Hey all.
I'm pleased to welcome three newcomers to Ye Olde Sidebarre: Professor Mondo, the Clue Batting Cage, and Lighthouse Hockey.
The third of these sites may be interesting to future students in Professor Ag²-zuRç-Œz♣ƒo≡♫'s elective on Obscure Blogging in the Terran Early-21st Century, since it's the first time I've been hired by someone else to write stuff. Pay = zero, but when I die, on my deathbed, I will receive total consciousness. In the meantime, you all receive blessed freedom from my occasional hockey posts, since they will usually take place over there now. (You still get to enjoy my split infinitives.) I'll link those posts here, but the casual visitor will be spared the in-depth demonstration of my niche amusements.
My thanks to Professor M and philmon for their good writing, and for Dominik the Lighthouse Keeper for the opportunity to do more of what I love. It's a great community of fans over there, the comment threads are friendly and smart, a lot of fun, and it's great to have the chance to be a part of it. My normal nom de blog was already taken, so you'll find me posting there as "mikb" - you know, because I'm creative like that.
Showing posts with label the Lord's Own Hockey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the Lord's Own Hockey. Show all posts
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Snippets and snarks
* Newly-finished: a soundtrack for the Sudden Yurt Commune. I'll be working on the insert over the next couple of days. Any of you Yurters want a copy, please email me - nightflymail AT gmail DOT com - with a mailing address.
* Hey, one of the SYC-OST songs is playing on the iPod right now. Sweet.
* It is currently 92°, with 85% humidity, about to storm. This is an improvement over last week, when it was 103°, with 174% humidity, and always five minutes away from a huge rainstorm that never came.
* I've played tournaments outdoors, in the bright strong sun; on painted concrete surfaces that baked like parking lots, where you could see heat waves at the far end of the rink; I've played as many as four hour-long games in a night; I've reffed for nine straight hours each day of a weekend tournament... but I have never been as beat as at the end of my one game last week, indoors no less, during the absolute depths of the hideous oppressive weather. The heat from under my gear felt like an open oven door. I could feel my pulse in my neck and ears. It was brutal. If there had been an overtime I don't think I could have finished it. I felt like a crayon melting in a closed car.
* I am holding an hour-long press-conference/ego-stroke/circus/charity fundraiser on ESPN tonight at 9 pm Eastern, to announce my decision about what to do with this blog.
* Speaking of which, the Miami Heat announced a free-agent deal with LeBron's former Cleveland teammate, Zydrunas Ilgauskas. I thought he left Cleveland because they surrounded him with bad teammates?
* Today someone at work brought in donuts for everyone. This happens about once a month or so, for no particular reason, on no set schedule, just because. My coworkers are pretty darned cool.
* I have too good a life to be so pissy lately.
* A few months ago I was walking the Official Dog, and an orange tabby decided to trot over, tail high, to make friends.
Since then Catfriend pops around every week or so and he hangs out with the pupperkins. She wags, he purrs. Pupperkins must think he's the strangest-smelling dog ever, but they're buddies - unlike the day last week when a lady on a horse walked through the neighborhood. (We have a sizable park near the house and folks will sometimes ride there.) The Official Dog was freaked about that a little. I kept her close to me, across the street, so she wouldn't spook the horse.
* If Ladybug wasn't allergic, I'd consider getting the pupperkins a catfriend of her very own at home. I have always been a cat lover. She'll have to make do with her eleven dozen toys, various snacks and treats, mild Internet fame, and the single attention of her two owners.
* There's a four-lane divided highway about a mile from our house; people enjoy making illegal lefts onto and occasionally off of said highway, despite no fewer than five signs forbidding the practice. You'd think that you couldn't miss such instructions, nor all the helpful people honking incessantly at you, or the friendly pointing to the signs with one finger. You'd be in error. It's amazing that there aren't more wrecks at that intersection.
* Last night was baseball's All-Star Game, out in Anaheim. Both leagues trotted out an assortment of pitchers who threw 95+ mph: Justin Verlander, Josh Johnson, Matt Thornton, Jose Valverde, Brian Wilson, Jonathon Broxton. Not surprisingly, there was a dearth of scoring. The AL's only run came off a walk, error, and sac fly. Dodger pitcher Hong-Chih Kuo (who was dealing in the high-90's himself) helped this immensely by fielding a dibbler in front of the mound, throwing off his back foot, and airmailing it 20 feet above his first baseman's head. Every New York Giants fan watching immediately said, "Hey - Eli Manning's in the game!"
* The NL won on a late bases-loaded double by Braves catcher Paul McCann. They wasted a great early opportunity when Verlander struck out Ryan Braun on a pitch down the middle of the opposing batter's box. This thing would have been wide of a soccer net. Every New York Mets fan watching immediately said, "Hey, I thought Jeff Francoeur didn't make the All-Star Game this year!"
* Brian Wilson and Corey Hart were NL teammates. Now THAT would be a weird musical collaboration.
* Paperwork. Always with the paperwork. I close my eyes and see these forms floating around, demanding to be properly catalogued and compiled. My subconscious has turned into a flash drive.
* Mmmmmmmm...... coffee.......
*In three weeks I will have been married three years. Wild.
* I love fonts. Thus, I love Blambot.
* The Mother of Unfinishable Stories goes slowly in any font. I've been writing others. As they begin to bog down, I think that switching back to the MOUS may help get everything moving again. I hope so, because I am enjoying the adventures of the characters in the series and would like not to have that stall permanently.
* Love you all.
* Hey, one of the SYC-OST songs is playing on the iPod right now. Sweet.
* It is currently 92°, with 85% humidity, about to storm. This is an improvement over last week, when it was 103°, with 174% humidity, and always five minutes away from a huge rainstorm that never came.
* I've played tournaments outdoors, in the bright strong sun; on painted concrete surfaces that baked like parking lots, where you could see heat waves at the far end of the rink; I've played as many as four hour-long games in a night; I've reffed for nine straight hours each day of a weekend tournament... but I have never been as beat as at the end of my one game last week, indoors no less, during the absolute depths of the hideous oppressive weather. The heat from under my gear felt like an open oven door. I could feel my pulse in my neck and ears. It was brutal. If there had been an overtime I don't think I could have finished it. I felt like a crayon melting in a closed car.
* I am holding an hour-long press-conference/ego-stroke/circus/charity fundraiser on ESPN tonight at 9 pm Eastern, to announce my decision about what to do with this blog.
* Speaking of which, the Miami Heat announced a free-agent deal with LeBron's former Cleveland teammate, Zydrunas Ilgauskas. I thought he left Cleveland because they surrounded him with bad teammates?
* Today someone at work brought in donuts for everyone. This happens about once a month or so, for no particular reason, on no set schedule, just because. My coworkers are pretty darned cool.
* I have too good a life to be so pissy lately.
* A few months ago I was walking the Official Dog, and an orange tabby decided to trot over, tail high, to make friends.
Since then Catfriend pops around every week or so and he hangs out with the pupperkins. She wags, he purrs. Pupperkins must think he's the strangest-smelling dog ever, but they're buddies - unlike the day last week when a lady on a horse walked through the neighborhood. (We have a sizable park near the house and folks will sometimes ride there.) The Official Dog was freaked about that a little. I kept her close to me, across the street, so she wouldn't spook the horse.
* If Ladybug wasn't allergic, I'd consider getting the pupperkins a catfriend of her very own at home. I have always been a cat lover. She'll have to make do with her eleven dozen toys, various snacks and treats, mild Internet fame, and the single attention of her two owners.
* There's a four-lane divided highway about a mile from our house; people enjoy making illegal lefts onto and occasionally off of said highway, despite no fewer than five signs forbidding the practice. You'd think that you couldn't miss such instructions, nor all the helpful people honking incessantly at you, or the friendly pointing to the signs with one finger. You'd be in error. It's amazing that there aren't more wrecks at that intersection.
* Last night was baseball's All-Star Game, out in Anaheim. Both leagues trotted out an assortment of pitchers who threw 95+ mph: Justin Verlander, Josh Johnson, Matt Thornton, Jose Valverde, Brian Wilson, Jonathon Broxton. Not surprisingly, there was a dearth of scoring. The AL's only run came off a walk, error, and sac fly. Dodger pitcher Hong-Chih Kuo (who was dealing in the high-90's himself) helped this immensely by fielding a dibbler in front of the mound, throwing off his back foot, and airmailing it 20 feet above his first baseman's head. Every New York Giants fan watching immediately said, "Hey - Eli Manning's in the game!"
* The NL won on a late bases-loaded double by Braves catcher Paul McCann. They wasted a great early opportunity when Verlander struck out Ryan Braun on a pitch down the middle of the opposing batter's box. This thing would have been wide of a soccer net. Every New York Mets fan watching immediately said, "Hey, I thought Jeff Francoeur didn't make the All-Star Game this year!"
* Brian Wilson and Corey Hart were NL teammates. Now THAT would be a weird musical collaboration.
* Paperwork. Always with the paperwork. I close my eyes and see these forms floating around, demanding to be properly catalogued and compiled. My subconscious has turned into a flash drive.
* Mmmmmmmm...... coffee.......
*In three weeks I will have been married three years. Wild.
* I love fonts. Thus, I love Blambot.
* The Mother of Unfinishable Stories goes slowly in any font. I've been writing others. As they begin to bog down, I think that switching back to the MOUS may help get everything moving again. I hope so, because I am enjoying the adventures of the characters in the series and would like not to have that stall permanently.
* Love you all.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Thirty years ago
What if 7:11 was closed?
Favorite part of the pic is John Tonelli going crazy over on the right.
HISTORY WILL BE MADE.
Favorite part of the pic is John Tonelli going crazy over on the right.
HISTORY WILL BE MADE.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Politicians and the Lord's Own Hockey
Charles Wang owns the New York Islanders.
He also owns a good bit of the land surrounding the Nassau Coliseum and would like to build things on it: office space, residential units, shopping, and a nice new building for the Islanders to play some hockey. His idea was to build a suburban destination for people, since that part of Hempstead is a hunk of nothing next to the highway.
Nassau County's then-executive, Tom Suozzi, liked the idea. The fans loved it. Of course Wang was behind it, as a way to generate revenue not tied to his hockey team, which (let's face it) currently sucks like an Oreck. Kate Murray, mayor of Hempstead, however, hemmed and hawed and stalled. One thing after another with this whole project: they insisted on all sorts of detailed reports, then refused to read them on the grounds that they were too complicated and the residents deserved a simple plan; they demanded environmental impact statements and then dragged their feet on vetting them; they ignored the many construction jobs, the larger tax ratables of new residents (and Hempstead sorely needs them) and new businesses (ditto).
This has been dragging on for longer than this lead-in; but all of a sudden check out this guy, senior councilman Anthony Santino:
(stick-tap to Chris Botta at Isles Point Blank)
If so very much is at stake, why has Hempstead taken a wait-and-NEVER-see approach for lo these three or more years? Proactive? You had a plan on the table with all the legwork done. You're the ones who wanted it scaled back and back until there was essentially nothing but a retrofitted Nassau Coliseum. NOW all of a sudden you want the tax base and construction jobs and long-term residents? OH, and by the way, at the end of the sentence, yeah, why not let the Islanders stay? Y'know, so the guy who OWNS THE TEAM might actually build all this crap for us on his own dime - which was what he WANTED TO DO IN THE FIRST PLACE.
I hate lying crapweasel politicians. (Yes, probably a redundancy, but I am really irked right now.) And Botta's got this clown pegged, right down to his red bulbous Pinocchio nose:
He also owns a good bit of the land surrounding the Nassau Coliseum and would like to build things on it: office space, residential units, shopping, and a nice new building for the Islanders to play some hockey. His idea was to build a suburban destination for people, since that part of Hempstead is a hunk of nothing next to the highway.
