hospitalized as a result of this riot. If you want to do some major tut-tutting, there are far worse injustices every day in every city than five torched cop cars. Injustices even worse than fifty stolen cars. Get some perspective, folks.

Now, to you juvenile delinquents: Save the riots for historically significant events. Say, if Koivu punches Cherry in the adam's apple for being called 'Sako Koy-voy' one time too many, and as a result Bettman suspends the captain for the remainder of the season and playoffs, then by all means, riot away.

~

WOOOOO FLYERS!

Also, Go Rivet! But Go Flames More!

Game 7 Belated Commentary

2008-04-21T22:52:00.003-03:00

1st Period

- To start: 21 11 27, 51 26. This is not the time for experimentation Carbo. Stick with the girl you brought to the dance.

- Everyone on both teams looks tentative.

- The next line: 46 14 74

- The first solid Bruins pressure occurs while Lapierre line is on.

- Smolinski line is outplayed by Savard.

- Komisarek on a deflection! 1-0.

- Again, Lapierre = chances for Boston.

- Early on it looks like every line but Koivu's gets stuck in own zone. B's gain the red line uncontested, not so for Mtl.

- Order is restored in the universe: 21-11-74.

- Begin hustles like a Bruin. He draws a penalty.

- PP awful again, they're beat to every puck. Wish they showed the same effort they do at EV. Better yet, give the same effort the Bs do all the time.

1st intermission:

Fine, Don, you're pro-Boston. We get it. We aren't asking you to change your mind. Dinosaurs are stubborn. Rather, we would prefer to see someone else in the 1st intermission. Someone whose opinion I care about. Someone who doesn't need every single f***ing pun from Ron MacLean explained to him twice. Maybe Steve Shutt? He's entertaining.

2nd Period

- Bruins utilize the lob.

- Looks like Murray is out. Mtl has carried the play since he left.

- Boston's Krejci line beats Smoke's.

- SKost goes for interference, penalties are 3-1 in Boston's favour.

- Come on, don't sit on the 1-0 lead guys!

- Kovy back on Koivu's line.

- Yikes, Habs 5 best players, 21 11 27 8 79 were hemmed in by the Metropolit line.

- Streit!!!! 2-0!!! Bob Cole mutters his saddest "ohhh... baby." ever!

- The little guy from Shawinigan's in attendance, waving a towel.

- Sturm is a fine player.

- Chara goes off for holding. Work it low on right side, Kovy!!!

- Higgins hustles like a Bruin.

- We have a horn on the faceoff... is it a phone call from the 'war room' in T-Dot? Seems every office with lots of phones and monitors gets called a 'war room.'

- SKost! QBing the PP from Kovy's spot! Brother Andrei makes it 3-0! I'll never disparage the kid again. PP has it's mojo back.

- Cole: "We'll be hearing that song a lot tonight, with a 3-0 lead" Will someone *please* explain this song to the old coot??

- Slow-inski, caught by Savard on the breakaway.

- Senator Mahovlich in attendance. Reading lips, it looks like he's reminding everyone in a 10-seat radius that he's "not with THOSE Senators."

- 3-0 after two, but I'm reminded of last season's final game debacle vs. Leafs. A lot can happen in one period.

2nd intermission

Spent the whole time cleaning up this crap writing.

3rd Period

- They kill off the remainder of a penalty from the 2nd, then Bouillon goes off for boarding. He's making the dive sign, but it was a dumb hit.

- So far so good for the PK.

- Lucic reaches skyward at Price's clear, very much resembling a great ape reaching for a low branch. Funny.

- Chara might have a case on Begin's block attempt that turned into a trip.

- *Another* penalty. I think they're 6-3 now.

- It's about time. Ference called for some crease violence.

- No goal on the PP, but it looks like they're trying. This is improvement.

- Higgins breakaway.... no dice.

- Go Flyers.

- Wow, Begin breaks Wideman's stick with a slash, but no call. That's usually called, but I hate it. You have to be able to play a guy's stick.

- Savard off for goalie interference, 3:00 left. That should do it.

- 4-0, Brisebois point shot, rebound knocked in by AKost. Now get the shutout for Price, lads.

- Go Flyers.

- SKost with 10 seconds left to punctuate the end of this series. 5-0.

- Three cheers for Boston. Great city, lovable team.

- Go Flyers.

No Cinderella run for Boston this year. It's midnight, and Claude Julien's gourd-like melon has turned back into a pumpkin.

Go Flyers.

But Keenan once gave me an 8 minute shift!

2008-04-21T16:03:00.003-03:00

Take a look at the average shift lengths in the playoffs. The guy at the top has young legs and is the world's best player right now. The guy sitting at #2? Not Chara, not Mike Green, not Andrei Markov or any other PP point man. Not Crosby either. It's Alex Kovalev.

Kovalev is, quite literally, short changing his teammates.

Game 6 Review

2008-04-20T23:44:00.005-03:00

I'll keep this one short, but not so sweet.

Canadiens' lines:
AKost / Pleks / Kovy
Higgins / Koivu / SKost
Begin / Smoke / Kostpls
Streit / Lapierre / Dandy
Markov / Komi
Hamrlik / Brisebois
Bouillon / Gorges

Shots, from timeonice:

Bruins' lines:
Lucic / Savard / Murray
Sturm / Krejci / Kessel
Axelsson / Metropolit / Nokelainen
Schaefer / Sobotka / Thornton
Chara / Ward
Ference / Hnidy
Stuart / Wideman

Shots:

Murray started on the top line, but he and Kessel switched spots late in the 1st. The Bs 2nd line with Sturm, Krejci and Kessel looked good.

Julien was less rigid with his matching this time around. The Savard line saw mostly Pleks, then Lapierre. The Krejci line saw mostly Koivu, Metropolit was used in more of a checking role against Pleks, and Julien did well to keep Sobotka out vs. Smoke. Chara was matched Kovy again, of course.

Carbo seems to be having some trouble trusting his 3rd pairing LD. We're seeing Markov and Hamrlik play almost the whole game on the left side, with Komisarek, Brisebois and Gorges rotating on the right. He's trying to make sure at least one of Komi, Markov and Hamrlik are on against the Bruin 1 & 2 lines.

It is noteworthy that AKost/Pleks/Kovy were on for half of the final 10 minutes last night. All three late Boston goals were scored on one of their shifts or as one of their shifts was ending. The two Montreal goals during this stretch were scored by the Koivu line.

~

The PP has been an utter failure. I think it's safe to say that if it had produced at half its regular season rate, this series would be over.

The other aspects of the game have been OK. After outplaying Boston at EV in games 1 & 2, 5 on 5 play has been a dead heat. This is a positive for the Habs, who were not a good EV team through the regular season while Boston was average. The Boston PP / Mtl PK has been pretty positive too. But we've seen *nothing* positive from the PP, despite the fact that they're facing the 27th best regular season PK. I don't think it's been a cold streak, because they're not even getting shots and chances.

I hate to say it, but Cherry might be right. It always seems in the playoffs that there is a rise in the proportion of goals resulting from point shots. With the harder checking in playoff hockey, conventional shots are harder to come by. Go for the simple play, take advantage of the chaos in front of the net. Deflections happen.

Here's a table providing the gory details of the PP suckitude:

Sorted by their playoff PP TOI per game. The Reg. season rates are for 5-on-4 PP time only, making the playoff rates (which include some 5-on-3 time) that much uglier.

Kovy's 4.0 pts/60 is OK, but only half the rate at which he produced in the regular season. The whole shebang has been miserable. Only Brisebois has pulled his weight on the PP.

I also included the EV scoring rates. The numbers support the consensus that Smoke/Begin/Kostopoulos have been Montreal's best at EV. Not only has the top line failed to produce on the PP, they've been sub-par at EV too. I wonder if this is a case of Kovalev (who is the least productive EV producer on the top line, by the way) "trying to do too much?"

I WAS COACH OF THE YEAR! I TELL IT LIKE IT IS!

2008-04-18T15:05:00.006-03:00

There has been a bit of talk about a backlash against the Mother Corp.

I think this is rooted in the failure to renew the SRC deal for Canadiens games a couple of years ago. The late 90s/early 2000s were not kind to the Canadiens and ratings were probably down in la Belle Province. SRC refused an opportunity to buy low, relinquishing rights to RDS. For the first time in my life, I couldn't watch Montreal every Saturday night on the French CBC. I still don't get RDS. Why pay for it when the pubs show the games for free?

Now that the Habs are the only option left, the CBC finds itself in unfamiliar territory: regularly broadcasting Canadiens games. They're not doing themselves any favours with the cast. To put it mildly, Cole has lost a step. With the possible exception of Glenn Healy, Greg Millen is the worst colour guy on TV. Most damning of all, Cherry comes on in the intermissions openly rooting for the Bruins.

Now the CBC sees the downside of Don Cherry. Sure, the bulk of your typical HNIC audience has a high tolerance level for his unique blend of redneck bigotry, glamorous flamboyance and outright shilling for ~~the political right~~ ColdFX, peppered with the occasional comment on the Leafs. Convincing working class people that their interests coincide with those at the top of the right wing food chain will go down as one of the greatest propaganda coups of our time. That sentiment lags behind in Quebec and other francophone pockets in the country, where big corporate media penetration is still less than total. You don't hire Rush Limbaugh to be the keynote speaker at a Greenpeace conference.

Cherry's not quite as much of a cash cow when they're broadcasting primarily to one of the man's most frequent targets.

Update: Don't know who this guy is, but he has an opinion too.

Game 5 Review

2008-04-18T13:39:00.004-03:00

Bruins scratched Ward with a knee boo-boo and Reich because he sucks. Replacing them were Alberts and Kessel.
Habs scratched Streit for Ryder.

Canadiens' lines:
AKost / Pleks / Kovy
SKost / Higgins / Ryder
Begin / Smoke / Kostopoulos
Lats / Lapierre / Dandy
Markov / Komi
Hamrlik / Brisebois
Gorges / O'Byrne

Habs Shots, from timeonice:

Bruins' lines:
Lucic / Savard / Kessel
Sturm / Krejci / Murray
Axelsson / Metropolit / Nokelainen
Schaefer / Sobotka / Thornton
Chara / Hnidy
Ference / Stuart
Wideman / Alberts

Boston shots:

I find it odd that Chara's partner keeps changing. Obviously he eats more minutes than any other Bruin defenceman and sees multiple partners throughout a game, but the guy he's paired with most keeps changing.

Shots and chances were pretty even. Honest.
The home team had the EV edge in shots, 23-17. The difference last night was special teams and goaltending.

Match-ups:
Carbo doesn't match like Julien. It's unfortunate - he might learn something from a good, experienced coach like Julien.

The Bruins started Savard, Lucic, Nokia, Hnidy and Ference. Shockingly, Carbo decided not to start the big guns. No Chara on the ice and Carbo inexplicably didn't take advantage.

It looks like Carbo wanted the top line out against Metropolit, Higgins against Krejci, Smoke's line against Savard, Lapierre vs. Sobotka. Halfway through the game it looks like he switched them up: Top line vs. Krejci, Higgins vs. 3rd/4th lines, and Lapierre got more time vs. the top 2. All in all, it was a lot more chaotic than we saw in Boston.

SKost/Higgins/Ryder were overmatched by Sturm/Krejci/Murray. Other than that, the home team looked OK at EV. Sergei took some dumb penalties.

The legend of the long Kovalev shift in the playoffs lives on. It's been repeated so often the guy probably thinks it's a good thing - a charming quirk.

Chara saw Kovy of course. Komisarek and Markov were split very evenly again, while Hamrlik was out vs. Krejci a lot. O'Byrne (when he played) and Gorges got mostly 3rd/4th line duty.

~

Cherry criticized Komisarek for not fighting Lucic. This probably doesn't even need to be said: Komi shouldn't go with Lucic because he's playing 22 minutes a game on the top pair. Losing him for 5 minutes when the Bruins lose a left wing who doesn't even play in the final 8 minutes of a close game would be a terrible trade-off. He'd hear it from his coaches - or worse, his teammates - if he wasted 5:00 in the box.

~

The Sharks-Flames series has been a beauty, every inch of ice has been contested. Either team would be crushing the Bruins or Habs right now.

Sean Avery: Psychopath?

2008-04-17T09:57:00.002-03:00

From the wikipedia article for Psychopathy, here is Dr. Robert D. Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised:

Factor1: "Aggressive narcissism"

* Glibness/superficial charm
* Grandiose sense of self-worth
* Pathological lying
* Cunning/manipulative
* Lack of remorse or guilt
* Shallow affect
* Callous/lack of empathy
* Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
* Promiscuous sexual behavior

Factor2: "Socially deviant lifestyle"

* Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
* Parasitic lifestyle
* Poor behavioral control
* Lack of realistic, long-term goals
* Impulsivity
* Irresponsibility
* Juvenile delinquency
* Early behavior problems
* Many short-term marital relationships
* Revocation of conditional release

Don't the Factor1 traits (according to the article, "the so-called core personality traits of psychopathy") pretty much perfectly match the public perception of Sean Avery?

Game 4 Review

2008-04-16T12:55:00.004-03:00

Quote of the day:

"I heard it hit the crossbar and then I heard the crowd cheer, so I thought it went up into the netting (behind the goal), out of play. And then I saw the Montreal guys celebrating and I realized it must be in. It ended up being the Montreal fans cheering."

- Tim Thomas, who has been fantastic in this series.

Now take a look at this screenshot from the timeonice shift chart:

This is the first ~7.5 minutes of the game last night, before any penalties or line juggling. Perfect mirror image. Pretty clear how the Julien wants the lines to match up, isn't it?

Habs Lines
AKost / Pleks / Kovy
Lats / Higgins / SKost
Begin / Smoke / Kostopoulos
Streit / Lapierre / Dandy
Markov / Komi
Hamrlik / Brisebois
Gorges / O'Byrne

Carbo shuffled Kovalev around again in the 2nd to get him away from Chara (or was it to get Plek/AKost away from Chara? Hmmm...). They went with nine forwards and four defensemen for the final ~8 minutes, when Breezy, O'Byrne, Lapierre, Streit and Lats sat.

Habs Shots, from timeonice (It looks like Vic added the player names to the shot tables - nice!):

Bruins lines
Lucic / Savard / Murray
Sturm / Krejci / Axelsson
Schaefer / Metropolit / Nokelainen
Reich / Sobotka / Thornton
Chara / Ward
Ference / Wideman
Stuart / Hnidy

Same old song and dance. Desparate for a goal in the waning minutes, Julien benched three of his forwards: Jeremy Reich, Shawn Thornton, and... Milan Lucic. A young Cam Neely indeed...

