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Ramblings and Bamblings from the NHL

Posted in Alex Semin, awesome, Bobby Ryan, Evgeni Nabokov, Linus Omark, NHL No Comments »

A lot has gone on in the world of hockey recently, some awesome, some REALLY awesome, and some really lame. But it’s all worth talking about…

Bobby Ryan scores with the wrong stick

This had to go first.

First of all, how did the refs miss it when Koivu literally stole Bobby Ryan’s stick out of his hands? I mean, does it ever get any more blatant than that? But it’s a good thing that they did miss it, because if they did call a penalty, we would have missed the ridiculously awesome thing that happened next.

What makes it even better is that one of the Wild players was nudging the stick towards the scrum along the boards, probably towards Koivu so he could get the correct stick, but Ryan “steals” it and scores. And his reaction was perfect. He was either trying to say “Hey! Look at this, I scored with the wrong kind of stick!” or “Hey, you, you want your stick back? HAAAA!” Although, maybe it was a little bit of both. Either way, priceless.

Linus Omark shootout goal

I hate shootouts, but I had to post this. What you have just witnessed was the biggest example of “Unnecessary” that you will ever see. Although, he did score, so I guess we don’t know how important the spin-o-rama in the neutral zone actually was. But what would you expect from a guy who did this?

If the league required players to use an Omark-esque move in the shootouts, I might not hate them anymore.

Evgeni Nabokov released by his KHL team

So, who wants him? Do any teams regret not paying him the multi-year contract now? Of course, his play might have been very different in the NHL than it was in the KHL, but this is still funny. After being one of the premiere goalies in the NHL, Nabby compiled an 8-8-5 record with a GAA of 3.02 and an .888 save percentage.

He’ll have to pass through waivers to get back into the NHL, but he’s eligible to play there. The only question is, does anyone want him? Some people seem to think so, but he’ll really have to drop his $6 million a year price tag in order to generate any interest from anyone. However, the contract would be pro-rated for this year, so his cap number would higher than he’s actually getting paid. Tampa Bay could be an interesting fit. They’ve got a pretty solid team overall, but their goalies have been pretty pedestrian. Dan Ellis and Mike Smith actually have even worse GAA’s and save percentages than Nabokov does this year.

Alex Semin escapes suspension after trying to decapitate John-Michael Liles with his stick

I would love for someone to explain this one to me. It was a full extension, violent crosscheck right in the back of the head. Yet somehow, it was only worthy of a fine according to the NHL. Some people argue that since he has a clean history, it was right for him to escape a suspension this time. I think that’s complete bullcrap. While I do think that a history should cause suspensions and/or fines to be a little harsher, I don’t believe that anyone should get a free pass. A dirty hit is a dirty hit. And this was dirty. What else are you trying to do by crosschecking someone in the head other than trying to hurt the guy? And even if he was trying to get him in the shoulder, you’re ultimately responsible for where you stick goes.

Danny Briere and Olli Jokinen each got three game suspensions this year for similar plays. Why did Semin get away with this one? Once again, the NHL swings and misses (unlike Semin).

Tim Thomas is unbelievable

After struggling last season, his record is 14-2-3 and he’s got a save percentage of .954 (1st in the NHL), a GAA of 1.51 (first in the NHL), 5 shutouts (1st in the NHL).

That’s all that needs to be said.

Other thoughts…

Andreas Nodl has more goals than Ilya Kovalchuk. Never heard of Nodl? That’s why it’s funny. Kovalchuk is 165th in the league in goals scored.

At least Kovalchuk’s scoring isn’t as bad as these jerseys.

The Penguins have rattled off 12 wins in a row. The Islanders barely have 12 points the entire year.

Speaking of the Islanders, they have only won 1 game in their last 20 games. ONE game in their last 20!!!! And do you know what team they beat? The Devils. The Devils would easily be the worst team in the league if the Isles didn’t exist.

The most deceiving division in the NHL? That would be the Pacific Division. The Anaheim Ducks are currently in 2nd place in the division with 36 points. They have the same number of points as the division-leading Coyotes, but Phoenix gets the tiebreaker. Why is this division deceiving? Look at the games played. The Ducks have played 33 games. No one else has played more than 29 games, and the last place Kings have played 6 less games than the Ducks but are only 3 points back.

The Detroit Red Wings are clearly too old to be successful.

Stephen Bochanski

Posted by: Stephen Bochanski Dec 14, 2010 Read More

Crosby Slewfoot?