Nassau County's then-executive, Tom Suozzi, liked the idea. The fans loved it. Of course Wang was behind it, as a way to generate revenue not tied to his hockey team, which (let's face it) currently sucks like an Oreck. Kate Murray, mayor of Hempstead, however, hemmed and hawed and stalled. One thing after another with this whole project: they insisted on all sorts of detailed reports, then refused to read them on the grounds that they were too complicated and the residents deserved a simple plan; they demanded environmental impact statements and then dragged their feet on vetting them; they ignored the many construction jobs, the larger tax ratables of new residents (and Hempstead sorely needs them) and new businesses (ditto).
This has been dragging on for longer than this lead-in; but all of a sudden check out this guy, senior councilman Anthony Santino:
Too much is at stake for the town to take a wait and see approach. Supervisor Murray and I intend to be proactive in the creation of a reasonable zoning plan that ensures that the Lighthouse gets built so that it spurs reasonable growth and development, expands the tax base, provides for construction jobs and long-term employment opportunities, and creates a new home for the New York Islanders.
(stick-tap to Chris Botta at Isles Point Blank)
If so very much is at stake, why has Hempstead taken a wait-and-NEVER-see approach for lo these three or more years? Proactive? You had a plan on the table with all the legwork done. You're the ones who wanted it scaled back and back until there was essentially nothing but a retrofitted Nassau Coliseum. NOW all of a sudden you want the tax base and construction jobs and long-term residents? OH, and by the way, at the end of the sentence, yeah, why not let the Islanders stay? Y'know, so the guy who OWNS THE TEAM might actually build all this crap for us on his own dime - which was what he WANTED TO DO IN THE FIRST PLACE.
I hate lying crapweasel politicians. (Yes, probably a redundancy, but I am really irked right now.) And Botta's got this clown pegged, right down to his red bulbous Pinocchio nose:
Essentially what Santino is doing is paving the way for Hempstead’s inevitable slashing of the project in June by two-thirds. The timing of Santino’s letter, after the recent double-dip of news of the Shinnecock Casino followed by the Islanders playing ball with the Mets, is not coincidental.I really want my guys to stay put, but if they do go to Willets Point or something, Hempstead's only got Mayor Murray to blame.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Scene from a hockey movie
[Shot: EXTERIOR, DAY. We see a sign that reads "Boston Bruins Team Headquarters, C Julien Commanding." The "C Julien" is graffiti'd out with cuss words.]
[INTERIOR. Rows of beds are filled with injured Boston Bruins players while nurses in white move to and fro. In one bed is MICHAEL RYDER, seemingly perfectly healthy, busily painting. Enter BILL SIMMONS, the Sports Guy.]
SG: Man, what a disaster. [sees Ryder and wanders over] You don't look so bad.
MR: Yeah.
SG: What you working on?
[We see Ryder's painting. Goalie Tuukka Rask is making saves on six pucks at once, with explosions in the background, while fending off Daniel Carcillo with his stick and cradling a baby in his catching glove.]
RYDER: It's just not coming together!
Off-camera voice: Hey, Mike, can I take a break?
RYDER: Oh... sure Tuukka. Take five.
TUUKKA: Thanks. [He hands the baby to a confused Daniel Carcillo and stumps off to get some Gatorade.]
RYDER: It's hell, Sports Guy. We had the whole city. We were doing great. Now look at this place.
[The camera pans the room. DAVID KREJCI has his whole arm in a cast, in traction. BLAKE WHEELER moans and rolls over. PATRICE BERGERON sits and rocks numbly.]
SG: [points to a bed with a moaning player] What about that guy?
RYDER: Mark Savard. Severe concussion. Poor guy thinks he's Kate Smith.
SAVARD: [tossing away sheets and standing] Godddddd bless A-mer-i-caaaaa! Lannnd that I loooooove! [He is surrounded by orderlies, who sedate him] Staaaannnnd.... beside... herrrrrr...... andguierrrrzzzzzz....
RYDER: Hockey is hell.
SG: Listen... this is awkward. But we had those plans for the rest of the playoffs. Soon, when you get out of here, maybe we can go back to how things were.
RYDER: Playoffs? PLAYOFFS? We've lost three straight games! [grabs a cup from the nightstand]
SG: Four. Blew a 3-0 lead at home last night. [RYDER spits out the drink]
RYDER [in voice-over] I think that was the point at which I developed my shooting problem.
[RYDER cues up a puck and shoots it at an empty net at the foot of the bed. He misses by twenty feet and hits Ken Socrates in the head.]
[INTERIOR. Rows of beds are filled with injured Boston Bruins players while nurses in white move to and fro. In one bed is MICHAEL RYDER, seemingly perfectly healthy, busily painting. Enter BILL SIMMONS, the Sports Guy.]
SG: Man, what a disaster. [sees Ryder and wanders over] You don't look so bad.
MR: Yeah.
SG: What you working on?
[We see Ryder's painting. Goalie Tuukka Rask is making saves on six pucks at once, with explosions in the background, while fending off Daniel Carcillo with his stick and cradling a baby in his catching glove.]
RYDER: It's just not coming together!
Off-camera voice: Hey, Mike, can I take a break?
RYDER: Oh... sure Tuukka. Take five.
TUUKKA: Thanks. [He hands the baby to a confused Daniel Carcillo and stumps off to get some Gatorade.]
RYDER: It's hell, Sports Guy. We had the whole city. We were doing great. Now look at this place.
[The camera pans the room. DAVID KREJCI has his whole arm in a cast, in traction. BLAKE WHEELER moans and rolls over. PATRICE BERGERON sits and rocks numbly.]
SG: [points to a bed with a moaning player] What about that guy?
RYDER: Mark Savard. Severe concussion. Poor guy thinks he's Kate Smith.
SAVARD: [tossing away sheets and standing] Godddddd bless A-mer-i-caaaaa! Lannnd that I loooooove! [He is surrounded by orderlies, who sedate him] Staaaannnnd.... beside... herrrrrr...... andguierrrrzzzzzz....
RYDER: Hockey is hell.
SG: Listen... this is awkward. But we had those plans for the rest of the playoffs. Soon, when you get out of here, maybe we can go back to how things were.
RYDER: Playoffs? PLAYOFFS? We've lost three straight games! [grabs a cup from the nightstand]
SG: Four. Blew a 3-0 lead at home last night. [RYDER spits out the drink]
RYDER [in voice-over] I think that was the point at which I developed my shooting problem.
[RYDER cues up a puck and shoots it at an empty net at the foot of the bed. He misses by twenty feet and hits Ken Socrates in the head.]
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The Lord's Own Hockey...
...in Liberia.
The booming and controversial used-clothes business in Africa means hockey jerseys can be found sprinkled throughout this war-torn West African nation.
Bizarrely, the authentic hockey jersey has become a status symbol among the poor for its "premium-grade" rating and high price tag ($4 CDN).
Bizarrely, the authentic hockey jersey has become a status symbol among the poor for its "premium-grade" rating and high price tag ($4 CDN).
"It is tough, tough material," street vendor Evelyn Togbah raves. "If you buy it, you can wear it for 20 years."
The bright NHL sweaters outshine the dirty, ripped and torn T-shirts hanging off many struggling Liberians who are forced to repeatedly wear one or two shirts. More than half of Liberians live on less than $1 a day.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
One great thing about the playoffs
The first night, all four lower seeds won on the road. Brilliant. Love love love the Stanley Cup playoffs. And of course, as things progress you get the mighty Playoff Beard, invented by the mighty Islanders teams of the late seventies and early eighties.
This recent example is a paragon of the Playoff Beard - Mike Commodore during the 2006 playoffs:
The flowing red 'fro puts it over the top. Well played, Mike Commodore. It's too bad the league wouldn't let you play helmetless just for the occasion.
This recent example is a paragon of the Playoff Beard - Mike Commodore during the 2006 playoffs:
The flowing red 'fro puts it over the top. Well played, Mike Commodore. It's too bad the league wouldn't let you play helmetless just for the occasion.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Logo FAIL
Marc Delphine is a motivated young go-getter who wants to be the next Senator from Oregon. He's just not so sure on how to go about it.
First, he's trying to secure the Libertarian Party nomination. That by itself is probably not a good sign, not in Oregon. But on top of that, he decided that the Libertarian love of property rights didn't really apply to intellectual property. As ESPN's Paul Lukas points out, both of these things look an awful lot like the other. It also looks like that logo has been quietly removed from Mr. Delphine's web banner.
Note to file - if you want to win a Senate race, don't use the logo of a hockey franchise that has never won a playoff game.
First, he's trying to secure the Libertarian Party nomination. That by itself is probably not a good sign, not in Oregon. But on top of that, he decided that the Libertarian love of property rights didn't really apply to intellectual property. As ESPN's Paul Lukas points out, both of these things look an awful lot like the other. It also looks like that logo has been quietly removed from Mr. Delphine's web banner.
Note to file - if you want to win a Senate race, don't use the logo of a hockey franchise that has never won a playoff game.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
I am loving this blog so hard right now
If you're a fan of a hard-luck sports franchise, you get completely crazy (see: all New York sports teams) or develop a darned good sense of humor. Lately, the Isles fans are going the wrong way... witness this spectacular nitwittery in the (400+ and counting) comments, most of them ready to toss GM Garth Snow under the Zamboni for getting a low second-round pick for Andy Sutton.
Dudes... the guy is turning 36 next year, makes $3 million, and will probably leave as a free agent after the year. Did you expect that Sid Crosby was coming back the other way? I hate that so many of my fellow fans have decided to turn into typical "Louie from the Bronx" WFAN caller types. Get down off the ledge, guys, woncha?
As an antidote I hang out over at Down Goes Brown. The draft advertisement post alone is worth your repeated clickage. ("Customers who viewed this item also viewed: Pylon, Turnstile, Wasted Money..." HAHAHAHAHAHA)
And BTW, Isles Point Blank is also on the Pantheon, and Chris Botta, who is Lord of the IPB, is very very good. No beef with him (even if he does spike my comments on occasion!). It's my fellow combox jockeys who need to get back on their meds.
update and BWAHAHAHAHA - from Greg Wyshynski (Puck Daddy), the Milbury Trade Scale. Never has mental scarring from epic failure been this amusing!
Dudes... the guy is turning 36 next year, makes $3 million, and will probably leave as a free agent after the year. Did you expect that Sid Crosby was coming back the other way? I hate that so many of my fellow fans have decided to turn into typical "Louie from the Bronx" WFAN caller types. Get down off the ledge, guys, woncha?
As an antidote I hang out over at Down Goes Brown. The draft advertisement post alone is worth your repeated clickage. ("Customers who viewed this item also viewed: Pylon, Turnstile, Wasted Money..." HAHAHAHAHAHA)
And BTW, Isles Point Blank is also on the Pantheon, and Chris Botta, who is Lord of the IPB, is very very good. No beef with him (even if he does spike my comments on occasion!). It's my fellow combox jockeys who need to get back on their meds.
update and BWAHAHAHAHA - from Greg Wyshynski (Puck Daddy), the Milbury Trade Scale. Never has mental scarring from epic failure been this amusing!
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
You keep using that word...
...I don't think it means what you think it means.
If they were to say that the stated rationale of the modern Games is to meet on the field of play, rather than the field of battle, then perhaps they'd have a point - but to reduce this to politics is rather like objecting to a ransom note because of the grammar. If this is the best they could do, then it's obvious that the ruling is itself a petty dig.
Well and duly noted. They should be told to note our mocking laughter in reply. Patriotism is not political, and it's kind of most of the point of having Olympics in the first place. Most of the countries participating in these Games have fought alongside our forces, or are free today only because of them. That is a fraternity that goes far deeper than politics. He that to-day sheds his blood with me shall be my brother...
Tim Thomas, btw, has already gone Vichy and has covered his own "Support the Troops" backplate. I hope he gets traded to Edmonton.