Bruins Shots:

As I mentioned earlier, only the Bs 4th line of Reich/Sobotka/Thornton really outplayed their Montreal counterparts, Streit(-8)/Lapierre(-12)/Dandy(-5). -12 against those scrubs? Fugly. When Koivu's back, Lapierre's minutes have to be curtailed.

Higgins/SKost/Lats were up against Krejci/Sturm/Axelsson. That's two kids and one vet against two vets and one kid and they held their own. Good for them.

The top dogs and 22/20/6 held the edge against the Savard and Metropolit lines.

Game 4 Belated Commentary

2008-04-16T11:38:00.005-03:00

My neighbours with the unsecured wireless network didn't come through for me last night, so no posts. Sorry. I did take notes during the game.

1st Period

Nothing to report. I spent the whole period fuming over the Ryder scratch.

Background: In game #3 Streit played poorly on the blueline. For long stretches Montreal used five defensemen. Streit had to be replaced on defence but had to stay in the lineup for the PP. That means a 4th line winger had to be scratched.

My beef is that the winger scratched was not a 4th line player - it was a 2nd/3rd line forward.

Here are the behindthenet numbers, sorted by quality of opposition. Click on the image to see it in readable size.

Tonight, Carbonneau sat the team's top even strength goal scorer in the press box.

Ryder:
He scored more goals per minute of 5 on 5 play than anyone on the team. Taking the season net, Ryder played minutes as tough as any other forward on the club. Corsi of -4. He drew more penalties than he took. He's a RHS, which matters in board battles at your own blue line. He can play a physical game. Now, I don't think I'm a 'Ryder Fan.' The guy will never be the #1 RW on a contender. I just think he's a better option *right now* than the three following players.

Dandenault:
On the whole, probably the worst forward this season. He played opponents one or two lines lower than those Ryder played against. Corsi of -13, worst on the team. Wes Walz was -14, realized that he sucked and retired. His GFON/60 suffered a bit from a rotten team shooting% of 6.9, but a lot of that must be due to the fact that he and his linemates were not exactly snipers. He commits twice as many penalties as he draws. This year Dandy looked like a solid vet defenseman who was unjustly and inexplicably converted to a forward. A tough situation for sure, but these are the playoffs. Team first.

Sergei Kostitsyn:
I'll get some heat for this (yes, I'm referring to you Mo). Everyone loves the kid's skills and enthusiasm. It's easy to get sucked in by what he does when he has the puck. He generates offense, but he gives up as much he gets. His Corsi of -9 is better only than Dandy and Lapierre. He played opposition weaker than Dandy's. He's high-event in terms of penalties, too, drawing a lot but taking even more. Most damning are the two rightmost columns. They are responsible for everyone's great opinion of SKost. He's led a charmed life in his brief time in Montreal. He and his mates have put up a 14% shooting rate when he's on the ice - best on the team and unsustainably high. That is luck. He's also benefitted from a high save%. If you scale his on-ice shot% and save% down to team averages, his admittedly attractive GF/GA numbers of +3.1/-2.1 drop down to +2.2/-2.5. Quite pedestrian. The kid will be a player but he's not just top 6 quality right now. The only excuse is player development.

Latendresse:
He saw the softest icetime on the team and got outshot almost as bad as SKost. Outshot twice as bad as Ryder. It's inexcusable that Lats is in the lineup ahead of Ryder in the playoffs, unless this is about player development.

No one game will tell us whether it's a good or bad move. If the Habs win it doesn't mean Carbo made the right move, and if they get blown out (and badly out-Corsied) it won't mean I'm right.

End of 1. Shots are 12-9, and I'd say the better chances were for Boston.

2nd Period

- Early in the period we're seeing some great trapping by the good guys.

- Halfway through the 2nd the only B's line beating the Habs' is the Bruins' #4 beating Lapierre. The rest are being won by Mtl.

- There aren't many Bruins who make me sweat when they've got the puck. Schaefer is one of them.

- Carbo split the top line, shuffling Kovalev around. Julien responds, keeping Chara out vs. Kovalev. I'm not convinced this is the right move. Plek/AKost are more dangerous at EV than Kovy.

- Now this is huge - Habs draw a PP early in a shift by the top line, right after a Chara shift. Habs should be able to use the #1 PP with either a tired Chara or no Chara.

- Yeah, the Habs PP has been underwhelming all series long. That doesn't make 4 Bruins a bigger threat to score than 5 Habs, no matter what Sturm thinks. The Boston PKers heads got big, they went for a shortie and got burned. Brisebois misses the post, hits mesh, 1-0 Montreal.

- Known stand-up guy who has shown tremendous discipline for a 19 year-old, Milan Lucic, embellished the Begin trip at the end of the period. Just so you know, Mr. Julien.

3rd Period

- Trap the shit out of this one, guys.

- There are stats-heads who question the value of hits. As a stat, it's useless. Tonight the Bs physical play definitely has the Habs defence hearing footsteps, and they're making hurried plays. Hitting works.

- I hate Stephen Harper and his armed forces ads that look like they're pulled straight from some 3D shooter video game.

- The Bs have guys who won't take a hit to make a play. Savard is one of them.

- Someday, Josh Gorges is going to get a knee ruined in a hit by a forechecker. You have to admire the kid's bravery and gutsy play.

- Yet another Lapierre shift hemmed in the Mtl zone.

- Crafty play by the 22/20/6 line, icing just before the TV timeout.

- I'd like to see more pressure on Boston defensemen when they have the puck in the Montreal zone. They handle the puck like a hot potato.

- Rookie move by SKost, spin-o-rama in his own zone. What do you think of that, Carbo? I dunno. Maybe the Ryder scratches are orders from above.

- Boos from the 'road' crowd after Kostopoulos has his stick slashed from his hands. I love it.

- SKost fails to get the puck deep on the change, but gets lucky again.

- Kostopoulos deserves one of the three stars of the game.

- The media criticism of Higgins in this series is unwarranted. He's playing centre for the first time in years, he's saddled with ineffective kids and he makes nothing but smart plays. He's an effective player without elite finish.

- WHY is 74 on with 30 seconds left??

- Habs are up 3-1. I feel all warm & fuzzy knowing that Cherry is almost giving himself a stroke right now, hurling a blue streak of invective at his television set.

Cinderellas?

2008-04-15T09:20:00.001-03:00

From The Contrarian Goaltender:

"The 1986 Habs had the third best goal differential in the league, and appear to simply have been a victim of bad luck in close games as well as the tough Adams Division, where every team was .500 or better. Montreal went 15-15-2 against their divisional opponents, and 25-18-5 against everyone else."

and...

"In fact as late as March 13, 1993, the Montreal Canadiens were actually in first place in the entire NHL."

The '86 club was 3rd in goal diff but finished 7th in a 21 team NHL.

The evidence for the 1993 club is a little less strong. They were only 8th in goal differential but finished 6th overall.

This year the numbers are #2 in goal differential and 3rd place overall, and we'll gleefully ignore the East/West imbalance.

Game 3 Review

2008-04-14T00:53:00.004-03:00

You know what they say - 11th time's a charm.

Not a bad game. I thought Montreal had the better chances, especially later on. Thomas made some stops in OT. If you want to worry, worry about the power play. If you count tonight's OT winner (I'd sure like to get a look at the penalty that was going to be called), the Bruins's PP has outscored the Habs' 2-1.

Habs lines
AKost / Pleks / Kovy
SKost / Higgins / Ryder
Begin / Smoke / Kostopoulos
Lats / Lapierre / Dandy
Markov / Komi
Hamrlik / Brisebois
Streit / Gorges

If Carbo wanted to match Markov/Komi against one of their top lines, they failed. Contrary to what Greg Millen observed, the top pair saw nearly half their EV icetime against Schaefer/Metropoili/Nokelainen. The rest of their minutes were evenly split against the Krejci and Savard lines. Hamrlik was on for half of Krejci's minutes.

Streit's EV icetime was cut back.

Habs shots, from timeonice.com.

Bruins lines
Lucic / Savard / Murray
Axelsson / Krejci / Sturm
Schaefer / Metropolit / Nokelainen
Reich / Sobotka / Thornton
Chara / Ward
Ference / Wideman
Stuart / Hnidy

Julien wanted Chara and Savard on Kovalev. Carbo pulled some tricks in the 2nd period to try to get Kovy away from Chara. There was a stretch in the 2nd period where Chara played about 8 minutes in a 10 minute stretch.

All Julien's match preferences were in the same order I have the lines/pairs.

Bruins shots

Looking at the shot numbers and matchups, it looks like:

- The top line was treading water in terms of EV shots. Can't complain there.

- 8/79 have to be used against the Bruins' threats. Hamrlik wound up playing a lot against Savard and accumulated the biggest minus. If Julien can get Chara out against Kovalev 75% of the time on the road, Carbo should be able to do the same.

- The Axelsson/Krejci/Sturm line smoked the S.Kostsitsyn/Higgins/Ryder line. Koivu can't return soon enough.

- The vet checkers (6/20/22) are getting the job done.

Game 3

2008-04-13T14:41:00.011-03:00

The second game in 24 hours, plus travel. The players say it's a wash because both teams have to deal with it. However, the Canadiens' icetime was a little more top heavy last night.

With the last change, Julien will be able to tighten up his matches. I get the feeling he's more interested in doing so than Carbonneau.

Still no sign of Koivu in the morning skates, and Bergeron still not cleared to play.

Looking closely at the events of last night, I don't think the Bruins edge in EV play was as big as first thought. A large proportion of their shot advantage came against the Habs' bottom lines and pairs, and it was the bottom-end guys on the Bruins doing the outshooting. The low-percentage shooters. It's not like Price was standing on his head.

Update:
From Hockey Numbers, here is some reinforcement for my thought that Boston didn't outplay Montreal all that badly last night. The expected goals were 5.6 to 2.0 in Montreal's favour. Those missed breakaways have to be responsible for a part of that 5.6.

Total expected goals for games 1 & 2 are 11.8 Habs, 3.1 Bruins. In this light, Thomas looks pretty good.

I'm pretty sure Javageek's expected goals numbers are based on Alan Ryder's Shot Quality work.

Here we go...

1st Period

20:00 - Wideman in, Alberts out. Lapierre vs. Savard to start. Carbo has to give his head a shake.

19:00 - AKost weak on the puck clearing the zone.

18:30 - Hamrlik off for roughing...

18:00 - Lucic off for boarding, 4vs4. I'm fine with them calling things tight, it lets the special teams decide the game.

17:30 - BOOOOOO! Chara BOOOOOOOOOOOO!

16:00 - Close call with Sturm nearly breking away on the PK.

15:00 - B's forechecking hard

14:00 - Schaefer has the oddest looking stick grip in the league.

13:20 - Lucic in the slot, 1-0 Bruins. That's their first lead over the Canadiens all season.

11:00 - Bogus call on Ward. I didn't see a trip.

10:00 - Bruins are hustling. Prediction: they'll be out of gas in the 3rd.

9:00 - GREAT work by Higgins on the #2 PP. Not much in the way of chances.

7:30 - The Boston crowd is surly. They never cheer the good things, they only boo less loudly.

6:00 - Higgins/Ryder/SKost line has been terrific.

5:00 - Lucic runs Komi, Komi mad... Komi unwisely leaves position looking for hit later in shift.

3:30 - Latendresse was lucky to avoid a goaltender interference call.

2:00 - Good chance for Higgins line - Ryder in the slot misses high.

1:00 - Fast & loose play by the #1 line.

0:00 - Scrum to end the period, looks like a possible Mtl PP to start the 2nd. Latendresse/Hnidy with fighting majors. 4th line forward for a defenseman is an excellent trade-off for the Habs.

Intermission

Well, we can't claim even play in that period. Boston's forechecking hard, often with two. Habs should be able to get some transition chances out of this if they keep it up. They're running Komisarek every chance they get - probably a good strategy. Losing him would open a huge hole on RD. Anyone for Brisebois on the #1 pair? This is why the Dandenault move to the wing made no sense.

Carbonneau got caught with Gorges/Streit out against the Savard line on the goal. Hard not to like that Lucic kid.

2nd Period

20:00 - I was wrong - it's a Boston PP, Lats with the roughing minor.

19:40 - Damn near a 2 on 0, Lucic and Murray can't finish.

18:00 - Good PK, Price didn't have much work.

17:00 - Montreal fans in attendance start up a Go Habs Go chant. Rather than simply overpower the word 'Habs' with the word 'Bruins' (like you would see in any other rink, except possibly Philly where they might respond with a hail of profanity then batteries then punches), the home crowd drowns them out with boos.

16:00 - Greek Lightning! The crowd goes wild! Good work down low by the vets. Smolinski with a grey area hit opens up the space. B's lead for less than a period.

15:00 - Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole! Ole, Ole!

13:00 - Solid chance by the top line. The turtleneck's hackles come up in a scrum.

12:00 - Axelsson can't find the handle on a puck sitting in the crease!

11:00 - Great chances at both ends, Ryder's shot trickles wide.

10:45 - Lucic's turn, can't bury the backhand!

10:00 - It's chaos when the Kovalev line is on. Scoring chances all 'round! Hits are piling up

7:00 - Kovalev's extended shifts are starting to screw up the lines. Millen: "They're trying to get Komisarek out against Lucic!" Uh, do you think maybe he's out there because Murray and Savard are on, Greg?

6:00 - Kostopoulos off for slashing a stick. Millen doesn't like this call. I check myself for a fever, because I agree with Millen.

5:00 - Plek/Kovy don't cover the points well on the PK.

3:00 - More solid work by 20/22/6.

2:00 - URP. Price nearly sets up Krejci for an ENG.

0:00 - EV shots are 18-17. RTSS hits are 20-19. Great game.

Intermission

Bad news: Bob Cole says he had a chat with Koivu before the game, and says he still can't get a boot over his foot.

3rd Period

20:00 - Bruins 4th line hem in the #1 D pair.

18:00 - Kovy draws one on Ward. Ward shakes his head, just like he did on his first penalty.

17:30 - SKost/Kovy/Higgins on the PP.

16:00 - Best chances are immediately after the penalty ends.

15:00 - It's almost painful to watch Komisarek. Laboured skating, hurried passes.

14:00 - Krejci breakaway after a bad dump-in, he goes five hole, Price save. Streit slashes Krejci on the way.

13:00 - For at least the third time this series, Boston's PP point men flub a routine pass out over the blue line.

