#I’ll look at certain players and think they should have been an arizona coyote

[korshrimpski]

do you ever wish a player people loved got drafted/traded to your team so people would start paying attention to your team and the players on it?

do you ever wish your team was at least semi-popular so people would love them?

do you ever wish your team was good?

do you ever wish the time your team got press was because something bad happened?

do you ever wish your team was alive?

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 13 - ARI - 9-2-2

Is this a trap game? I’ll admit I’m not familiar with the concept. Arizona has been on the edge of competitive since… always? Yeah they had that conference final appearance but we’re all kinda conditioned to think they’re bad. It’s the teams that you think you should beat but have a high likelihood to surprise you that constitute trap games, right? The Yotes had a rough start but have managed to off the likes of Nashville and the Rangers to arrive in Buffalo 6 and 4. Like the Buffalo Sabres everyone is still wondering if they might actually be good. Another thing these two teams have in common is a man named Phil Housley. After bouncing around a little bit following his firing from the Sabres Head Coach position in the Spring he finds himself the assistant Coach of the Arizona Coyotes. They are certainly trying to recapture his coaching talent from his time with the Nashville Predators where he benefited a lot from a stacked defense. When Lance Lysowski, the last good hockey writer at the Buffalo News, asked Housley if he would make any changes to his time as Sabres bench boss he responded: “Those are things I’ll keep to myself”. If there’s anything Phil Housley is good at its dodging the meat of a question, eh? All kidding aside that is the best possible answer to that question. What is he going to do, activate all the suburban hockey dads and roast one of the talented player’s compete level? I think it’s safe to say he’s done with Buffalo and really doesn’t want to be pressed into any talk about it. I put the feelers for what Sabres fans feel about Phil Housley on twitter. In the most unsurprising chain of events since missing the playoffs most of y’all responded with “tHe DaY hE gOt FiReD!” There were a couple interesting responses I’ll throw in at the end of this postgame. For now let’s dive into the Sabres Episode XIII: the Return of Housley!

The Sabres came out crisp as the Autumn air in the first period. They outshot and out-chanced a Yotes side that was up to the task. Arizona made the first mistake however when Lawson Crouse got called for tripping Evan Rodrigues. The powerplay has been a canary-in-the-coal-mine for the Sabres in the early going this season. If it’s firing bangers in the first period you can tell it will be a good game for us. The games the PP wasn’t exactly spinning well were the not so pretty games a la New York, LA, Detroit and Anaheim. Mind you they won half those games. I had hardly vocalized this thought when Jack Eichel gets kicked out of the faceoff circle and proceeds to score immediately thereafter with that classic slapper. It’s Eichel’s 23rd birthday and evidently he had not scored on his birthday yet in his career on this team. There it is, Happy Birthday, bud. The game evened up a bit down the gut of the period while the Sabres still got the prettier chances. It would be another pretty goal from the increasingly nice Marcus Johansson Jeff Skinner duo. They shut down some quality O-zone time for the Yotes and went off on the rush down ice. Skinner gave the puck to Johansson who didn’t skate too far before returning it to Skinner to tap it in. They did a little crisscross in the middle there and it was just so pretty. They were out to 2-0 lead, but again the Coyotes were not missing their chances either. In spite of being boxed out over and over again by Jack Eichel and Jake McCabe, old friend Phil Kessel got his looks. Victor Hinostroza seemed to be breathing down Hutton’s neck whenever he was in the zone. This Arizona side has allowed the fewest goals in the league so far, you have to be careful with them when they do get their chances. Before the first ended Carter Hutton let in a Conor Garland tight-angle shot that was less than stellar. It was hard to see how it went in from most angles but one at ice-level showed a big 3-hole. It was 2-1 through 20 minutes of play.

The home team came out hot in the second period as well. There was a push of play in the first ten minutes where the Sabres hemmed Arizona in their zone for 1:40 continuous minutes! It got uproarious cheering from the home crowd and to be frank it sent a shiver up my spine. You watch that kind of multi-minute dominance and you almost don’t recognize the squad in front of you. They were winning quick puck battles and nailing very tight passes. They looked like they were on a powerplay, but they were roasting wolf meat 5 on 5 in that stretch! Its that kind of peak “play connected” competitiveness and actualization of real skill that makes me believe this hot start is for real. In that glorious stretch I felt this squad was really and truly back from the darkness. I think they’re for real and I feel more confident than I ever have after that stretch. Unfortunately there is somehow always a reason to be a disappointed Sabres fan and we found it as Buffalo was not rewarded for the frightfully good first half of the period. Arizona pushed back, reclaimed the edge in shots and eventually got a fluke equalizer off Hutton’s ass. It was tied at 2 going into the third period and I’d like to share Rob Ray’s joy in saying this was the most fun Sabres game yet this season but I just can’t. The third period was vintage Sabres. When I use that phrase I’m referring to the 2010s Sabres. They had no lead but decided to more or less retreat into a defensive shell. They had let the expected goals darling of this young NHL season back into the game and in the third they let them take over. Every player wearing Blue and Gold on that sheet of ice saw their corsi percentage implode and had it not been for Carter Hutton standing on his head at times there would have been no loser point as solace. Evan Rodrigues started the game out hungry. By the third period he disappeared. Jake McCabe and Rasmus Ristolainen simultaneously decided to forget two respective lifetimes of hockey training and could not pass a puck without a turnover for the life of them. Now one might say the Sabres began playing for overtime. One word answer there pals: unacceptable. Regulation wins are the currency of dynasties and I don’t care how good the Sabres have looked in extra hockey so far this season. Stop with that garbage.

Arizona earned their overtime point having shelled Buffalo with shots at a 2-1 rate in the third. In overtime they registered the only official shot on goal. Apart from an Olofsson ringer of the crossbar this was the worst overtime period I’ve seen from this new Sabres squad. As with the regulation portion of the night if Victor Hinostroza or Phil Kessel converted any of their chances this would be a darker story. At one point even Hutton caught the turtle bug and turned over the puck in the corner almost gifting the Yotes an overtime winner. It was a jaw dropping overtime in more bad ways than good ones. It went to the shootout and all it took was Nick Schmaltz outmaneuvering Hutton to sink one to seal the visitor’s victory. This one ended 3-2 Coyotes and looked like a microcosm of the Sabres play through its now completed first month of the season: gloriously fun and evidently more cohesive as a team but very much still bearing the toothless mistrust of themselves and propensity to fail to complete games. They end October 9-2-2 and I think that record is very telling. They’ll will have to sit on this surrender until Friday when they travel to Washington to take on the Capitals. I think the last third period plus of this game earned them every little bit of the nagging sensation this outcome will weigh on them in those intermittent days.

So back to the Housley memories: he got some applause when the video tribute came on the jumbotron and I don’t necessarily hate that. BUT, and this is a big but, most of us Sabres fans simply will not remember him fondly, at least for his coaching tenure. One @alexa_mallare replied with her photo of the Fire Housley sign her and her family made and put up in the 300 level for a few glorious minutes at Fan Appreciation Night last season. According to her Rasmus Ristolainen caught sight of it during warmups and got a chuckle out of it. Alexa says the team staff held Housley in the tunnel while they were forced to take it down. Heroes! Heroes, I tell you! Those last few months of the season were so catatonic someone had to show signs of life and it ended up having to be us fans. @depressedbflos replied with the Rob Ray quotes that got dug up and promptly reburied before the Housley firing. Evidently Ray was not treated right as a rookie by Housley during their playing careers and Ray still holds it against him. The quotes were from a 2003 Buffalo News piece that someone rediscovered as Housley dug his own grave that Spring. I think that was the moment that I personally realized he was done. When you’re so reviled by the fanbase you got signs going up, 15-year-old quotes coming out AND the team is losing at a record clip its over. Unfortunately Housleyisms like throwing Sobotka out there in the dying minutes of a 2-2 tie aren’t lost on Ralph Krueger. However I think we can all agree this new guy is a whole lot better at… well… everything? Everything right?

The one guy who replied a positive gif of the former coach made sure to qualify afterward that he did not endorse the coaching acumen of Housley. What a crazy time we lived through, eh? This has been the roast of Phil Housley. Thank you for coming, please like, comment and share this blog on your way out. Should we be concerned about this current team? Eh, yes in certain places. Do I think they’ll win at this clip in November: no. Do I think they’ll win more games than they lose: yes. I really feel as though 9-2-2 is something to believe in. This club is really something new. I believe it and you should too. They’ve got two games left this weekend and then it’s off to Sweden. I choose to believe, and risk being hurt. I suggest you do too. What fun would this be if we all played it safe?

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. Happy Halloween everyone.

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/sports/superstitious-minds-the-rituals-that-obsess-winners/

Superstitious minds: The 'rituals' that obsess winners

“It’s not really superstitious. It’s a thing you do every time. There are guys literally that think they won’t play good if they don’t do the same thing (every time),” Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Seth Jones tells CNN Sport, speaking ahead of the NHL Playoffs’ start.

Let’s face it, even if you might find it hard to admit, we all probably have a few habits that get us out of the house and through each day.

A Montreal Canadiens video crew chronicled Andrew Shaw’s intriguing pregame routine — including slashing a teammate in the knee pad and orchestrating 50 different handshakes — in which he admits: “I’ve added little things that I find just help me get ready for the game.

“I think now it’s just being superstitious going into every game. Most players do have a routine. If they say they don’t, they are lying to you.”

‘Rigid routine’

When NHL players are asked about their pregame routine, they often answer in a sheepish, almost noncommittal way — “Oh that’s not me but let me tell you about my teammate.”

Many players don’t readily expand on their daily routines likely out of fear of not wanting to sound odd or give away a secret that an opponent, or even worse a teammate, can use against them.

Winnipeg Jets forward Mark Scheifele warns: “We have (Dustin) Byfuglien on our team who is a big jokester, so anyone who has a superstition probably needs to get rid of it if you play on the Winnipeg Jets. If you set your sticks up a certain way. You put your pads a certain way. Buff’s gonna knock ’em over.”

Even so, Scheifele, who is the Jets leading goal scorer, has a ritual that ‘afflicts’ several other NHLers — wanting to be the last skater off the ice after the warm-up.

“I am the last one to go off. I like being on the ice. I like shooting around. I like it when no one else is out there. The way I look at it is that if I’m the last one off the ice, I’ve prepared the most.”

READ: Carolina Hurricanes — NHL side dividing opinion with outlandish celebrations

Rock, paper, scissors

Problem is that the Dallas Stars’ Tyler Seguin has the same last man mentality — cue an impromptu game of rock, paper, scissors.

“It’s not like I have ever gone up to Tyler and said: ‘Hey, let’s play rock, paper scissors to see who gets off the ice last,’ says Scheifele. “Sometimes I would just give it to him. Or he would give it to me.

“And then one time he put out his dukes like he wanted to play rock, paper scissors, and I was like this is awesome. I think that’s the fun part of hockey. Obviously, we are competitors but that is a fun way to settle that score.”

When St. Louis Blues forward Ryan O’Reilly arrives at the arena, he’s intent on chilling rather than warming up.