(stick-tap to Gabriel Malor at the Ace of Spades)
Trouble is brewing over United States ice hockey goalie Jonathan Quick and the “Support Our Troops” slogan on his helmet. Slogans of this sort are banned under Olympic rules and Quick will be told to remove it, the International Ice Hockey Federation has told Reuters.Political propaganda? Wha...? I don't recall GOP or DNC patches on the uniforms. Besides, this is the Olympics - the non-partisan gathering of the fraternity of athletic endeavor in which, every four years, you gather with your countrymen to totally pwn stupid furrinurs and rub it IN! THEIR! FACE! Afterward, they give out medals to the athletes who defeat their foreign opponents, and the winners are stood on a podium in front of millions while their national anthem is played.
...
IOC rules forbid political propoganda or advertisements being placed on equipment. “If the players don’t agree with the interpretation they can ask the USOC (United States Olympic Committee) to petition the IOC.”
If they were to say that the stated rationale of the modern Games is to meet on the field of play, rather than the field of battle, then perhaps they'd have a point - but to reduce this to politics is rather like objecting to a ransom note because of the grammar. If this is the best they could do, then it's obvious that the ruling is itself a petty dig.
Well and duly noted. They should be told to note our mocking laughter in reply. Patriotism is not political, and it's kind of most of the point of having Olympics in the first place. Most of the countries participating in these Games have fought alongside our forces, or are free today only because of them. That is a fraternity that goes far deeper than politics. He that to-day sheds his blood with me shall be my brother...
Tim Thomas, btw, has already gone Vichy and has covered his own "Support the Troops" backplate. I hope he gets traded to Edmonton.
(stick-tap to Gabriel Malor at the Ace of Spades)
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Much better now
For those who asked or just had a prayer and a good thought, thanks. I'm over the congestion. There's a little backstory, which I hinted at but didn't elaborate, until now.
As for the other doctory things:
The tech who gave the echocardiogram was a pleasant guy, born in Spain. He attached me to what seemed like forty leads and had me lay on my side in the classic first-aid recover pose. (Worst. Swimsuit photo. EVER.) Somewhere behind me, he got the terminal up and running, and then reached across with his one arm to move the sonogram wand across my torso. So, yeah, real awkward. And he kept saying stuff like, "Beautiful! Wonderful!" in his classical accent. I tried to be fierce, peeps, but it was difficult. New spot - whooosh whooosh behind me, and then "Booteefool!" followed by a click and a beep. He was either happy about the cardio or got a top score on Minesweeper, I can't tell.
Next, the stress test. Since I didn't want to fool with my BP before the visit I had been taking exactly nothing for my sinus complaints, so I wasn't feeling my best. Luckily the actual jogging wasn't so bad. Hockey pays off. They took my BP every three minutes, and the machine went up a level (really, it said so right on the screen). The hardest part was not pulling too much with my arms and just using them to steady myself. I got up to level five and still hadn't hit the target heart rate yet.
"How many levels are there?" I asked.
"As many as it takes," said the doctor.
"So, Level 6.... the machine starts throwing things at me?"
"Knives," he replied. The laughter finally got me to the target.
Why was I taking a stress-echo test? Basically, a couple of days before Christmas, I was woken by a great deal of discomfort in my chest. I also felt dizzy and had tingling in my hands, much worse on the left. Freaking out about said conditions didn't help all that much, either.
Don't ask why, because I have no good answer, but I didn't call anyone, nor tell anyone. I rode it out. That tingling certainly wasn't my brain working. I suppose I had a mental line of demarcation, where I would have just woke up the Ladybug and gone to the hospital, and my symptoms never crossed. Had they done, though, I may not have been in a place to ask for help. It was, in all respects, incredibly dumb.
A couple of weeks later, a milder form of this happened again, and then again a few days later, and again, and by the last week of January it was almost a daily occurance. Mind you, I'm still playing my weekly hockey games at this point,* and the funny thing is that my symptoms NEVER occured during or after games. I'd feel like crap driving there but be fine once I started.
* (I'm intensely stupid, he explained.)
Finally I got fed up with it and checked myself in for fun tests. They took very good care of me. Better still, my wife declined to kill me once I told her the whole story.
The upshot of it is that all my EKGs and my stress-echocardiogram were fine. Cholesterol and components were excellent. The only thing to watch, oddly, was my B-12 level, which is (marginally) low. I wonder if that's a contributing factor? Maybe the illness had something to do with it.
In any case, I'm keeping a close eye on things. It looks like you're stuck with me for a while longer.
update: beat this, techie!
As for the other doctory things:
The tech who gave the echocardiogram was a pleasant guy, born in Spain. He attached me to what seemed like forty leads and had me lay on my side in the classic first-aid recover pose. (Worst. Swimsuit photo. EVER.) Somewhere behind me, he got the terminal up and running, and then reached across with his one arm to move the sonogram wand across my torso. So, yeah, real awkward. And he kept saying stuff like, "Beautiful! Wonderful!" in his classical accent. I tried to be fierce, peeps, but it was difficult. New spot - whooosh whooosh behind me, and then "Booteefool!" followed by a click and a beep. He was either happy about the cardio or got a top score on Minesweeper, I can't tell.
Next, the stress test. Since I didn't want to fool with my BP before the visit I had been taking exactly nothing for my sinus complaints, so I wasn't feeling my best. Luckily the actual jogging wasn't so bad. Hockey pays off. They took my BP every three minutes, and the machine went up a level (really, it said so right on the screen). The hardest part was not pulling too much with my arms and just using them to steady myself. I got up to level five and still hadn't hit the target heart rate yet.
"How many levels are there?" I asked.
"As many as it takes," said the doctor.
"So, Level 6.... the machine starts throwing things at me?"
"Knives," he replied. The laughter finally got me to the target.
Why was I taking a stress-echo test? Basically, a couple of days before Christmas, I was woken by a great deal of discomfort in my chest. I also felt dizzy and had tingling in my hands, much worse on the left. Freaking out about said conditions didn't help all that much, either.
Don't ask why, because I have no good answer, but I didn't call anyone, nor tell anyone. I rode it out. That tingling certainly wasn't my brain working. I suppose I had a mental line of demarcation, where I would have just woke up the Ladybug and gone to the hospital, and my symptoms never crossed. Had they done, though, I may not have been in a place to ask for help. It was, in all respects, incredibly dumb.
A couple of weeks later, a milder form of this happened again, and then again a few days later, and again, and by the last week of January it was almost a daily occurance. Mind you, I'm still playing my weekly hockey games at this point,* and the funny thing is that my symptoms NEVER occured during or after games. I'd feel like crap driving there but be fine once I started.
* (I'm intensely stupid, he explained.)
Finally I got fed up with it and checked myself in for fun tests. They took very good care of me. Better still, my wife declined to kill me once I told her the whole story.
The upshot of it is that all my EKGs and my stress-echocardiogram were fine. Cholesterol and components were excellent. The only thing to watch, oddly, was my B-12 level, which is (marginally) low. I wonder if that's a contributing factor? Maybe the illness had something to do with it.
In any case, I'm keeping a close eye on things. It looks like you're stuck with me for a while longer.
update: beat this, techie!
Monday, February 08, 2010
Cry-landers
Our very young ice hockey team has had everything go sideways on them. Not a surprise, as they are still not quite ready for contention - not even in this year's Eastern Conference, which features seven or eight mediocre teams, any two of which will make the playoffs by default this season.
In their honor, I've decided to put up a post about the worst of times. It's easy to pick out the best times when you win four straight championships and nothing else; when you have seven Hall of Famers over a concentrated period and little else. But when the suffering starts to pile up - it's just about 30 seasons since "OT - NYI, Nystrom (Tonelli, Henning) 7:11" - it's time to have a laugh about crying. This is not an original idea (and Leafs fans have been waiting longer than we have), but it's cathartic. If you like, you can hum the Simpsons' "Mediocre Presidents" song in your head as you read, for these are the adequate, forgettable, and occasionally regrettable Islanders...
Starting goalie: Tommy Soderstrom - Folks are more familiar with the longer tenure of Tommy Salo, a middling enough keeper who shrank from big moments and was reduced to tears in an arbitration hearing by his own general manager. That deserves special mention. Soderstrom, however, beats him out. He wasn't really good at anything. His 3.61 GAA is lowest in the annals of the franchise for any goalie with 50 career games, save Gerry Desjardins, who is excused because he played for the team in their first three seasons. Save percentage? .886, in the dead puck era. He played ten seconds in the 1996-97 season, and that was it for his career. And then there's this demoralizing fight. Perhaps the odd helmet/mask combo fooled the Isles into thinking they were getting Arturs Irbe, or something.
Backup: Eric Fichaud - Not really all his fault. He was drafted too high by the Leafs, and then dealt off in a trade that hurt everyone involved: the popular Benoit Hogue went from Long Island cult hero to Toronto pariah, the extra picks were squandered, and poor Fichaud was tossed onto the ice to face NHL teams behind one of the most porous teams of the day. His first two teams finished in the bottom five of the league and his final team finished 19th out of 26. The only consolation for him must have been that the Leafs finished below the Isles twice in those three seasons. Just a horrible trade.
Dishonorables:
Salo. Not Ron Hextall - everyone remembers "A River Runs Through Him" but there were mitigating factors: 1. if not for Hextall the Isles would never even have made the playoffs that year; 2. the Rangers were so stacked that year that beating them would have been even more astounding than beating the Pens the year before; and 3. Jamie McLennan got similarly smoked in his game two appearance. It wasn't Ron's fault.
Defenders:
Dick Tarnstrom - drafted in 1994, finally came to North America as a 27-year old rookie and human giveaway machine for the 2001-2002 Isles. He was a frustrating player to watch; offensively gifted but lost anywhere within fifty feet of his own goalkeeper. (Penguins fans are nodding right now. Sixteen goals and 52 points while going minus 37?!? Ugh.)
Thomas Pock - three points in fifty-nine games, minus 17, hasn't played an NHL minute since. Completely overmatched by the NHL. At least he was only a waiver claim.
Bruno Gervais - the current whipping boy for suffering Isles fans. He's a polite, well-spoken, decent young fellow who likes cooking, has a cute girlfriend, and gets undressed regularly by opposing forwards. Probably not as bad as advertised, but that's a function of having a poor team: you have guys playing too many minutes, against too-tough opposition. Bruno may be a sixth or seventh guy, and he's been on the TOP pair at times. Sadly, there can be only one outcome.
Janne Niinimaa - if you look at his numbers, they're actually not bad. Janne was never very comfortable on the Island but he didn't disgrace himself, either. On this I think some of my fellow fans were overreacting. Then again, you can go to any Isles blog and see that for yourself: if they win a few games everyone is mentally organizing parades and banner-raisings; lose a few and it's "trade everybody, those guys stink!" In other words, we probably owe Janne a fruit basket or something. I hope he's happier wherever he is now.
Dean Chynoweth - this was hardly Dean's fault: he was very frequently injured. The trouble was that he was drafted in the first round ahead of some talented players, such as Joe Sakic and John LeClair. (I'm leaving out others like Mathieu Schneider who actually later became Islanders... including the 114th overall pick, who is now their general manager.)
Scott Lachance - much like Chynoweth, he wasn't openly dreadful the way some of the others were, but it's all about opportunity cost. The Isles took him FOURTH overall in 1991, leaving on the table players like Peter Forsberg, Brian Rolston, Alexei Kovalev, Ray Whitney, and Markus Naslund. Heck, they could have taken Richard Matvichuk if they wanted a defender. Then again, it also comes down to player development; had they taken Matvichuk maybe he's on this list and Lachance has a long career as a respected blueliner for Minnesota/Dallas.
Dishonorables:
Most of the folks I could list here just weren't around very long, so instead, some follow-up trivia about 1991: the Isles took Ziggy Palffy in the second round of this draft, after all the above-listed players were off the board. Nice pick. And the all-time scoring leader for that draft class, surprisingly, is NOT Forsberg or even Eric Lindros. Injuries limited their playing time too much. With 408 goals and 980 points (and counting), it's Kovalev.