12:00 - Krejci latches onto Kovy breakingin after the kill, Habs PP

11:00 - Boston PK looks like they're forcing the PP to work down low.

10:00 - F'ing Brisebois drops into the slot for a pass after the PP is done, no one close to covering, the pass is picked for a 2 on 1, Price stops Krejci again. Shot quality will favour the home team tonight.

9:00 - Fine time to be abandoned by the damn PP. WTF was SKost thinking?? Roughing, Boston PP.

7:00 - Habs (mostly Price) kill it off.

3:00 - Whew! No time for updates - the action is hot & heavy.

0:00 - OT on the way. It doesn't look like these guys played last night. It's back and forth.

Intermission

EV shots are 20 apiece.

EV icetime for the D:
Komi 19:01
Markov 18:51
Hamrlik 18:02
Gorges 15:01
Breezy 12:14
Streit 06:25

Might be time to bring in O'Byrne and move Streit to the 4th line.

OT 1

18:00 - Helluva long shift by Kovy. Bad move in OT.

17:30 - More fine work by Smoke's line and they nearly end the game.

16:00 - Higgins line carrys the play... another great scoring chance.

15:00 - Curious move by Carbo, putting on the Smoke line again while the top line sits. Is he trying to keep Chara and Savard off the ice? Looks like it's the right move, *yet another* good chance.

14:30 - Here comes Kovy et. al. *Another* loooong shift, it's nearly costly. Koivu has to come back, just to get the 'C' off that guy's sweater.

12:30 - Damn. Lapierre line ices it.

11:30 - Pace is starting to slow. Latendresse looks like he can skate at an almost normal speed.

11:00 - Metropolit - what a feel-good story he is, huh? These Bs are hard to hate.

10:35 - The hate's back. Good work by Schaefer. Savard's the extra attacker on a delayed penalty, finishes off Schaefer's pass and that's the ball game.

Game 2 Review

2008-04-13T01:20:00.004-03:00

They're up 2-0 now, but the rest of this series will be no cakewalk.

Habs lines:

AKost / Pleks / Kovy
SKost / Higgins / Ryder
Begin / Smoke / Kostopoulos
Lats / Lapierre / Dandy
Markov / Komi
Hamrlik / Brisebois
Streit / Gorges

Matches:
There were a lot of PPs, messing up the EV battle. Markov/Komi still weren't hard matched. Again, they saw more of the Savard and Krejci lines. Harmlik/Brisebois got Krejci and Metropolit's lines. They tried to keep Streit/Gorges away from Savard and Krejci.

With Savard reunited with Murray, it looks like Smolinski's line has checking duty. Precipitating from that match, we saw Higgins vs. Krejci, Pleks vs. Metropolit, and Lapierre vs. Sobotka.

The table below (courtesy timeonice.com) shows us exactly how badly these match-ups worked.

Bruins lines:
Lucic / Savard / Murray
Axelsson / Krejci / Sturm
Schaefer / Metropolit / Nokelainen
Reich / Sobotka / Thornton
Chara / Ward
Stuart / Hnidy
Ference / Alberts

Matches:
Chara/Ward vs. the top line. Stuart/Hnidy saw a lot of Higgins. Ference/Alberts got bottom line work whenever possible.

Bruins shots:

¡Olé! - Game 2

2008-04-12T20:11:00.005-03:00

In 1999, the Bouncing Souls recorded a tune called ¡Olé! for their album, Hopeless Romantic. It's based on a traditional chant, and the lyrics are about playing footy. This is the best recording I can find in a 15 second scouring of the internet.

Sometime thereafter, the DJ at the Bell Centre started playing the opening bars of this recording during Habs games. The crowd took the ball and ran with it.

1st Period

20:00 - Wideman & Kessel (no shootout tonight, kiddo) are out of the lneup, Alberts & Sobotka are in. No lineup changes for the home team.

19:00 - B's carrying play early.

18:00 - First few ¡Olés! are heard.

16:00 - How 'bout that Thoreson? Ballsy kid.

14:00 - Hook on Markov.

12:00 - That was close. Lapierre is a weak link. Penalty killed.

11:00 - Savard's back hurts.

10:00 - Carbo says the Begin/Smoke/Kostopoulos line is one he's had in mind since camp. Interesting that he'd be so persistent with his plan for a 4th line.

9:00 - 2:00 to Streit for the hook/hold.

8:00 - Hnidy on the 1st PP wave? Fine by me.

7:00 - *Ward* on the PP? Also fine by me. These guys need puckmovers on the blueline. Penalty killed, obviously.

6:00 - Chara for a retaliatory crosscheck. PP is Kovy/Plek/AKost, Markov/Streit.

5:00 - Higgins/Ryder/SKost give the #1 unit a 30sec. rest.

4:00 - AGAIN with Lapierre line after the PP?? Murray et. al. almost make Carbo pay.

3:00 - Komisarek has lost a lot of mobility.

1:30 - Begin with a big hit on Alberts! Habs break out, Marc Savard covers and FAILS! Hamrlik goal!

0:00 - Bob Cole, "It's a loooong way to go yet." Keep telling yourself that, you Leaf fan. ¡Olé!

2nd Period

20:00 - Higging and Reich ar off for roughing, it's 4-on-4. Habs F's are Plek/Akost.

19:00 - SKost/Kovy.

18:00 - Kovy looks like the skinny guy from Nintendo Ice Hockey - circling the opponents' net, no one can touch him, and Sergei finishes it off! 2-0 Habs.

17:00 - Note to Jeremy Reich: goading Higgins into coincidentals may be a good trade in terms of personnel; forcing your oafish team to play 2:00 of 4vs4 hockey in Montreal? Bad idea.

16:00 - Nokia-lainen with a bad penalty, #1 PP is out.

14:00 - Some good work but no goal, back to EV.

12:30 - Streit with a... hook? Smoke/Kostopolous, Komi/Markov on the PK.

11:30 - The best acquisition Gainey can make this summer is a neck guard for Carey Price.

9:30 - Penalty killed, no good chances

8:30 - Hamrlik for a slash. Bogus.

6:30 - Penalty killed, some better chances for Boston this time. They're crashing the net.

5:30 - Hamrlik hits the post! He's on fire!

5:00 - Thornton whacks Price, hard. That has to be called.

4:00 - Higgins/Ryder/SKost are all over the Bruins grinders in their own zone.

3:00 - AKost on the breakaway... Thomas with the unorthodox save!

1:40 - Stuart off for interference. Good opportunity here - taking a 3 goal lead in the final minute of a period would be so clutch.

0:00 - no PPG... yet.

EV shots are 13 Boston, 12 Montreal.

Hamrlik: Most EV icetime on either team, 1 goal, 1 post, +2. Savard: -2.

Elliotte Interview: Carey Price reminds Aaron Ward of... Steve Penney. Now THAT'S backhanded.

3rd Period

19:00 - B's kill off remaining 20 sec. of Stuart's minor. So far the best PP in the league is 0-for-the-series.

18:00 - B's are being more physical.

17:00 - Man, it's obvious that Komisarek is not 100%. Long shift in Habs' end.

16:00 - Schaefer, breaking in on a 2-on-2 makes it 2-1. Bob and Greg agree: being one goal down makes it a 'brand new game.'

14:00 - Looks like Habs are sitting back. This is always nerve-wracking.

12:15 - AKost trapped on a long shift, Lapierre takes a hooking minor.

12:00 - Ference/Hnidy at the points?

10:00 - Interesting turn of events. Kovalev doesn't score on a breakaway and is tackled by Ward. No call. In frustration, he taps Ward with a slash. They always catch the retaliation. Krejci scores on the 5-on-3. It's a brand new game.

8:00 - Habs kill off the rest of Kovy's minor.

7:00 - Reich off for holding. The PP is due! DUE!!

5:30 - Good work by the nominal #2 unit. Ryder is tripped, 5-on-3 Habs.

3:30 - The 27th best PK in the league has kept the #1 PP off the board for nearly two full games.

2:15 - Kostopolous is high-sticked, Thornton is off for 4:00. Redemption time, Kovy.

0:01 - Brisebois hits the post, square, with less than 1/10th of a second left. The hockey gods frown on us tonight. Onto OT.

Terrible period for the home team. EV shots were 8-2. The PP is officially on a cold streak.

Ugh, those two missed breakaways and two goalposts loom large.

So when a Bruin cuts a guy, the double minor shouldn't apply? Please, Don Cherry, just go away.

OT

20:00 - Hoping this one's short & sweet. 1:43 left in the PP...

18:30 - Hockey gods are fickle. Reich trips Markov, the only good thing to happen on this PP. The Habs better put it away, because you know the Sword of Damocles hangs over their heads in the form of a make-up call.

17:30 - Kov. a. lev. "Please accept this overtime GWG as an apology for my earlier error in judgement."

The best thing about this series so far: knowing how much it twists Don's nuts. "RULES SCHMULES!! BRUINS GOT JOBBED!" Your tax dollars at work, folks.

Tough loss for the Bruins. They held the advantage in play and got a couple of breaks (posts) but were still outscored. Hard to say if goaltending was the difference - Price had more shots but didn't have to stop as many glorious scoring chances. Now they have to take 4 of 5 against a team they're 0-10 against this year.

Game 1 Review

2008-04-11T11:07:00.003-03:00

Habs lines:
AKost / Plek / Kovy
SKost / Higgins / Ryder
Lats / Lapierre / Dandy
Begin / Smoke / Kostopoulos

Markov / Komi
Hamrlik / Breezy
Streit / Gorges

Matchups: Not much. If Carbo wants to match, you'll see Markov/Komisarek against top lines. We didn't, and that is unusual. They just played a little more against the Krejci and Savard lines. With their softer minutes, their shot margins were sky high (see chart below). The top line saw more of the Krejci trio, Higgins saw a lot of the Axelsson line (maybe to keep Lucic the wrecking ball away from the top line?) and it was a mismatch.

Odd choice by Carbo to send out the Lapierre line after PPs. It was under this circumstance that the Bruins (Savard line) scored their goal. That error was masked a bit in the 3rd when Kostopoulos finished off a similar Lapierre line shift with a goal.

Courtesy of timeonice.com, Canadiens Shots (click for a clearer view)

Bruins lines:
Sturm / Krejci / Murray
Schaefer / Savard / Kessel
Axelsson / Metropolit / Lucic
Thornton / Nokelainen / Reich

Chara / Wideman
Ference / Ward
Stuart / Hnidy

Matchups: Chara vs. the Kovy line, no surprise there. It looks like Savard is back to soft minutes, perhaps because he's not 100%. His line was often sent out immediately folowing a Kovalev shift.

Bruins Shots

Quasi-liveblogging Game 1

2008-04-10T21:55:00.002-03:00

Quasi-, becasue my illegal wireless connection is too tenuous to update every couple of minutes.

Pregame - I'm getting tired of "Where the Streets Have No Name" starting off every game.

1st Period

20:00 - Telemarketer called right after the puck drop so I missed Sergei's goal. Everyone Boycott Ramada Inns. 1-0 Habs

19:00 - Everyone said to expect a physical game from Boston and the B's are clearly trying to run Montreal out of the rink.

18:00 - Andrei K. on a *sweet* cross ice pass from Pleks. 2-0 Habs. The hitting isn't working, Bruins.

16:00 - Bob Cole can't believe the fans are singing the ole ole ole song. He seems to think it's a victory song or a taunt or something. In Bob's defense, he isn't the first broadcaster I've heard express this sentiment. Attention broadcasters: listen to the words! They are singing ole ole ole ole etc, not na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye. Fans sing at sporting events.

14:00 - That was a quick change of plan: Bruins have eased up on the hitting.

12:26 - Terrible coverage by Lapierre/Lats/Dandy, Hnidy(!) in the slot, 2-1 Habs. A solid vet would never let that happen.

10:00 - Fans boo the glandular freak every time he touches the puck.

6:00 - I *loathe* the puck over glass penalty.

0:00 - More stuff happened, Cole & Millen go blah blah blah.

Intermission
- Got a beer, missed Hrudey.

2nd Period

20:00 - You can almost hear Greg Millen blush a bit as he awkwardly describes the huge arms of Andrei Kostitsin. Aaron Ward took a puck to the ribs.

19:00 - CBCs score and clock graphic are on hiatus. All times below are approximate.

18:00ish? - The other Bruin strategy predicted by the pundits has reared its head - running Price.

16:00 - Kovy/Pleks, making a silk ear out of a sow's purse again.

14:44 - Smoke! From a scramble in the slot, 3-1 Habs, all goals scored 5-on-5.

13:00 - Kovy misses a wide open net, looks skyward dramatically, emotes exasperation.

10:30 - I miss the days when, between whistles, the cameramen at the Forum would zoom in on incredibly hot women in the stands.

10:00 - Hamrlik with a heavy hit on the wunderkind Lucic, the crowd goes wild.

8:00 - Phooey, interference penalty on Ryder.

7:00 - Plek/Kovy on the PK. People love this and cite it as an example of Kovy's supposed greater commitment this year. I think it's a waste of their icetime.

5:50 - Price with a couple of nice stops on 1-ball. Would he only need to use half a cup?

5:00 - Cole, "The Bruins have turned it up a notch here!" *Everyone* turns it up a notch when the Lapierre line is on.

4:30 - Higgins' turn to miss an open net. Habs outshooting Bs 18-9, 5-on-5.

2:00 - Smolinski, looking like the Smolinski of old... when he was scoring 30 goals as a Bruin.

0:00 - A fine 2nd period by the Habs, probably better than the 1st.

Intermission
- Here's Ron MacLean in China, educating us on Chinese calligraphy. The CBC should have sent Cherry over so we could be enlightened by his opinion on another subject he just can't understand.

- Is that Bruce McCulloch doing the voice over for the orange box in that Home Depot commercial?? What a shame. I love my... AAAAAAANSWERING MACHINE! These are the Daves I know, I know, these are the Daves I know. Would he put that on his resume? 2008: Played faceless, inanimate orange box in ads for a major retailer.

- PJ Stock: "What do I do? Do I do highlights now? You guys?" Ron just laughs.

- Wings/Preds are tied 1-1. Innnnteresting.

3rd Period

19:00 - BOOOOOOO! Chara BOOOOOOO!

18:00 - Questionable pass by Kovy, Sturm breakaway! Wow, Hamrlik looks slow. Price save, btw.

17:00 - Friedman sounds hoarse. Better rest up, bud, it's only night #2 of the playoffs.

16:00 - Thomas goes behind the net to stop a dump-in but the puck bounces out front... and skips over the stick of Sergei.