Posted in New York Rangers, NHL, Pittsburgh Penguins, referees, Ryan Callahan, Sidney Crosby 2 Comments »

He’s really, really good, but once in awhile, he does something that’s pretty cheap. And here he shows he can be a serious cheapy cheapskate. To the non-hockey fan, this just looks like a trip…not a big deal. But a slewfoot is one of the dirtier things you can do to someone other than tomahawking them over the head with your stick. It’s coming from behind and using your foot or leg to sweep the legs out of the victim. There’s no way to defend against it and once you’re slewfooted, there’s really not much you can do except hope that you don’t smack the back of your head against the ice. It’s an injury waiting to happen.

Crosby didn’t get a penalty on the play, but Callahan did. According to these refs, being slewfooted by Crosby is worthy of a two minute penalty for interference. What the referees saw there I have no idea. It’d be great if they actually caught this kind of stuff. But hey, at least they call all of those ticky-tack hooks!

Brandon Dubinsky of the Rangers had some choice words for Crosby about the play.

“That’s just a dirty play. That’s just the type of guy he is. He tries to get away with all that kind of nonsense and complains a lot.”

Anyone else love that he added “and complains a lot” at the end? He might as well have also said “and he’s a poopy pants” for good measure.

Crosby, however, wasn’t so amused by the comments:

“How many penalty minutes do I have this year, if I’m that dirty? I mean, please. Show me all those dirty plays. It’s a battle and he falls. I think Dubi has done his fair share of things out there that are questionable. I guess he’s talking again. But I’m not surprised. It’s a battle (with Callahan). He’s holding me going up ice and I’m trying to push him off. Is it that calculated? I’m trying to get to the net. I’m not worried about that kind of thing. If I tripped him, I tripped him. Am I dirty hockey player? C’mon. I think Dubi is smarter than that.”

Show you the dirty plays? Meh, we could if we wanted to, but do you really want us to pull up the video of you punching a guy where the sun don’t shine?

Crosby’s right, he doesn’t have many penalty minutes (15 PIM). But come on, Sid, you should know better than anyone else that superstars always get protected by the refs. Think about that the next time you see a roughing the passer flag thrown for when Tom Brady gets sneezed on.

And that’s also the reason why Crosby wasn’t disciplined further by the league. It’s the reason why the league acts like a 4-year-old eating spinach when they suspended Alex Ovechkin. It kills the NHL brass to have to discipline one of their posterboys or speak up about a mistake *cough*disallowing Pronger’s OT goal*cough*.

Not many people take the NHL front office seriously, and for good reason. If they continue to let certain players slide, the real fans will continue to be angry and frustrated.

Stephen Bochanski

Posted by: Stephen Bochanski Dec 02, 2010 Read More

The Atlantic Division: The Good, the Pretty Good, and the Really BAD

Posted in Atlantic Division, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, NHL, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins No Comments »

It’s been an interesting start of the season for the NHL’s Atlantic Division. It’s the home of the Eastern Conference’s best record it’s worst record…well, records. We’ll go through each team with some thoughts. I’ll start from the bottom up.

New York Islanders (4-12-4, 12 points)

This has to start with a comment that was posted by an Islanders fan on my first article:

How do my Isles have 10 points in their first 8 games? Are they just off to some stupid start before they go back to losing, or should I actually start paying attention to them?

In their first 7 games, the Isles went 4-1-2. They have not won a game since and own a record of 0-11-2 in those next 13 games. They’ve scored 18 goals in those 13 games, but have given up 50. That’s an average of 3.85 goals against per game. Ew.

They say you can’t win games if you can’t score. They also say that defenses win championships. Well, what do they say when you have a bad defense and a bad offense? Only four players have points in the double digits and the leading scorer is a defenseman. Rick DiPietro and his 15 year contract (I’m being serious, he’s got a 15 year contract) have been horrible with a GAA of nearly 4 and a save percentage of .867. Fortunately, Dwayne Roloson has decent numbers (2.58 GAA, .912 SV%), but when the team in front of you is averaging less than two goals a game, then it’s going to be tough to get any wins. And oh yeah, Roloson’s 41 years old, so don’t get used to him playing for much longer.

Unless something drastic happens, it doesn’t look good for the Islanders this year.

New Jersey Devils (6-13-2, 14 points)

They got the most prized free agent on the market, but that hasn’t exactly worked out well for them. They’ve been the league’s worst team until the Isles’ hard work took honor away from them. Like the Isles, they’ve got a case of the “we can’t score goals but can’t keep the other team from scoring” syndrome.

They’re not playing like those classic Devils teams: y’know, boring. But hey, they won a lot of games. Now they seem like they’ve thrown their whole team philosophy away for one player in Ilya Kovalchuk. They have players who can score in Patrik Elias and Zach Parise (now injured for awhile), but they’re also very responsible all around players. Kovalchuk play defense? Me think not. Or at least not yet. He’s on the first year of a 15 year contract, so one would have to assume that the Devils are going to try to make it work and maybe he can turn himself around defensively. So as it stands, his job is to score goals. Whatever else happens is just something the Devils are going to have to accept. That’s all well and good if he’s scoring, but his 4 goals (10 points) so far this season aren’t going to cut it. His season, as well as the entire team’s, was summed up in a recent shootout “attempt.”