Forwards:
Kirk Muller - public enemy number one for a large number of Isles fans of my age. He'd won a Cup with the Canadiens - beating the '93 Isles in the conference finals along the way - and midway through the shortened '94-'95 year, the Isles traded for him and Matheiu Schneider. However, it cost them Pierre Turgeon and Vladimir Malakhov, depriving the Isles of their most talented forward and defender in one shot. And Muller flat-out did NOT want to play for the Isles, bitched about it publicly, and dogged it while on the ice. The Isles were forced to accept pennies on the dollar for him midway through the very next season. Oh, we'll be talking about the GM of THIS trade in a few minutes, thankyouverymuch. Sonofab...
Brett Lindros - Don Maloney bragged upon his selection in 1994 that he had "the better Lindros." It was not to be. He was even more concussion-prone than big brother Eric. Eventually he was forced to retire after just 51 games. He scored twice in that time. Nobody was ever angry at Brett they way they were at anyone else on this list, really; he may well have made good on his potential. (Of course, with Milbury on the horizon, he would have done so in another jersey.) This is just a very sad story.
Alexei Yashin - I remain convinced that the real problem with Yashin was not his talent, nor his production. He played well, if not as well as he had in Ottawa. He overcame a severe injury that affected the tendons in one of his hands, which could have ended his career. I don't buy the "aloof Russian" reputation crap, either. Nobody would have thought he was aloof if he was only paid $3 million per year. No, the real issue here was that the Isles paid a king's ransom for him (soon-to-be franchise defender Zdeno Chara, checking forward Bill Muckalt, AND the second-overall pick, which became Jason Spezza), paid him a kings' fortune, and then were stuck with the bill after the lockout and the new salary cap. Eventually they were forced to buy him out; now he plays back home in Russia and sleeps with Carol Alt, so who's laughing now?
Oleg Kvasha - no discussion of Yashin is complete without Kvasha. When it comes to enigmatic Russian talents, this was the poster child: a large, physical player with gifted hands who could never top 15 goals in a season. Eventually went back to play in Russia as well, though his tastes in supermodels are unknown. Talk about enigmas: either there's another dude named Oleg Kvasha out there, or he has hidden musical talents.
Mike Comrie - anytime a guy plays for five different teams before his 30th birthday, something's up, but when he's done two separate stints for two of them, then it's on a whole new level. The guy's obviously got great talent, but something makes him very easy to part with despite it all. Incidentally, one of the prospects he was once traded for, Rob Schremp, is currently an Islanders rookie, and off to a promising start.
Chris Simon - long one of the league's better enforcers, but had good enough hands to score 29 goals one season. Also good enough hands to clobber Ryan Hollweg in the face with his stick. In fairness to Simon, it was later revealed that he had been concussed by an illegal hit from behind that received no penalty at all. He claimed later that he didn't really recall what he'd done to Hollweg because of it; I only note that he certainly recalled which player was responsible for it. He was later suspended again for stomping on a guy with his skate. Now out of hockey.
Joe Sacco - remember those players I didn't mention above, who eventually became Islanders after being drafted after Dean Chynoweth in 1987? Joe was one of them, but he gets mentioned anyway, because while on the Island, he put up one of the most confounding statlines in league history: in 73 games in 1998-99, he scored three lonely goals with zero assists - zero as in nil, zip, none, bubkes. Nobody deflected one of his shots in, or scored on one of his rebounds, or even had a fluke shot off his rump and into the net, much less converted an actual pass. It's astonishing. He wasn't a brawler, either. One would think that even in just ten minutes played per game, you could get an assist just by accident, at least once. I mean, even Mick Vukota never went an entire year without an assist, and he took 250 penalty minutes a year.
Scott Scissons - it seems odd to hate on a guy who played all of two NHL games, and scored no points. Wonder no more. He was taken sixth overall in 1990's entry draft. Eighty-seven different players taken in that draft had points in the NHL, including eight goaltenders. If that's not enough, one of those goalies is still playing in the area: you may have heard of him, fellow by the name of Brodeur, the NHL's all-time wins and shutouts leader in the regular season. Scott *($$!?%^* Scissons, people!
Dishonorables: I'll take nominations from the audience here. I just can't go on. Scott Scissons....
GM: Mike Milbury - the easy choice. He was the engineer of so many disastrous moments during his inexplicably long stay in the organization. Tops was trading Roberto Luongo and Olli Jokinen to Florida for Oleg Kvasha and Mark Parrish: that's one of the five best goalies in the league and a perennial 30-goal scorer (if a touch of a headcase) for one of the other guys on this list and hard-working yet clearly secondary scorer. Then there's Spezza/Chara for Yashin, the constant coaching changes, exiling young talent before it could develop, whiffing on top draft choices... to say nothing of the already-mentioned arbitration hearing where he savaged his own starting goalkeeper. It was a comedy of terrors with Mad Mike at the helm. O to put it another way - searching his name returns his wikipage as the top result, and a blog called "Mike Milbury Sucks" as the second. The third is his current job as an analyst on NBC and CBC. The fourth is "Mike Milbury's Bad Deals."
Dishonorable: Don Maloney - the former Ranger played a bit for the Isles before moving up to the front office in 1992. He came into a team with a lot of offensive talent (four 30-goal scorers) and a reasonable defense (Norton, Kurvers, Krupp, Malakhov, Pilon, Kasparaitis), and they shocked the two-time champion Penguins in the conference semifinals in 1993. He didn't feel like they could get any farther without better goalkeeping, though. He brought in Hextall. That, as we have seen, didn't work out so hot, so he panicked and sent Hextall right back to Philadelphia... for Soderstrom. Later that very season, he bundled Pierre Turgeon and Vladimir Malakhov to Montreal in the infamous Kirk Muller deal. That was pretty much all she wrote.
Muller was eventually dealt for Ken Freakin' Belanger, straight up. Schnieder is STILL playing, but was long dealt away: the Isles got Kenny Jonsson for him, which was nice, and the first-round pick that was part of that deal became... well whodathunk it? Roberto Luongo, who was part of Mad Mike's finest moment as GM of the Florida Panthers. Oh, wait... he was our GM, wasn't he?
:::facepalm:::
So just three degrees of separation for the two worst trades in the history of the franchise (Turgeon/Malakhov for Muller/Schneider and Luongo/Jokinen for Kvasha/Parrish). Shocka. We'd better not be out of beer...
Trivia - Maloney and I were born on the same date, but not the same year. We also share a birthday with Jesse James. I am the only one of us not to kill a person or a franchise.
In their honor, I've decided to put up a post about the worst of times. It's easy to pick out the best times when you win four straight championships and nothing else; when you have seven Hall of Famers over a concentrated period and little else. But when the suffering starts to pile up - it's just about 30 seasons since "OT - NYI, Nystrom (Tonelli, Henning) 7:11" - it's time to have a laugh about crying. This is not an original idea (and Leafs fans have been waiting longer than we have), but it's cathartic. If you like, you can hum the Simpsons' "Mediocre Presidents" song in your head as you read, for these are the adequate, forgettable, and occasionally regrettable Islanders...
Starting goalie: Tommy Soderstrom - Folks are more familiar with the longer tenure of Tommy Salo, a middling enough keeper who shrank from big moments and was reduced to tears in an arbitration hearing by his own general manager. That deserves special mention. Soderstrom, however, beats him out. He wasn't really good at anything. His 3.61 GAA is lowest in the annals of the franchise for any goalie with 50 career games, save Gerry Desjardins, who is excused because he played for the team in their first three seasons. Save percentage? .886, in the dead puck era. He played ten seconds in the 1996-97 season, and that was it for his career. And then there's this demoralizing fight. Perhaps the odd helmet/mask combo fooled the Isles into thinking they were getting Arturs Irbe, or something.
Backup: Eric Fichaud - Not really all his fault. He was drafted too high by the Leafs, and then dealt off in a trade that hurt everyone involved: the popular Benoit Hogue went from Long Island cult hero to Toronto pariah, the extra picks were squandered, and poor Fichaud was tossed onto the ice to face NHL teams behind one of the most porous teams of the day. His first two teams finished in the bottom five of the league and his final team finished 19th out of 26. The only consolation for him must have been that the Leafs finished below the Isles twice in those three seasons. Just a horrible trade.
Dishonorables:
Salo. Not Ron Hextall - everyone remembers "A River Runs Through Him" but there were mitigating factors: 1. if not for Hextall the Isles would never even have made the playoffs that year; 2. the Rangers were so stacked that year that beating them would have been even more astounding than beating the Pens the year before; and 3. Jamie McLennan got similarly smoked in his game two appearance. It wasn't Ron's fault.
Defenders:
Dick Tarnstrom - drafted in 1994, finally came to North America as a 27-year old rookie and human giveaway machine for the 2001-2002 Isles. He was a frustrating player to watch; offensively gifted but lost anywhere within fifty feet of his own goalkeeper. (Penguins fans are nodding right now. Sixteen goals and 52 points while going minus 37?!? Ugh.)
Thomas Pock - three points in fifty-nine games, minus 17, hasn't played an NHL minute since. Completely overmatched by the NHL. At least he was only a waiver claim.
Bruno Gervais - the current whipping boy for suffering Isles fans. He's a polite, well-spoken, decent young fellow who likes cooking, has a cute girlfriend, and gets undressed regularly by opposing forwards. Probably not as bad as advertised, but that's a function of having a poor team: you have guys playing too many minutes, against too-tough opposition. Bruno may be a sixth or seventh guy, and he's been on the TOP pair at times. Sadly, there can be only one outcome.
Janne Niinimaa - if you look at his numbers, they're actually not bad. Janne was never very comfortable on the Island but he didn't disgrace himself, either. On this I think some of my fellow fans were overreacting. Then again, you can go to any Isles blog and see that for yourself: if they win a few games everyone is mentally organizing parades and banner-raisings; lose a few and it's "trade everybody, those guys stink!" In other words, we probably owe Janne a fruit basket or something. I hope he's happier wherever he is now.
Dean Chynoweth - this was hardly Dean's fault: he was very frequently injured. The trouble was that he was drafted in the first round ahead of some talented players, such as Joe Sakic and John LeClair. (I'm leaving out others like Mathieu Schneider who actually later became Islanders... including the 114th overall pick, who is now their general manager.)
Scott Lachance - much like Chynoweth, he wasn't openly dreadful the way some of the others were, but it's all about opportunity cost. The Isles took him FOURTH overall in 1991, leaving on the table players like Peter Forsberg, Brian Rolston, Alexei Kovalev, Ray Whitney, and Markus Naslund. Heck, they could have taken Richard Matvichuk if they wanted a defender. Then again, it also comes down to player development; had they taken Matvichuk maybe he's on this list and Lachance has a long career as a respected blueliner for Minnesota/Dallas.
Dishonorables:
Most of the folks I could list here just weren't around very long, so instead, some follow-up trivia about 1991: the Isles took Ziggy Palffy in the second round of this draft, after all the above-listed players were off the board. Nice pick. And the all-time scoring leader for that draft class, surprisingly, is NOT Forsberg or even Eric Lindros. Injuries limited their playing time too much. With 408 goals and 980 points (and counting), it's Kovalev.
Forwards:
Kirk Muller - public enemy number one for a large number of Isles fans of my age. He'd won a Cup with the Canadiens - beating the '93 Isles in the conference finals along the way - and midway through the shortened '94-'95 year, the Isles traded for him and Matheiu Schneider. However, it cost them Pierre Turgeon and Vladimir Malakhov, depriving the Isles of their most talented forward and defender in one shot. And Muller flat-out did NOT want to play for the Isles, bitched about it publicly, and dogged it while on the ice. The Isles were forced to accept pennies on the dollar for him midway through the very next season. Oh, we'll be talking about the GM of THIS trade in a few minutes, thankyouverymuch. Sonofab...