15:30 - Savard for hooking, Habs start the PP with the top unit: Kovy/Plek/AKost, Streit/Markov. Some good chances. This is only the 4th PP of the game.

14:30 - Smoke, Sergei, Higgins, Hamrlik, Breezk on unit #2.

13:00 - Millen says "Detroit just finds ways to win." So that's their secret!

12:30 - Found one. Greek Lightning! 4-1.

11:00 - Thornton penalty, here comes the na na na na hey hey goodbye. No finger wagging from Bob Cole this time.

10:00 - Commercial break, I Google "Bruce McCulloch Home Depot commercial" to see if that's really him. The #1 hit? This very post.

9:00 - Wasn't it Buccigross who said Kessel would rival Crosby? Must have lost his mojo.

8:24 - Habs are trying to nurse this one home, Komi takes a bad penalty.

8:00 - Smoke, Kostopoulos, Hamrlik, Gorges on the #1 PK.

7:00 - Another penalty quashed.

6:00 - Brisebois with his signature move - the blind cross ice outlet pass. Not intercepted this time.

4:00 - Two minute 5-on-3 coming up for the Habs. Going for one goal is OK, but going hard for a second would be running up the score.

3:00 - Smoke(??) Higgins, Kovy, Markov, Streit. Putting Smolinski out there is probably Carbo 'playing the hot hand.' It's a bad move.

1:30 - Bs killed it off, no one in the audience seems too broken up about it (for a change).

0:00 - Carbo has the Lapierre line out to finish the game. Bruin thugs considering "sending a message" take a look around the ice at their counterparts and think, "not worth it."

4-1 is the final. Habs outshot Bs 25-13 in 5-on-5 play. Take that, Jim Corsi!

Broons. Again.

2008-04-10T16:31:00.007-03:00

Welp, the Habs are a lot better. The B's were probably the worst team over the last 82 games to make it into the playoffs. The bookies have made the Habs the biggest non-Detroit 1st round favourite. Then there's the whole sweeping the season series thing. Smells like an upset, doesn't it?

The last two Habs/Bruins series have been mentioned a lot. The 2004 upset wasn't really much of an upset. Look at the Canadiens' and Bruins' goal differentials. There were 11 points separating them in the standings, but only 5 goals.

The 2002 series is a better comparison to this year. They were 14 points apart in the standings and the Bruins were 37 goals better.

In 2002, the underdog team just had their top centre and inspirational leader bravely return from long term stay on the IR. That was Saku Koivu, who was recovering from a form of cancer: Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Now in 2008, the underdog team just had their top centre and inspirational leader bravely return from long term stay on the IR. That is Patrice Bergeron, who is recovering from a form of cancer: a cheap shot by a Philadelphia Flyer.

Also, it may not be malignant but there has to be a tumour or growth or something on Zdeno Chara's pituitary gland. That's another connection.

Most ominous of all: the B's had PJ Stock on their side in '02. He's in Montreal in '08.

Patience, grasshopper, we will be competitive in 2009

2008-04-10T15:49:00.004-03:00

I just got around to listening to the latest Habs Inside/Out podcast. The gang discusses Bob Gainey's galling comment, 'Now that we're in the playoffs, our goal is to win the Stanley Cup.'

Since his arrival in Montreal, Gainey has developed a Master Po-like mystique.

He's a soft-spoken, sagely and contemplative master, always going on about having patience. So when the Master comes out and says something as brash as "we want to win the Cup," it's newsworthy.

Huh??

This is Montreal. The Habs are in first place in the East. Shouldn't it only be newsworthy if the GM doesn't say that their goal is the Stanley Cup? What have we become?

Anyway, actions speak louder than words. Gainey's actions this season suggest that he's not doing everything he can to win the Cup this year. It's a deliberate management decision and we all should be fine with that. George Gillett's comments from this February 2006 article come to mind:

"The Canadiens will celebrate their centennial in 2009, and Gillett says it's the organization's intention to 'be fully competitive, during that time, for the Stanley Cup.' "

Gainey's moves have been consistent with this statement. Look at the Huet trade. On the surface, the Canadiens lost Huet for the final 20 games plus playoffs and gained a 2nd round pick. Looking a little deeper, you have on the positive side of the ledger the experience Carey Price gains as a number one goaltender, and on the negative side you are improving (significantly) a rival team within your conference heading into the playoffs. This isn't a move you make if you're going balls out for the Cup this year. A 2nd round pick in 2009 isn't worth much. Obviously, Gainey greatly valued the additional experience for Price. It was a gutsy move.

Personally, I would have preferred to have seen Gainey take a harder run at the Cup this year. It's not often you have a serious shot at first in the conference. And who knows what might happen next year, like a long term injury to Price or Markov.

Now, I don't mean going after Hossa (Pens overpaid). I mean bolstering the ranks with a reliable veteran or two - bottom six forwards who can be trusted. In the final game of the season we saw Dominic Moore's line hem Latendresse and Sergei in their own zone for entire shifts. Dominic Moore! Yeesh. It's easy to get sucked in by the offense the kids provide, but we all know damn well that they give up as much as they get. Guys like Marty Reasoner were out there at the deadline and presumably wouldn't have cost much. BUT they would have cost developmental minutes for the kids, and it seems Gainey values that more.

You have to give credit to Bob Gainey for sticking to the plan. I sure hope it works. If catastrophe strikes and the wheels fall off next year, if they can't snatch the pebble in 2009, will management look back at this year with regret?

Playoff Power Outage?

2008-04-10T01:12:00.006-03:00

Everyone's been saying special teams lose some importance in the playoffs. I'm on board with that. Once the postseason starts there are fewer PP opportunities and PPs are less effective (or are PKs more effective?). But special teams don't become completely irrelevant. If you want to compare one team to another, it's easy to take these factors into consideration.

Real quick and dirty: Last year in the playoffs, the league wide PP rate was 78% of what it was in the reg. season (14.5% vs. 18.6%). Let's throw in another 8% (that number is straight out of my ass) to account for the reduced number of PP opportunities. That's almost certainly a gross overestimate. There were actually 5.1 PP opportunities per team per game in last year's playoffs, compared to 4.9 in the reg. season, but that doesn't account for overtime. I'd rather err on the side of caution and say special teams in the playoffs are only 70% as important as they are in the regular season.

Looking at the real numbers from behindthenet...

I never do anything simple or straightforward, so here is the explanation for the table.

The first column is just the 5-on-5 goal differential per 60, straight from the source. This is how the teams are sorted.

The second column is the special teams goal differential per 60 of special teams icetime. It's the total of all PPGs and SHGs minus all PPGs/SHGs against divided by the team's icetime in all PP/PK situations. If you broke down 60 minutes of hockey for each team, divvying up the minutes proportionally to their regular season 5-on-4, 5-on-3, 4-on-5 and 3-on-5 icetime, this is the average goal differential they would produce. Measuring special teams this way conveniently incorporates penalty differential, SHGs and PPGs in all situations. Note the incredible season the Habs had on special teams. Obviously, that huge number is the point of this post.

The third column is a net goal differential per game over the regular season. Figuring 75% of the game to be 5-on-5 and the rest to be special teams, this number is 3/4 column 1 plus 1/4 column 2. This number should be a touchstone for the team's total goal differential (not including shootout goals, 4-on-4, and whatever else isn't included in the behindthenet numbers). The Habs apparently doubling the Pens here is a bit of a statistical fluke due to rounding.

The fourth column is where we take into account the dropoff in PP scoring in the playoffs. It's the same as column #3, only the special teams factor is reduced by 30%. 3/4 column 1 plus 1/4 (column 2 * 0.70).

As you can see, even if special teams play loses 30% of its importance in the playoffs *and* if you assume 5-on-5 rates stay the same (they generally drop), the Canadiens' goal differential is still the best in the East. Pretty impressive when you consider that their 5-on-5 play is flat. The PP has been that good.

A caveat: Because special teams are still only 25% of the game (smaller sample size), relying on them can make your team more susceptible to luck. That sword cuts both ways: a cold streak on the PP can kill you against an underdog; with a hot run can you can upset a better club.

It just wouldn't be a post of mine without some negativity, so I added a 5th column to show the 5-on-5 shot differentials. The Habs are bad by this measure, but so are the Pens.

~~~

Matt at BoA sees four tiers of teams in the East: 1) Pittsburgh, 2) Habs, Rangers, Devils, Caps, 3) Bruins, Flyers and 4) Sens. I don't have that fine a resolution - I see the Pens, Habs, Rangers and Caps in the first tier and the other four in the second tier.

The four tier 1 teams should beat the second four and after that it's a toss-up. The good news here is the Habs' top seed. If any of the other top four are upset the Habs get to play another bottom four club in round two. That is, if they get past Boston.

~~~

East: Habs, Pens, Caps, Rags
West: Wings, Sharks, Avs, Ducks

I wrote those down before last night's games. Honest.

The Habs' Happy Hooker

2008-02-06T11:50:00.000-04:00

Koivu's untimely hook and subsequent benching last night got me thinking about penalties. Here are the penalty taken/drawn numbers from Behind the Net for individual players and for the team while that player is on the ice.

The diff columns are just the Drawn minus the Taken. Positive is good, negative is bad.

The most importing thing here is, unlike last year, the team is in the black. Seeing how the Habs have a good PP and poor PK, that is crucial.

The item at the forefront of everyone's mind is Koivu's penalty taking tendency. Individually, he's taking 1.7 per 60 - tied with Kostopoulos for worst on the team. That's the bad news.

Taking a look at a slightly bigger picture, his individual differential is -0.8. That's pretty much par for a Habs centre. Smolinski and Lapierre are also at -0.8, while Plekanec is even.

Looking at an even bigger and more important picture, the team draws 2.4 more per 60 when Koivu is on the ice. That's just a hair behind the Plek-Kast-Kovy line's diff, despite Koivu playing tougher defensive assignments. Not bad.

If you consider that Koivu is -0.8 individually and the team is +2.4 while he's on the ice, that means his linemates and defensemen are a collective +3.2 while he's on the ice. That's a big number - by far the biggest on the team. So how are Koivu's linemates achieving the +3.2? The defensemen are pretty much all negative. He hasn't skated with Kovalev or A.Kastsitsyn. The most you get by adding up the individual numbers for Higgins and Ryder/S.Kastsitsyn is 2.4. It seems we have a paradox.

I think the answer is Koivu quite literally making his teammates better in this statistical regard. He's an aggressive player. He's hard on the puck. This means he takes more penalties, but it also means he gains possession of the puck. You take way more penalties when the other team has possession of the puck. If you are good at gaining and retaining possession, you are going to draw more penalties than you take. Koivu's aggressiveness looks bad on the surface (his individual -0.8), but it is a huge net positive for the team. That's why I think it was a bad move to bench Koivu last night. Ottawa dominated possession and it almost cost the Habs the game. That's now at least three home games in a row that they've been outshot and outchanced at EV.

In contrast to Koivu is Chipchura. During his stay in Montreal he bucked the trend for Habs centres and was a solid individual +1.1. However, his team number was -1.1. That means his linemates were a collective -2.2 while he was on the ice. That's the worst on the team (although Latendresse is close behind). When Chipchura was on the ice, the team simply didn't gain/retain possession and it cost them penalties. He's a rookie, and he'll learn the ropes. Possibly from Koivu.

Numbers Of Interest

2008-02-05T22:24:00.000-04:00

Here are the Canadiens' 5-on-5 scoring numbers from Behind the Net.

Click on the table to see it in a reasonable size.

Onto the Numbers Of Interest. I usually sort tables like this by the Quality of Competition column. To change things up, this one is by ES Pts/60.

For the last thirty games or so, A. Kastsitsyn-Plekanec-Kovalev has been the nominal #1. They've been the first choice for offensive situations and have usually been the line focused on by opposing coaches. This doesn't mean they're getting all the tough minutes - that duty is still usually for Koivu's line or Carbo's random array of checkers on a given night. But there is no question the Kovalev line has a bigger role now than it had at the start of the season.

The guy garnering most of the credit is, of course, the uber-skilled Kovalev. He's come to play this year, say the pundits. Well, I'm not so sure this 34-year-old leopard has changed his spots.

By the numbers, Kovy's put up 1.5 points per 60 et EV. His season-long linemates are each better by 50% - A.Kast is 2.2 Pleks is 2.3. Kovy's put up 0.76 goals per 60. Compare that to the utterly snakebitten Ryder's 0.79.

The EV success of the #1 trio this year is not a Kovalevian revival so much as an emergence of 23 year old Kastsitsyn and 25 year old Pleks. These guys have taken a leap forward. They're driving the results. That should be much more encouraging news to a Habs fan than a resurgence of Kovalev, if one had in fact taken place.

Obviously, Kovalev is not exactly a boat anchor on that line. His presence probably creates a lot of room for the kids. I should also point out that his EV production has nothing to do with his dominance on the PP. That's a whole other ball of wax, and is definitely a big reason for this club's success this year. Just don't confuse those PP numbers with his 5-on-5 performance.

This post may come across as Kovy-bashing. I hope not. People trying to reconcile the talent with the lack of production over his career have attached certain adjectives to his name more than others - 'enigmatic' on good days, 'indifferent,' 'petulant' or 'lazy' on not so good ones. None of that is fair to the player. Rather than search for explanations, why not just look at the production? He's at 1.52 ESP/60 this year. That's a little better than last season's 1.19 ESP/60, but not as good as 05/06's 2.08 ESP/60. His production is in line with his average over his last two seasons with Montreal.

Now here's something I like about Kovy's EV game:

Reminds you of the Tucker incident, eh? Or Bure on Churla. These skilled guys absorb a lot of cheap shots. It's refreshing to see them finally snap and take it out on a thug.

Mmm, Tangy!

2008-01-18T14:48:00.000-04:00

Bob McKenzie says Tanguay for Ryder. Matt at BoA has an informed response.

With all the staff sightings between between Montreal and Calgary this year, it's hard not to think 'where there's smoke there's fire.' Then you look at the names involved - Tanguay for Ryder - and think it's typical nutty media speculation. Tanguay automatically comes up because he's French. Ryder is mentioned because he's the goat du jour in Montreal.

Unlike most of the media regarding rumours like this one, McKenzie does recognize the real motivation here: the Flames need 08/09 cap space (which isn't exactly Earth-shattering news - BoA's Matt has talked about it for months) and the Habs have 08/09 cap space. To clear 08/09 cap space via trade, the only two realistic options are Tanguay and Aucoin. Both have no-trade clauses. Neither can be given up entirely for futures because Sutter can't weaken the team's chances this season. And Sutter can always clear 08/09 cap space by simply not re-signing UFAs Huselius, Langkow, Conroy and Yelle. It's not like he must make a trade.