“When I get to the rink, the first thing I do — I get in the cold tub. Its one of those things that wakes myself up. It gets my legs feeling the right way.”

Speaking of cold, according to Florida Panthers defenseman Keith Yandle, his former teammate Jeff Halpern, who is now coaching with the (Tampa Bay) Lightning, used to put his skates in the refrigerator.

“I remember seeing his skates in the fridge and thought that was kinda of … something quirky,” laughs Yandle.

READ: Filip Forsberg on his journey from Sweden to the Nashville Predators

‘Stick in the bathroom’

Other notable pregame routines center around food, with carb consumption high on the menu.

“Chicken and pasta. I think everyone does it. Grilled chicken and penne vodka (sauce),” said Yandle.

It’s pasta and chicken every time for Vasilevski, who is also intent on not varying his breakfast.

“Eggs, bacon, toast, latte. I’m doing latte at home. I have a big café machine. I can be a barista at Starbucks at this point.”

Ottawa Senators defenceman Thomas Chabot doesn’t want to disrupt his meal routine but also doesn’t want to tire of it.

“Chicken and pasta at home and on the road, I’ll do salmon and rice or salmon and pasta. Just ’cause we play so many games, I feel like I’ll get tired of chicken and pasta and I don’t want to get tired of it ’cause I like it.”

Scheifele is a fan of beet juice, while Arizona Coyotes forward Clayton Keller has a soft spot for sweet potato.

The Washington Capitals’ Stanley Cup run last season highlighted Alexander Ovechkin’s carb-powered Italian combo.

The Russian forward has a local Italian restaurant — Mamma Lucia — deliver to him before every home game, chicken parmesan, pasta, bread, and four separate sauces — alfredo, meat, mushroom marsala, and marinara.

“There’s no shame,” Ovechkin’s teammate Brooks Orpik told the Players’ Tribune. “It’ll be 11 in the morning, way before anyone is really thinking about eating lunch, and Ovi will walk into the dining area yelling, “Mama Lucia! Mama Lucia! [sic].

“I don’t know. It’s weird, but it seems normal now. Then, a few hours later, he’s outskating everyone on the ice, knocking guys on their asses.”

READ: Gabriel Landeskog — From Stockholm to NHL stardom

‘Great One’

Widely known as the best player to ever play the game, “The Great One” Wayne Gretzky, told Graham Bensinger in 2016, that back in his day, Snickers, hot dogs, and Diet Cokes were the fuel that powered him through.

Compare this to three-time Stanley Cup champion Sidney Crosby. The Pittsburgh Penguins captain counts on a simple peanut butter and jelly before each game.

But don’t let the simple sandwich fool you. Crosby’s before-the-puck-drop rituals might be the most well known. But as someone who has won multiple Olympic golds and Stanley Cups, who can say they aren’t working?

“There is just too many, it’s hard now after you do things for so long to know what is a superstition and what’s just part of your daily routine,” Crosby acknowledged in a 2017 post-practice interview. “There’s a lot of guys in here that have them — they just don’t want to admit it.”

During Crosby’s sixth season, a HBO camera crew followed “Sid the Kid” during his pregame routine — willingly taking the long way around the arena as to not walk in front of the visitors’ locker room.

The aforementioned Jones, who says he is not really superstitious, is quick to smile and highlight one of his teammate’s routines. “Boone Jenner is one of the weirdest ones I’ve seen on the bench.

Every time he comes on the bench from a shift, he’ll take (a sip of) water, then Gatorade, water, Gatorade, spit, spit … there is like a certain sequence to it. And if he messes it up — he’s done.”

Jenner counters with, “I’m not the worst.” But in jest seems to admit that if he has a good game or scores, the next pregame meal must be reenacted – right down to the same time, same table and same guy paying the bill.

Meanwhile, the Columbus Blue Jackets’ Cam Atkinson almost appears to laugh in the face of superstitions — the All-Star forward wears the #13 on his back.

When called out about the monotony of his chicken and pasta routine, Atkinson countered: “you should ask (Johnny) Gaudreau about his pre-game lunch.”

At this point Atkinson cracks a big smile. Atkinson knows the Calgary Flames star well. So, well that Gaudreau actually wears the #13 in homage to Atkinson.

“Gaudreau has pasta but has never had pasta sauce in his life. So he gets a big bowl of pasta with nothing — not even butter, no cheese, nothing. I don’t know how you can do that.”

Gaudreau too seems impervious to all of this. “I’m not superstitious at all. I was born on August the 13th. Friday the 13th.”

‘Left side first’

Minnesota Wild goalie Devan Dubnyk, a 10-year NHL veteran, has learned not to allow specific routines to dictate his game approach.

“You can’t just throw away a game because you are superstitious. I always told myself is to make sure to never let it affect what you are doing if you are unable to do it. That’s the difference to having a routine and superstition.”

Then again, someone like Anaheim Ducks forward Corey Perry, a 2-time Olympic champion and Stanley Cup winner, readily admits that he counts on his elaborate routine to prepare him for a 60-minute game.

“I stretch at the same time,” he told the Players’ Tribune. “I ride the bike the same amount of minutes. I get dressed left foot first — everything left side first. Touch all the doors on the way out (to the ice). The list goes on and on.”

Team-based Stanley Cup Playoff rituals vary; refusing to shave in order to grow thick beards as their teams advance toward the Final, or the subtle tradition of “to touch or not to touch” the conference championship trophy en route to playing for the Stanley Cup, and lest not forget one of the most unique title winning traditions — spending the day with the trophy.

Confidence is key

There is scientific reasoning behind the myriad of rituals on display in the NHL.

George Gmelch, a professor of anthropology at the University of San Francisco who has studied superstition in baseball for decades, says that superstitions tend to be more prevalent in areas where there’s a lot of uncertainty — such as elite sport.

“What they’re really doing is giving themselves confidence,” said Gmelch.

“If I do these little rituals, then I’m gonna feel confident going into this activity, and I can succeed and do well.”

So for the next two months as the post-season plays out, before the coveted Cup is lifted skyward, keep an eye out for the unique – dare we say fun — individual routines. But whatever you do, just don’t mention the word superstitious.

[paradoxicalca]

(OC) Frenchifying the Canadiens (An Alternate Reality)

(This is the squeakquel threequel to Moneyballing the Senators and Covertly Tanking the Wild)It's August 2019. Marc Bergevin and Trevor Timmins are sitting in the Montreal Canadiens' war room when the phone rings. It's Geoff Molson, the team president and co-owner.Hey guys, it's Geoff. I'm gonna cut a long story short - the province's Minister for Sports has apparently stumbled on some... compromising information about this organization. For legal reasons I'm not gonna get into it, but it implicates all of us in the front office. The good news is that he says he's not going to put it out there for the sake of the franchise and the city. The bad news is that he has one demand, and I don't think we'll be able to get out of it. He's a bit of a nationalist, you know? Very vive la Québec francophone and all that. He says the worst thing that ever happened to les Habs was when they started letting Ontarians and Americans on the team, and that he stopped watching when they made Saku Koivu captain. He told me he'll shred all the dirt he has on us if we make the Canadiens a 100% Québecois team by October. I know that puts you in a tough situation guys, but good luck guys!Bergevin and Timmins look at eachother in shock."Well at least this will save us a shit-ton on amateur scouting""This isn't funny Trevor, what the hell are we going to do? I guess I'll start sending out feelers and hopefully we'll be ready by opening night. If we rush this we'll lose every trade and look like imbéciles""No, Marc, we have to get all of this done now. Tonight. You think we'll lose these trades if we hurry? If McKenzie somehow gets wind of this and tweets it out we're gonna be icing a fucking QMJHL team this year. We need to do this all at once before anyone figures out what's going on.""Merde you're fucking right.""Think about it though Marc. If you brought a Cup to Montreal with a bunch of Anglos and Americans on the ice you'd be a hero, sure. But if you get les Canadiens une Coupe with all French guys they'll add your biceps to the fucking fleur de lis. Let's just do it and be légendes, frère.""Alright. Get me a list of every son of a bitch in this league with an accent aigu in their name, a six pack of Taureau Rouge, and 29 more phones."Six Hours Later​Bobby Margarita @TSNBobMcKenzieIt's probably nothing, but I'm hearing that the NHL trade line has about 12 trades pending.​Elliotte Friedman @FriedgeHNICHabs have signed Pominville (1.5M), Chartier (0.75M) and Bourque (0.7M) to 1 year contracts.​Bobby Margarita @TSNBobMcKenzieA lot of talk around the Habs right now. Things are about to get really silly.​Tampa Bay Lightning @TBLightningThe #Lightning have acquired LW Tomas Tatar, D Mike Rielly, G Charlie Lindgren, and a 2020 3rd round pick from the #Canadiens in exchange for RW Yanni Gourde, LW Cedric Paquette, and G Louis Domingue.​Columbus Blue Jackets @BlueJacketsNHLBLOCKBUSTER ALERT: #CBJ have acquired G Carey Price, C Jesperi Kotkaniemi, and D Jeff Petry in exchange for C Pierre-Luc Dubois, D David Savard, C Maxime Fortier, and a conditional 1st round draft pick.​Pittsburgh Penguins @penguinsTRADE ALERT: The Penguins have acquired defenceman Shea Weber and forward Max Domi from the Coyotes in exchange for Kris Letang, Jack Johnson, and Samuel Poulin.​Ottawa Senators @SenatorsNews Release: #Sens acquire defenceman Cale Fleury, forward Joel Armia from Montreal for Christian Wolanin and Anthony DuclairCommuniqué : Les #Sens acquièrent Cale Fleury et Joel Armia de Montréal pour Christian Wolanin et Anthony Duclair.​Colorado Avalanche @avalancheA big trade. #GoAvsGoColorado trades Sam Girard and Mark Barberio to Montreal for Victor Mete, Artturi Lehkonen, and 2018 2nd round pick Alexander Romanov​Vegas Golden Knights @GoldenKnightsTrading places! ⚔️Vegas acquires RW Brendan Gallagher from the Montreal Canadiens for LW Jonathan Marchessault and a conditional 2020 3rd.​New York Islanders @NYIslanders#Isles trade RFA rights to Anthony Beauvillier to MTL for C Ryan Poehling and C Nate Thompson.​Jim Matheson @NHLbyMattyStill blws my mind that Keith Gretzky hasn't been offered a GM job yet. Lots of respct around the league for his scouting in EDM. Wouldn't be surprised if Minneosta takes a long look at him​Chicago Blackhawks @NHLBlackhawksTRADE ALERT: Left Wing Paul Byron, Cayden Primeau, and Keith Kinkaid have been acquired from Montreal in exchange for Corey Crawford and Nicolas Beaudin.​Detroit Red Wings @DetroitRedWings#RedWings have acquired RW Cole Caufield and LD Brett Kulak from the Montreal Canadiens for C Joe Veleno and a 2020 4th round pick​Winnipeg Jets @NHLJets#NHLJets have acquired forward Jordan Weal and a second-round draft pick in the 2020 #NHLDraft from the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for forward Matthieu Perreault.​Arizona Coyotes @ArizonaCoyotesTRADE ALERT: #Coyotes have acquired Noah Juulsen from the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for Jason Demers.​Vancouver Canucks @CanucksNHLTRADE ALERT: #Canucks have acquired a 2021 5th round pick from MTL for D Alex Biega​Anaheim Ducks @AnaheimDucksTRADE: The #Ducks have acquired centre Nick Suzuki, defenceman Ben Chiarot, centre Nick Cousins and a 2020 2nd round pick from the @CanadiensMTL for C Benoit-Olivier Groulx and LW Maxime ComtoisBergevin and Timmins slump down in their chairs, surrounded by crumpled up pieces of paper and half-drunk half-Red Bull protein shakes, and look at the new roster they've assembled, scrawled on the white board in front of them.Jonathan Marchessault - Pierre-Luc Dubois - Jonathan Drouin Anthony Beauvillier - Philip Danault - Yanni Gourde Anthony Duclair - Mathieu Perreault - Jason Pominville Joe Veleno - Cedric Paquette - Maxime Comtois Gabriel Bourque Samuel Girard - Kris Letang Christian Wolanin - David Savard Alex Biega - Jason Demers Mark Barberio Corey Crawford Louis Domingue The Next MorningThe hockey world is in complete chaos. The Canadiens' front office pulled off all of these trades simultaneously, and not a single other GM realized what was going on. Sure they guessed that the Habs were targeting their French players (what else is new?) but they were as shocked as anyone when they started getting frantic texts as soon as they had submitted the deals to the league.Hockey media is a mess. TSN has interrupted their coverage of Canadian U20 Cricket regionals and dispatched the Bellicopter to retrieve Bobby Margarita from the Muskoka wilderness; analytics bloggers are frantically assembling heat maps and charts to make some sense of the madness; podcasters are recording 6-hour episodes.Bergevin and Timmins are asleep, and will be until the afternoon. They'll wake up to a copy of Le Devoir and the Montreal Gazette on the front porch of the Bell Centre with competing editorials:Montreal Gazette - August 11 2019"What the Hell did Bergevin Just Do?"MONTREAL, QC - NHL teams aren't put together in a day - it takes years of scouting, developing, trading, and signing to put together a team that can compete for the Stanley Cup. To succeed, managers have to be able to set aside their biases - for certain types of players, for action, and for nationality - and make rational, measured decisions.Apparently nobody told Marc Bergevin that.On Saturday night, Bergevin blew up a team that finished as close to a playoff spot as is humanly possible. Usually in hockey "blowing up a team" means trading a few core pieces; in this case it meant a rabid simultaneous onslaught of 13 trades replacing 90% of the roster and a large chunk of the prospect cupboard. And why? So that the insecurity of nationalist Francophones can be resurrected on the Bell Centre (excuse me, Centre Bell) ice, and the worst nostalgic tendencies of our society can play out below the retired number banners of Doug Harvey, Larry Robinson, and Bernie Geoffrion.Maybe this team will be a Cup contender, maybe they won't be. But the message that Marc Bergevin has sent to the thousands of children who watch the Montreal Canadiens (many of whose Weber or Price jerseys are now suddenly out of date) is one of exclusion and tribalism. And he, and Geoff Molson, and every element of our province responsible for this idiocy should be ashamed.Le Devoir - 11 Août 2019"Bergevin: le sauveur du hockey québécois"MONTRÉAL, QC - Avant jeudi soir, le mandat du directeur général des Canadiens, Marc Bergevin, était controversé. Pour chaque échange intelligente, il en avait un autre qui était horrible. Mais maintenant, il n’ya aucun doute: Marc Bergevin est un héros.Les Canadiens de Montréal participeront à une coupe Stanley ce printemps, et ce, avec une formation entièrement née et élevée au Québec pour la première fois en près de cent ans. Les enfants de la belle province seront inspirés, et le hockey québécois retrouvera enfin sa place sacrée au sommet. Une nouvelle génération de fierté française, de renouveau national et de domination du hockey est à portée de main. Et il n'y a aucun doute sur qui est responsable. Vive Bergevin!​How did it turn out in the end? Let's just say that the Fleurgevin was hanging in every classroom in the province by the summer.Hope you enjoyed, if you have any ideas for a future thing like this let me know! (OC) Frenchifying the Canadiens (An Alternate Reality) Source