Brett Lindros - Don Maloney bragged upon his selection in 1994 that he had "the better Lindros." It was not to be. He was even more concussion-prone than big brother Eric. Eventually he was forced to retire after just 51 games. He scored twice in that time. Nobody was ever angry at Brett they way they were at anyone else on this list, really; he may well have made good on his potential. (Of course, with Milbury on the horizon, he would have done so in another jersey.) This is just a very sad story.
Alexei Yashin - I remain convinced that the real problem with Yashin was not his talent, nor his production. He played well, if not as well as he had in Ottawa. He overcame a severe injury that affected the tendons in one of his hands, which could have ended his career. I don't buy the "aloof Russian" reputation crap, either. Nobody would have thought he was aloof if he was only paid $3 million per year. No, the real issue here was that the Isles paid a king's ransom for him (soon-to-be franchise defender Zdeno Chara, checking forward Bill Muckalt, AND the second-overall pick, which became Jason Spezza), paid him a kings' fortune, and then were stuck with the bill after the lockout and the new salary cap. Eventually they were forced to buy him out; now he plays back home in Russia and sleeps with Carol Alt, so who's laughing now?
Oleg Kvasha - no discussion of Yashin is complete without Kvasha. When it comes to enigmatic Russian talents, this was the poster child: a large, physical player with gifted hands who could never top 15 goals in a season. Eventually went back to play in Russia as well, though his tastes in supermodels are unknown. Talk about enigmas: either there's another dude named Oleg Kvasha out there, or he has hidden musical talents.
Mike Comrie - anytime a guy plays for five different teams before his 30th birthday, something's up, but when he's done two separate stints for two of them, then it's on a whole new level. The guy's obviously got great talent, but something makes him very easy to part with despite it all. Incidentally, one of the prospects he was once traded for, Rob Schremp, is currently an Islanders rookie, and off to a promising start.
Chris Simon - long one of the league's better enforcers, but had good enough hands to score 29 goals one season. Also good enough hands to clobber Ryan Hollweg in the face with his stick. In fairness to Simon, it was later revealed that he had been concussed by an illegal hit from behind that received no penalty at all. He claimed later that he didn't really recall what he'd done to Hollweg because of it; I only note that he certainly recalled which player was responsible for it. He was later suspended again for stomping on a guy with his skate. Now out of hockey.
Joe Sacco - remember those players I didn't mention above, who eventually became Islanders after being drafted after Dean Chynoweth in 1987? Joe was one of them, but he gets mentioned anyway, because while on the Island, he put up one of the most confounding statlines in league history: in 73 games in 1998-99, he scored three lonely goals with zero assists - zero as in nil, zip, none, bubkes. Nobody deflected one of his shots in, or scored on one of his rebounds, or even had a fluke shot off his rump and into the net, much less converted an actual pass. It's astonishing. He wasn't a brawler, either. One would think that even in just ten minutes played per game, you could get an assist just by accident, at least once. I mean, even Mick Vukota never went an entire year without an assist, and he took 250 penalty minutes a year.
Scott Scissons - it seems odd to hate on a guy who played all of two NHL games, and scored no points. Wonder no more. He was taken sixth overall in 1990's entry draft. Eighty-seven different players taken in that draft had points in the NHL, including eight goaltenders. If that's not enough, one of those goalies is still playing in the area: you may have heard of him, fellow by the name of Brodeur, the NHL's all-time wins and shutouts leader in the regular season. Scott *($$!?%^* Scissons, people!
Dishonorables: I'll take nominations from the audience here. I just can't go on. Scott Scissons....
GM: Mike Milbury - the easy choice. He was the engineer of so many disastrous moments during his inexplicably long stay in the organization. Tops was trading Roberto Luongo and Olli Jokinen to Florida for Oleg Kvasha and Mark Parrish: that's one of the five best goalies in the league and a perennial 30-goal scorer (if a touch of a headcase) for one of the other guys on this list and hard-working yet clearly secondary scorer. Then there's Spezza/Chara for Yashin, the constant coaching changes, exiling young talent before it could develop, whiffing on top draft choices... to say nothing of the already-mentioned arbitration hearing where he savaged his own starting goalkeeper. It was a comedy of terrors with Mad Mike at the helm. O to put it another way - searching his name returns his wikipage as the top result, and a blog called "Mike Milbury Sucks" as the second. The third is his current job as an analyst on NBC and CBC. The fourth is "Mike Milbury's Bad Deals."
Dishonorable: Don Maloney - the former Ranger played a bit for the Isles before moving up to the front office in 1992. He came into a team with a lot of offensive talent (four 30-goal scorers) and a reasonable defense (Norton, Kurvers, Krupp, Malakhov, Pilon, Kasparaitis), and they shocked the two-time champion Penguins in the conference semifinals in 1993. He didn't feel like they could get any farther without better goalkeeping, though. He brought in Hextall. That, as we have seen, didn't work out so hot, so he panicked and sent Hextall right back to Philadelphia... for Soderstrom. Later that very season, he bundled Pierre Turgeon and Vladimir Malakhov to Montreal in the infamous Kirk Muller deal. That was pretty much all she wrote.
Muller was eventually dealt for Ken Freakin' Belanger, straight up. Schnieder is STILL playing, but was long dealt away: the Isles got Kenny Jonsson for him, which was nice, and the first-round pick that was part of that deal became... well whodathunk it? Roberto Luongo, who was part of Mad Mike's finest moment as GM of the Florida Panthers. Oh, wait... he was our GM, wasn't he?
:::facepalm:::
So just three degrees of separation for the two worst trades in the history of the franchise (Turgeon/Malakhov for Muller/Schneider and Luongo/Jokinen for Kvasha/Parrish). Shocka. We'd better not be out of beer...
Trivia - Maloney and I were born on the same date, but not the same year. We also share a birthday with Jesse James. I am the only one of us not to kill a person or a franchise.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Now that's puttin' on the foil
First, I'd like to welcome Ken Socrates' hockey blog, Hockey Gone Wild, to the sidebar. Do go read!
(update - oh, yeah... helps to include the link. Fixed now.)
Second, I'd like to show off a little. I've been harping on the pity points in the NHL... it reduces competitiveness at the end of games, doesn't eliminate the "boring" ties (games still are even after 65 minutes), artificially makes teams look better than they are, and makes it harder to catch the teams ahead of you in the standings.
Tiresome? Well, you'll notice I haven't run the Real Standings for a while. But check this out from The Hockey News' Edward Fraser. Essentially, it's a pithier and better-written version of all of my harping over the past few months.
I'd like to take credit, but I've just discovered Mr. Fraser's work, and way back in December 2007, it turns out that he invented the Real Standings, with a twist - he eliminated ties entirely and went to a 2-0 system. In recognition, the next Real Standings here will be named the Fraser Standings. (I'm not changing the tag, though.) And yes, I will actually try to run them sometime over the weekend. It takes a little while to catch up if I haven't updated it regularly.
(update - oh, yeah... helps to include the link. Fixed now.)
Second, I'd like to show off a little. I've been harping on the pity points in the NHL... it reduces competitiveness at the end of games, doesn't eliminate the "boring" ties (games still are even after 65 minutes), artificially makes teams look better than they are, and makes it harder to catch the teams ahead of you in the standings.
Tiresome? Well, you'll notice I haven't run the Real Standings for a while. But check this out from The Hockey News' Edward Fraser. Essentially, it's a pithier and better-written version of all of my harping over the past few months.
I'd like to take credit, but I've just discovered Mr. Fraser's work, and way back in December 2007, it turns out that he invented the Real Standings, with a twist - he eliminated ties entirely and went to a 2-0 system. In recognition, the next Real Standings here will be named the Fraser Standings. (I'm not changing the tag, though.) And yes, I will actually try to run them sometime over the weekend. It takes a little while to catch up if I haven't updated it regularly.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Musical Monday, hockey edition, again
There's something about Dylan and the Lord's Own Hockey that inspires me.
Slapshots ring out in the October night
Enter the head coach from the player’s bench
Sees the goaltender sittin’ in a pool of red light
Calls out, “Get the backup in there now!”
Here comes the story of the Hurricanes
The ones the media have come to blame
For all those games they never won
Sittin’ in the box when they coulda been
The champions of the world…
Meanwhile, far away in another part of town
Erik Cole and a couple of friends are drivin’ around
A top contender for the Eastern Conference crown
Then they dropped the puck and the losses started comin’ down
Refs whistlin’ them for all those bogus calls
Just like the time before and the time before that
In Carolina that’s just the way things go
You might as well not even show up on the scoresheet
‘Less you wanna draw the heat
Jim Rutherford built this team from scratch
Got him some defensmen and a couple of scorers
Said his goalie was one of the best that there was
But the team kept gettin’ worse and he had to face the reporters
He said “All my guys are hurt and they’re on the IR
Ain’t gonna fire my coach or bench my star
We’ve just gotta have a little time
Get our team into a little climb
Just last year we won two playoff rounds!”
Two months later and the Hurricanes are still dead-last
Bloggers sayin’, “Hey, isn’t this the new NHL?
Everyone’s above .500 now, how can this pass?
We’re looking like the ‘75 Capitals!”
This is the story of the Hurricanes
Out of the playoff race by Christmastime
They’ve gotta hope the ping-pongs run
So they can at least draft #1
But they used to be champions of the world!
This one, much older, started life as a comment Chris Botta's Islanders Point Blank blog, in January 2009.
Isles are in the basement, tankin’ on the season
I’m on Point Blank, thinkin’ ’bout the reasons
Bad drafts, dumb trades, front-office charades
Fifty games played and an injury parade
Look out, fans! Nothing getting done
Waiting on a new trend while riding out the old one
Snowie in a three-piece suit on the telephone
Wants a first-round pick, but they don’t wanna give him one
New coach, new kids, old vets, prospects,
Twelve third-liners and eleven second-round picks
Looking for a rebuild, tired of the quick-fix
Playin in an old barn in the middle of the sticks
Trying to save face, want to build a new space
Town drags its feet so they may be movin’ someplace
Look out, fans! It’s feeling old
Fifteen years with the same tale told
Feeling down, can’t get a shovel in the ground
And the town of Hempstead keeps jerkin’ us around
It's not so odd. Dylan is from Minnesota dere, ya know?
Slapshots ring out in the October night
Enter the head coach from the player’s bench
Sees the goaltender sittin’ in a pool of red light
Calls out, “Get the backup in there now!”
Here comes the story of the Hurricanes
The ones the media have come to blame
For all those games they never won
Sittin’ in the box when they coulda been
The champions of the world…
Meanwhile, far away in another part of town
Erik Cole and a couple of friends are drivin’ around
A top contender for the Eastern Conference crown
Then they dropped the puck and the losses started comin’ down
Refs whistlin’ them for all those bogus calls
Just like the time before and the time before that
In Carolina that’s just the way things go
You might as well not even show up on the scoresheet
‘Less you wanna draw the heat
Jim Rutherford built this team from scratch
Got him some defensmen and a couple of scorers
Said his goalie was one of the best that there was
But the team kept gettin’ worse and he had to face the reporters
He said “All my guys are hurt and they’re on the IR
Ain’t gonna fire my coach or bench my star
We’ve just gotta have a little time
Get our team into a little climb
Just last year we won two playoff rounds!”
Two months later and the Hurricanes are still dead-last
Bloggers sayin’, “Hey, isn’t this the new NHL?
Everyone’s above .500 now, how can this pass?
We’re looking like the ‘75 Capitals!”
This is the story of the Hurricanes
Out of the playoff race by Christmastime
They’ve gotta hope the ping-pongs run
So they can at least draft #1
But they used to be champions of the world!
This one, much older, started life as a comment Chris Botta's Islanders Point Blank blog, in January 2009.