From Montreal's perspective, they can't add a whole lot of salary for this season. To take on Aucoin or Tanguay, Montreal would have to give up a significant 07/08 salary. The Habs only have one player who fits the criteria, and that's Ryder. I would think the Flames would be a little wary of Ryders, given their experience with Daniel.

Aucoin doesn't make a whole lot of sense for the Habs. There are already more players than roster spots on the blueline, and more importantly the team's salary distribution is already defense-heavy. In addition to Ryder, the Habs would have to send one or more defencemen back. Brisebois, Streit and the youngsters are the only ones who won't take up much 08/09 salary. Something like Aucoin and Yelle for Ryder and Streit is possible, I suppose. I can't imagine why Gainey (who is dealing from a position of strength, being the one with the cap space) might make a deal that widens the F/D imbalance.

Tanguay makes more sense for Montreal (duh). He would even if he weren't French. The team's even strength scoring (Tanguay's bread & butter) has been improving, but it's still below average. The problem here, obviously, is that Ryder is nowhere near the player Tanguay is. That's true even if Ryder is on pace for his usual 30 goals. Gainey would have to sweeten the deal with significant futures. Even then, I have a hard time believing that Sutter would be willing to surrender such a big contributor this season.

For Calgary, there must be a better option out there for an impending UFA on a team with 08/09 cap space. Marian Hossa, perhaps?

Why is this man smiling?

2008-01-14T11:30:00.000-04:00

All the commentary about Ovechkin's contract got me thinking. I posted this comment at Tom Benjamin's:

One thing that seems to be overlooked is the downside of this deal for Ovechkin. If he turns out to be a top 5 player in the league, he should be paid close to the ceiling (20% of the cap). Whether paying anyone the player maximum is the right team-building strategy is irrelevant - the top players will command the maximum salary. By signing for 13 years, he's allowing the player maximum in 2008 dictate what he'll be earning in 2020. I suppose that's a good bet if you think the cap will still be $50M in 2020.

Suppose the next CBA is the same as the current one. If you project a modest cap increase of 5.5% per year over the next 13 years (it's gone up over 10% in each of the last two years), you're looking at a team cap of ~$75M when Ovechkin hits age 30. In 2020 the team cap would be over $100M and the player max would be over $20M. Ovechkin's cap hit will be roughly 60% of the player max when he's 30 and under 50% of the player max when the contract's done. I don't think it's outlandish to suggest that, come 2020, he might be able to earn more in the RSL than his $9.5M cap hit in the NHL.

If this contract makes sense for any team, it's the Caps. If they hadn't signed Nylander in the offseason, they would have been dangerously close to the $34M team salary floor. They needed a big salary to pay for the next few years to replace Kolzig's. The diminishing fraction of the team cap that Ovechkin eats up over the next 10+ years gives them room to build a supporting cast. If you believe Ovechkin is a top 5 player, a deal like this gives the team it's best chance to contend.

I thought this was the reason for the brief term of Crosby's contract. If you know you're worth the league max, why settle long term for the league max right now? Why not get the most current league max (or close to it) every year?

Brett Hull's First Blunder

2008-01-08T17:12:00.000-04:00

$5M per season for Mike Ribeiro? Wow. Well done, Brett. Why, oh why couldn't you have been hired as the next GM for the Leafs?

THN's Ryan Dixon notes that Ribs is indeed on pace for 41 goals and 87 points. As some other writer once said, "I'm on pace to live forever." He's shooting over 36% - more than double his career number. On top of that, according to the behindthenet qualcomp numbers there are only two Dallas forwards playing softer minutes than Ribs: Krys Barch and Brad Winchester. If Ribeiro scores 40 goals this season - or any other season for that matter - I'll eat my shirt.

Hull said he wanted to mould his team in his own image. Handsomely rewarding an indifferent floater is a great first step in that direction.

The Southleast Division

2008-01-07T14:47:00.000-04:00

This snapshot is from Zorak's NHL standings. Based on points per game, the five Southeast division teams sit at 9th, 11th, 12th, 14th and 15th place in the East. The Hurricanes were actually sitting in 10th prior to their win over Tampa on Sunday, and for a brief moment the SE division held five of the bottom six places in the conference. All five are solidly sub-.500 in terms of GF/GA too. We are now halfway through the NHL season. With the number of divisional games played in the New NHL, how is this even possible?

Here's the punchline: One of these clubs will start the playoffs at home.

Googling PJ Stock Returns A Lot Of Stock Photos Of Pyjamas

2007-12-19T15:44:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, Elliotte Friedman wrote sports columns in Western's Daily Student Newspaper, the Gazette. I read them - they were the only sports columns worth reading in the Gazette. Now, fifteen years later, Friedman and I have another thing in common: rambling, disjointed blog posts, the point of which (when they have a point) is difficult to discern.

Friedman's blog, From the Pressbox, is hosted at the CBC website. His latest post, Can youth, Koivu co-exist in Montreal? suggests that Saku Koivu is being (or should be) edged out by a youth movement. It features lots of speculation about Koivu's feelings.

Here's my response, which follows the classic blogger template of a hack & slash snip job of the original article followed by my witty remarks.

"...the Canadiens signed Markov, while making a below-market offer to Sheldon Souray. They knew Souray would decline and leave as a free agent."

Keeping up appearances of trying to sign the record-setting PP point man to appease the fans, knowing full well that Souray would receive and accept a better offer elsewhere? If this is really the way it played out, then it was a brilliant move by Bob Gainey. The thing is, the reported offer of $22M over four years (Hamrlilk's contract) was a bit more per annum than the offer Souray eventually accepted from Edmonton - $27M over five years. Gainey might have been cutting it a little bit too close with his bluff. If the move had backfired, this would truly be the season from Hell. In Gainey's defense, maybe Souray made it clear that the fifth year was non-negotiable.

Anyway, signing Markov was not a deliberate move toward a younger player. It was a deliberate move toward the better player.

"The team stuck with Christopher Higgins and Tomas Plekanec during good and bad, and it’s working. Higgins, 24, is an assistant [sic] captain while Plekanec, 25, is second behind linemate Kovalev in scoring. Carbonneau is following the same process with Guillaume Latendresse and Sergei Kostitsyn, both 20, and Kyle Chipchura, who is 21."

It would be nice to be able to look at these names and see a bona fide star. We can be pretty sure that none will be the player Koivu is. Someone might, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Over at Lowetide is a recent post mentioning that the Oilers have had "only" six top six picks in their history. Over the same time period, Montreal has had three, and none of them 'earned' by being a bottom six team. There was the Wickenheiser 1st overall in 1980 (acquired in a trade), Svoboda at #5 in 1984 (again, acquired in a trade) and Carey Price at #5 in 2005 - the result of the Crosby lottery. The last time Montreal 'earned' a top 6 pick, there were only 6 teams in the league. The highest pick they've been granted since the WHA merger was the 2001 #7, Mike Komisarek. As bad as the Habs have been over the last decade, they haven't been bad enough to earn a star.

This post at IOF nicely explains the Habs' LOFT issues. Be sure to look at the chart. Star players come early in the draft. A #10 forward pick only has about a 30% chance of becoming a mere 0.5 ppg player. Montreal has not had many top 10 picks. There are diamonds in the rough (see Detroit), but I think that's almost entirely luck.

My point is that going further with this youth movement is unlikely to result in improvement. The young Habs aren't the young Penguins. No one can step into Koivu's role yet, and I have strong doubts that anyone in the system will ever be able to do Koivu's job as well as Koivu.

"What I can see is Koivu looking around and realizing his friends are gone. The faces are younger, not familiar. He feels threatened. He wonders if he’s going to be next. (Although, it should be pointed out he has a no-trade, and, as of last Friday, says he hasn’t been asked to waive it.) He sees his offensive role eroding."

Well, since I'm not privy to all of Saku's hopes and dreams, all I can see is Koivu outperforming every other forward on the team at EV. If (big if) his offensive role is eroding, it's chiefly because his defensive role is expanding due to a lack of centres capable of taking faceoffs in their own zone against the other teams' top lines.

"P.J. Stock made the point in the pre-game the other day that Koivu was being turned into a checking centre."

Jesus Murphy, I can't believe this 110% hogwash* is now polluting the commentary on HNIC. P.J. Stock made a career out of absorbing blows to the head. He now goes by P.J. because it's easier for him to spell than 'Phillip Joseph.'

Chris Higgins has been a fixture on Koivu's wing. Checking lines generally don't feature the team's best scoring winger (Higgins). Maybe nuances like that are a little too subtle for a former NHL goon to notice, so how about this: if Koivu has been used as a checking centre, then Sundin, Sakic, Datsyuk, Lecavalier, Jokinen, and Marc effing Savard have too.

I'll stop here. The fact is, at 33, Saku Koivu is still the best forward on the team (granted, this team is dressing two #6/7 defensemen as forwards so the title of 'best forward' carries less weight in Montreal than it does in, say, Detroit). The Canadiens are still on pace for a playoff spot. Just what is the point of all the criticism?

* - This is weird - I Googled "tqs 110%" to find a link to the TV programme. It came up #1. #5 was this page describing stats courses at the University of Washington. Apparently, "TQS 110... Addresses introductory statistical concepts and analysis in modern society." There it is in black and white.

транскрипция?

2007-12-17T16:54:00.000-04:00

Bullet points today, because rum n' nog shortens my attention span.

o The guys are brothers, but apparently that's not enough for nhl.com to spell their surnames identically. Kostsitsyn? Kastsitsyn? The Canadiens' page spells it a third way: Kostitsyn. There must be someone out there who can offer some consistent written translation of languages that use the cyrillic alphabet.

o Speaking of Sergei/Siarhei, there was a recent Mike Boone post at Habs I/O that said Dale Hunter believed Sergei/Siarhei was more NHL-ready than his London Knights linemates Sam Gagner and Patrick Kane. That may be. Of the three, only Kane (playing with Toews and Ruutu) has played a significant role in the NHL this season, and consensus is that it was he who drove results in London.
After working for 2+ years before earning a spot in the Canadiens' lineup, I wonder how Andrei - the older, more experienced, bigger, faster, and more skilled of the two - feels about his kid brother being airlifted onto the top line and getting more minutes?

o In the eight games since this post the Habs' EV shot differential has dropped considerably. Through 24 games, they were getting outshot 30.1 to 31.9 per 60. In the last eight games they've been outshot 24.4 to 31.5. Carbonneau's frantic line juggling is not working.

o Is Randy McKay's real first name Hugh???

o On the Mike Richards deal...

One NHL GM, who obviously wanted anonymity, said he didn't understand the point of the Richards deal.

"He's not a $6-million player next year and he still would have been a restricted free agent," said the GM. "The guy had 32 points last year. I know he's had a great eight weeks so far... but could you not have just done a three-year deal at $4 million per year and then re-address it after that? Maybe do eight or nine years at that point when you have a better handle on what the player is all about?"

Why would an NHL GM bitch about it? If it's a bad deal, it's primarily bad for the Flyers. I suppose it could be bad news if you have some comparable players approaching RFA and possible arbitration. If this contract overvalues Richards in a compensation structure with a cap and linkage, it just means someone else out there must be undervalued. A smart GM would shut up about the Flyers' dealings and exploit the undervalued segment of the player market.

o Koivu's two goals on Saturday were his first two 5-on-5 goals this season. He had one other EV goal that was scored 4-on-4. Before anyone mistakes me for Al Strachan, I'm *not* saying Koivu is underperforming. He's having a better season than last year. I could watch a video loop of him shredding Ian White down low for hours. If by some freak accident both Saku Koivu and I get invited to the same holiday party, he should stay away from the mistletoe.

o The Leafs looked bagged in that game. It seems like there have been a lot of games this year where a team will play back-to-back games, but their opponent in the second game does not. That said, how stupid is it to dress Belak in that situation? With a tired team, Maurice needed four usable lines.

Diary of a Madman

2007-12-12T01:30:00.001-04:00

Someone recently told me that some of my posts assume an unrealistic degree of familiarity with some rather obscure stats. This post is intended to be a bit of a primer for other Habs fans, demonstrating how I interpret some of these numbers for the Habs. If you think this is all hogwash, you're not alone. If you see something that piques your interest, I recommend reading some archives of some of the more numbers-oriented blogs listed on your right. Especially the Oilogosphere ones.

These are 5-on-5 numbers from behindthenet.ca.

The columns are Games Played, Time on Ice per 60min (that's 5-on-5 time per 60 minutes), Quality of Competition (v. v. v. important), Goals For (by all players) while on the ice, Goals Against while on the ice, and the Corsi Index. The Corsi number is like a plus/minus for shots directed at the net by your team minus those from the opposition (shots for + missed shots for + opposition blocked shots - shots against - missed shots against - blocked shots). The number shown doesn't include the blocked shots, and it's a number per 60min.

If you want to get a handle on who the important players are and who is doing a good job given their role, these numbers are valuable. 5-on-5 hockey is at least two thirds of the game. In addition to the goals scored/allowed, events at 5-on-5 determine who gets the PPs and determines whether you make it to OT/SO. PP/PK performance is certainly valuable - probably moreso on a per-minute basis - but the bulk of the game is decided 5-on-5.

If you accept that, the next important piece is who the player in on the ice with/against. Most Habs fans are aware of the team's lines and defence pairings. Less well known is how those lines are used by Carbonneau and how they are addressed by opposing coaches. The most common misconception revolves around just who is on the checking line (hint: it's 'none of the above'). The second most common misconception is the even strength effectiveness of the Kovalev/Plekanec line. Sure, they score some at 5-on-5, just not as much as they surrender. And they do it against weaker opponents than the Koivu line. And their penalty differential is worse. Anywho, the QUAL COMP column is the important piece of the above table. If you Google 'Desjardins' and 'quality of competition,' you'll find lots of interesting discussion. It's not a perfect stat, to be sure. I find that when I compare QUALCOMP to the players each Hab regularly faces according to the shift charts and Hockeyanalysis stats, they mesh very well. YMMV. Now we have an idea of the difficulty of the players' icetime, and that provides context for the GF/GA.

Finally, the Corsi column. Obviously GF/GA are the currency of wins and losses. The problem with looking strictly at goals is sample size. A few extra saves in one end of the rink and not the other can make a good player look bad, or vice versa. Shots directed at the net are a good proxy for GF/GA, and they provide a much larger sample size. It tells you which end of the ice is seeing most of the action.

