Archives / 2010 / January

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  • Wow

    That is all.

    January-31-10 at 12:22:22 PM
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  • The Oilers Quagmire

    The boys on TSN were talking about some potential trade opportunities coming up for the Oilers.  Given their current funk (hey, they’re worse than the Leafs!), the Oilers are clearly not going anywhere.  With no superstar-in-waiting, the immediate future doesn’t seem too bright either.

    So they discuss the obvious choices, including Fernando Pisani, Ethan Moreau, Sheldon Souray, and Steve Staios, all of whom are prime candidates for a trade.  They’re too old to stick around for a serious rebuild, have reasonable contracts, and should be somewhat attractive to teams stocking up for the playoffs.

    Then things get crazy, as they start talking about trading Andrew Cogliano in exchange for some draft picks.  Now, I don’t get to watch a lot of Oilers games, so I can’t speak first-hand to Cogliano’s play.  Having said that, he’s only 22 and he’s playing on a putrid team.  Is it really time to give up on him?  If I’m the Oilers, I’m prepared to resign Cogliano this summer.  He hasn’t lit the world on the fire, so he won’t demand a huge contract.  If he turns things around, great.  If not, well at least you didn’t trade away a potential game-breaker.

    Despite not having a franchise saviour coming through the system, the Oilers do have some pretty talented youngsters on the way.  Both Magnus Paajarvi-Svensson (henceforth known as MPS) and Jordan Eberle have excelled on the international stage and should provide some much needed talent on the wing.

    And let’s not forget that the Oil currently reside in last place in the NHL.  That guarantees them a top draft pick; unlike the Maple Leafs, the Oilers actually have their picks.

    The future isn’t that bleak in Edmonton, but it will take some work.  As I told one long-time Oilers fan recently, it could be worse.  They could be the Leafs.

    January-27-10 at 12:22:51 PM
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  • New Fantasy Hockey Plan

    Here’s the deal with my office pool.  I currently sit in the top 2 in the following categories: Goals, PIM, SHP, GAA, SV%.  I’m in the bottom 4 in: A , +/-, PPP, SHO.  I’m middle of the pack in goalie wins. The way I figure it, I could start benching my goalies now (Nabokov, Price, and IR’d Varlamov) and only stand to lose a few points from the wins and shutout categories.  Worst case scenario, I’d drop a few points from the GAA/SV% as well, although since I’ve been rolling primarily with Nabokov only for the last 2 months,
    January-26-10 at 10:41:21 AM
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  • The Fallacy of the Fine

    When Alex Burrows was fined $2,500 for his comments about the poor officiating (suffice to say the story is far larger than that, but I don’t want to get into it), some people seemed to think it excessive.  In particular, the talking heads on CBC decided that he should’ve been fined far less, to the tune of $1,000 total. Let’s put that in perspective. According to NHL Numbers, Burrows is scheduled to make $2,000,000 this season.  Let’s forget about things like escrow and taxes, and just estimate that he takes home half of that.  So we’ll work with a nice,
    January-23-10 at 4:29:41 AM
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  • Kick Him Out

    Patrice Cormier. If you haven’t seen his latest, take a quick trip to a hockey site.  I won’t post the video or even a link. 3 times within a month he’s viciously attacked an unsuspecting player in a vulnerable position.  He is possibly the biggest disgrace to hit the ice in a long time. I’m ashamed to have had him captain Team Canada at the WJHC. After his cheap shot against Sweden in the tournament warm-up games, I suggested to some friends that Cormier should be kicked out of the tournament.  Most agreed, and yet it was never even mentioned
    January-19-10 at 1:14:50 AM
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  • Inglorious Backes

    I loved this post over on the Yahoo blog… - http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/David-Backes-is-dismantling-Team-Canada-with-his?urn=nhl,213456 While it’s kind of in good spirits, I’d like to point out that Backes isn’t exactly tackling the Team Canada “heavy weights”.  It's too bad he won’t get to try his schtick on Pronger.  He will get a crack at Jarome Iginla however, and something tells me that it won’t be as fun as fighting Corey Perry, Jonathan Toews, or Rick Nash. I wish the Olympics started tomorrow.
    January-15-10 at 9:15:17 AM
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  • Unwatchable

    That’s about the only word for the Maple Leafs right now. I’ve never seen penalty killing so atrocious.  At any level.  They look worse than the ankle-biters who simply swarm the puck.  Those 4-year-olds have more strategy than the Maple Leafs. How does an NHL team put together a penalty kill that is so bad?  I’d not have thought it possible for a team to be this bad at penalty killing unless they were actively working at sabotaging their efforts.  Given that the Leafs have bid adieu to their draft picks, we can safely assume they aren’t tanking the season
    January-12-10 at 11:27:38 AM
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  • The Laser of Death

    In the wake of some genius Canucks fan (is there any other kind?) aiming a laser pointer at Miikka Kiprusoff during the Flames/Canucks tilt on the weekend, it seems that everyone is making a large stink about the risks associated with laser pointers.  I remember reading somewhere that the risks associated with laser pointers were largely overblown by our protectionist society (1 in 8 zillion people get this disease, so we must all beware!).  I was lead to Wikipedia, through Google, and the following…  “Thus, it appears that a brief 0.25-second exposure to a <5 mW laser such as found
    January-11-10 at 12:17:34 PM
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  • The Leafs “Penalty Kill”

    Just how bad is it? The Oilers have the league’s 2nd worst penalty kill, an abysmal 76.1%.  That’s pretty bad. The Maple Leafs need to successfully kill their next 48 penalties to catch up to the Oilers. UPDATE: Given that the Sabres scored again on the power-play, the Leafs now must kill their next 51 penalties.  If there is a God, I’m convinced that he hates Leafs fans.
    January-08-10 at 12:39:47 PM
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  • Nazem Kadri

    Like most Maple Leafs fans, I’ve been watching this year’s WJHC with a special eye on Nazem Kadri, the 1st round pick of the Leafs last spring.  Despite Kadri playing for the London Knights, whose home arena is a 10-minute walk from my apartment, this is really my first exposure to him. So far, I like what I’ve seen…I think. There’s no doubt that Kadri wants the puck.  He’s pretty shifty with it too.  The problem is that in this tournament, he isn’t the star.  He isn’t the trigger man on his line, that’s Taylor Hall.  So, not great for
    January-04-10 at 1:21:48 PM
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