Isles are in the basement, tankin’ on the season
I’m on Point Blank, thinkin’ ’bout the reasons
Bad drafts, dumb trades, front-office charades
Fifty games played and an injury parade
Look out, fans! Nothing getting done
Waiting on a new trend while riding out the old one
Snowie in a three-piece suit on the telephone
Wants a first-round pick, but they don’t wanna give him one
New coach, new kids, old vets, prospects,
Twelve third-liners and eleven second-round picks
Looking for a rebuild, tired of the quick-fix
Playin in an old barn in the middle of the sticks
Trying to save face, want to build a new space
Town drags its feet so they may be movin’ someplace
Look out, fans! It’s feeling old
Fifteen years with the same tale told
Feeling down, can’t get a shovel in the ground
And the town of Hempstead keeps jerkin’ us around
It's not so odd. Dylan is from Minnesota dere, ya know?
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Fun with goalie numbers
In a long-distant post, I remember discussing goalie stats, and how the standards changed historically from the old, pre-expansion NHL, through the expansion and scoring boom of the 70's and 80's, and into the "dead-puck" era and beyond. I can't find that post at all, sadly - it's not tagged. But I do remember that in the comments, someone suggested that links to the pertinent numbers and goalies would have helped.
Well, this is that... kind of. (I'm full of met expectations in this post, aren't I?)
The NHL's official stat pages for the keepers is a great resource for tinkering with numbers and comparing/contrasting.* The guys I found and linked below, I've picked for particular reasons. For example, you'll have heard that Martin Brodeur has won more regular-season games than any other goalie to play in the NH, and that he tied Terry Sawchuck's all-time-best mark for shutouts. You may also know that after last night's game against Montreal, he is tied with the former Canadien, Patrick Roy, for most regular-season appearances by a goalie. (If you click that first link above, you'll see it for yourself - at least if you click before the Devils play Ottawa on Friday, when Brodeur will pass Roy.)
*With one exception - they don't sort the career numbers based on any minimum number of games played, so the "all-time leaders" for the rate stats are pages of guys who played one game in net for their careers. It can be a hassle to page through those and try to find the actual career guys.
Brodeur got his 103 clean sheets by allowing 2.21 goals per 60 minutes (the goals-against average is the goalie equivalent to a pitcher's ERA). Sawchuck permitted 2.51. Does that make Brodeur clearly better? Is that more a function of the Devils' excellent system? It's hard to say. No complete records exist for the numbers of shots Sawchuck faced; we can't be sure what percentage of those he saved. And from there, it's another step to compare his average to the league average. Carl Yaztremski hit .301 in 1968, which sounds terrible to us, but he led the AL that year; it's possible that's more impressive than anyone who hit .335 in Coors Field during the steroid era. To take Roy as an example: he led the league in GAA in 1991-92. He saved 91.4% of shots against him, and surrendered 2.36 goals per full game; the league averaged 3.48 per team, per game. Bob Sauve led the league twelve seasons earlier with an identical GAA (save percentage not recorded), with teams averaging 3.52 goals per game. But nearly overnight, the game changed - in 1999-2000, Roy's 2.28 GAA (and identical .914 sv%) was only good for ninth, in a league where teams only scored 2.75 goals per game. Was Roy actually better in 2000, or in 1992?
But the data get better every day, as do the tools used to understand them. Tom Awad at Puck Prospectus has developed something called Goals Versus Threshold, for example. In brief, it takes offense, defense, and goaltending, separates and quantifies each, and translates it into how many goals that contribution is worth to a team. It's not easy to calculate, but it's a substantial move forward. Folks also like the Corsi rating, named for its inventor, former goalie coach Jim Corsi, though like any stat, it's not perfect.**
** I have a book on goalkeeping which has contributions from Corsi, and it's excellent, much like the article on Corsi you can reach by clicking his name above.
As far as the basics? Start with the unassuming, yet wonderfully-named, Doug Soetart. Soetart finished his career with a winning record... but his GAA was 3.97. It's the largest GAA I could find for any keeper who won at least 100 games, and more than he lost. Even during the superball scoring of his time, it was rare for a guy with much worse numbers to keep playing.
You'll notice that in the few years Soetart's sv% was recorded, it was fairly unremarkable. Ken Wregget, the longtime Flyer and Penguin (among others), was one of the first keepers who played an entire career with shots and saves officially recorded, and you'll see that he never reached .900 until 1995, and never got under 3 goals per game until three seasons after. Not coincidentally, these were the beginning of the lower-scoring environments following the loss of half the '94-'95 season. Wregget only recorded 9 shutouts for his career, and six of those were beyond this cutoff.
There's a lot of examples like this that suggest that a goalie is often dependent on the team in front of him to put up the sorts of statistics that catch attention; it's also part of why a number of people don't automatically call Brodeur the best goalie in history, just because he tops so many all-time lists. Had the Islanders drafted him in 1990 instead of the Devils, for example, he wouldn't have played behind Scott Stevens, Scott Neidermeyer, Ken Daneyko, and Colin White, but behind Kenny Jonsson, Scott LaChance, Rich Pilon, and Radek Martinek. Jonsson was a fine defender, but I don't think there's much of a comparison. (Didn't pick those names at random, either - they're the four defenders who played the most games for those franchises since 1993, when Brodeur came up for good. And fifth/sixth are Brian Rafalski and Tommy Albelin vs. Eric Cairns and Roman Hamrlik. Oy.)
The most stark example I could find was old-time Charlie Gardiner, a Scotsman (aye!) who finished his career way back in 1934 with a 2.02 GAA... and a career losing record. He was one of the last goalies to be named a captain (the NHL forbade it for many years, but recently permitted Vancouver's Roberto Luongo the honor); and won the Stanley Cup his last year while suffering from an illness that eventually killed him; he was named to the Hall of Fame in 1945. That 2.02 is eye-popping, but the league's teams only scored 2.41 times per game in his last season. He began his career before forward passing was permitted. He also played for the so-called "goalless wonders," the Chicago Black Hawks.***
*** The 1906 Chicago White Sox were known as the Hitless Wonders... the '59 AL pennant winners weren't much better. Maybe it's the city?
At least Gardiner won a title. More modern (and less successful) examples include:
Doug Favell - 123-153-69, 3.17 GAA. Started with the expansion Flyers, moved to the dreadful mid-70's Maple Leafs, and ended with the expansion Colorado Rockies. Played from '67-'79.
Gary Smith - 173-261-74, 3.39 GAA. A victim of one of the worst squads in NHL history, the late, lamented Oakland/California Seals. Went 19-34-12 in '69-'70 despite a respectable 3.11 GAA; moved to Vancouver and went 32-24-9 with a 3.09 GAA and six shutouts in '74-'75. Played from 1965-1980.
Tommy Salo - 210-225-73, 2.55 GAA. Favored whipping boy of his own GM, "Mad" Mike Milbury (may his name be razed). Won a gold medal in the 1994 Olympics, then moved to the Islanders, and eventually the Oilers; good enough to shut out 37 NHL opponents from 1994-2004.
Jamie Storr - 85-86-23, 2.54 GAA. Seventh-overall pick in the 1993 entry draft, and tossed into action too soon behind some mediocre LA Kings squads. Went 0-8 in his last NHL season to sneak under .500, and now plays in Germany. Played exactly the same years as Salo.
Ron Tugnutt - 186-239-62, 3.05 GAA. Another fine example of how the game changes: in 1990-91, Tugger had a 4.05 GAA in 56 games for Quebec; in 1998-99, in the midst of the dead puck era, he led the NHL with a 1.79 GAA in 43 games for Ottawa. During that 1991 season, he faced 73 shots in a single game against Boston, stopping 70, for one of the greatest ties in league history. Played from 1987-2004.
On the other end, there's Michel Larocque, who backed up Ken Dryden on the Montreal dynasty teams of the 70's. He finished 160-89-45 with a 3.33 GAA from 1973-1984; but more accurately, he had two careers: Montreal ('73-'81: 144-48-31, 2.83 GAA,17 SO) and everywhere else ('81-'84: 16-41-14, 5.56 GAA, 0 SO). Nobody could blame Larocque for playing second fiddle to Hall-of-Famer Dryden, but he failed to beat out Denis Herron in 1980; was supplanted by Richard Sevigny in 1981, and was moved to Toronto. There he was outdone by backup Vincent Tremblay (out of the NHL by age 24!) and then lost his job to the underrated Mike Palmateer. His last year was as the third goalie for St Louis, who had Mike Liut and Rick Heinz (who only played 49 games in his career, but now runs a goalie school). At every stop Larocque was usually a half-goal or more worse per game than his fellow keepers. The W-L-T record is wildly misleading when compared to his other stats and his teammates.
Two other notables are John Vanbiesbrouck, the all-time winningest US goalie, and Oilers/Sabres/Blues stalwart Grant Fuhr. Both Hall-of-Famers from the 1981 draft class, with numbers which may pale next to modern keepers, but which were considerable when measured against their peers. VBK played for mostly forgettable teams and won 30+ games only once, leading the league with 31 in 1985-86; Fuhr was the keeper for the Oilers dynasties in the mid-late 80's, and thus won more often; but his career GAA and sv% were worse and he had fewer shutouts (3.38, .887, and 25 SO against 2.98, .889, and 40 SO for Beezer). He also had two fewer cool nicknames, though that wasn't his fault - "Grant Fuhr" is simple and memorable, and no reporter wants to spell "Vanbiesbrouck" five times, especially in the days when "cut and paste" involved an X-acto knife and Elmer's glue.
Well, this is that... kind of. (I'm full of met expectations in this post, aren't I?)
The NHL's official stat pages for the keepers is a great resource for tinkering with numbers and comparing/contrasting.* The guys I found and linked below, I've picked for particular reasons. For example, you'll have heard that Martin Brodeur has won more regular-season games than any other goalie to play in the NH, and that he tied Terry Sawchuck's all-time-best mark for shutouts. You may also know that after last night's game against Montreal, he is tied with the former Canadien, Patrick Roy, for most regular-season appearances by a goalie. (If you click that first link above, you'll see it for yourself - at least if you click before the Devils play Ottawa on Friday, when Brodeur will pass Roy.)
*With one exception - they don't sort the career numbers based on any minimum number of games played, so the "all-time leaders" for the rate stats are pages of guys who played one game in net for their careers. It can be a hassle to page through those and try to find the actual career guys.
Brodeur got his 103 clean sheets by allowing 2.21 goals per 60 minutes (the goals-against average is the goalie equivalent to a pitcher's ERA). Sawchuck permitted 2.51. Does that make Brodeur clearly better? Is that more a function of the Devils' excellent system? It's hard to say. No complete records exist for the numbers of shots Sawchuck faced; we can't be sure what percentage of those he saved. And from there, it's another step to compare his average to the league average. Carl Yaztremski hit .301 in 1968, which sounds terrible to us, but he led the AL that year; it's possible that's more impressive than anyone who hit .335 in Coors Field during the steroid era. To take Roy as an example: he led the league in GAA in 1991-92. He saved 91.4% of shots against him, and surrendered 2.36 goals per full game; the league averaged 3.48 per team, per game. Bob Sauve led the league twelve seasons earlier with an identical GAA (save percentage not recorded), with teams averaging 3.52 goals per game. But nearly overnight, the game changed - in 1999-2000, Roy's 2.28 GAA (and identical .914 sv%) was only good for ninth, in a league where teams only scored 2.75 goals per game. Was Roy actually better in 2000, or in 1992?
But the data get better every day, as do the tools used to understand them. Tom Awad at Puck Prospectus has developed something called Goals Versus Threshold, for example. In brief, it takes offense, defense, and goaltending, separates and quantifies each, and translates it into how many goals that contribution is worth to a team. It's not easy to calculate, but it's a substantial move forward. Folks also like the Corsi rating, named for its inventor, former goalie coach Jim Corsi, though like any stat, it's not perfect.**
** I have a book on goalkeeping which has contributions from Corsi, and it's excellent, much like the article on Corsi you can reach by clicking his name above.