So.... what can we take from these numbers?

1. Markov and Komisarek are playing against the best players in the league. If you were to look at Hamrlik's +8, compare it to Markov's -9 and conclude "Hamrlik's been playing better defensively," you'd be wrong. It's easier to shut down Kyle Wellwood's line than it is Mats Sundin's line. There are some factors besides QUALCOMP that explain the huge +/- discrepancy between these two that I'll get to in another post.

2. Koivu, Higgins, and Ryder are (or were) also playing against the best players in the league. This is a major departure from last season, or any of the last 5+ seasons for that matter. Last year the Bonk/Johnson checking line faced the top opposition. Despite this shelter, the Higgins/Koivu/Ryder line were terrible at even strength. This season the trio has actually been in the black when playing together, and they've done it facing the top lines in the league way more often than last year. This has to be taken into consideration when looking critically at their performance.

3. Trevor Linden, Joe Juneau and Radek Bonk are all veteran players who were brought to Montreal to play a checking role. I assumed Bryan Smolinski would inherit that role this season, but it looks like Carbo was having a hard time trusting him. Judging by his +8/-16, it's understandable. Again, there are other factors at work that mitigate the +/- discrepancy. Smolinski's line has still been the usual 2nd option against tough opposition, after Koivu's. His loss due to injury is a big deal.

4. Dandenault has been awful. Just awful. It's shocking that he's been given so much responsibility, being a frequent winger for Smolinski (a big factor in Smolinski's +8/-16). Dandy's been shuffled from line to line and he's getting blown away everywhere.

5. Hamrlik and Brisebois have been the second pairing, and they've done well. Hamrlik is a vast upgrade over Souray, 5-on-5.

6. Kastsitsyn/Plekanec/Kovalev have performed no better than Koivu's line, 5-on-5. And they're facing mediocre opponents. There have been some recent games where the opposing coach focused on the Kovalev line rather than the Koivu line but that's only because of the bizarre decision to put guys like Streit or Kostopoulos or Dandenaullt on Koivu's wing. For the most part, the Kovy line has been getting plum icetime and not doing as much with it as we would hope. Same as last season.

7. Mark Streit looks bad in terms of GF/GA, especially considering his 3rd pairing status. However, his +8/-17 doesn't seem to jive with his Corsi number of -1.7. Shooting luck is a huge factor here (again, I'll discuss in a later post). He's been good.

8. Surprise, Chipchura is not this team's checking line centre.

9. Kostopoulos has been getting 4th line minutes and he's one of four regular forwards with Corsi numbers on the right side of zero. Maybe it's time to give him a little more responsibility.

10. Gorges has been getting a free ride from fans/media. He's been the worst defenseman while facing the softest opposition. With nine frigging defensemen on the roster, this guy should not be playing.

Conclusions and Contradictions.

With the hindsight of 29 games this season Brisebois has been OK, but the decision to bring him to town looks like a bad one.

Immediately after the offseason FA frenzy, The team had seven defensemen: Markov, Komi, Hamrlik, Streit, Dandenault, Bouillon and Gorges, plus the guys on the farm. Up front they had lost the entire checking line of Perezhogin/Bonk/Johnson, and replaced them with Smolinski and Kostopoulos. Now, Smolinski is a versatile player but had never in his lengthy career (to my knowledge) demonstrated that he could play a role like Bonk's. Kostopoulos was a 4th liner in LA. Even if you give Gainey the benefit of the doubt with Smolinski (maybe he saw something that indicated he could be a shutdown guy), it seems clear that there were holes in the bottom six forward spots.

As the summer wore on and Bonk and Johnson remained unsigned, Gainey picked up a retreaded Patrice Brisebois for $700k. So now we're up to eight defensemen and ten forwards. Interesting. That, in a nutshell, is why we are now seeing Streit and Dandenault playing on the wings.

I just don't get it. Why sign Brisebois when Dandenault is an adequate 3rd pairing RD, and then bump Dandenault up to the wing? Why not skip the middle man and just sign a competant RW?? I would have been happy to see Bonk back - he signed for a cap hit of $1.5MM over two years in Nashville. Gainey must not have wanted to commit to that 2nd year. Tangent time: Speaking of Bonk, it looks like he was the one in the driver's seat last season - not Johnson. Bonk's doing for the Preds what he did last year for the Habs. Johnson's in St. Louis and he's been used in a similar role too but with ugly results.

So. Here we are with the top two lines playing tougher roles but coping pretty well, and a weak bottom six. They were keeping things close to even at even strength, and doing great on the PP. So what does Carbo do? He loses patience with Ryder's stagnant counting numbers and screws up the top line. And he continues to give significant icetime to Dandenault, Begin, Latendresse, Chipchura - all bottom six forwards who are getting beat up regularly. There are deeper teams than Montreal who are limiting their 4th liners to significantly less icetime. It's puzzling.

The NHL Coach Farm Team

2007-12-11T13:08:00.000-04:00

An interesting post is up at Eyes on the Prize. Robert L recommends that fans have patience with Coach Carbonneau.

When questions arise about the competency of Canadiens' coaching, the club's recent history of head coaches looms large. There are a couple of noteworthy observations:

- In the last decade, the team has hired four consecutive rookie head coaches.
- In the last fifteen years, every head coach has had a francophone name.

The francophone thing is simply a reality of the Montreal market. The political climate dictates that not only must a coach be fluently bilingual, but his mother tongue must be French. The fluently bilingual Pat Burns was hired back in 1988. I strongly doubt that a rookie head coach with a name like 'Pat Burns' would ever be hired nowadays. It wouldn't matter if his mother tongue was french or if he could speak like Gérard Depardieu. It's an unfortunate limitation for the organization, but c'est la vie. What are you gonna do.

The francophone requirement informs the hiring oddity noted in the first observation. In a competitive endeavour, when you hold yourself to a constraint to which your direct competition is not held, you are at a disadvantage. There just aren't as many good options available. That's why we've seen a series of coaches with zero NHL head coaching experience upon their arrival. To be sure, good coaches are out there that fit the constraint (Lemaire, Jacques Martin), but there are many more that don't. If this were the Hamilton Canadians, the string of Vigneault-Therrien-Julien-Carbonneau would not have evolved. One would have to think that a good, veteran non-francophone coach would have broken in at some point.

I'm not saying that Vigneault, Therrien, or Julien are bad coaches. Au contraire. The Canucks, Penguins and Bruins obviously think highly of them. The thing is, these guys had to cut their teeth in Montreal. They were fired from the Canadiens, presumably for a perceived lack of performance. If there was a lack of performance, how much of it could have been attributed to inexperience? It looks like these guys learned from their mistakes.

On to Carbonneau. Back in 2003 when Bob Gainey jumped back into the biz, he inherited Claude Julien as head coach. Gainey was patient and waited a season and a half before canning Julien. His record over that time was 60-46-7-10. Gainey filled in as interim coach for the remainder of the 05-06 season bringing with him Carbonneau as an assistant. Gainey stated openly that 'his man' Carbo was being groomed for the head coach position starting 06-07.

Carbonneau's qualifications at the time? He spent two seasons as an Assistant Coach behind Michel Therrien in Montreal. Then he was hired by Gainey as Assistant GM in Dallas, a title he held until Julien was fired in 2006. To summarize, he had accumulated 2.5 years of experience as an Assistant Coach at the NHL level and zero as a Head Coach anywhere prior to his Head Coaching job with the Habs.

When Claude Julien was hired, he had spent 2.5 years as Head Coach in Hamilton, plus four as coach of the QMJHL Olympiques. Therrien was a Head Coach for four seasons in the AHL and another four in the Q. Vigneault spent 7.5 years as Head Coach in the Q, and another 3.5 as an assistant with the Senators.

One of these things is not like the others. Yes, the Habs have introduced four ~~cookie~~rookie coaches in the last ten years. Yes, all four currently hold NHL Head Coaching jobs. Three had accumulated extensive head coach experience before their hiring. One had not. Carbonneau's pedigree makes one wonder whether he will learn from his mistakes and become a better coach.

There is evidence to suggest that Carbo's not exactly doing a bang-up job (see below). I won't get into it in this post because I have a feeling that pretty much everything I have to say in this space will, in some way, comment on Carbonneau's performance.

You're all wrong. All of you.

2007-12-05T17:27:00.000-04:00

Up until game #23, Michael Ryder was playing his usual role as Saku Koivu's finishing sidekick. In the three previous seasons with this gig he scored 25, 30, and 30 goals. Nothing spectacular, but reasonably good production considering his pedigree.

In the first 23 games this season, Ryder was on the ice for 303 shots directed at the net by Montreal and 242 against in 5-on-5 play (see behindthenet). That's a differential of +2.7 per game, or +7.1 per 60 minutes - the best on the team in both cases.

Ryder's been on for 9 GF and 8 GA. Not exactly Crosbyesque numbers, but try to find another Habs forward in the black. The huge thing here is the 8 GA. That is superb. It's a vast improvement over last year's performance by the first line. Unlike last year, they've frequently been doing it against the opposition's top lines. Well done, Mike. Kudos to the entire top line, up to game #23.

In 5-on-5 hockey, Ryder's been on for 17 penalties committed by Montreal and 35 committed by the opposition. Overall, Ryder has committed 4 and drawn 10 himself (see ontheforecheck).

Up to game #23, Ryder had 70 shots. He was on pace for 250, which would have been a career high.

Overall, Ryder was on pace for a typical Ryder season with one big exception. Um, make that two big exceptions. He's been much better defensively, and his shooting percentage was only 4.3% rather than his career norm of 12%.

Ryder's catastrophically rotten performance? Nothing more than a run of bad luck shooting. On March 10 Sidney Crosby had a shot% of 3.8% over his previous 20 games. If I recall correctly, very few fans called for Crosby to be waived and replaced with an AHL call-up. NHL shooters, like any string of coin tosses, will have cold streaks. It happens.

Unfortunately when it happens in Montreal the entire fan base and sports media join forces to proclaim that the player is bringing shame to the CH by playing so poorly. After all, they're The Most Knowledgeable Fans In The World (tm). Just ask them. Then something really screwed up happens: the coach starts to believe them and then acts on these idiotic assertions. Now we have Mark Streit on the 1st line. I hope you're all happy.

On the flip side, Mathieu Dandenault has escaped the fury of the fan base and media. Clearly because he's big presence, a fast skater and a stand-up guy. It sure as hell can't be due to a good performance.

His Corsi number (a measure of shots directed at the net for/against) is -21.1. That's the worst in the league if you exclude anyone under 10 games played and Eric Boulton. The next worst regular forward in Montreal is the rookie Kyle Chipchura at -9.7. Dandenault has been shuffled from line to line and he's been poison on every one of them, hemorrhaging shots against. He's committed 6 non-coincidental penalties and drawn 2. He's been on the ice for 8 GF and 15 GA, 5-on-5.

There are two mitigating factors for Dandenault: he's been facing tough opposition, and he's a defenseman playing forward. Both of these lay the blame squarely on Carbo. Dandenault should not have his current role.

Same goes for the Ryder debacle. It may sound like I'm blaming the vocal fans and media, but obviously the coach has a responsibility to look a little deeper at a player's performance. If the coach of this team falls for the same foolishness as the raving lunatics on TV and on the message boards, we're in deep trouble.

Puck Luck

2007-11-28T16:27:00.000-04:00

They're off to a good start. Still, Habsland has this nagging feeling. The ominous shadow of last season hangs over this team. They were off to an even better start in 2006 when the wheels fell off. We can blame 2006-07 Maple Leafs MVP c difficile all we want, but deep down we all know they were doing it with smoke and mirrors.

The $64,000 question is, Will the same thing happen this year? Let's pop the hood and look for some warning signs through the first 24 games.

1. Even Strength

All stats in this post are from behindthenet.

I'm only including the 4-on-4 info for the sake of completeness. It's irrelevant compared to 5-on-5.

First off, the +32/-43 in 5-on-5 play looks like trouble. It's eerily reminiscent of last year. Good teams don't get outscored 4:3 at even strength. The shot differential is negative, but it's nowhere near this 4:3 ratio. They're only being outshot by 1.3 shots per game, 5-on-5.

If you look a little closer, you'll find the Save percentages are the difference. The league average EV Sv% is .916 (calculated by adding up each team's Sv% and dividing by 30). As expected, Huet and Price are above average at .924. Montreal shooters have been making opposing goalies look like Tretiak. Collectively, they have had a .940 Sv% - the Habs have been shooting 6% at ES. Only the Rangers have been worse, at 5.4%. I can accept that Montreal shooters are below average, but this looks suspiciously like a run of bad puck luck.

What if we plug in some numbers to account for the bad luck? If opposing teams merely had the same kind of goaltending Huet/Price provided at ES (a solid .924 Sv%), Montreal still would have scored an additional 8 goals. I think it's fair to keep the Habs' .924 Sv% as is - goaltending is a team strength. Here's the revised table:

If Montreal could shoot a below-average 7.6% rather than an abysmal 6%, they would only be outscored 40:43 at ES. If they could shoot at a league-average 8.4%, they would be outscoring opposition 45-43. But let's not get carried away. Shooting 7.6% is a reasonable goal for a team comprised of four 4th lines.

Puck luck at even strength: Unlucky by 8 goals (-8)

2. Power Play

It's a different story on the PP - shooting percentages are abnormally high.

League average Sv% are .870 for 5-on-4 and .750 for 5-on-3. As unlucky as the Habs have been at ES, they've been extremely lucky on the PP. We can be pretty sure that the Habs PP is good, this being it's second successful year in a row, so we'll grant them a 5-on-4 Opposition Sv% of .850. That's still a lot better than average, but you have to consider that had they not scored on some of those 'lucky' shots, the PP would have continued and they would have had more shots.

Puck luck on the PP: Lucky by 4 goals (+4)

3. Penalty Kill

Things look normal for the 4-on-5 penalty kill. League average Sv% is .870 - Price/Huet performing at .882 is reasonable. The 3-on-5 Sv% is way out of whack. They're giving up fewer goals per minute when down two men than when they're down one. Those numbers will change by the end of the season. A .760 Sv% is more reasonable for 3-on-5 situations. With some rounding, that means 4GA rather than 1.

Puck luck on the PK: +3 goals, all 5-on-3

3a. SHGs

The other piece of puck luck on special teams is the 4 shorties scored and none allowed. Last season, the Habs scores 15 and allowed 5. There is probably some repeatability there, but not the 3:1 ratio. I'll use a completely arbitrary and unjustifiable 4:3 ratio as reasonable. This means the Habs are up another 3 goals here due to luck.

