Official Hockey discussion thread

I expect Ovechkin to score 50 goals.  He shot well below his career shot % last year; I think the puck just wasn't bouncing his way.  I think he'll win the Rocket Richard.
 
I don't either, those days in the NHL are long gone. Hell, I was surprised when Detroit did it in the 90s. In fact, while they have won cups since they haven't repeated.
 
I think Boston has a slim chance of repeating. Not a fantastic chance, but a slim one. Overall, though, the era of multiple winners seems done. Few teams are deep enough to attempt it. If Tim Thomas was 3, 4 years younger? Maybe.

Pittsburgh has the best chance of building a dynasty, but I would think they're a Detroit-style one, with three or four wins scattered over a well managed 10-12 years.
 
Had some great drunken hockey talk with an old buddy last night.
He's a huge Canucks fan and is convinced they are the favourite going into this season.
His rationale: They dominated the league last year, came within a game of the cup and are bringing back mostly the same team.
I said no way. They peaked last year and failed to win it then, they lost their PP ace/best puck-moving D-man.
And they have done nothing to address the lack of grit and second-line scoring that cost them against Boston.
I believe there are only two teams post-expansion that lost the Cup final then came back to win it all the next year (Edmonton in '85 and Pittsburgh a couple years ago).
I see the Canucks as dominating their weak division and being one of the league's better teams.
But I would be stunned in they won the cup.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if they won the Cup.  Small sample sizes.  All it takes is for one team to go on a tear.  Boston had Thomas get hot at the right moments (and they scored a lot when he played poorly, in the 3rd round).  Chicago got 11 goals out of Byfuglien, and their entire team just lit up Philly in the final.  Pittsburgh saw Crosby and Malkin deliver two of the best performances by a forward in recent memory.

For instance, in 2009-10 Ottawa won 12 games in a row.  Ottawa was not a particularly good team, but they tore it up in January, even against the league's best (they ended up losing 5-0 to Toronto to end the streak).  If that had happened during the playoffs, *BAM* Stanley Cup.  In the small sample sizes of playoff series, having great players helps a lot, but randomness still rules.
 
Like GP says...if you can get into the playoffs and get hot at the right time, you have a chance. Vancouver isn't that much worse. They have a shot.
 
I don't think it is all numbers and luck. Numbers were against Boston in the East. Everybody was rooting for Washington or Tampa. Boston won for more than just luck, it took HARD WORK... teamwork, to win, specially against Tampa and Vancouver. Vancouver was the "lucky" team in the finals, I said it throughout the playoffs and I'll say it again. Boston was clearly the better team and it went beyond Thomas' save percentage or how many goals for (though that helped). On paper Washington should have crushed Tampa, Tampa SWEPT them and not by luck. I get what GP is saying and yes, if a team makes into the playoffs they have a chance (Edmonton as an 8th seed, anyone?), but so much goes on beyond the numbers and... luck.

I love Claude Julien and my favorite quote of his is, "We focus on the little picture because it is easier to address than the big picuture." Do the little things right, take care of your own zone, your own man, etc and the rest falls into place. The players, the teams, that do that... win.
 
I don't think that Boston was "clearly" the better team.  Their expected goals were only slightly higher than Vancouver's; it was Thomas playing extremely well that made the difference.

You say Boston won by hard work.  Fine.  But they were one goal away from being eliminated in round 1, were evenly matched in round 2, outscored in round 3 (winning by one goal), before they outplayed Vancouver in the Finals.  They received their fair share of luck throughout their run.

Regardless, I thought Boston was the best team in the East before the playoffs.  They had the best goal differential by a fair margin (+16 from Philadelphia, second only to Vancouver).  The question for me was whether or not Thomas could sustain his level of play.  Which, it turns out, he could.