As far as the basics? Start with the unassuming, yet wonderfully-named, Doug Soetart. Soetart finished his career with a winning record... but his GAA was 3.97. It's the largest GAA I could find for any keeper who won at least 100 games, and more than he lost. Even during the superball scoring of his time, it was rare for a guy with much worse numbers to keep playing.
You'll notice that in the few years Soetart's sv% was recorded, it was fairly unremarkable. Ken Wregget, the longtime Flyer and Penguin (among others), was one of the first keepers who played an entire career with shots and saves officially recorded, and you'll see that he never reached .900 until 1995, and never got under 3 goals per game until three seasons after. Not coincidentally, these were the beginning of the lower-scoring environments following the loss of half the '94-'95 season. Wregget only recorded 9 shutouts for his career, and six of those were beyond this cutoff.
There's a lot of examples like this that suggest that a goalie is often dependent on the team in front of him to put up the sorts of statistics that catch attention; it's also part of why a number of people don't automatically call Brodeur the best goalie in history, just because he tops so many all-time lists. Had the Islanders drafted him in 1990 instead of the Devils, for example, he wouldn't have played behind Scott Stevens, Scott Neidermeyer, Ken Daneyko, and Colin White, but behind Kenny Jonsson, Scott LaChance, Rich Pilon, and Radek Martinek. Jonsson was a fine defender, but I don't think there's much of a comparison. (Didn't pick those names at random, either - they're the four defenders who played the most games for those franchises since 1993, when Brodeur came up for good. And fifth/sixth are Brian Rafalski and Tommy Albelin vs. Eric Cairns and Roman Hamrlik. Oy.)
The most stark example I could find was old-time Charlie Gardiner, a Scotsman (aye!) who finished his career way back in 1934 with a 2.02 GAA... and a career losing record. He was one of the last goalies to be named a captain (the NHL forbade it for many years, but recently permitted Vancouver's Roberto Luongo the honor); and won the Stanley Cup his last year while suffering from an illness that eventually killed him; he was named to the Hall of Fame in 1945. That 2.02 is eye-popping, but the league's teams only scored 2.41 times per game in his last season. He began his career before forward passing was permitted. He also played for the so-called "goalless wonders," the Chicago Black Hawks.***
*** The 1906 Chicago White Sox were known as the Hitless Wonders... the '59 AL pennant winners weren't much better. Maybe it's the city?
At least Gardiner won a title. More modern (and less successful) examples include:
Doug Favell - 123-153-69, 3.17 GAA. Started with the expansion Flyers, moved to the dreadful mid-70's Maple Leafs, and ended with the expansion Colorado Rockies. Played from '67-'79.
Gary Smith - 173-261-74, 3.39 GAA. A victim of one of the worst squads in NHL history, the late, lamented Oakland/California Seals. Went 19-34-12 in '69-'70 despite a respectable 3.11 GAA; moved to Vancouver and went 32-24-9 with a 3.09 GAA and six shutouts in '74-'75. Played from 1965-1980.
Tommy Salo - 210-225-73, 2.55 GAA. Favored whipping boy of his own GM, "Mad" Mike Milbury (may his name be razed). Won a gold medal in the 1994 Olympics, then moved to the Islanders, and eventually the Oilers; good enough to shut out 37 NHL opponents from 1994-2004.
Jamie Storr - 85-86-23, 2.54 GAA. Seventh-overall pick in the 1993 entry draft, and tossed into action too soon behind some mediocre LA Kings squads. Went 0-8 in his last NHL season to sneak under .500, and now plays in Germany. Played exactly the same years as Salo.
Ron Tugnutt - 186-239-62, 3.05 GAA. Another fine example of how the game changes: in 1990-91, Tugger had a 4.05 GAA in 56 games for Quebec; in 1998-99, in the midst of the dead puck era, he led the NHL with a 1.79 GAA in 43 games for Ottawa. During that 1991 season, he faced 73 shots in a single game against Boston, stopping 70, for one of the greatest ties in league history. Played from 1987-2004.
On the other end, there's Michel Larocque, who backed up Ken Dryden on the Montreal dynasty teams of the 70's. He finished 160-89-45 with a 3.33 GAA from 1973-1984; but more accurately, he had two careers: Montreal ('73-'81: 144-48-31, 2.83 GAA,17 SO) and everywhere else ('81-'84: 16-41-14, 5.56 GAA, 0 SO). Nobody could blame Larocque for playing second fiddle to Hall-of-Famer Dryden, but he failed to beat out Denis Herron in 1980; was supplanted by Richard Sevigny in 1981, and was moved to Toronto. There he was outdone by backup Vincent Tremblay (out of the NHL by age 24!) and then lost his job to the underrated Mike Palmateer. His last year was as the third goalie for St Louis, who had Mike Liut and Rick Heinz (who only played 49 games in his career, but now runs a goalie school). At every stop Larocque was usually a half-goal or more worse per game than his fellow keepers. The W-L-T record is wildly misleading when compared to his other stats and his teammates.
Two other notables are John Vanbiesbrouck, the all-time winningest US goalie, and Oilers/Sabres/Blues stalwart Grant Fuhr. Both Hall-of-Famers from the 1981 draft class, with numbers which may pale next to modern keepers, but which were considerable when measured against their peers. VBK played for mostly forgettable teams and won 30+ games only once, leading the league with 31 in 1985-86; Fuhr was the keeper for the Oilers dynasties in the mid-late 80's, and thus won more often; but his career GAA and sv% were worse and he had fewer shutouts (3.38, .887, and 25 SO against 2.98, .889, and 40 SO for Beezer). He also had two fewer cool nicknames, though that wasn't his fault - "Grant Fuhr" is simple and memorable, and no reporter wants to spell "Vanbiesbrouck" five times, especially in the days when "cut and paste" involved an X-acto knife and Elmer's glue.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sharp-saving
This started ten days ago... I read about Hawerchuk's quick item here at Tango's site. It's devoted mostly to baseball and sabermetrics - excellent for fans and students alike. The art of recording and analyzing hockey data is jumping forward, and Tango posts a couple of times a week on it.
In any case, I stuck a comment out there... and, like most of my comments in places like this, it made no visible impact. I don't mind that, actually, since what I don't know about advanced statistics could fill a typical introductory textbook on the subject, no matter what the real standings posts may say. But I do find it interesting to follow the topics as they develop and see other people who may have thought along similar lines, and see what they post about it.
If all this puck talk bores you, I do apologize. I haven't the energy to risk much more right now.
In any case, I stuck a comment out there... and, like most of my comments in places like this, it made no visible impact. I don't mind that, actually, since what I don't know about advanced statistics could fill a typical introductory textbook on the subject, no matter what the real standings posts may say. But I do find it interesting to follow the topics as they develop and see other people who may have thought along similar lines, and see what they post about it.
It is not surprising that winning teams tend to have higher save percentages, but this save percentage split is much larger than normal (this year goalies have averaged .939 in all wins and .873 in all losses). Even though these teams outshot their opponents by a 2-to-1 margin on average, they still lost 40% of the time. This indicates that often a goalie does not have a low save percentage because of a low shot total, but rather that he has a low shot total because of a low save percentage.Emphasis mine, just to highlight the similarity to what I'd written last week:
Those two trends seem to suggest that stopping a high percentage of shots is what pushes the totals higher, not the reverse. In his four worst save % performances of the year, [Cam] Ward was yanked every time, meaning that he didn’t play well enough to be allowed the chance to face a lot of shots - in much the same way as a pitcher getting smacked around doesn’t get a lot of IPs.Incidentally, the author of that Puck Prospectus piece, Phil Myrland, blogs at the provocatively-titled Brodeur is a Fraud. Many of his sidebar links go to other worthy, puck-oriented writers (haven't checked them all). At this rate I may need a separate hockey section of the blogroll.
If all this puck talk bores you, I do apologize. I haven't the energy to risk much more right now.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Real Standings 4½ - now with value-added commentary!
I'm running this earlier than usual so the links below wouldn't grow stale. The standings are updated through Thursday's action. -nf
As a twist, I've added an additional line to the end of the tables, which you will see at the end - the teams are still sorted the way the NHL wants them to be, but next to "actual points" is a new column labelled 3-1-0. That simply means, three points for a win, one for a tie, and nothing for a loss.
I love the idea behind the system, in that it would assess a premium on winning the game. I'd extend overtime to ten minutes, or even a full period (twenty minutes), to further increase the chances for a decision, and scrap the shootout, because it's inherently unfair to have teams cop extra points on a skills competition after the game is finished - especially one that is more luck than skill. Teams would definitely push for more wins, even at the cost of an occasional loss: 1-1 would be better than 0-0-2; heck, 3-5 would be better than 0-0-8. Notice how, below, the Sabres would be well ahead of the Bruins, on the strength of having four more wins? That's the idea - reward teams that win their games, knowing that ties are no longer an option in the playoffs.
The only downside is that, at the extremes, it could become almost as unfair as the system it replaces.
Assume two teams go to OT every game. One goes all out for every point and finishes 30-52 for 90 points. The other tries to stall for the sure point every time, only countering in the most obvious situations (blocks leading to breakaways, for example). They split their games with the all-out team, draw everything else, and finish 3-3-76 for 85 points.
A team that has 49 more losses than another would look very odd indeed above them in the standings, even given the 27 more wins. Not that either would make the playoffs anyway, but to take a less extreme example - say the same two teams with 20 OT games each, not an unheard-of total. They each go 40-22 in regulation, but the tie-up team takes its 20 draws, while the all-outers split their games 7-13. The 47-35 team will finish ahead of the 40-22-20 team by one point. That could be a problem.
One compromise is to muddle up the two systems - three for a win, nothing for a loss, but only for regulation and overtime. Once the game gets to a shootout, each team gets a point, with the successful team (it could hardly be called a "win") gets the third point. The standings would look odd: just as an example:
A. 35-30 (12- 5) 134
B. 38-34 ( 7- 3) 131
C. 34-28 ( 7-13) 129
D. 33-33 (10- 6) 125
E. 30-30 (11-11) 123
That's regulation record (shootout record) total points, where the total points equals 3*wins + 2*SO wins + SO losses. It looks odd, but people would get used to it if you broke it up in pairs like that; but I dislike it for a different reason. If you go through it and subtract shootout losses from the total points, you would make just one change: team C would finish behind team D, which would be more fair, because D's winning percentage (43/82, .524) is better than C's (41/82, .500). Whenever possible, we want the teams winning more often to be the playoff teams, because in the playoffs, it's win or lose, no pity points, and no pat on the back for hanging in there for 60 or 65 minutes.
The thing is, nobody - NOBODY - complained that the 2-1-0 system was unfair. They complained that there were too many ties, that the ends of games were boring. The league added the five-minute regular-season OT in response, but ties didn't go down "enough," so they cooked up solutions to a problem that really didn't exist, and made it worse. All the fixes debated above, and elsewhere in the hockey world, have varying merits, but the simplest fix would simply be to go back to the old, not-really-broken system... just make the OT a real hockey period, sudden death, and not the five-minute afterthought we currently have.
As a twist, I've added an additional line to the end of the tables, which you will see at the end - the teams are still sorted the way the NHL wants them to be, but next to "actual points" is a new column labelled 3-1-0. That simply means, three points for a win, one for a tie, and nothing for a loss.
I love the idea behind the system, in that it would assess a premium on winning the game. I'd extend overtime to ten minutes, or even a full period (twenty minutes), to further increase the chances for a decision, and scrap the shootout, because it's inherently unfair to have teams cop extra points on a skills competition after the game is finished - especially one that is more luck than skill. Teams would definitely push for more wins, even at the cost of an occasional loss: 1-1 would be better than 0-0-2; heck, 3-5 would be better than 0-0-8. Notice how, below, the Sabres would be well ahead of the Bruins, on the strength of having four more wins? That's the idea - reward teams that win their games, knowing that ties are no longer an option in the playoffs.