[thrashermaxey]

Ramblings: Svechnikov Injured; Kadri and Thornton Suspended; Looking Back – April 16

  There were a pair of suspensions handed down on Monday as Nazem Kadri was suspended for the rest of the series for his cross-check in Game 2 and Joe Thornton was suspended for one game for his hit on Tomas Nosek on Sunday night.

With Kadri out of the lineup, William Nylander lined up as the third line centre between Connor Brown and Patrick Marleau.

*

Carolina took their first game of the series against Washington with a 5-0 win at home in Game 3. The bigger news, however, could end up being the health of rookie star Andrei Svechnikov. The 19-year old challenged Alex Ovechkin to a fight and was promptly knocked out after about three punches. The ‘Canes forward left the game and did not return.

Micheal Ferland also suffered an upper-body injury and did not return.

I imagine Svech will be out for Game 4 at a minimum and it would not surprise me if he missed the rest of the series. That’s just speculation on my part, of course, but it was a devastating knockout.

Dougie Hamilton scored a pair of goals in the win, both coming on the power play. He had six total shots with two blocks, two hits, and two penalty minutes. Why the coaching staff hasn’t moved him to the top PP unit is beyond me.

The Hurricanes utterly dominated the game from start to finish. Sometimes, a score that reads 5-0 can be misleading. This was not one of those cases.

*

Toronto took a 2-1 series lead over Boston with a 3-2 win on Monday night. Auston Matthews got on the board with a goal and an assist while Andreas Johnsson also had a goal and an assist filling in on the top PP unit for the now-suspended Nazem Kadri.

This was a much tamer affair than the game on the weekend but I’m not very interested in talking about officiating.

*

Update on the late games in the morning. 

*

Time makes fools of us all. While we do our best to predict what’s going to happen in an NHL season beforehand – that’s the entire premise of fantasy sports – there’s no possible way to get everything right.

I wanted to go back to the preseason to our panel of predictions. (Part 1 here, Part 2 here.) We cover everything from breakouts, to busts, to midseason call-ups, trophy winners, and more. Basically, I want to review where some of the predictions went wrong and what we can learn from this.

Naturally, I’ll start with my own failures.

  Dark Horse – Sam Steel

At the outset of the season, I envisioned a transition year for the Ducks. Guys like Ryan Kesler and Corey Perry would still be productive, but likely on the third or fourth lines, while guys like Steel, Troy Terry, and Max Comtois would step up and lead the next wave of the Ducks core.

That wasn’t entirely the case.

Steel’s first foray in the NHL saw three points and 17 shots on goal through 13 games, averaging under 15 minutes a game. We have to think back to the state of the Ducks in October, though: Ryan Getzlaf missed two weeks due to injury, Ondrej Kase was not in the lineup due to his own injury, and Perry was injured as well. With guys like Rickard Rakell, Jakob Silfverberg, and Andrew Cogliano in the top-6, Steel was playing on the third and fourth line most nights with guys who were either unproven or without a lot of offensive skill. He wasn’t exactly put into a position to succeed, and he, Lundestrom, and Terry were eventually sent down either for the rest of the season, or until after the trade deadline.

In all, the underlying numbers weren’t great for Steel but I wonder how much of that is Anaheim being a disaster most of the season. Those numbers were really bad in October, but after his recall at the end of February, he had very strong shot share numbers for the remaining games he dressed. It really was a tale of two seasons for Steel.

I’ve still a believer in his talent and think he can be a good second-line centre in the NHL. I thought that might start in 2018-19 but clearly he needed another year of to get up to speed. I think my mistake was my own beliefs in a player’s potential clouded what I should have seen as a clear development year.  It’s a mistake I’m certain I’ll make again.

  Midseason Call-Up – Eeli Tolvanen

This was a popular pick amongst the Dobber team, and for good reason. There has been fanfare around Tolvanen basically since the moment he was drafted by the Predators, and likely before that from certain corners of the fantasy community. I mean, he was called up in the spring of 2018. It would make sense he’d be called up sometime this season, right?

Note: I know he was called up in December, but he only lasted four games. I don’t think this is what our writers had in mind when they predicted a midseason recall.

There are two ways of looking at Tolvanen’s season: a disappointment because he was not able to make any significant contributions in NHL, or a solid development season with 33 points in 57 AHL games. That might not seem like a great total but Milwaukee was in the lower half of the league in total goals, nobody on the team cracked 50 points, and Tolvanen led the roster in shots on goal with 152 despite missing 18 games. When provided a bit more context, that’s a good year for a 19-year old. (He turns 20 next week.)

It did surprise me that Tolvanen did not get a longer look in the NHL given the injuries suffered by Filip Forsberg and Viktor Arvidsson at different times in the season. Clearly, Nashville felt more development in the AHL was necessary and with their track record at developing talent over the last five years or so, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

To me, this screams value in 2019-20. I imagine that Tolvanen is on the roster out of camp but I also imagine some of the shine has worn off by now. There was a lot of Tolvanen buzz a little over 12 months ago about being a game-changing call-up for the Nashville playoff run. I didn’t see nearly the same fervour going into the 2019 playoffs. Does he fly under the radar this summer and into drafts in September? My money is on yes.

  Probable Bust – Patrick Kane

I understand the thinking here. Following the 2017-18 season, the Blackhawks certainly seemed like a team on the downturn. There had been the breakout of Alex DeBrincat in 2017-18, but Jonathan Toews had three straight years of under 60 points, Brandon Saad was coming off a miserable season, there were other aging players like Keith, Seabrook, and Anisimov, and the team did not make a splash in free agency. Kane himself was coming off his lowest point total (76) in three years and had seen two years of decline post-Panarin. There was every reason to think the Blackhawks would take a dive this year, and Kane’s production would take a dive with them.

Two things changed for Chicago: DeBrincat was better this year than I think even the most ardent DeBrincat supporter could have expected, and Erik Gustafsson came out of nowhere to post 60 points from the blue line. Chicago’s back end looked very thin with an aging core, and Gustafsson really helped solidify it, at least offensively. An additional two minutes of ice time per game for Kane certainly didn’t hurt.

Now, to be fair to those who thought Kane would be a bust, he did have a lot of underlying numbers that were out of line: his individual shooting percentage both at five-on-five and at all strengths was a three-year high, his on-ice shooting percentage at five-on-five was by far a career high, his secondary assist rate was the highest it’s been since 2010-11, and his on-ice shooting percentage on the power play was also a three-year high. It was a rebound, or career year, in many ways for Kane. Not something easily predicted for a 30-year old on what was thought to be a declining team.

An early lesson I learned in fantasy sports is to always bet on talent. Originally, for me, this applied to relief pitchers in fantasy baseball, but it’s very much true in almost any sport; elite talent usually finds a way to be productive almost regardless of circumstance. This certainly isn’t always the case (see: Kopitar, Anze) and I would bet on a modest step back for Kane in 2019-20. All the same, doubting elite talent is a bet I do not often make.