As for the Tampa/Washington sweep, I watched the series.  The teams were pretty evenly matched; Tampa just got some puck luck, and Washington got abysmal goaltending.  Goalies have a disproportionately large influence on the outcome of a series.  Neuvirth played great for five games, and then poorly for four.  If he had mixed it up, it's not unlikely that Washington could've beat Tampa.  Small sample sizes.  Boston was able to score at the right times when Thomas had his poor series (9 times out of 10 if a team has four games in a series where they score five goals, they'll win).  So was Chicago, when Niemi sucked it up through the Finals.  The Penguins had Fleury absolutely bail on them during the Washington series, but managed to score 27 goals in 7 games.  All of these are examples where due to small sample sizes there were periods of poor goalie play, but the team in question was able to outperform offensively to compensate.  Luck.

What I'm saying is that it's easy to look back at something and force a "story line" over it.  People say hindsight is 20/20, but it's clearly not.  Boston (as a complete unit, including Thomas) was much better than Vancouver over the course of the Finals.  But they still ended up in winner-takes-all game 7.  Anything can happen in one game, and Boston won.  It's revisionism to then turn around and say it was "obvious" why they won.
 
I agree, very good points.

I think we're talking about the same thing in different angles. I don't care how teams look like "on paper" or if they have a veteran core "that knows how to win." Show me results.
 
Boston won 3 game sevens. That is an incredible feat. Vancouver was hampered by injuries in the final and Luongo's collapse. But the fact that the Bruins won in adversity, shows they knew "How to win."
 
One would think that if they "knew how to win", they would not have needed 7 games to finish off teams they outplayed.

EDIT: And for the record, they lost their previous three game sevens.
 
GuineaPig said:
EDIT: And for the record, they lost their previous three game sevens.
Click to expand...

Well DUH! That was the whole storyline... can they "slay the dragon?" And they killed all of them. They beat MTL, Philly AND won the Cup. Everybody was talking about how Van had been to the finals twice before and never won, but nobody talks about the close calls Boston has had since the Cup in '72...
 
Well, "storylines" rarely conform to reality, because it's difficult to mangle a series of unscripted events into an arc. 

Great example is from this years NBA playoffs.  Going into them, Dirk Nowitzki was widely considered to be a poor playoff performer; despite playing on a number of excellent Dallas teams, they had never won a championship.  He was widely criticized for lacking "what it takes to win", and many said that under his leadership the Mavericks were not capable of winning a title.  Lebron James, was a widely respected playoff performer, whose own lack of playoff success was pinned (accurately) on inferior teams.

2 months later, and Nowitzki is being praised for his clutch abilities (he won the Finals MVP, despite not playing particularly well; there were no standouts in that series), and James is being condemned as a "loser" and a "choker."  Everyone promptly ignored the previous storylines and clichés and made up new ones.



Examples of myths ignoring realities are very common in the NHL.  Daniel Sedin was widely criticized for not fighting back against Brad Marchand.  The previous playoffs, he was widely criticized for fighting back against Dave Bolland.  The former was used as an example of how the Canucks didn't have the mental toughness to win, while the latter was apparently proof the Canucks did not have the proper leadership or maturity.  People will make the "storylines" they want, and ignore everything that doesn't conform to it.  It gets even worse when it comes to goalies, considering most commentators don't know how to properly evaluate them.
 
By the way, anyone interested in statistical analysis of hockey should check out Hockey Analytics.  They do great yearly reviews where Alan Ryder breaks down the best players, how they contributed, and his picks for each award, as well as a couple of other cool features.

Just as an example, here's his Vezina picks (which double for his Hart picks, as he argues that goalies are nearly always the most valuable players - an exception for him is Lidstrom in 2002-03) for 2006-10:

Henrik Lundqvist
Roberto Luongo
Tomas Vokoun
Tim Thomas
Tomas Vokoun

And here are his top forwards from 2006-10:

Alexander Ovechkin
Vincent Lecavlier
Alexander Ovechkin
Pavel Datsyuk
Sidney Crosby


Check it out.  It's some very interesting stuff, easy to digest, and might change your opinion on a lot of things.

http://hockeyanalytics.com/2007/03/2006-nhl-review/
 
So Nassau county denied the Islander's bid for a new arena. Guess they don't give a shit that they won four cups at one point, I wonder where they are going to move to. It would be nice if it was Quebec or Halifax, but most likely some U.S non-traditional market.
 
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