LATEST STORIES FROM SISU HOCKEY
A Little Ditty
Dear Ron MacLean.Dear Coach’s Corner.I’m writing in orderfor someone to explainto my niece the distinctionbetween these mandatory pre-game group rites of submissionand the rallies at Nuremburg.Specifically the functionthe ritual serves in conjunctionwith what everybody knowsis in the end a kid’s game.I’m just appealing to your sense of fair playwhen I say she’s puzzled...
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April 06, 2009
Discuss
A Swing and a Miss?
If you take last year's club, subtract Streit, Ryder and Smolinski and add Tanguay, here is the lineup we'd be looking at:Pencil in a combined $3.5M for Halak, Gorges and O'Byrne and we're sitting at a cap number of $49.3M for 12 forwards, 7 defensemen (including Dandenault) and 2 goalies.The bad news is this team is not obviously better than the one whose season...
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July 02, 2008
Loading Up
Interesting draft day for the Canadiens - At first glance, I like the Tanguay deal. There is only one year left on his current contract at $5.25M (making him the highest-paid forward on the team). Check out these posts from BoA . The price may be steep but the guy is a star EV player - just what the doctor ordered. Now Gainey has a year to get him signed to a value contract...
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June 20, 2008
Crosby. CrosbyCrosbyCrosby.
Call this a backlash against a backlash.After the first two playoff rounds, a lot of very reasonable people were suggesting that Malkin might actually be a better player than Sid. Crazy talk, that was. Crosby was the best player in the final - quite a feat for a 20-year-old whose team went 2-4.When both Crosby and Zetterberg were on the ice at EV, the Pens outscored the Wings 3...
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June 07, 2008
Some Numbers
Back when the Zednik incident occurred, there was a lot of commentary about how dangerous the NHL game could be and some lobbying for steps that should be taken to make it safer. Out of curiosity, I did a little math and did a little googling.There have been ~35,500 games played in the post-expansion NHL. Figuring 40 participants per game, that is 1.4 million man-hours of hockey...
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May 30, 2008
Playoff Numbers
Discovered via Mirtle, the playoff stats are up at Behindthenet.Only ten games are listed for the Habs. I'm not sure which two are missing.Quality of OppositionIn such a small sample, the QUALCOMP measure can be misleading. The Bruins' 4th line blew away the Lapierre line. That means the QUALCOMP algorithm thinks Shawn Thornton, Vlad Sobotka and Jeremy Reich are Boston...
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May 23, 2008
Projecting Gorges
Josh Gorges is an interesting case. Passed over in his draft year of 2002, he attended the Sharks camp that fall and they signed him. Since then he's been on an above average track in his NHL career.Gorges appears to be ahead of Rivet, Rivers, Dykhuis and Lukowich at 23.A couple of Bruins - one past and one present - seem very similar to Gorges. Both Sweeney and Ference are...
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May 22, 2008
Projecting Komisarek
We're verging on blindfolded darts here - this one is even less exact than Chipchura.Komisarek is quite clearly a defensive defenceman. I thought it would be hard to come up with similar players but I'm pleased with these lists of past and present defensive defencemen. Rather than points, I used games played and ATOI.Regehr and Hannan are way ahead of Komi in terms of development...
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May 21, 2008
Projecting Perezhogin
He's still technically Montreal property.His NHL numbers say '3rd liner,' which is about as much as you can expect from a #25 draft pick. His RSL numbers say 'sniper.' Last season at 24 he was the top scorer for Ufa. And get this: during the lockout year he put up 0.77ppg in Omsk as a 21 year old - compare that to 26yo Pavel Datsyuk's 0.74 with Moscow Dynamo...
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May 15, 2008
Projecting Grabovski
Grabovski scored in his limited icetime to the tune of a respectable 1.94 EVPTS/60. He also gave up lots of scoring chances against.In his defense, Grabovski is a Jan 31 birthday, making him as young as possible and still qualify as 23/24 in his NHL seasons on hockey-referece. Why are so many Habs clustered right around Feb 1? It's a nuisance. Nevertheless, he's still...
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May 15, 2008
Projecting Chipchura
With a skater like Kyle Chipchura, point totals aren't going to tell us a whole lot. He wasn't drafted to score. That forced me to dig a little deeper into Chipchura's record, so this might be a more indepth look than previous posts.A severed achilles tendon that cost him half a season in Prince Albert has to be considered a major setback in his development. Prior...
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May 14, 2008
Give 'til it Hurts
After a bit of back & forth, the chaps over at PPP have donated $120 to the Saku Koivu Foundation. I'm impressed.In response, I'd like to see if readers here can match that in donarions to the Geneva Centre for Autism. It's a charity supported by the Leafs Fund.If you can swing it please chip in to help make a difference in the lives of a growing number of kids...