  Sleeper – Antti Raanta

I just want to mention this briefly because I also liked Raanta coming into the year (officially, my pick was Kyle Palmieri) and he had a wonderful season up until the injury issues. Like many people, I wrote off Arizona after the injury, and that was a giant mistake.

Darcy Kuemper had a great year being the starter from basically the middle of December onward. He finished the year with a .925 save percentage, and has a .916 save percentage since becoming an NHL regular in 2013-14, the same rate of saves as Henrik Lundqvist and Jaroslav Halak. Now, his goals saved above average rate since 2013 isn’t very good (read: bad), but after the season he had, he’s going to at least be in the conversation for the starter in Arizona next year.

Sidebar: does anyone realize Kuemper is younger than Raanta?

So here’s the question: which goalie is the sleeper next year? How far does Raanta’s injury and uncertainty surrounding his grip on the starting role push down his ADP? Does Kuemper’s great season and potential push for the top job drive up his ADP? Will these two be drafted in relatively the same tier as, say, Matt Murray and Marc-Andre Fleury were a few years ago? I am fascinated to see where these guys are valued by the market, especially if the Coyotes make some moves this offseason either in the trade or free agency markets. Or both.

  Those were a few misses from myself and the Dobber team from before the 2018-19 season. I’m sure those of you reading this had a few. What were some predictions on player performance that went awry this year? Let us know in the comments.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-svechnikov-injured-kadri-and-thornton-suspended-looking-back-april-16/

[how2to18]

I WAS IN the airport bookstore in Tallinn, Estonia, when I noticed a translation of Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty. This was 2015. It had taken a while for him to reach the Baltics — 24 years, to be exact. That’s a long time compared to other American writers like Paul Auster and Charles Bukowski. Is there something about Elmore Leonard’s work that resists translation?

After reading Charles Rzepka’s Being Cool in paperback reissue (hardback 2013), I venture that there is. In this detailed and deep investigation of Leonard’s sangfroid, Rzepka lays out a number of factors that contribute to a more hermetic American-ness, one that just doesn’t offer foreign translators, publishers, or readers an easy grip on the author’s native charms. And it might matter that most of my translator friends in Estonia are women: I’ll get to that later.

Among the selling points of this study are useful snippets of Leonard’s biography, which Rzepka slips into his readings very dexterously. We learn that Leonard was the good Catholic schoolboy, the son of a General Motors executive, a skilled sand-lot baseball player, and a Seabee during World War II. He trained up as a writer at the Ewald-Campbell Advertising Agency in Detroit and after publishing a number of Western stories (relying on Arizona Highways magazine as his landscape guide), used its severance package to launch his full-time writing career. Although other writers have come up similarly (think of Kurt Vonnegut at GE, or Allen Ginsberg’s gig as a market researcher), Leonard was always very serious about his corporate work. In his fiction, Rzepka notes, “scenes of apprenticeship, mentoring, and testing” are “early versions of ‘being cool’ as a way of defending against self-dispossession by anger or panic.”

Rzepka dovetails this background of the “organization man” with Leonard’s self-schooling in the mechanics of the Western, showing the disciplined bones beneath early classics such as “Three-Ten to Yuma” (1953). There is great finesse here, not just the tricky plot reversals that strike us on first reading or viewing. By the time we reach an account of Leonard’s The Big Bounce (1969), his first crime novel, Rzepka has imparted a very modern sense of what the genre writer is. Like Cormac McCarthy, Leonard is above all a writer who does research, who knows that art is work and who works at it every day, who polishes his dialogue until not a word “sounds like writing” and strives to eliminate the “sharp elbows” in his plotting that might cause a reader to pause.

I myself came to Leonard with City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit (1980). I had just signed to write a book on Dashiell Hammett, so I was reading the two authors in tandem, and I found that Leonard had none of Hammett’s pop and repartee. But I could see that these were well-managed narratives, so I continued with Glitz (1985) and Freaky Deaky (1988). Then Carl Hiassen came into view and usurped this particular channel in my interests. And that’s another clue, I think, in explaining why Elmore Leonard has not traveled as well as Bukowski or Auster or Hiassen. His cool is hermetic.

Leonard doesn’t offer foreign readers what my academic colleagues would call affordances, a feature of visual design that tells you a doorknob is for turning or a ball is for throwing. If you are the translator of Raymond Chandler, you wait for his elaborate metaphors with relish; they are a challenge and a chance to have fun. Hemingway, meanwhile, is a par course and García Márquez a master class in syntax, while Bukowski sends you deep into the resources of your native slang. Leonard, by contrast, worked to make his presence invisible, to eliminate all the literary speech, to remove all the plot elbows. Translating him might be like recreating Amish chairs.

How Leonard achieved such seeming simplicity is what Rzepka calls his techne, Aristotle’s (and Thomas Aquinas’s) term for “skill.” The skills here are all in the service of “flow,” a being-in-the-moment sense that athletes know well: it is not timelessness, but such a high degree of practice that what comes next has been anticipated, has been set up so that there is no visible transition. According to Rzepka, this is what all of Leonard’s protagonists strive for too, but it took about a decade for the author and his heroes to meld style with character. The obstacle was that the style needed a certain amount of “flow” in order to avoid appearing wooden. The flow seems to readers to be improvisation, but actually it consists of subtle parallels, repetitions, and omissions: think of Joe Morello’s drum solo in “Take Five” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. In this scene from Mr. Majestyk (1974), for instance, the protagonist almost sets his nephew straight about a certain woman:

“Listen,” Mr. Majestyk said then. “That broad on the phone —” “Yeah?” Mr. Majestyk smiled, self-conscious, showing his white perfect teeth. He shrugged then. “Why should I say anything — right? You’re old enough.” “I was about to mention it,” Ryan said.

Then there is Nancy, in the same novel, characterized — via free indirect discourse, says Rzepka — by her internal repetitions:

She sat quietly while Ray and his group whipped off to Chicago to attend the dumb meeting or look at the dumb plant and make big important decisions about their dumb business. Wow. And she sat here waiting for him.

Considering “cool,” of course, always leads back to Hemingway, for whom courage was “grace under pressure.” In his short story “Soldiers’ Home,” the character Krebs thinks about the lies he has been telling since returning from World War I. He has lost

all of the times that had been able to make him feel cool and clear inside himself when he thought of them; the times so long back when he had done the one thing, the only thing for a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done something else, now lost their cool, valuable quality and then were lost themselves.

That clearly includes killing people.

This is very close to what “cool” means to Leonard too, but Rzepka insists that his characters always feel at home in their skins, that these are not the intermittent “times” of Hemingway but a continuous flow, “never forgetting who you really were.” No Krebs’s moments of lying. This inspires the cool ones to “always dress well,” to “always be polite on the job,” and to “never say more than is necessary.” That some of these internal character rules are among Leonard’s rules for writing, leading to a synthesis of style and character, may be among the problems confronting translation.

While the reader of this book may flash back to Hemingway, it is impossible to read about Leonard’s dialogue without flashing forward to Richard Price. This is not a topic that Rzepka takes up, but the relation became explicit in a 2015 Washington Post interview with Price: “He admire[s] the great Elmore Leonard, perhaps the only writer in America that one could say surpassed him in street dialogue.” But Price does precious little research and admits to “making it up.” “I’m a good mimic,” he says.

Once you get the patter of how someone talks, you can replicate it. It’s not verbatim … It’s like after George Bush was president for eight years, if you told everybody in America to do Bush reading Shakespeare, everybody could do it. Maybe you’d [screw] up the Shakespeare, but you’d get the idea of how it would sound.

So perhaps it all does come down to craft: as the author of Clockers says elsewhere, “Realistic dialogue is interminable and goes nowhere. Good dialogue is about heightened reality, nudging it into a form that doesn’t really exist in the way people talk.” And the way people talk is gendered. If you are a translator, that’s another of your affordances, so that if you are a woman translating Hammett or Paul Auster, you can invoke and understand the gender gradations or oppositions that inform their worlds. Christine Le Bœuf once translated “The coot was stuck on her” in Auster’s The Book of Illusions as “Le vieux avait le béguin pour elle.” That’s gender genius because, while the contemporary meaning of “béguin” is “crush,” it was originally a hood worn in convents. The coot doesn’t get the girl in this novel, but the historic resonance of the word choice makes the French reader brake and shift gears. Le Bœuf told me that she worked on and worried about that word for several days.

But if “cool” has now become friction-free, then it’s more difficult to suggest the frisson behind the speech of Mr. Majestyk. Perhaps the foreign reader needs to know the films made from Leonard’s novels? But that’s not necessary with Richard Price, whose French translations read like sips of Grand Marnier. In Leonard’s A Coyote’s in the House (2004), the titular quadruped looks down on Hollywood and thinks, “It was their turf.” We understand the “cool” of that in American English, but there’s not much for a translator to work with. It becomes “C’était leur territoire” in French. And that’s not cool at all.

¤

William Marling, Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University, is the author of several books on the detective novel and, most recently, of Gatekeepers: The Emergence of World Literature (Oxford University Press, 2016).

The post In the Flow: On Charles J. Rzepka’s “Being Cool: The Work of Elmore Leonard” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

Rick Tocchet sleeps off mistakes, accepts hard Coyotes challenge

On three different occasions during his introduction as Arizona Coyotes head coach, Rick Tocchet mentioned that there are only 31 jobs of this nature in the National Hockey League.

He had one of them before, with the Tampa Bay Lightning from 2008-10. He went 53-69-26, failing to make the playoffs in either of his two seasons.

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His assistant coach in Tampa, Mike Sullivan, had also flamed out in his first head coaching gig with the Boston Bruins, losing his job after two seasons. He was given a second crack at it with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016, and kept Tocchet aboard as an assistant coach after his promotion.

Together, they won back-to-back Stanley Cups.

Tocchet’s résumé was basically rewritten, having been credited as the “players’ coach” while Sullivan was bad cop. He found a way to motivate Phil Kessel, was a sage for the Penguins’ young supporting cast and had grown as a coach since his stint with the Lightning.

There are only 31 head coaching jobs in the NHL.

It was time for Tocchet to have another one.

“For me, he’s one of the best communicators I’ve come across, in hockey but professionally as well,” said John Chayka, the Coyotes’ president of hockey operations and general manager, who did thorough homework on his new hire. “The phrase ‘best coach I ever had’ was used so much, it’s almost a tag line.”

Tocchet’s advantage as a communicator with players? That they see him as one of their own, no matter how they play the game.

He banked 1,144 games in the NHL from 1984-2002. The skill players see the 48 goals he scored in 1992-93. The supporting cast sees his ability to play in a top six role, a prototypical power forward during an era when that position was at a premium. The grunts see him as a player who could drop down to the bottom six and play a role, amassing 2,972 penalty minutes in his career.

And he sees them.

“Communication is just a flow. I don’t have a blueprint on it. I guy can come into my office, I can just see how the flow should be. And I’ve been in that seat before,” he said.