Puck luck with SHGs: +3 goals

4. Penalties taken/drawn

On average, Montreal is on the PP for 7.6 minutes per game and spending only 6.8 minutes on the PK per game. The success of the PP means that the difference between penalties drawn/taken is even greater. This is a huge improvement over last season, and it's a bit of a wild card. I'm not optimistic that they'll be able to sustain this, but then again I'm wrong an awful lot.

If the Habs conformed to the league average, they would have been on both the PP and PK for an equal 7.3 minutes per game. This would have resulted in a 2 goal swing downward - instead of scoring 4 more PPGs than their opposition, it would be down to a +2. However, I'm going to call this one a wash because they just might be able to continue drawing more penalties than they commit.

Puck luck on penalty differential: 0

5. Empty net goals

They've scored 3 and allowed 4.

Puck luck on ENGs: -1 goal

6. Goalposts

As of Nov. 23, the publication date of this post at IOF, opponents hit seven more posts than did the Habs.

I don't know what to make of this. There is some debate regarding the accuracy of the stats. No one calls shots that go off a post and into the net 'lucky' for the shooter, but shots that hit the post and stay out are somehow 'lucky' for the goalie. There must be some number of goalposts hit that would have been saves if the shot had been aimed an inch or two closer to the centre of the net. Intuitively, something tells me the luck value of a goalpost is not more than half a goal. I'll call the -7 goalpost differential equivalent to 3 goals worth of luck. I'll allocate two of those to 5-on-5 and one to 4-on-5.

Posts: +3 goals.

Total: Habs have been lucky by 4 goals. Instead of a +7 differential (69GF, 62GA) in these situations, we should have expected only +3 (73GF, 70GA). They may not be quite as good as their record indicates, but they're not a sub-.500 team either. As long as no major injuries strike, everyone gets their flu shot and there are no lengthy skids of bad luck, they should stay above .500 and make the playoffs.

Update: It looks like I might have double counted a shorthanded empty net goal. It doesn't change the conclusion much - the good luck on the PP and 3-on-5 PK has been countered by rotten luck scoring at 5-on-5. The team should be able to maintain a slight positive goal differential.

Ryder Criticism. Alan Ryder, that is.

2007-11-21T11:18:00.001-04:00

I read all of Alan Ryder's columns at the Globe & Mail. I'm a fan of his and it's great that he has a mainstream forum for his number crunching. Ryder's latest piece is on one of his hobby horses - respecting the shootout.

His conclusion is that there is little correlation between a goalie's hockey performance and shootout performance, therefore coaches and GMs need to spend more time thinking about the shootout. Especially those crotchety old-schoolers North of the border. To be honest, I find his dismissive tone of 'traditional hockey values' getting in the way of smart decisions a little insulting.

According to Ryder's table, there have been 337 shootout points awarded. Over the same time span, there have been 3373 non-shootout points awarded. That 3373 includes wins and OT/SO losses. So it's fair to say that the importance of the shootout is one ninth of the importance of regulation/OT NHL hockey.

For the most part, NHL coaches aren't morons. Say a coach has to decide between two players available to dress for a game. The two have identical regulation/OT performance but one happens to be a shootout ace. The decision is obvious in this case. The difficulty arises when there is a trade-off.

Let's compare Player A and Player B. Player A is fantastic in shootouts - he contributes 0.5 points more than Player B for every shootout. Unfortunately, he's not quite as good at regulation/OT hockey and contributes team 0.1 points per OT/regulation game less than Player B. Player A's net contribution:

0.5ppg*(1/10) - 0.1ppg*(9/10) = -0.04ppg

So Player A contributes 0.04 fewer points per than player B.

Similarly, if player C costs you 0.5 points per shootout but gains you an extra 0.1 points per regulation/OT, he's worth 0.04 points per game more than player B. Because of the rarity of the shootout, regulation/OT performance is much more valuable than shootout performance.

To sum up: Although 1/10th of all available points is a significant fraction, 9/10ths of all available points is nine times more significant. If you're facing a trade-off, you need to gain 9x more shootout value than you lose in regulation/OT value.

Next, let's look at Ryder's table of team shootout performance and compare it to regulation/OT performance:

Click the table for a clearer image. The SO record columns are copied from Ryder's table. I got the Non-SO record numbers from NHL.com.

The correlation between SO% and Non-SO% is -0.15. Good shootout teams are slightly less likely to be good 65-minute teams and vice versa.

The negative correlation is small but significant and completely unsurprising. It suggests the trade-off between shootout performance and 65-minute performance is real. Kiprusoff sucks in shootouts, but wins a lot of games for the Flames. Jussi Jokinen isn't that special in the first 65 minutes (recent 4-goal games notwithstanding), but is crackerjack in the shootout. Ryder's perspective that there is a lack of 'market competition' is explained by some teams having regular players that happen to be great shootout performers (i.e. Dallas), and some teams having great regular players who happen to be lousy shootout performers (i.e. Calgary).

To be fair, the main thrust of Ryder's article is that the backup goalie should come in as the closer for shootouts if he is the better shootout performer. It's a good point. The reason it doesn't happen is probably because coaches prefer not to put a 'cold' goalie in that situation, either due to injury concerns (seems goalies do the splits a lot in shootouts) or concerns about the performance of a 'cold' player. I'd like to see evidence that a player can be put in this situation regularly and perform at his usual 'warmed up' level without a greater risk of injury before I'd endorse the idea. Raycroft looks like the perfect guinea pig for the experiment.

Update: Ryder responded to my comment on his article thusly:

"You are absolutely correct that the shootout is 'only' about 10% of the game. But 'only' 3-4 players per team affect that 10%. And, of course, the goaltender is always one of those players. In the case of forwards the leading shootout contributions of all time have come largely from guys who don't perform at the same level in skating time. They are, in effect, shootout specialists. The shootout tests finesse. But the Leafs trot out their power forwards. The story with goaltending is more complex. You would not choose a single goaltender based on a stand-out shootout record. But, just maybe, you might choose a backup based on that metric AND use him as your closer."

Unbalanced

2007-03-31T16:47:00.000-03:00

It's often been said that this year's edition of the Habs features an odd combination of special teams prowess and even strength ineptitude. But just how broad is the chasm? Well, not including empty net goals, they've allowed 41 more than they've scored at even strength and they've scored 26 more than they've allowed in all special teams situations. If your car tires were this far out of balance, you'd experience some seriously uneven tread wear.

But how do they compare to other teams? Let's see... NHL.com has usable team GF/GA data from the last five seasons. To compare teams, I invented a number called Powerplay IMbalance Points, or PIMPs. It's the goal differential of your special teams minus your goal differential at even strength. The more PIMPs you have, the greater your even strength suckage compared to that of your special teams.

Here are the teams having the top 20 PIMPs over the last five seasons:

The first thing you notice is that these teams, by and large, stink. It contains the 30th place team in each of the last four seasons. The only club in the top dozen with a better than .500 win/points% is your 2006-07 Montreal Canadiens, smack dab between this year's .344 Flyers (.344w%) and the powerhouse 01-02 Bluejackets (.348w%). The only team to score more PIMPs than the Habs were back-to-back editions of the Bluejackets. If they printed up t-shirts to commemorate that feat, I'd buy one.

Now here is the "bottom" 10. They are teams who perform much better at ES than on special teams:

Particularly weird is the appearance of the 05-06 and 06-07 Leafs and Sabres on both lists. The 05-06 Sabres were dominant on special teams and average at ES. This year, they're dynamite at ES and sub-par on special teams. The Leafs have flipped the other way, from being a good ST/bad ES club last season to a bad ST/good ES club this year.

In conclusion, no team in the last five seasons has performed the feat the Habs are pulling off this year. No one else has been this much worse at ES than on special teams and still finished better than .500. We Habs fans are witnessing something pretty special.

Market Watch - One Less Fish in the Sea

2007-03-30T17:08:00.000-03:00

Sami Salo signed a 4-yr. extension at $3.5M per. Amazingly, that is the exact amount I guestimated he would get, albeit as an extension rather than on the free market.

