Sunday, April 17, 2011

Boston completed

Boston now finished too

Friday, April 15, 2011

Blocked Shots

I did a stat crunch of blocked shots in the NHL this year and based my ratings off that.

Dan Girardi and Greg Zanon will get a 4 in BS

http://www.nhl.com/ice/playerstats.htm?fetchKey=20112ALLSASAll&sort=blockedShots&viewName=rtssPlayerStats

ATL ratings complete

on to Boston

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Anaheim Ducks

Have been rated

Saturday, April 9, 2011

APBA disk

After pondering for a short while I have decided to produce my own disk. I hope to have it finished before the "real" disk is released. It should be interesting to see how the two compare... my winging it versus their analytical approach

Friday, April 1, 2011

Down the stretch

Taking a closer look at the league leaders as the CCHL season winds to a close I am struck with some of the freakish scoring of the current disk.

Karlstad's Patrick Marleau is leading the world in scoring with an amazing 132 points and a plus 78 ! Denver's Paul Stastny is no slouch with over 100 assists. Copenhagen's Stamkos with 69 goals. WOW ! Budapest's Evgeni Nabokov has 46 wins and Beverly Hills Bryzgalov has 12 shutouts to go with 42 wins. Niagara has an impressive duo on the blueline with Doughty and Markov as well as Denver with Kaberle and Liles. Copenhagen has Green on the blueline with 63 assists. Meanwhile Victoria's pugilist Carkner has 241 pims (I had to throw my name in there somewhere)

I won't go into details on Dayton since Bill turned over so much of his roster but the team numbers are very impressive.

The shots are also very surprising. Wisborg's Ovechkin has 453 shots on net, Karlstad's pair of Marleau and Semin have 933 shots between them. I feel for the goalies of the lessor teams of the CCHL.

Its not that various teams should be criticized for maximizing their rosters. In fact they should be congratulated. However, I am left wondering how realistic is a disk that has four 60 goal scorers ? During the disk creation process many of us participate in we are told that the numbers are crunched so that they fall "within" certain parameters. Yet I don't fully buy into the way the disk is produced. I am not slighting the disk team, its purely volunteer work and requires hours of data crunching, but perhaps those of us who are true non-myopic hockey fans might get within 90% of the final numbers by just fudging it ourselves.

Yes its easy to sit back after the season is done and take a skeptical look at the results but I think the disk is no longer what it once was. This is news to nobody and has been a repeated subject of discussion between Bill and I over the years.

One possible solution is that the CCHL might do well to start considering the possibility of making our own disk. As long as it is scheduled I know I can find the time to more than pull my weight. I think that we would have to have some guidelines, for example a reviewer wouldn't create ratings for players on his/her current roster.

Anyone else interested ?

Friday, March 25, 2011

Hey Mario !

with the recent elbow to the head of Rangers defenseman Ryan McDonaugh I came across this great website that has links to many of Matt Cooke's history of injuring hockey players.

Its appropriately titled "Matt Cooke history of violence"

http://www.tolensky.com/2011/03/matt-cooke-history-of-violence.html

My question is
"Why are Matt Cooke's antics good enough to wear a Penguins uniform ?"

I would love to hear what you have to say

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Jan 2011 In depth

Happy New Years everyone, I hope you all had a nice break. My best wishes for your happiness and perhaps more importantly a healthy new years.

My wife and I just returned from a circuitous trip around South East Asia visiting Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. It was an amazing trip and I would highly recommend an 80 degree christmas and new years in your life at least once.

On to the CCHL. What happened while I was away enjoying fantastic food and the warm sun on my face ? Corfield went and made his Musicmen a powerhouse AGAIN. Crikey bill give the rest of us a chance will ya ? :) I will leave the trade analysis up to my trading partner in River Cities Chris Kash but wow talk about a roster turnover.
Mr Dave Bole came on to run Havana after Michael Gilman and his new Aorta stepped down to pursue other matters. No sooner had Dave checked in, then he shook things up by trading all world Alex Ovechkin ! Talk about making a splash.

I thought this time I would take a closer look at some of the better special teams play in the CCHL so far this year. It is no surprise that Long Island's Sidney Crosby and now Wisborg's Ovechkin lead the pack with 10 apiece, but what I found very interesting is how Karlstadt's Ott has 9, and Dayton's Ian White has 8. Thats a heck of a total in one season, especially for Ott and White, I am left wondering if the disk really was as good as hoped for. Perhaps an issue for another day, however it certainly doesn't ruin such a wonderful first half of PPG for the Long Island pairing of Crosby and Parise, not to mention Victoria's own Dustin Penner with 8 on a lottery bound team.

Looking at the SHG situation Portlands Kesler is in a three way tie with 4 shorties at the first half mark along with DAY's Malone and WIN Bourque. Very impressive totals for half a season. I wonder if they can keep it up. Of note BEV has two players with Pettinger and Chimera with 3 each.

Special Kudos to Copenhagen's Steven Stamkos with 31 tallies in 37 games played. Those are Gretzky like numbers for sure. Not far behind are Bobby Ryan with 23 and Pat Kane chipping in 18 so far on the season. Great depth on that team and it shows as they are 17-0-2 with the lead after 2 periods. Hopefully it translated into a nice playoff run.

Not to be left out of the mix Niagara Falls leading scorer is defenseman Doughty with 36 points in 38 GP. Good balanced scoring on the team too with Kovalchuk potting 18 in 32GP, Seanus Avery with 15 and Datsyuk and Ribiero with 13 apiece. The only concern I see for the Thunder going forward this year would be in nets with the twin headed due of Nittymaki and Theodore not instilling much confidence in a long post season run. Then again anything is possible.

Last up on this edition of the update are the Timberwolves who have completed their rebuilding and are atop the CCHL. With 6 forwards having double digit goal scoring thats a very impressive attack, with guys like Rick Nash and John Tavares carrying water ? Wow. Acquiring Lundqvist should really improve things in Thunder Bay if thats possible.