Tocchet gets plenty of credit for getting Kessel to a Conn Smythe level of play, but perhaps not enough for his work with the Penguins’ younger players. Chayka was quick to mention defenseman Brian Dumoulin and forwards Conor Sheary and Jake Guentzel as Tocchet success stories. He’s also quick to credit him with being one of the only coaches he’s interviewed that can back up his words with examples of success and realistic plans for success.

“He wants to play with the puck. Play aggressive, play fast. We had a lot of coaches come through and say something similar, but he had a concrete plan on how to do it,” said Chayka. “He doesn’t just have the buzzwords down. He knows how to do it.”

Tocchet wants to play fast and make it fun. He wants the creative players to create. To simplify things. It’s the kind of thing Sullivan was credited with doing when he took over the Penguins, after Mike Johnston got a little systems-happy. The spark that approach gave players like Sidney Crosby and Phil Kessel was apparent and palpable.

“I don’t want to take the stick out of guys’ hands. I want them to be creative. I don’t want them to think too much. I want them to play,” said Tocchet.

There are only 31 head coaching jobs in the NHL.

The majority of them do not involve being “good cop.”

One of the things Tocchet learned from Sullivan was that the buck must stop with the head coach. He relied on his staff for input, but ultimately the big decisions that helped the Penguins win consecutive Stanley Cups – Sidney Crosby’s linemates, the goaltending changes – were triggers pulled by Sullivan. The backlash would have been his. But he had a knack for making the right calls.

Tocchet was watching.

“I’m a more decisive guy now. He gives his staff a lot of autonomy, and then he makes the decision. I like that,” he said. “But you have to be decisive, and Sully is. I’ve learned that over the years, that there are going to be some unpopular decisions.”

Tocchet was learning.

“I think early in my career in Tampa, I got swayed a little bit on decisions. I think I’ll be a little bit more decisive. I know I will,” he said.

But here’s the challenge for Tocchet: Can one make the unpopular decisions and still be one of the boys? Can a head coach, whose decisions can sometimes lean hard into everything from team politics to economics, separate the business from the personal, or at least combine both in a reasonable way for his players?

“That’s the million dollar question. I don’t want to change as a person. I don’t think when you get a title as ‘head coach’ that you have to be distant from the players,” said Tocchet.

Except there’s no question that things have changed for Tocchet.

There are only 31 head coaching jobs in the NHL.

He’s taking one with a team for whom he played, and for whom he was once an assistant coach after his playing days were over, beginning in 2005.

“I’d be lying if it didn’t cross my mind. I think it means something to him to be an Arizona Coyote,” said Chayka. “It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to sit back and do another year with Pittsburgh. He’s taking a chance on us. I respect that.”

He’s also taking one with a team that saw him take a leave of absence because he was facing federal charges.

In Feb. 2006, Tocchet was charged with helping to fund a national gambling ring based out of New Jersey. He took leave from his job with the Coyotes. In May 2007, Tocchet pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to promote gambling and promoting gambling, and received two years probation. By the time the NHL finished its own investigation, and Gary Bettman reinstated him, Tocchet had been away from the Coyotes for nearly two years.

This is an inescapable part of his legacy with the Coyotes, and perhaps the first thing that came to mind for some fans when news broke about his hiring.

“He’s a man of character and integrity. Any issues that are in the past are in the past. It didn’t raise any red flags for us,” said Chayka. “His track record speaks for itself.”

The controversy is so far back in Tocchet’s rearview mirror that it’s invisible to him.

“Uh, shoot … I haven’t really thought of it,” he said, when asked to think about it. “It’s 10 years ago. Put it this way: What happened 10 years ago? I sleep well. I slept well then, I sleep well know. I’ve won two Stanley Cups since then. It’s in the past. I don’t even think about that stuff to be honest with you.”

Assuming he’s thought about it for, like, a moment: Did he learn anything from the ordeal?

“You learn lessons in life, for sure. I’m not going to get into it, but like I said, I slept very well at night when it happened,” he said, before pivoting back to hockey. “I want to see how a player reacts from his mistakes on the ice or off the ice. To me, that’s high character guys that can do that. That they can come back from certain things.”

Tocchet has come back to the Coyotes at a critical time. There are a slew of young players on the roster and on the way up that he’ll be tasked with making NHL ready. Chayka believes the Coyotes can be good if the team over-performs, but Tocchet wasn’t ready to make any promises. “We want to have pressure. We want to be relevant in these games,” he said. “You never know what happens. There are always surprise teams.”

Then, off the ice, there’s the ongoing drama. The influence of owner Andrew Barroway, who bought out his minority owners and had an active role in the team’s decisions to part ways with captain Shane Doan and coach Dave Tippett.

Chayka said Barroway came into the conversation after Tocchet was determined to be the frontrunner by himself and assistant general manager Steve Sullivan. Said Tocchet: “They reached out to me a few times. I had really good discussions with John and Andrew.”

The bottom line is that Barroway not only signed off on Tocchet – not a surprise, considering he was a lifelong Philadelphia Flyers fan and Tocchet was a fan favorite there – but convinced him not to fret about the team’s ongoing arena drama.

Perhaps some of that optimism came from the news announced on Wednesday: Steve Patterson was named the team’s new president and CEO, having helped bring the Texans and the Super Bowl to Houston, as well as leading “the development of the 425 acre Sports Facilities District adjacent to the University in downtown Tempe” as Managing Director of Sun Devil Sports Group, Vice President for Athletics and Athletic Director for Sun Devil Athletics at Arizona State University.

Whatever the message, Tocchet was convinced to sign on with the Coyotes. “He asked good questions. He got the answers he was looking for,” said Chayka.

“I think that’ll rectify itself,” said Tocchet on the arena. “This a hockey market. They get in the right situation, it’ll burst out. And if that happens, my job here is a premiere job.”

The team believes he’s the right coach for the job. Tocchet believes it’s the right time in his career to take on the challenge, and the right team to coach.

“I know the market. I know the direction that they want to go. So it was an attractive job for me,” said Tocchet.

“Plus, there are only 31 jobs in the NHL.”

—

Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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[thrashermaxey]

21 Fantasy Hockey Rambles

Every Sunday, we'll share 21 Fantasy Rambles – formerly 20 Fantasy Thoughts – from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week's ‘Daily Ramblings’.

Writers: Michael Clifford, Ian Gooding, Cam Robinson, and Dobber

  1. One season does not make a career, but despite the high shooting percentage, it was a marvelous campaign for Hawks’ Erik Gustafsson.

The question is if he maintains his power-play role; he had more than 100 minutes at five-on-four over the next-closest Blackhawks defenseman. Henri Jokiharju looked great whenever they allowed him to play in the NHL, while Adam Boqvist was a top-10 pick last year for the franchise and has been tearing up the OHL playoffs.

It seems certain that unless he falls off the map (he won’t), Gustafsson should have the PP role for 2019-20. Beyond that? Less certain. (apr12)

  2. You know who the Leafs don’t need? William Nylander. I mean, sure you could use a second-line talent with good first-line upside. But they have enough of those and could shed one if it means keeping a top-six character player who brings other things to the table.

Since Nylander makes the money he does, logically he would be the best one to shed. Still shaking my head over that “not trading Nylander” comment from Kyle Dubas. Nylander is a great top six forward, perhaps even a first liner, but there are several dozen of him in the league – most definitely not a rare commodity.

And if he costs the team keeping the likes of Andreas Johnsson or Kasperi Kapanen (I won’t even consider them losing Mitch Marner over keeping Nylander, I shudder), and prevents the team from acquiring a No.3 or 4 D, then that’s too big a sacrifice. (apr8)

  3. The reason I am not a big fan of Alex Nylander in keeper leagues? Injuries. He had himself a nice season this year taking a big step forward in his pro career after a couple of steps backward. But he had a different injury wipe out two of his training camps, back-to-back, and then finally getting an opportunity with Buffalo that looks as though he is there to stay – and he gets hurt again.

If every time Nylander gets some sort of opportunity, or gets on a role he suffers an injury, he’s never going to get going. There are too many other prospects to roll the dice on, so I’ll leave the younger Nylander to someone else.

I just realized I’m kinda trashing on both Nylander brothers today. Time to write something nice: Both have tremendous upside and I really like William as a potential first-liner – no matter what team he plays for. In fact, I think it’s better for both him and the Leafs if he went somewhere else. He would flourish elsewhere and they would address some serious needs. (apr8)

  4. By far the biggest question regarding the Flames entering the playoffs was their goaltending. Mike Smith had been downright awful during significant stretches of the season, so would he be able to hold up during the playoffs? Why didn’t the Flames give David Rittich a go instead?

Smith has found his game and then some. Since he doesn’t fit the definition of a stud goalie, he fits the definition of a hot goalie, which can just as well get the job done in the playoffs if he can be hot for long enough.

Even though Smith has a brief playoff history for a goalie of his service time, his career playoff numbers are outstanding (11-8, 1.79 GAA, .947 SV% entering Game 2). Maybe that could have counted for something in coach Bill Peters’ decision to start him in Game 1? The numbers aren’t recent, though, as his last playoff experience was in 2011-12 when he led the Coyotes to the conference final (his playoff numbers are mainly from that season). It’s more likely that Smith’s much-improved play swayed the decision (9-5-1, 2.08 GAA, .916 SV% since February 14). (apr14)

  5. This year’s Dobby Awards!

Fantasy Player of the Year: Andrei Vasilevskiy. It’s not a coincidence that the teams that won each of my leagues that involve goalies, owned Vas. As I noted to one GM when we were discussing the fairness of the goalie points system in that league: “Owning Vasilevskiy under these rules right now is like owning Gretzky in 1986.”

Vasilevskiy  only played 53 games thanks to a broken foot, and yet he still managed 39 wins. If healthy all year, he may have taken a run at 50 wins. He also boasted a 0.925 SV% in an era where goaltenders don’t really do that very often.

Runner-Up: Nikita Kucherov, who finished with 128 points, 12 more than the next player and the highest total in 23 years. (apr8)

  6. Fantasy Rookie of the Year: Jordan Binnington. I wrestled with this one for a long time because I’m a huge Elias Pettersson fan and feel he will be an elite player. As in, top-5 in the league. Meanwhile, Binnington could Jim Carrey his way out of the NHL and become this massive bust. But we’ll always remember this year.

In the end, I asked myself: which rookie did the most to help a fantasy owner win? And frankly, Winnington turned more than a few fantasy squads around on his own this year. So, even though I would much sooner own runner-up Pettersson and honorable-mention Rasmus Dahlin by a wide, wide, ridiculously wide margin in keeper leagues, Binnington has to be the ROY in fantasy hockey. (apr8)

  7. Fourth Year Magic Award: Dylan Larkin teased in Year 3 with 63 points and then took another huge step this season with 73. This is quite the feat when you consider that no other Detroit player reached 55.

Runner-Up: Max Domi jumped from 45 points in his third year to 72. He was a big reason why the Habs made it to Game 81 before finally being eliminated from the playoffs. (apr8)

  8. Second-Half Stud Award: Patrick Kane’s 59 points in 39 games tied Nikita Kucherov in scoring since January 5. It was also a nice jump from his already-solid first-half pace of 51 points in 42 games.