The number makes $4.5M over 4 or 5 years sound like a reasonable deal for Markov.

~~~

A couple of bloggers have been tracking the odds of Eastern Conference teams making the playoffs: hockeyrodent and Hockey Numbers.

Also, Behindthenet.ca now has a blog!

Fighting Foofaraw

2007-03-29T15:13:00.000-03:00

Although this year's fighting debate has already gone 11 rounds, Serge Savard just stepped into the ring with these comments:

"If I do the same thing (as Simon did) on the street, what do you think will happen to me? I'd be jailed."

This is an argument that has never made sense to me. If you crosschecked some poor unsuspecting schmuck in the small of the back while walking down the street, you'd be jailed. If you threw a perfectly clean hipcheck at some annoying mallrat, you'd be jailed. If you took your stick to the park and started firing 6oz vulcanized rubber discs toward a mime at speeds over 90mph, you'd be jailed. It wouldn't even matter that you were technically aiming for the fountain behind the mime and the mime just happened to be in the way.

There are things that happen in every sport that are not tolerated off the field of play. By playing the game, you're accepting some risks by implied consent.

BRB

2007-03-07T15:33:00.000-04:00

We will resume our regularly scheduled programming in a couple of weeks.

Fantasy GM, part 2

2007-03-06T18:22:00.000-04:00

The writing was on the wall once Rivet was dealt. The most probable scenario will see Gainey gun for Souray. If you're listening to what the pundits say, that will probably mean breaking the Koivu cap. Say Souray signs for $5M, which is the low end of what people are saying he'll get:

Now we're at $41.5M, leaving $3.5M to spend on two remaining spots. Those spots are the ones currently occupied by Radek Bonk and Mike Johnson, who bring down a combined total of $4.2M. This is not good.

Unless Bob Gainey has some pleasant tricks up his sleeve, we're looking at essentially the same team as we have this year. Two veterans (Rivet and Abby) are replaced by two minimum wage earners and $3.5M in cap space instead of the two most reliable forwards (Bonk & Johnson). That's not exactly a formula for success. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

So let's try something different.

First off: let Souray walk. In Hockey Pools 101 they teach you not to buy a guy after a career year. By all means, get involved in the bidding to drive up the price, but do not buy. And another thing: would you pay $5M for a 30-goal right wing PP specialist? Then why pay that much for a 30-goal PP specialist d-man? Those goals can be replaced much more inexpensively by addressing the team's needs up front.

Second: Pull a Lamoreillo and treat the Hamilton Bulldogs crowd to the Sergei Samsonov show. Admit the mistake and don't send good money after bad. The Montreal Canadiens are a profitable enough organization to afford this.

Third: As soon as July 1 rolls around send Saku to Kimmo Timonen's house with a Texas mickey of Finlandia and instructions to reminisce about their exploits while playing together on their national team. They were on the same WJC team in 93 and 94, TPS Turku in 94-95, World Cups in 96 and 04, World Championships in 99 and 03, and the Olympics in 98 and 06. There is no doubt in my mind that Timonen is a more valuable all-around player than Souray, and he will come a lot cheaper. His numbers are a little better than Markov's, but he's also a little older. A contract similar to Markov's seems reasonable. If Timonen doesn't bite, the backup plan is Sami Salo.

There! That leaves $8M in cap space for three forwards.

Now we have options. Gainey could go for strength down the middle by landing a star centre. This would be a great environment to ease kids into the lineup:

Alternatively, players like Bonk and Johnson seem to be undervalued. That makes them wise choices in the FA market. Getting them signed for small raises would allow the space to go toward some help on Koivu's wing:

Or we could try to nab the 'Next Radek Bonk,' aka Patrick Stefan. He comes with the added advantage of having an Embarrassing Youtube Discount. That would clear enough space for some serious help for Koivu:

Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?

Fantasy GM, part 1

2007-03-06T16:13:00.000-04:00

This year's playoff drive certainly has been inspiring. I've been inspired to ponder how the team might look next season.

Here's the team's current roster when healthy:

The astute observer will note the number of names with white backgrounds not earning their keep.

The salary numbers come from nhlnumbers.com. They may not be exact, but they're close enough. Total salary is in the ballpark of $41M.

The total signed for next year is $23M. Murray and/or Lapierre are the only two signed names that stand a chance of losing their roster spots, and they would be replaced by someone with similar salary. Next year's RFAs are earning $5.4M and the UFAs are about $12.6M.

It's unlikely that any of the RFAs will disappear. They all should return, and here are some WAGs of their price tags:

$2.5M should be quite reasonable for Ryder. Tomas Holmstrom just signed a 3-yr extension at $2.25M per, and J.-P. Dumont got $2.25M over two years as a UFA. Guys with similar numbers to Higgins and Plekanec generally don't make $1.5M, but I'll peg them for the amounts shown just to be on the safe side. Perezhogin has had scant numbers this year and should be under $1M. Gorges' and Komisarek's numbers appear on the high side but salaries have a tendency to be surprisingly high year after year.

That puts us at a total of $32M with holes at C, W, #2G and two gaping ones on defence. If the salary cap is $46M next year and Gainey keeps a $1M buffer, that leaves $13M to complete the roster.

Let's start with the easy decisions. Sign Markov and use a rookie backup netminder.

Aebischer won't be back, and Gainey won't pursue a pricey #2 goalie. Halak or another cheap kid from camp will do just fine as a backup. Markov has to be re-signed. As mentioned several times before, Tomas Kaberle's deal should provide a ceiling for Markov. Philippe Boucher just signed a three year extension at $2.5M per. Nevertheless the market will not listen to reason. Markov will fetch over $4M per season with a long term deal.

That puts us at $36.5M with some difficult decisions to make in part 2.

The Aftermath

2007-03-02T16:12:00.000-04:00

Ah, the NHL trade deadline - a good time to reflect on impermanence.

I had an ex who was not a hockey fan, but who still watched a fair bit of it simply due to association with yours truly. Her favourite player was Ryan Smyth. Why? Because he was by far the most emotional player on the ice after Canada won in Salt Lake.

After being traded to the Islanders, the poor guy was a wreck - see the clip up at CiO. When you invest as much in your job as Ryan Smyth does, the highs are ecstatic and the lows are agonizing. The sword cuts both ways.

Defending Bob

Pierre Lebrun:

"People will say Montreal was a big loser on the day but the reality is that Canadiens GM Bob Gainey was in a pickle. He's rebuilding the team while trying to remain competitive so dealing high draft picks or prospects for a rental was out of the question. On the other hand, with his team on the bubble, he couldn't afford to deal high-scoring defenceman Sheldon Souray despite the huge return he would have fetched. The Habs can't make the playoffs without Souray, so they'll accept that when he leaves town as unrestricted free agent in July that his stay in the spring was worth it.

Besides, Gainey deserves credit for pulling a first-round draft pick and a 22-year-old defenceman in Josh Georges in exchange for a rental, Rivet, on Sunday."

I think Lebrun hit the nail on the head.

As a dedicated fan, I would have been fine with Gainey taking the long view and getting what would have been a jackpot of a return for Souray in the ultimate sellers' market. But I'm not a season ticket holder, nor am I one of the twenty-odd roster players who have committed a good chunk of their careers to this season. As long as the playoffs are within reach, Gainey couldn't sell off his star rentals no matter what the market conditions were.

On the flip side, this year's team is not a Cup contender. It would have been utterly foolish to sacrifice the future by paying the going rates for rentals. By getting a great return for a role-player and keeping his major contributors, Gainey hedged nicely.

There have been a lot of comments criticizing Gainey, saying the team needed a goalie/#2 centre/winger.

The goalie criticism is baffling. The team still has a servicable starting goalie in Aebischer, and they are deep in prospects. Giving up assets for Curtis Joseph or some other retread who is no better than Aebischer/Halak would be wasteful. What probably happened was word got out that "Gainey's looking for a goalie" after Huet went down. Pundits automatically assumed that meant he sought a big name, when he may have been targeting a depth guy like Leighton all along.

The '2nd line centre' talk was foolish too. Bryan Smolinski is no better than Tomas Plekanec, and he would have cost a 2nd round pick. Yanic Perreault is no better than Tomas Plekanec, and he would have cost even more. Zubrus might be a slight upgrade, but is a slight upgrade worth a 1st round pick and a solid prospect?

The one valid criticism might be the winger. A true star winger (preferably a LW) would have improved the Koivu line and allowed Higgins to solidify another line. By star winger I mean Smyth calibre, or Tkachuk at the very least. That kind of upgrade would have cost too much. A rental of Smyth is not worth A. Kostitsyn, David Fischer and a 1st round pick.

Playoff Implications

While Bob Gainey kept a level head, some other GMs were buying like ugly spinsters at a bachelor auction.

If the Penguins were a fun team to watch before, they'll be an absolute hoot with Big Georges in the lineup. Gary Roberts is older than dirt, but dirt is still better than what Pittsburgh was trotting out on their bottom lines. They are looking solid for the #5 spot.

It's down to Tampa and Atlanta for the SE division title. Feaster only did some minor shuffling while Waddell was in full panic mode. Tampa had been rolling before the deadline while the Thrashers addressed their biggest need (a warm body to play centre), so I'll grant them both spots.

The Islanders added a star and should be OK unless the wheels fall off. I'll concede another spot to them.

Uh oh. That leaves Montreal, Carolina, Boston, NYR and Toronto all fighting for the last spot. The Rangers have been owned by the Islanders so far, and they face them four more times. Boston sucks. They're at -50 and lucky to be doing this well. So let's count out Boston and the Rangers. That leaves Carolina and Montreal at 5 to 2 odds, and Toronto at 5 to 1 because of the Raycroft factor.

Tangent time. Why hasn't the Toronto media been universally napalming Raycroft? He's been terrible. Just like any series of coin tosses, he's had his 'hot streaks.' But .894 Sv% on the season? Yeesh. There have been 25 goalies to play 40 games this season. Among them, Raycroft is #25 in Sv%.

Unrelated Trade Deadline Stuff

There was a highly entertaining article in USA Today (via Kukla's) in which Brian Burke documents his adventures leading up to the trade deadline. Some highlights:

"If you are offended by profanity, it's difficult to make a trade in the NHL."

"I call Montreal's (GM) Bob Gainey and push him about whether he's going to move any of his defensemen. Gainey says he's unsure if he's selling. Timing is beginning to be a problem. I decide to push on this, but I don't get anywhere."

"Craig Rivet is traded to San Jose by Montreal, and I call and whine to Gainey about not calling me back and telling me he was available. He tells me that I was late to that party, and he had been talking to Doug Wilson for three weeks. Fair enough."

"I told our younger players that I wouldn't trade them and I kept my word. But I did get May. He's a great character guy with a sunny disposition."

Final Filler

- What often goes unmentioned when discussing impending UFA players as 'rentals' is the exclusive negotiation rights a team holds until July 1. That must count for something.

- There is a new table up at Behindthenet. It ranks players according to penalties drawn/taken. Compare the relative positions of Rivet and Gorges.

Craig Rivet to San Jose

2007-02-26T09:55:00.001-04:00

To San Jose:
Craig Rivet for 20 games + 2007 playoffs
5th round pick in 2008.

To Montreal:
Josh Gorges for the next five years
1st round pick in 2007, which should land somewhere between #20 and #30 overall.

Regardless of Montreal's current position in the playoff race, you just can't be disappointed with that kind of return. This was an excellent move by Gainey. It was also quite ballsy to give up a veteran player at this point in the season, no matter what the return. This trade also tells us that Gainey will take a run at signing both Markov and Souray in the offseason.

I don't know much about Gorges. He looks like a defensive defenseman, getting ES and PK icetime in San Jose. I hope that his recent spate of healthy scratches are due to trade talks and not performance. The Sharks have an awful lot of young defensemen, and he may just have been squeezed out. I'm hoping he can step right into Rivet's role. He'll probably be paired with Dandenault.

Hockey's Future describes him as a "solid skater with adequate speed," which would make him more of a New NHL player than Rivet. This post at Shaved Ice has some... interesting scouting info.

For all the talk of veteran leadership, grit, and experience, what the Sharks really needed was a right handed shot for killing penalties. Not many teams have the Habs' wealth of defensemen with right-handed shots (Komisarek and Dandenault, plus Fischer and Carle in the pipeline).

Now for a salute to Craig Rivet - his most memorable moment (to me) in a Habs uniform:

I'm definitely pulling for the Sharks in the West for the playoffs this year.

Where Are They Now?

2007-02-21T17:17:00.000-04:00

Ever wonder whatever happened to Pierre Dagenais?

Well, after a failed tryout with Jokerit of the Finnish SM-liiga (hey not everyone can be a sniper of Clarke Wilm's calibre), he's become the latest scoring sensation for Innsbruck in the Austrian league. That team's top dog is another familiar name: the 40-year old Todd Elik.

I wonder if Tavis Hansen is upset about Dags stealing his icetime.

Up Front

2007-02-18T18:04:00.000-04:00

I already talked about the Defense and Goaltending. Time to see how the forwards measure up. Sources are Behindthenet's quality of competition/quality of teammates/enhanced plus-minus stats, and this site's plentiful data.

Starting at the top:

Koivu line

For the bulk of the season, this has been Higgins/Koivu/Ryder. Latendresse filled in for Higgins for a month or two when he was out with an ankle injury.

Thanks to Montreal's magnificent power play this year, Koivu's counting numbers (16G, 29A) aren't too far off his usual pace. Unfortunately, his line has been getting absolutely killed at even strength.

Koivu was good for about 0.55 points per game at even strength from 2002 to 2006. This season he's at a 0.3 ppg clip.

Believe me - I've tried desperately to find a way to blame his struggles on his linemates, but it just doesn't wash. Here's a chart tabulating GF/GA for the Koivu/Ryder combination for the last three seasons:

In the two previous seasons under Julien and Gainey, the Koivu line has had basically the same role as it does this season. The checking line (Juneau, then Bonk) has had the tough assignments against the opponents' top lines and Koivu's line has always been the second option. From '03 to '06, Koivu/Ryder were good for 3.4 GF/60 and 2.7 GA/60 at even strength. This season they are at 2 GF/60 and 4 GA.

That's a huge swing. From +0.7 per 60 to -2.0 per 60.

So what the hell happened? It's hard to fathom how the ES numbers could drop so drastically with so little change in personnel. If anything, goaltending has been better this year. The coaching has been the same - defensive and conservative - for years. The drop off can't be blamed on being saddled with the rookie (Latendresse) while Higgins was out because their numbers were actually better over that period. Higgins has been playing hurt, but I can't see that causing a 2.7 goal per 60 swing. Ryder has always been a sub-par defensive player, but it's hard to imagine him suddenly turning his line into suck in his third NHL season.

The one difference I can think of between this season and prior seasons? Saku Koivu's eye injury.

Kovalev line

This has been less stable than Koivu's trio. Samsonov/Plekanec/Kovalev have been the most common, with Perezhogin and Latendresse occasionally filling in. Their role has been similar to that of Ribeiro's line in the past: soft opposition, few defensive zone draws, less play when trying to hold a lead.

That is why I'm not prepared to cut Samsonov and Kovalev much slack. Yes, their +/- numbers are far better than Koivu/Ryder, but they have been getting very soft icetime. Their job is to score goals on the other teams' roster filler while Bonk/Koivu try to hold the fort against the stars.

If Koivu's line has been failing at their role, the Kovalev line has been failing just as much at their own role. Samsonov and Kovalev are being asked to do exactly what they've done their whole careers - play plum shifts and rack up points. They're both way off last season's pace.

While Kovalev's struggles might be injury related, I'm willing to bet that Samsonov's season-long pout has been due to a lack of time on the first PP unit. The Habs' top unit of Koivu/Ryder/Kovalev/Markov/Souray has been either the best in the league, or damned close. Sorry, Sammy, you're not going to displace one of those guys.

Bonk line

Bonk/Johnson have been the most reliable pairing all season. This is Carbonneau's checking line and they have really been carrying the mail at ES. Perezhogin has been the most common LW, with Latendresse and lately Samsonov getting some shifts. Perogy's numbers look great, but that's solely because he was riding the coattails of Bonk/Johnson during their best run of the season.

They're the first option when the opposition's best is on the ice. For that reason, they have benefited immensely from being on the ice with Carbo's top D pairing of Markov/Komisarek. It's noteworthy that the Koivu line most often has to contend with the on-ice hijinks of Rivet/Souray at even strength, while both the Bonk and Kovalev lines both get to reap the benefits of having the Markov pairing as their most common defencemen. See the most common teammates at the behindthenet page here.

This line has been a pleasant surprise all season. Does that make Bonk a better or more valuable ES player than Saku Koivu? That's hard to answer. Intuitively, I think Koivu could do Radek Bonk's job more effectively than Bonk could do Koivu's. But the enormous drop in Koivu's play this season has shaken my confidence in him.

'4th line'

In the 'other' category fall Begin, Streit, Lapierre, Downey and Murray. There's not much to say here - these guys are not the ones deciding the games.

~~~

The problems at forward are broader and deeper than the problems on defence. Basically, everyone sucks except for the checking line. Looking subjectively at rosters across the NHL, I'd say that the Canadiens don't have a centreman in the top 20 in the league. I might even have to bump that down to top 30, given Koivu's production this season. The team doesn't have a winger in the top 50 in the league. When I watch a game, I see maybe five forwards who make me feel safe when on the ice with a lead in the final minutes: Bonk, Johnson, Koivu, Higgins and Plekanec. The rest are PP specialists, kids and 'energy' players - guys who need to be sheltered from situations like that. The forward ranks are out of balance.

The peanut on top of this turd sundae is that Bonk and Johnson - the sole bright spots up front - are going to be UFAs this summer. The rest of this motley crew is either signed or a RFA.

The lack of scoring punch is nothing new for the Montreal Canadiens. Their record in drafting forwards over the last dozen years must be among the worst in the league. Of the batch of highly touted kids from recent drafts - Perezhogin, Higgins, Kostitsyn, Grabovski - none look like they're going to suddenly turn into star forwards.

The alternative to drafting star forwards is signing them once they're UFAs. That isn't going very well, either. Big names don't want to play in Montreal, says Sheldon Souray:

"You have a lot of people who are influenced by what they read in the papers, which is a downside of playing in Montreal... It's not an easy place to play. Look at some of the free agents who have turned down the opportunity this summer to play here, for some of the reasons that everybody knows - the media hiding behind bushes, starting rumours... When hockey's a religion, people are impatient."

Yes, the reasons are plentiful: The media, the taxes, the defensive system, the language issue, the weather...

And that's why the team was stuck with Sergei Samsonov. He must have been a rash desperation signing after plans A(rnott) and B(rendan Shanahan) failed. Samsonov was likely somewhere around plan E or F. Surely, Bob Gainey saw the spots on this leopard before signing him but what else could he do? He had the cap space, the team needed a forward, and Samsonov was the best available.

The worst of the Kovalev/Samsonov deals is yet to come: This offseason, Datsyuk, Briere and Gomez become UFAs.

Scoff

2007-02-14T14:28:00.000-04:00

Ted Leonsis reveals his profound ignorance of what's going on in the NHL this season (via Kukla's):

"We now play in the toughest division in hockey with two recent Stanley Cup champs and the best scoring duos in the league, etc. yet we compete with all eastern teams for eight playoff spots."

If he'd bothered to check, he would have found that the SE is not quite the toughest division, but is rather the worst division.

If he'd bothered to dig a little deeper, he would have discovered that the SE has been the worst division in 7 out of the last 8 seasons. According to the Sagarin ratings, the only reprieve was a 4th place finish in '05-06 when Carolina singlehandedly hoisted the division out of the dumpster with their Stanley Cup run.

Here are the final Sagarin ratings for '98-99, '99-00, '00-01, '01-02, '02-03, '03-04, and '05-06.

Here's another 'quirky but sobering observation:' You obviously don't have to be very observant to become a bajillionaire.

Turtle Derby '07

2007-02-13T17:45:00.000-04:00

Buffalo and New Jersey are in. The way Ottawa's been rolling, I'd say they're in too. That leaves Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Montreal, Toronto, NYIslanders, NYRangers and Carolina fighting it out for the remaining five spots.

At least one of (Atlanta Tampa Carolina) is in too, because someone has to win the Southeast.

Here's an overview of who has what left:

Montreal is in tough with the worst home/road breakdown and six games on back-to-back nights. The upside is a lot of games against bad teams like Boston.

According to the game by game odds for today's dolphin rankings, here's the most likely point total for each club:

These numbers don't take a back-to-back game effect into account. I didn't bother to work out the totals for Buf, NJ and Ott.

The Penguins look to be in good shape. The Thrashers have accumulated a pretty good buffer. After that, it's ridiculously tight.

See also Hockey Numbers.

Update 02/14:
And just like that... with a home loss to a bad team the Canadiens are now on pace to finish 9th.