Now Brodeur’s out for about two weeks with an elbow injury. That makes Johan Hedberg the starter for awhile. Somehow, some way, he shut out the Capitals in a 5-0 win last night. I wouldn’t get too used to scores like that with the Devils winning, especially with Brodeur being on and off the shelf with injuries. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be getting much better this year.

New York Rangers (12-9-1, 25 points)

The most important move the Rangers made this offseason may have been a subtraction. Wade Redden has been sent to the AHL and no longer has to cause Rangers fans ulcers with his play on the ice and ridiculous contract. This and the emergence of some young players have helped the Rangers enjoy a solid start to this year’s campaign.

Brandon Dubinsky leads the team in goals (12) and points (19) and is showing that he can be a real offensive threat in the league. He’s well on his way to shattering his previous career high in points and this could be the beginning of a late bloom of production from the center. Another player coming into his own is U.S. Olympian Ryan Callahan. He was a prolific scorer in the OHL and is looking to translate that into top line production after playing in the NHL for four previous seasons. If Gaborik starts producing better and stays healthy, the Rangers could have a very dangerous top scoring line.

What’s a bit strange about the Rangers is the goaltending situation. Henrik Lundqvist is not his usual self and is being outplayed on the stat sheet by backup Martin Biron. Do the Rangers stick with their stalwart in net or does Lundqvist lose a significant number of his typical 70-some starts to Biron?

Pittsburgh Penguins (12-8-2, 26 points)

It’s been an up and down season so far for the Penguins. This offseason, GM Shero built a very strong group of defensemen on paper despite losing Sergei Gonchar, but it’s been tough to job how good they’ve actually been because they’ve been mired in injuries. Despite Kris Letang’s breakout offensive season, the group has struggled at times. Players like Letang and Alex Goligoski may be able to bring some good offensive potential, but if they’re not playing like good defensemen, there could be some problems. But maybe they’ve begun to tighten things up given their recent success they’ve achieved.

The most interesting story out of the Pens has been the goaltending, like the Rangers. Marc-Andre Fleury started out the season about as bad as he could. He couldn’t buy the Pens a win, let alone steal one. Fortunately for the Pens, Brent Johnson played out of his mind in the beginning of the season, and has himself a nice record of 6-2-1 with excellent personal numbers to go along. Fleury’s picked up his pace since his poor start, but being such a hot and cold goalie throughout his career, would coach Dan Bylsma hesitate to hand the starting job to Johnson for awhile? How long of a leash does Fleury have now that they know that someone can play pretty well behind him?

If the defense sorts itself out, the goaltending is decent enough, and Crosby does as Crosby does, the Pens will do as they have in the past few years.

Philadelphia Flyers (14-6-2, 30 points)

All’s been very well in Flyerdom so far this season. They’re tied for best record in the conference with the Capitals (whom they’ve recently beaten) and have the best goal differential in the entire league (+23). Claude Giroux has continued his breakout since the playoffs last year and Mike Richards is producing at more than a point per game pace. The Briere-Hartnell-Leino line never lost their chemistry from the playoffs. Even if they’re not scoring, they’re pinning the opponent deep in their own zone. Goals have not been a problem for the Flyers.

I sound like a broken record, but the headlines in Philly have been about the goaltending. Sergei Bobrovsky, signed as a free agent from Russia this past May, has taken the hockey world completely by surprise. He owns an excellent 11-3-1 record with a 2.29 GAA and .925 SV% so far and has at times dominated games. And while he’s gotten some nice goal support, he’s kept the team in games when the offense was sputtering in the beginning. But it also wouldn’t be fair to mention how good of a job the defense led by Chris Pronger has done. The pickups of Andrej Meszaros and Sean O’Donnell were severely underrated as both are in the top in the league in +/-…and they’re the third pairing.

This isn’t the first time that the Flyers have started out hot. The challenge will be to keep it up, which they haven’t always been able to do in the past.

Watch Sergei Bobrovsky. Is he the real deal and the anwer to the neverending goalie question for the Flyers or is he the product of an excellent defense in front of him and teams not having much of a scouting report on him?

Stephen Bochanski

Posted by: Stephen Bochanski Nov 23, 2010 Read More

Headshots: Bad. The way the NHL deals with them? Even worse.

Posted in concussions, Dustin Brown, headshots, Kris Letang, NHL, Rule 48 3 Comments »

This year, both the NHL and the NFL have tried to deal with the issue of headshots. It is a problem in both leagues as head injuries (namely, concussions) are things you don’t want to be messing around with. Players can’t be going around targeting and delivering vicious blows to the head. So anyone who does drill another player in the head should be punished.