Runner-Up: Sean Couturier, who had 47 points in the last 42 games after starting out with 29 in 38. This was despite managing just three points and going minus-9 in the final seven contests. (apr8)

  9. Second-Half Swoon Award: Patrik Laine had 20 measly points in the last 49 games after starting the season with 30 in 33.

Runner-Up: Jeff Skinner was a revelation with 44 points in 45 games to start the year. He was going to demolish his career high of 63 points, no question about it. That is, until he didn’t. Just 19 in his last 37 to finish up with, you guessed it, 63 points. Congrats to anyone who traded either of these players in January. (apr8)

  10. Although Art Ross Trophy winner Nikita Kucherov was the top-ranked player in playoff pools, he has been held without a point in two games so far and will still be scoreless in the playoffs after Game 3 because of his one-game suspension.

Steven Stamkos and Brayden Point, who were projected to go second and third, have also been held without a point in the first two games (see our Dobber Hockey Experts Panel picks for more). In addition, Kucherov has been held to just two goals in his last 14 playoff games. He’s been getting it done and then some in the regular season, but not so much in the playoffs when the intensity is turned up several notches.

So, if the Lightning is eliminated in the first round, does that mean the folks that didn’t pick any Lightning players will win their playoff pools? It probably isn’t that simple, but it goes to show that playoff pools aren’t as easy to predict as you might think and sometimes a counterintuitive strategy (although more risky) wins in the end. The silver lining is that if the Bolts come back and win this series, you’ll probably get the same four or five games of production out of them than you thought you would receive from them in the first round anyway.

It's funny how in two short games that the narrative on the Lightning has shifted from being the model franchise to the ultimate choke team. A win in Game 3 would go a long way toward righting the ship. A loss, well… (apr14)

  11. Jordan Weal has teased us at the end of the season like this before. And the last time he did it, he was set to become a UFA and earned himself a two-year, one-way contract.

I think his progress was derailed by the Flyers lucking into the draft lottery win and adding Nolan Patrick to the lineup. It nudged Weal down the roster and he hasn’t done much of anything since.

Here he is, set to become a UFA again and he ends things in Montreal with eight points in nine games. What kind of contract he earns from that should determine how much of a chance he will get. And to be fair, he had plenty of top-six opportunities in Arizona, but couldn’t find the chemistry. He is clearly a guy who will lean on chemistry with a talented player for his points. (apr8)

  12. Vince Dunn has long been thought of as an offensive defenseman. He had 99 points over his final 120 games in the OHL, and had 45 points in 72 games as a 20-year old rookie in the AHL back in 2016-17.

All I’m saying for now is that I’m leery of predicting some sort of Erik Gustafsson-esque breakout. In St. Louis, there is still Alex Pietrangelo’s ice time to contend with and Colton Parayko isn’t someone to just eschew. Of course, Dunn is still just 22 years old, so the fact that we’re even talking about him potentially being an offensive factor from the blue line is a very good sign. (apr12)

  13. When we look at the list of top producers per minute from the blue line at five-on-four, most of the names make sense. We see Torey Krug, Dustin Byfuglien, Keith Yandle, Victor Hedman, and Morgan Rielly, among others. Who’s the defenseman that finished second in points/60 minutes at five-on-four this year (minimum of 100 minutes)? It was Rangers’ Neal Pionk.

In fact, over the last two years, Pionk leads all defensemen in points/60 minutes on the power play. Yes, all defensemen. Granted, it’s limited ice time (140 minutes or so) but it’s been an unbelievable run.

I think a bit of caution should be used here. Pionk had a poor season defensively, as much of the rest of the team did. Tony DeAngelo had a good season for the team even if coach David Quinn wouldn’t play him every night. Kevin Shattenkirk is still lurking and I’m sure he’d like to have a rebound season of his own. I’m not entirely sure what the Rangers are going to do on the blue line next year. I’m not entirely sure the Rangers know what the Rangers are going to do on the blue line next year.

There could be some sneaky value here should: A) Pionk be a regular next year again and; B) no one else is brought in. There are a lot of moving parts that can change in the next 5-6 months. (apr12)

  14. I’m interested to see what Robin Lehner’s contract ends up being this summer. A lengthy postseason run with the Isles could mean a significant pay raise. Cap league owners are watching carefully. (apr11)

  15. In spite of the loss in Game 2 vs the Predators, Ben Bishop was stellar, stopping 40 of 42 shots to keep the Stars in this game. With his 1.92 GAA and .946 SV% in two playoff games, Bishop is carrying a strong regular season into the playoffs, where he has been the Stars’ best player so far. Bishop finished the regular season with a 1.98 GAA and .934 SV% and seven shutouts, which are numbers that could result in a Vezina Trophy nomination. (apr14)

  16. David Savard had a marvelous season for Columbus. It’s a shame he’s stuck behind Seth Jones and Zach Werenski on the PP depth chart. I would like to see him get top power play minutes sometime. (apr11)

  17. So, I wanted to take a stab at what the NHL might look like in four years. Ready to be made a fool of again? I am.

A lot of stars have signed huge contracts in recent seasons with lengths of anywhere from six to eight years. A lot of those contracts will be running out in the same three-year span, and that will lead to a lot of talent in unrestricted free agency, even if they’re older.

Per Cap Friendly, here are some of the names that could theoretically be available after the 2022-23 season: Patrick Kane, Vladimir Tarasenko, Jonathan Toews, David Pastrnak, Sean Monahan, Nathan MacKinnon, Dylan Larkin, Ryan O’Reilly, Max Pacioretty, James van Riemsdyk, Jonathan Huberdeau, Shayne Gostisbehere, and Bo Horvat. That kind of talent in a single free agent class is almost surreal.

Of course, as alluded to, a lot of players will be in their 30s by that point. There are a handful of guys who will be in their mid-to-late 20s like MacKinnon, Pastrnak, Monahan, and Larkin. With the likelihood of a lockout looming, will some of the older players not named who will also be UFA like Milan Lucic, Kyle Okposo and Duncan Keith be bought out?

The younger guys, I’m sure, will be extended by their current teams. What about everyone else? Wouldn’t it be cool for Toews and Kane to do what Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne did and take cheap contracts to sign somewhere together? Regardless, in a few years’ time, there will be a lot of high-profile free agents that will start hitting the market. (apr10)

  18. It seems pretty likely that Colorado is one of the top teams in the league in four years, isn’t it? They’ll have Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen on the roster, Samuel Girard will be a top-tier puck-mover, Cale Makar has the look of a future Norris Trophy contender, and then there’s Ottawa’s top pick from this year. There will be a great core to build around and if management can manage to not pull an Edmonton or Buffalo, it will hopefully be a championship core.

Of course, there is a lot else the team will have to deal with. Their captain, Gabriel Landeskog, is a free agent after the 2020-21 season. Will he still be around? Will Tyson Barrie? Will any of the young guys currently on the roster like J.T. Compher, Alex Kerfoot and Tyson Jost be making an impact on the 2022-23 roster? This is certainly a team on the rise, but the toughest leap to make is from a good team to a championship-calibre team. Can the Avs be that team?

I say yes. There were some early bumps in the road but the Avalanche management group has made solid deals over the last year or so. As long as they can keep making positive deals for the franchise, there’s no reason to believe they’ll flounder. I believe that in April 2023, we’ll be talking about the Avalanche as one of the top franchises in the league, returning to the glory they enjoyed early in the franchise’s existence. (apr10)

  19. Cale Makar is the 2018-19 Hobey Baker winner. After playing in Saturday’s championship game, it’s possible that he could debut with the Avalanche as early as Game 3 on Monday night. Of course, we’ll be keeping an eye on the top prospect blueliner should he enter the Avs’ lineup. With 49 points in 40 games with UMass, the 2017 fourth overall pick is definitely a blueliner that should be heavily sought-after in keeper leagues. (apr13)

Not that I’m not looking forward to seeing Makar in the NHL, but what an introduction to the top professional hockey league; “Here ya go kid, you’re starting your career in a playoff series against the top team (Flames) in the West.” (apr11)

  20. Dustin Byfuglien was injured on December 29. He returned in early February for five games and then was injured again, not returning until the end of March. That’s important because Byfuglien is a top-pair defenseman whose relative expected goals against numbers were among the top-20 defenseman league-wide this year.

Over the last three years, Mark Scheifele’s shot share numbers drop from nearly 53 percent to under 49 percent when he’s not on the ice with Byfuglien, while Bryan Little’s drops from 52.2 percent to 49.2 percent. Big Buff is an important player. (apr9)

  21. Legendary coach Joel Quenneville was hired by the Florida Panthers to be their next bench boss last Monday. He replaces the recently fired Bob Boughner and will try to take the Panthers to the playoffs for the first time in four years, and past the first round for the first time in over 20 years. You can read Dobber’s take on the hiring here.

All I will say is that I do not believe coaching was and is the issue with the Panthers. I’ll leave it at that. (apr9)

  Have a good week, folks!!

  from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-home/21-fantasy-hockey-rambles/21-fantasy-hockey-rambles-13/

[thrashermaxey]

Ramblings: Updates on Malkin, Letang, Karlsson, and Kuemper; Down Years – April 4

    Good news for Pens fans as Evgeni Malkin was skating at practice on Wednesday in a normal jersey. He hasn’t played in nearly three weeks but the team was always hopeful he’d get a game or two before playoffs, and that may be on Thursday against Detroit. I suppose it’s not much comfort to fantasy owners who lost him in semi-final or final week, but fantasy owners with Malkin should be prepared for extended absences by now. 

In practice, Malkin was flanked by Phil Kessel and Bryan Rust while Jared McCann was reunited with Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel.

We should note that Letang took part in the full practice, even skating on the second power-play unit, though he was still in a non-contact jersey. His status for the playoffs is less certain.

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In other injury news, Erik Karlsson took part in a full practice with the Sharks on Wednesday. Whether he’s ready for a week from now, we’ll see.

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With Arizona’s playoff hopes hanging by a thread, the team looks to be without Darcy Kuemper who may have sustained an eye injury on Tuesday night getting poked with a stick. The Coyotes have called up Adin Hill, which seems to assure that Kuemper will be out at least one game. Let’s just hope there’s no serious damage here.

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The Vegas Golden Knights signed college defenceman Jimmy Schuldt to a one-year contract. He’ll be a restricted free agent after this season, at which point I imagine Vegas will give him a two- or three-year deal. Our own Brad Phillips wrote on Schuldt about a year ago. I recommend giving it a read.

In general, this is a good time to be paying attention to Dobber Prospects. We’ll have a lot of playoff content here at Dobber Hockey,= to be sure, but it’s also a time when our Prospects team is busy covering everything you need for the up-and-comers. You can read Peter Harling’s Ramblings from Wednesday here, just to get you caught up a little bit.

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Speaking of playoffs, the 2019 Dobber Hockey Playoff Draft List is available for pre-order now and will be available to download at the end of the week. Get the help you need for your playoff pools!