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May 13, 2008
Latendresse II
There is a post by MC79 from back in December, and it is an interesting one. It looks at recent players' 20/21yo seasons and where they stand in a percentile ranking of their EV points. Go read it then come back. I'll wait.So Guillaume Latendresse just completed his 20yo season, posting 1.07 ESG/60 and 1.75 ESP/60 in 788 ES minutes. Judging from seasons by other players...
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May 13, 2008
Projecting Latendresse
Early this year Latendresse was tried on the 3rd line ahead of Begin/Kostopoulos but couldn't stick. When Ryder was demoted Gui was surpassed by Sergei (who is actually older by two months) for a job on the top 6. His chances have been scarce but he's still showing some progress.On the surface it might look discouraging. He followed a rookie season of 29 points (.36ppg...
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May 13, 2008
Projecting Lapierre
In his 21yo season Lapierre was .26ppg in the NHL and .29ppg NHLE in the AHL. At 22, he was .34ppg in the show and .32ppg NHLE in Hamilton. Pretty consistent. We should have a bead on his abilities at this stage in his career.Vermette was in the AHL at 22 due to the lockout. At 23 he was a little ahead of Lapierre at 22 with less icetime but also shooting 17%. It's tempting...
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May 11, 2008
Projecting Sergei Kostitsyn
There is far less of a track record here, so anything said should be taken with a grain or two of salt. Also, Sergei shot an unrealistic 18.4% so we should dock him about three goals when looking for comparisons. Doing so would put his ppg at .46 rather than .52. Lastly, like Anrdei, he is an 'old' 20 in the chart because he's a March 20 birthday. I compensated a...
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May 10, 2008
Hard Luck & Horseshoes
Here is a list of players whose opponents shot at least 4% better than his team did while he was on the ice:I pulled out anyone who played less than 40 games, anyone who played under 8 minutes and anyone whose name I'd never seen before. Some of these guys just aren't very good and contribute to the shooting% imbalance. Others spent many minutes in front of terrible goaltending...
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May 09, 2008
The Sean Avery of the Blogosphere
I read a lot of hockey blogs. If you do the same, you'll eventually become familiar with some of the commenters who frequent multiple blogs. One regular commenter at the Battle of Ontario was the most negative Sens fan I'd ever seen. There would be post after post after post, all berating his team.So I was quite surprised to find out yesterday that this guy, PPP, is not...
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May 09, 2008
1st 3rd vs. last 2 3rds
A few things happened with the Canadiens about 1/3 of the way through the season. The biggest thing was a changing of the guard on the top line - it was early December when Koivu/Higgins/Ryder gave way to Plekanec/AKostitsyn/Kovalev for the top role. This is also when Ryder first became familiar with the 3rd/4th lines and the press box. Lapierre and S. Kostitsyn were called up...
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May 08, 2008
UFA Cup Half Empty
Gainey says:"I think that we want to play a fast game. We don't want to be vulnerable to (tough play). We have big guys. Perhaps we can be bigger and more rugged, but I think our philosophy is: We're quick, we're exciting, we're on the attack, we play to score, we're going to play to beat you within the rules. We just need to do it a little better."Tom...
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May 07, 2008
Projecting Higgins
Chris Higgins got off to a relatively slow start. Not many guys that produced at his level at 22-24 scored as little as he did in the AHL at 20 (.72ppg, or .32ppg NHLE). His 21 y.o. AHL season was even worse (.67ppg, .29ppg NHLE), but that happened in the 2004-05 lockout year when the AHL was stacked.Looking for comparisons, I focused on Higgins' 22, 23, and 24 year old seasons...
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May 06, 2008
Projecting A. Kostitsyn
An ideal comparison would be a recent Eurpoean (preferably Eastern) top 10 pick who started out in the NHL at 21/22 and there just aren't many guys like that. The lockout year further muddied waters.Kostitsyn was in the AHL for his 20 y.o. season, AHL/NHL at 21 (I averaged his NHL ppg and AHL equiv. ppg) and had a full NHL season this past year at 22.It is important to note...
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May 05, 2008
Projecting Plekanec
We're looking at a relatively young team. It looks like there are more names trending up (Price, Plekanec, Kostitsyns, Higgins, Komisarek, Gorges, Latendresse) than trending down (Koivu, Kovalev, Dandenault, Hamrlik). I'm going to do a series of posts in an effort to project the talent level for the near to slightly less near future.At hockey-reference.com, the Player Season...
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May 05, 2008
Season Ending Bullets
- Bloody goalposts. Three more last night. The series count was 7-1 (not counting the one by Prospal in g4 that landed on Upshall's stick for a goal). "In a playoff series between closely matched teams, the team that hits less iron usually wins."- In 2006, "After two rounds of the playoffs the teams that had been helped out by the posts the most were EDM(12...
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May 04, 2008
Broons. Again.
Welp, the Habs are a lot better. The B's were probably the a<a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://hockeynumbers.blogspot.c...
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April 20, 2008
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