The NHL agreed and came up with Rule 48. Section 48.1 reads as follows:

“A lateral or blind side hit to an opponent where the head is targeted and/or the principle point of contact is not permitted.”

Okay, good. I think that nearly everyone can agree that’s a good rule to have. However, the NHL completely dropped the ball after Section 1. When the rule is used for a hit, the ONLY penalty that can be given is a 5 minute major and a game misconduct.

Hockey’s a fast game. When the refs think that the rule has been violated, they have to call a penalty. And so anything borderline will be called and result in the player getting tossed from the game. It also won’t help with the problem of officials employing “refereeing by result” when making calls. What happens when the receiver of the hit is being irresponsible and is crossing a danger zone with his head down?

Kris Letang of the Penguins was the first victim of this rule.

It’s a perfectly clean hit. It’s textbook. But his team ended up shorthanded for 5 minutes and he had to end his game early because the refs saw Comeau go down in a heap, they must have figured it was an illegal hit. They were wrong.

Dustin Brown was also tossed for a hit, but the legality of his hit was more debatable.

The NHL decided not to give Brown any further punishment. So it couldn’t have been that bad.

The problem with this rule is that the NHL is forcing refs to make a decision that takes the league’s disciplinary office a few days in a few seconds. The call is going to be messed up more often than not. It’s not fair to the players or the teams. If the rule continues to exist as it does now, it will force some players to lose their physical edge and style. To some players, that’s their game and how everything else builds from. It’ll make some players get complacent and get comfortable skating with their heads down. And they will get destroyed by the players whose physical style isn’t changed by the rule.

My solution? There needs to be an immediate deterrent. That’s why the refs should have the option to give a minor or double minor for an infraction. That way, if they do make a mistake, it won’t have the potential to dramatically influence the outcome of the game. And for the hits that are vicious, the hit should just be ruled on under the intent to injure rules and the league needs to adopt a consistent policy in punishing dirty hits, which they haven’t done yet.

Right now, the refs have to make split second decisions and their mistakes can’t be fixed. The NHL should take a minute and allow themselves to make the right call after the game.

Stephen Bochanski

Posted by: Stephen Bochanski Oct 29, 2010 Read More

Hi, My Name is Hockey

Posted in Brian Rolston, Hockey, Ilya Kovalchuk, New Jersey Devils, NHL 2 Comments »

Greetings, Sports Headquarter-ers, and welcome to the wonderful world of hockey. I’m thrilled to be a part of The Sports Headquarters team and the new hockey writer.

I was originally planning on just giving a hello since I’m new to the site, but I figured it’d be better if I added some actual content. I’ll talk about something that’s been on my mind a bit lately: the New Jersey Devils.

2-6-1. There have been some teams that were expected to be good that have had some slow starts, but this is pretty terrible for an always solid Devils team. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that they’ll be this bad all year, but they’ve had some strange things happen so far that really make you wonder about what’s going on.

In their third game of the season, they could only dress 15 skaters. That’s 3 less skaters than a full lineup, which came down to a missing forward line. And recently, the Devils benched their $180 billion man, Ilya Kovalchuk as a healthy scratch. Really? By the way, they got blown out that game 6-1 by a Sabres team still trying to find itself.

Most people will point at Ilya Kovalchuk as the source of both of those problems. Personally, I thought it was a bad move. He doesn’t fit that Devils style of play they’re so famous (or infamous if you prefer) for. And while I’m not convinced he can’t turn his game around into more of a two way, trapping style, it’s just a whole lot of money for a very long time. Obviously if the Devils are going to scratch Kovalchuk, they’re not afraid to send a message, but when the team has a -15 goal differential after only 9 games, it means that they’re not losing by a little each time and that it’s not the fault of just one player.

And here’s another thing I’m not convinced of: Ilya Kovalchuk’s contract is root of the salary cap problem. Yes, it’s a huge cap hit, but at least it’s a (potentially) productive cap hit. Who’s cap hit is $5.0625 million and isn’t going to live up to that in terms of production? That would be Brian Rolston. He’s also got a No Trade clause and is on a 35 and older contract, which means that unless the Devils can not only find someone willing to take on his salary but also that team be a one that Rolston is willing to go to, they’re screwed with his cap hit for another year after this season’s over. Erasing that hit would have allowed the Devils to have added a few quality forwards to their roster, and only one of whom could have equaled Rolston’s production.

It’s early, and I think the Devils will get better as the season progresses, but it’s still pretty interesting. The Devils missing the playoffs this year would be embarrassing to a franchise that is so used to success.

Posted by: Stephen Bochanski Oct 26, 2010 Read More