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Just a quick thought: Mats Zuccarello is a very important player to the Dallas Stars. With him in the lineup, it gives the team two legitimate scoring lines teams need to worry about, something teams didn’t need to fret over before the trade. He just needs to stay in the lineup.

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Updates on the games in the morning. 

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A couple days ago in these Ramblings, I wrote up some players who had a breakout of sorts in 2017-18 and followed that up with a solid-to-great 2018-19 season. This could have been established players finally reaching their ceiling, or young stars without much of a track record making the most of their opportunity. It was just to point out some guys upon whom we can now rely in the fantasy game moving forward.

I thought it would be worth writing up the other side of this coin; if there were players who followed up a stellar 2017-18 with a stellar 2018-19, then were there players who did not have a good 2018-19 in response to their breakout 2017-18? Let’s dive right in.

  Yanni Gourde

A favourite of many before he stepped foot into the NHL because of solid production in the AHL, Gourde made the most of his 2017-18 with 25 goals and 64 points. He was a top-100 player in almost any fantasy setup and with him skating on what looked to be a high-powered squad on the verge of multi-year dominance, there was a lot of hope that the 60-plus points would be the norm.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Gourde has 47 points in 78 games. So what went wrong?

It should be noted there’s nothing wrong with his goal scoring. He’s managed 22 goals this year after a season that featured 25 tallies. He does need to shoot more – he’s 200th out of 267 forwards in shot rate this year at five-on-five – but there is nothing wrong with his goal scoring. It’s his assists, of which there are 14 fewer this year than last, that are the issue.

When looking at his stats, it seems like it’s death by 1000 cuts for Gourde rather than any one single thing:

His on-ice shooting percentage at five-on-five, or the rate at which the team scores with him on the ice, fell from 11.5 percent in 2017-18 to 10.1 percent in 2018-19. It should be noted that 10.1 percent is still a very good mark, it’s just that the year before it was a bit too high.

His individual points percentage (IPP), or the rate at which he garners points on goals scored when he’s on the ice, fell from 73 percent last year to 66.7 percent this year. That rate this year puts him near the middle of the league which is, again, just fine.

His secondary assist rate at five-on-five, which we know is mostly random for forwards, fell from 0.69 last year to 0.44 this year.

His IPP on the power play declined to 44.4 percent this season from 65 percent a year ago, so even though he’s been on the ice for nearly as many PP goals (18) as last season (20), he’s lost three assists.

During the offseason, we’ll dig further into the how of all this but for now, at least we know why there was such a decline in assists.

Realistically, a guy with over 20 goals and pushing 50 points who doesn’t get prime PP minutes and is playing under 16 minutes a night, is a productive guy. It was just below the expectation he set for himself. Can he rebound? That’ll be something else for another day.

  William Karlsson

I think the player almost everyone assumed would see a major pullback after a breakout season was the top Vegas centre. A guy with 18 career goals in over 180 career games suddenly exploded for 43 markers while shooting in excess of 23 percent. It didn’t take a brain genius to figure out this puzzle.

But is his production this year indicative of his and his line mates’ true talent? That’s a much better puzzle.

As things stand on Wednesday afternoon, the top line for Vegas has an expected goal rate at five-on-five of 2.8 per 60 minutes. Their actual goals scored sits at 2.9 per 60 minutes. While there is some debate as to whether the expected goals captures everything a line does offensively, it’s one of the best predictive measures we have right now. As far as we can tell, this is about the true talent level of this line (which is still an excellent trio at both ends of the ice).

The line’s expected goals rate and shot attempts generated have been similar to last year so the difference is all shooting percentage driven: the team scored on 11.3 percent of shots last year to 8.6 percent this year with the Karlsson-Marchessault-Smith trio on the ice. Everything else about Karlsson’s season is about normal, with his IPP (68.5) near last year’s mark (70.2) and his assists per 60 (1.17) actually a bit higher than last year (1.11).

This is about the season we should expect from Karlsson unless the top PP unit is one that is heavily-used next year. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a 25-goal, 60-point season from the centre of a good top line. He has upside beyond that with increased PP production but that’s about it.

  Ivan Provorov

A little over two years ago, I was asked a question on Twitter that read as follows: If you exclude McDavid, Laine, Matthews, and Eichel, who do you start your franchise with? I answered:

  I say Marner for now, but maybe a year away from saying Provorov #BellLetsTalk https://t.co/SsO9vQH4Mv

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) January 25, 2017

  After Provorov put up 17 goals and 41 points in 2017-18, which included solid defensive metrics per Evolving Hockey, I was feeling pretty confident in that answer.

The 2018-19 season has given me a lot of doubt.

Without diving deep, all of Provorov’s metrics have declined. His offensive play-driving has declined, his defensive game has declined, and the production have gone down. As far as the metrics are concerned, playing with Robert Hagg (who has been atrocious) has hurt his overall numbers, but they’re still not good for Provorov even without Hagg. Part of me wonders if his playing through that bad shoulder injury in the playoffs last year lingered into this year. Maybe his offseason training was pushed back and he was never able to catch up once the season started. With his pedigree and strong first two seasons, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

As far as the production is concerned, there’s nothing too out of line. His IPP is 32.8 percent, near the middle of the league, and in the same range as guys like Alex Pietrangelo and Jacob Trouba. His on-ice shooting percentage fell but only by about half a percent, and his secondary assist rate actually went up. Aside from a few assists here and there, most of the point drop came from goal scoring.  It should be noted he had three empty-net goals in 2017-18, the most in the league for a defenceman. There’s part of his goals drop (he has none this year). His shot rate at five-on-five has dropped by about 23 percent and that, combined with a small shooting percentage drop, has meant four fewer goals at 5v5 (which includes those empty-net goals). Combined with a bagel on the power play (zero goals on 20 shots), and now we know why his goal total has dropped.

Again, I do wonder if the shot rate drop is because of a lingering shoulder issue. That’s just pure speculation on my part, but it would explain the sudden drop-off after two years of solid shot rates for a young defenceman.

I do believe the Flyers are a team on the rise and this will be a higher-scoring franchise next year. We have to keep in mind how productive he’s been at such a young age: Provorov is one of five defencemen since the 2005 lockout to post 30 goals and 60 assists in their age 20-22 seasons. The others are Dion Phaneuf, Drew Doughty, Erik Karlsson, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. As long as Provorov isn’t the next Phaneuf, he’ll be a good fantasy option for a long time, especially in multi-cat leagues.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-updates-on-malkin-letang-karlsson-and-kuemper-down-years-april-4/

[thrashermaxey]

Ramblings: Karlsson Trade Impact on Senators, Blackhawks Injuries, Keeper Decisions (Sept 16)

Karlsson Trade Impact on Senators, Blackhawks Injuries, Keeper Decisions

Don’t forget to purchase your Fantasy Guide before your draft comes and goes! And if you purchased it a while ago, download the latest copy from the Downloads page. Read through some of the articles. Have a look at the projections, including the updates made to Ottawa and San Jose as a result of the Erik Karlsson trade.

Speaking of which, you’ll want to check out Mike’s piece on the fantasy impact of the Karlsson deal for both teams. From the Ottawa side, I’ll agree with Mike that I don’t think this deal itself helps anyone outside of Thomas Chabot, although another injury will help another player heading to Ottawa. More on that shortly.

Chabot might end up with a plus-minus of about minus-100 playing for a dreadful Ottawa team (yes, I’m exaggerating on that number, but you get the idea). The Senators lack veteran d-men that can take on the tough minutes. But I believe the Karlsson trade adds about 5-10 points to his projected point total and 3-4 minutes of icetime per game while vaulting him onto the first power-play unit. Whether he’s ready or not, he’ll be jumping head first into the water this season. He should already be owned in keeper leagues, while he’s worth drafting in the later rounds in single-season leagues.

The Jean-Gabriel Pageau injury (out six months with a torn Achilles) likely moves Chris Tierney up to the second line. Tierney was a bottom-6 forward for the Sharks, but he’ll be leaned on heavily and seems a good bet that he’ll start the season on the second line, although Colin White could work his way up into that role. Drake Batherson’s changes of making the Senators should also improve because of this injury. All three forwards’ fantasy values improve with the injury news, as Pageau could be out all season.

Some news on Karlsson: He’s expected to receive an eight-year contract offer from the Sharks (NHL.com).

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We finally know more about Corey Crawford’s injury, and the news isn’t good. Crawford has been sidelined with a concussion, and it doesn’t look like he’ll be ready for the start of the season. This isn’t good news for fantasy owners who drafted him at a discount hoping that his ability would outperform his draft ranking, which had already fallen with the speculation that he still hadn’t recovered from a concussion. Crawford was having an impressive season (16-9-2, 2.27 GAA, .929 SV%), so this also isn’t good news for the Blackhawks’ playoff chances.

Cam Ward is worth taking a flier on in the later rounds of your draft, but how effective will he be? Ward hasn’t had a save percentage above .910 over his past six seasons, so your expectations shouldn’t be high. This included a .906 save percentage in 43 games last season, which came in spite of the Canes allowing the fewest number of shots per game (28.9) of any team. The Hawks were a top-10 team in terms of shots allowed in 2017-18. With a defense that is led by the aging Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook, Ward will be in tough for improved numbers with his new team.

Connor Murphy’s injury (out eight weeks with a back injury) improves the chances that 2017 first-round pick Henri Jokiharju makes the Blackhawks out of training camp. Keep in mind that Gustav Forsling is also expected to miss the start of the season with a wrist injury. Jokiharju scored 71 points in 63 games last season for the Portland Winterhawks of the WHL. Check out his Dobber Prospects profile here.

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Keeper decisions are fast approaching, so I’m going to take you through my thought process in one of mine. It’s a 12-team league in which the categories are Goals (G), Assists (A), Plus/Minus (+/-), Powerplay Points (PPP), Shots on Goal (SOG), Hits (HIT), Blocks (BLK), Wins (W), Goals Against Average (GAA), and Save Percentage (SV%). These are relatively common settings in multicategory leagues.

I get to keep four players, with maximum one goalie. Brad Marchand will be my first keeper based on his high goal total and preseason ranking (currently 5th in Yahoo leagues).

So I might as well get right to the goalies. I need to pick between Tuukka Rask, Ben Bishop, Antti Raanta, and Craig Anderson. Let’s compare their numbers from last season.

  W

GAA

SV%

Rask

34

2.36

.917

Bishop

26

2.49

.916

Raanta

21

2.24

.930

Anderson

23

3.32

.898

I think we can eliminate Anderson right off the bat given his numbers last season the Sens’ current state. That leaves Rask, Bishop, and Raanta. The Coyotes’ goalie had the lowest win total of the bunch (even lower than Anderson), although he missed portions of the first half due to injury. This might fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but I would actually rank Raanta ahead of Bishop and put him close to Rask in this format. Two of the three goaltending categories are GAA and SV%, and Raanta has the top GAA (2.20) and SV% (.927) for the 46 goalies that have played at least 100 games over the past four seasons.