The only downside is that, at the extremes, it could become almost as unfair as the system it replaces.
Assume two teams go to OT every game. One goes all out for every point and finishes 30-52 for 90 points. The other tries to stall for the sure point every time, only countering in the most obvious situations (blocks leading to breakaways, for example). They split their games with the all-out team, draw everything else, and finish 3-3-76 for 85 points.
A team that has 49 more losses than another would look very odd indeed above them in the standings, even given the 27 more wins. Not that either would make the playoffs anyway, but to take a less extreme example - say the same two teams with 20 OT games each, not an unheard-of total. They each go 40-22 in regulation, but the tie-up team takes its 20 draws, while the all-outers split their games 7-13. The 47-35 team will finish ahead of the 40-22-20 team by one point. That could be a problem.
One compromise is to muddle up the two systems - three for a win, nothing for a loss, but only for regulation and overtime. Once the game gets to a shootout, each team gets a point, with the successful team (it could hardly be called a "win") gets the third point. The standings would look odd: just as an example:
A. 35-30 (12- 5) 134
B. 38-34 ( 7- 3) 131
C. 34-28 ( 7-13) 129
D. 33-33 (10- 6) 125
E. 30-30 (11-11) 123
That's regulation record (shootout record) total points, where the total points equals 3*wins + 2*SO wins + SO losses. It looks odd, but people would get used to it if you broke it up in pairs like that; but I dislike it for a different reason. If you go through it and subtract shootout losses from the total points, you would make just one change: team C would finish behind team D, which would be more fair, because D's winning percentage (43/82, .524) is better than C's (41/82, .500). Whenever possible, we want the teams winning more often to be the playoff teams, because in the playoffs, it's win or lose, no pity points, and no pat on the back for hanging in there for 60 or 65 minutes.
The thing is, nobody - NOBODY - complained that the 2-1-0 system was unfair. They complained that there were too many ties, that the ends of games were boring. The league added the five-minute regular-season OT in response, but ties didn't go down "enough," so they cooked up solutions to a problem that really didn't exist, and made it worse. All the fixes debated above, and elsewhere in the hockey world, have varying merits, but the simplest fix would simply be to go back to the old, not-really-broken system... just make the OT a real hockey period, sudden death, and not the five-minute afterthought we currently have.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Classic (Standings) IV
Your Eastern Conference:
And your Western Conference:
This week's charts highlights one of the big downsides to the pity-point system: the playoff races aren't as tight. Five of the six divisions would have closer races if the league still scored under its previous rules. Only the Central Division would be otherwise, as Chicago's lead over Nashville and Detroit would move from five and six points to six and eight points. The Southeast and Northeast are the strongest the other way - Washington's nine-point edge over Atlanta would be a less-comfortable five, and in the old Adams Division (the Northeast), Boston's lead over Buffalo would actually be a deficit. That's rather a huge deal. Instead of the third seed as the weakest division winner (and a home-ice advantage over sixth-seeded Buffalo), the Bruins would slide all the way to seventh, and have to open the playoffs on the road, against Ovechkin and the Capitals.
Further, it's harder to make up ground in the new system. Not only are certain teams further behind than otherwise, but to make up that extra distance, they have to hope the teams ahead of them don't scrape points after regulation. That just makes it harder. On the surface it's more exciting to look at the standings and see your team at or above .500, a thrill that 80% of the league currently enjoys. It's not so much of a thrill, however, when you realize that even a great run isn't likely to move you up in the standings so long as the teams you chase are getting extra points from a skills competition after the actual games end. Think of the Columbus Blue Jackets and their fans. 13-11-5 sounds better than 11-11-7... except now they're eleventh in the conference, well out of the playoffs. They have to pass Vancouver and Detroit and catch Dallas, currently eighth. But in the old system, they'd already be ahead of Detroit, and they'd only be behind Dallas by one win (31 points to 29). They could do that on Wednesday against Florida, who are fairly poor. Oh, but not now... and not with Dallas' Marty Turco leading all goaltenders in overtime games. If he wasn't 1-5 in shootouts, it would be even worse.
(OK, to be fair, Columbus has Steve Mason, who is the only goalie in the league currently WORSE than Turco in the shootout this season. But is it fair to either team to have it come to this?)
And your Western Conference:
This week's charts highlights one of the big downsides to the pity-point system: the playoff races aren't as tight. Five of the six divisions would have closer races if the league still scored under its previous rules. Only the Central Division would be otherwise, as Chicago's lead over Nashville and Detroit would move from five and six points to six and eight points. The Southeast and Northeast are the strongest the other way - Washington's nine-point edge over Atlanta would be a less-comfortable five, and in the old Adams Division (the Northeast), Boston's lead over Buffalo would actually be a deficit. That's rather a huge deal. Instead of the third seed as the weakest division winner (and a home-ice advantage over sixth-seeded Buffalo), the Bruins would slide all the way to seventh, and have to open the playoffs on the road, against Ovechkin and the Capitals.
Further, it's harder to make up ground in the new system. Not only are certain teams further behind than otherwise, but to make up that extra distance, they have to hope the teams ahead of them don't scrape points after regulation. That just makes it harder. On the surface it's more exciting to look at the standings and see your team at or above .500, a thrill that 80% of the league currently enjoys. It's not so much of a thrill, however, when you realize that even a great run isn't likely to move you up in the standings so long as the teams you chase are getting extra points from a skills competition after the actual games end. Think of the Columbus Blue Jackets and their fans. 13-11-5 sounds better than 11-11-7... except now they're eleventh in the conference, well out of the playoffs. They have to pass Vancouver and Detroit and catch Dallas, currently eighth. But in the old system, they'd already be ahead of Detroit, and they'd only be behind Dallas by one win (31 points to 29). They could do that on Wednesday against Florida, who are fairly poor. Oh, but not now... and not with Dallas' Marty Turco leading all goaltenders in overtime games. If he wasn't 1-5 in shootouts, it would be even worse.
(OK, to be fair, Columbus has Steve Mason, who is the only goalie in the league currently WORSE than Turco in the shootout this season. But is it fair to either team to have it come to this?)
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
The real standings, hopefully improved
These images should at least be larger and more legible - I uploaded each conference as a separate image. Blogger lets me make each individual picture a bit bigger, with better resolution, if I do that rather than upload the whole shebang as a unit.
A table would be the gold standard, however. Hm... in a series of posts mocking the league's pity points, my method could at best be described as a shootout loss - thus deserving of a pity point itself. At least I've successfully employed the concept of irony in my blogging.
Nonetheless I will still decry; heck, at least I'm trying to improve. The NHL seems more than happy about their system, and I think I see why. Say you're CommissionerGarrison Keillor Gary Bettman. You have to interest a non-market such as Phoenix to accept a transplanted team like the Winnipeg Jets, who finished the 1993-94 season a dreadful 24-51-9. Or, let's say you're trying to expand into new markets... but your expansion Tampa Bay Lightning were less than an exemplary example - that's 17-55-10 in '97-98 and 19-54-9 in '98-99. Yeah, who wants in?
So, the very next year, Bettman introduces an overtime loss column. Instead of Tampa duplicating its 19-54-9 record, it gets to say it was 19-47-9-7. Voila! And the brand-new Atlanta Thrashers avoid 60 losses by moving four of them to this OTL column. Huzzah! So what if these points wind up costing the Carolina Hurricanes (37-35-10) a playoff spot in favor of the inferior Buffalo Sabres (35-36-11, but four of the losses were in OT)? And by 2001-02, there were no 50-loss teams in the league; or, scratch that, there were three, but only if you actually count the OTL as an L. And the year after that, 27 of the 30 teams could say, hey, we got points in more than half our games! Somehow only three NHL teams managed to lose 40 or more games.
The extra column drove purists crazy, but it kept the owners happy. Nobody wants to say they were well-below .500, so the extra points were a godsend. Then, after they blew up the 2004-2005 season, they came back with the shootout - because if points for losing was good, then points for winning after the game was over was doubleplusgood!
As a result you have the table below, where 24 out of 30 teams are .500 or better. Everybody's above-average!
Well... not Carolina. Even their pity-point record is 5-17-5; it's almost impossible to be that bad under any circumstance. That translates into a full-year record of 15-51-15 with one game to play; even under the old rules, it's a record of futility that few teams have matched. But under the old rules, the 'Canes would be 2-19-6. There's just no way to sugar-coat that. It's epically bad, a SIX WIN pace. Even if they could scrape the seventh win in the last game, that's a full-year of 7-57-18, and only the ties would keep them from being possibly the worst team in the history of the league. Their seven wins would break the old 1975 Washington Capitals record for the fewest in the expansion era.
A table would be the gold standard, however. Hm... in a series of posts mocking the league's pity points, my method could at best be described as a shootout loss - thus deserving of a pity point itself. At least I've successfully employed the concept of irony in my blogging.
Nonetheless I will still decry; heck, at least I'm trying to improve. The NHL seems more than happy about their system, and I think I see why. Say you're Commissioner
So, the very next year, Bettman introduces an overtime loss column. Instead of Tampa duplicating its 19-54-9 record, it gets to say it was 19-47-9-7. Voila! And the brand-new Atlanta Thrashers avoid 60 losses by moving four of them to this OTL column. Huzzah! So what if these points wind up costing the Carolina Hurricanes (37-35-10) a playoff spot in favor of the inferior Buffalo Sabres (35-36-11, but four of the losses were in OT)? And by 2001-02, there were no 50-loss teams in the league; or, scratch that, there were three, but only if you actually count the OTL as an L. And the year after that, 27 of the 30 teams could say, hey, we got points in more than half our games! Somehow only three NHL teams managed to lose 40 or more games.
The extra column drove purists crazy, but it kept the owners happy. Nobody wants to say they were well-below .500, so the extra points were a godsend. Then, after they blew up the 2004-2005 season, they came back with the shootout - because if points for losing was good, then points for winning after the game was over was doubleplusgood!
As a result you have the table below, where 24 out of 30 teams are .500 or better. Everybody's above-average!
Well... not Carolina. Even their pity-point record is 5-17-5; it's almost impossible to be that bad under any circumstance. That translates into a full-year record of 15-51-15 with one game to play; even under the old rules, it's a record of futility that few teams have matched. But under the old rules, the 'Canes would be 2-19-6. There's just no way to sugar-coat that. It's epically bad, a SIX WIN pace. Even if they could scrape the seventh win in the last game, that's a full-year of 7-57-18, and only the ties would keep them from being possibly the worst team in the history of the league. Their seven wins would break the old 1975 Washington Capitals record for the fewest in the expansion era.
Monday, November 23, 2009
The real standings
Weird weekend. The Chiefs, Lions, and Raiders all won yesterday. I feel like I woke up in 1993.
The NHL's "real standings" this week -
Not quite as illegible as last time. Trying to make the picture bigger just blurs everything. My HTML-fu is weak, and I can't get a table to look like anything but an affront to statistics everywhere. The dumb thing is, the table looks amazing in Excel, but I can't just dump the spreadsheet page to the web... or, to be more precise, *I* can't just dump the thing on here. A skilled person could. Hope I can find one before next week, but there's that Thanksgiving thing... you know, the one everyone seemed to skip this year to get right from Halloween to the high holy shopping season.
The NHL's "real standings" this week -
Not quite as illegible as last time. Trying to make the picture bigger just blurs everything. My HTML-fu is weak, and I can't get a table to look like anything but an affront to statistics everywhere. The dumb thing is, the table looks amazing in Excel, but I can't just dump the spreadsheet page to the web... or, to be more precise, *I* can't just dump the thing on here. A skilled person could. Hope I can find one before next week, but there's that Thanksgiving thing... you know, the one everyone seemed to skip this year to get right from Halloween to the high holy shopping season.
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