Bishop’s ADP is 54.7, which I could only justify if he plays enough games to make his way off the Band-Aid Boy Trainee list. Raanta’s is criminally low at 135.1. I would be tempted enough to reach for Raanta within the top 100, as there are a number of goalies with an ADP higher than Raanta that I would definitely not draft before him. This group includes Henrik Lundqvist, Mike Smith, Corey Crawford, Semyon Varlamov, Cory Schneider, and Roberto Luongo.

Yet I’m going to keep Rask, and here’s why. First, I’m almost certain that Rask’s win total will be higher than Raanta’s (barring injury). Ratios aren’t always as predictable. Also, if I leave Rask unprotected, I know he’ll get drafted in the first round (technically the fifth round, as the first four rounds are the keepers). However, I’m going to bet that Raanta will probably fall at least another round or two. The experts in this league might be on to how strong a goalie Raanta really is, so he might also get scooped up quickly. But not as early as Rask, who is universally perceived as the better fantasy option.

Yes, perception from other owners of where a player is ranked should affect where you should draft the player.

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I’ll lump the rest of my players together. I can keep two of the following players: Drew Doughty, Dougie Hamilton, Torey Krug, Jakub Voracek, Ryan Getzlaf, Brayden Schenn, and Clayton Keller. Let’s list out their numbers from last season:

  G

A

+/-

PPP

SOG

HIT

BLK

Doughty

10

50

23

20

205

127

128

Hamilton

17

27

1

12

270

83

80

Krug

14

45

0

24

197

79

73

Voracek

20

65

10

35

228

23

32

Getzlaf

11

50

20

13

117

96

57

Schenn

28

42

10

19

210

154

37

Keller

23

42

-7

20

212

7

28

With the exception of Getzlaf (who played just 56 games), almost all of the players in the list played a full 82 games, while the lower games played total was 76. So this should be a fairly accurate representation of each player.

Out of the group of defensemen, I would go with Doughty. His point total and power-play totals should be relatively similar to that of Hamilton and Krug, but where he really stands out is in the physical categories of hits and blocked shots. I realize I can easily fill those categories later in the draft, but if you’re stuck between two or more similar players scoring-wise, the tiebreaker should be the peripherals. Hamilton has the high SOG total and should take on first-unit power-play minutes in Carolina, but his highest PPP total in a season is 16. Doughty simply does everything when he’s on the ice, which pays off in multicategory leagues.

You could argue that I could pick two forwards over Doughty, but I like balancing out my positions (G, D, F) over the first few rounds anyway. That way I’m not left high and dry at any one position, unless I’m extremely confident in my later-round picks (which depending on what’s left over after the keepers, I might not be). So I’ll basically go process of elimination for the remainder.

Keller might have the highest scoring upside of the bunch. But his scoring total is rather assist-heavy, his plus-minus might not be strong playing for Arizona, and his hits and blocked shots remind me of Phil Kessel (who I decided not to keep in a previous season for that reason, although that was a decision I came to regret later).

Schenn is the multicategory beast in this league. But his projections are somewhat similar (or are not much higher) than Keller’s across the board, except for in hits. I’d rather load up on scoring than on hits in the earlier rounds because I know that scoring will be harder to find in the later rounds. I wouldn’t hesitate to draft Schenn in the early rounds, though. I mentioned him as the one guy that I’d be willing to reach for in fantasy drafts in multicategory leagues. By and large I wasn’t disappointed by doing that, although he cooled off significantly after the first quarter of the season (26 points over his first 21 games, but 44 points over his last 61 games).

That leaves me to pick between two other assist-heavy scorers in Getzlaf and Voracek. Both averaged over a point per game last season, with Getzlaf’s total slightly higher (1.09) than Voracek’s (1.05). In spite of the fewer games played, Getzlaf was easily the more physical player as well, topping Voracek in both hits and blocked shots in spite of playing fewer games.

Yet Getzlaf isn’t overly strong in several scoring-related categories. Over the past three seasons, Getzlaf has never scored more than 15 goals, although he has recorded at least 50 assists in those three seasons. As well, he hasn’t recorded 25 power-play points in his past seven seasons. That’s not a terrible number, but it’s not elite either. But something else that concerns me is his lack of shots. Getzlaf has taken fewer than 200 shots over each of the past four seasons. To compare, 87 players took at least 200 shots last season. For those reasons, I’d be more tempted to draft Getzlaf higher in a pure points league than a multicategory league.

That leaves me with Voracek. He’s been a bit of an up-and-down scorer throughout his career, but he consistently takes over 200 shots, finished 13th in scoring and 9th in power-play points last season. He’s also less of an injury risk and will probably play around a higher-scoring group than Getzlaf. Plus the hits and blocked shots that I would have gotten from Getzlaf I can easily pick up with Doughty, though I know I’ll need to fill all categories later in my draft. As well, if a center and a winger are similarly ranked, and my league uses separate center and winger positions, I’ll take the winger, everything else remaining equal (unless I’m already thin at center).

So there you have it. Marchand, Voracek, Doughty, and Rask are my keepers.

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For more fantasy hockey information, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-karlsson-trade-impact-on-senators-blackhawks-injuries-keeper-decisions-sept-16/

[thrashermaxey]

Injury Ward: The Latest on Simmonds, Gibson, and More

The Latest on Simmonds, Gibson, and more…

Here’s this week’s latest in the injury world! If you don’t see a certain player below, there probably haven’t been any major developments in their progress. Once there is a significant update, I’ll be sure to have it for you on Twitter @BrennanDeSouza!

The Big Guns (>75% owned in Yahoo Leagues)

Wayne Simmonds – The Flyers’ forward will miss the next two to three weeks with an upper-body injury. Nolan Patrick might see an increased role on the power-play in Simmonds’ absence.

Jack Eichel – Sporting a boot on his ankle, still weeks away from a return. The team is 1-4 in his absence…

Mike Smith – The Flames’ goaltender will travel with the team as they visit Vegas and Arizona, but this might have more to do with Smith being a former Coyote, getting a chance to catch up with familiar faces. There’s still no guarantee he skates on the trip, so expect him to miss a few more games.

Corey Crawford – Hasn’t been on the ice since I told you he participated in the team’s morning skate last week. When asked if the injury would threaten Crawford’s career, coach Joel Quenneville said, “not sure about that, too far out”. There’s about a 0.4% chance the Blackhawks make the playoffs at this point, so if I were a betting man, I’d say Crawford doesn’t return this season.

Shea Weber – His recovery from a left-foot injury isn’t going according to plan, and now rumors are swirling that he’s done for the season. According to coach Claude Julien, Weber is “not comfortable in his skate right now” and there are a few small issues that need to be taken care of. Considering the Habs have a 0.2% chance of making the playoffs, the best move would be to shut Weber down for the rest of 2017-2018 and come back with a healthy roster next season.

Cory Schneider – Has been skating the past couple of days. The team is expected to give us another update on Wednesday, so follow me on Twitter @BrennanDeSouza to hear the details as soon as they’re made available. I wouldn’t say Keith Kinkaid has been stellar in Schneider’s absence, but he’s certainly giving the Devils a chance to win. Kinkaid is 3-1 in his last four starts.

John Gibson – The Ducks’ goaltender won’t face the Stars on Wednesday, and should be considered day-to-day with a lower-body injury. Gibson was sent spinning after contact with Alex Tuch, and while he was able to finish the period, he left the game during the intermission. The fact that he wasn’t removed immediately allows me to hope the injury isn’t too severe, but he hasn’t practiced since. Ryan Miller has been a serviceable back-up this season, which is evident through his .918 SV%. However, he’s going to have his hands full against a high-powered Dallas offense.

James Neal – It looks like the flu kept Neal out of Monday’s game against the Ducks. Consider him day-to-day for now, but I’d expect him to be ready to face the Flames on Wednesday.

The Second Liners (40%-75% owned in Yahoo Leagues)

Robin Lehner – The Sabres’ goaltender sat out Monday’s game against the Capitals as he recovered from a hip injury. He expects to be a full participant in Wednesday’s practice and travel with the team for their games on Thursday (@Detroit) and Saturday (@Washington). It’s hard to expect much from Lehner considering the state of the team in front of him, but maybe a change of scenery would boost his value.

Erik Johnson – The Avalanche defenseman will be out indefinitely with an upper-body injury. While he was on pace for only 30 points on the season, it’s going to be hard to replace the 25 minutes of ice-time he was averaging each game.

Mike Green – The Red Wings’ defenseman is hoping to return from an upper-body injury Thursday when the team faces the Sabres. Green is on pace for a respectable 41 points this season, which has generated a lot of interest among contending teams before the deadline.

Jeff Carter – The Kings return home to host the Stars on Thursday, and the plan is for Jeff Carter to start practicing with the team before that. Considering he has only played six games this season, he needs to participate in a few practices to improve his conditioning. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if next week I was announcing Carter’s return.

Tomas Hertl – The San Jose Sharks have three more games left in their road trip (Thursday @ Nashville, Friday @Chicago, and Sunday @Minnesota), and coach Pete DeBoer still expects Hertl to return in one of those games.  

Justin Schultz – Has been practicing and seems close to a return. Considering the team had four days off in between games, Schultz hopefully had plenty of time to recover from an illness.

Jacob Trouba – The team expects him back in mid-March, but have no reason to rush him back considering there’s a 99.4% chance they make the playoffs.

The Depth Guys (10%-40% owned in Yahoo Leagues)

Jacob Markstrom – The Canucks goaltender “tweaked something” in Monday’s practice, so expect another update on the severity of the injury soon.

Nick Foligno – Will miss one or two weeks with a lower-body injury. It’s been a pretty disappointing season offensively for Foligno, as he’s on pace for just 36 points.

Jonathan Bernier – Was hit in the head during Friday’s game against the Jets. Looks like he has a concussion, something we can never really put a timetable on. With Semyon Varlamov healthy again, Bernier’s role would have been greatly reduced anyway.

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – The Oilers’ forward skated with his teammates on Tuesday, for the first time since suffering a rib injury last month. He last played on January 13, so he’s going need a few practices before returning to the lineup.

Thomas Greiss – While we don’t have an exact timetable for his lower-body injury, coach Doug Weight doesn’t think it’ll keep him out for too long. Greiss’ 11-7-2 record doesn’t really highlight his struggles this season, but his .891 SV% and 3.84 GAA sure does. 

Michal Neuvirth – The Flyers’ goaltender will miss the next four to six weeks with a lower-body injury. With Brian Elliot out long-term as well, the team was forced to trade for an experienced goaltender – Petr Mrazek. Check out the impact of that trade here.

Bobby Ryan – Has been skating and could return before Monday’s trade deadline (February 26).

Shea Theodore – The Golden Knights’ defenseman is dealing with a serious throat infection, but don’t expect it to keep him out for too much longer. He had gone eight straight games without a point prior to the ‘injury’.

The Mr. Irrelevants (<10% owned in Yahoo Leagues)

Andrew Shaw – Has returned to practice, but it’s unlikely we see him in the lineup before next week’s trade deadline (Monday).

Vladimir Sobotka – Missed Tuesday’s game with an illness, shouldn’t cause him to miss any more action.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-home/injury-ward/injury-ward-the-latest-on-simmonds-gibson-and-more/