Joe Pavelski not likely to play tonight. Melker Karlsson and Joonas Donskoi are questionable.
Pavs’s head hit the ice hard. I fear a major concussion. I hope he will be okay.
Go Sharks!!!
Well… with the Canadian teams out, I’m jumping on the Carolina Hurricanes bandwagon!
I have family in Chapel Hill, NC and watched the Thursday night game in Raleigh while visiting them last week.
It was, but I liked one of Zuccarello’s goals from last night just as much - always cool seeing buddy take a knee to the ice to get down low to one-time it, up high, from short range.
Yeah, I got home the other night just in time to see Pavelski being escorted off the ice. (And of course, the unbelievable comeback.) I’m pretty concerned for him. Hoping for no lasting damage.
Games starts in a few minutes…GO SHARKS!!!
I am also a veteran of Whalers games at the Hartford Civic Center, from about 1974-1976! Also the Bruins and the Springfield (Mass.) Indians in those years. I think I still have a puck from the Indians.
If Canada weren’t so underrepresented in NHL, they’d have broken that Stanley Cup drought long ago. Of course, there’s also the Leafs’ “we get big money whether we win or not” culture as well (although they’re just one team.)
What’s your point? Canada has 1/10 the population of the US. The Greater Toronto Area has like 6 million people. Of course they’re going to sell tickets. Hockey is like a religion here.
We all know that something like two thirds of all NHL teams are comprised of Canadian players. It would be nice to see the cup back in Canada, but all teams are playing with Canadian players.
Shrug.
ETA:Sorry. I guess we’re down to about 46% now.
You’re right about the Leafs culture, although arguably that’s changing. We’ll see.
But your statistics are just crazy wrong. Canada has 11% of the population of the US, but no less than 7 of the 31 NHL teams (about 23%). So it’s actually very much over-represented.
And it would be even higher if Bettman wasn’t such a dick, obsessed with US expansion. There is an ample market for a second team in the Greater Toronto Area, and there very nearly was one approved, which would have been based in Hamilton, until Bettman scuttled it. A second team anywhere in the GTA would have no problem at all filling the arena to capacity. And there’s a market and an arena for another one in Quebec City. And there’s also the fact that so many players on US teams are actually Canadian.
YAY GRONK!!! Go Canes!!!
To be fair though, Phil Kessel did NOT deserve all the shit he got in Toronto. It’s so obvious that he’s much happier as a Penguin.
Hamilton Steelheads?
I liked Mrazek’s goaltending. Some great saves.
The players are from all over the world, not just the US and Canada. How many Russians, Finns, Czechs, Swedes? The hometown team really isn’t a hometown team, but an ever-changing international group that wears the same-colored shirts for a while. It’s amazing that we build loyalties around such abstract entities.
GodDAMMIT! :mad:
Yes! It is like arguing “our prostitutes are better than your hookers.”
The Sharks seemed a bit sluggish out of the gate last night - nut surprising since they played 9 periods of hockey in their last two games - but they seemed to catch fire after killing the 4-minute double minor early in the 2nd.
I meant this article: Why Can’t Canada Win The Stanley Cup? | FiveThirtyEight
It notes that relative to hockey demand, that having only 7 out of 31 NHL teams be Canadian is actually underrepresentation of Canada.
For one period, at least, the Stars made Jordan Binnington look like Craig Billington.
It’s tough to live in the Spotlight that is Toronto. And Toronto is still picking up $1.2 M for three more years.
I’m glad to see Phil doing well in Pittsburgh. He had no one to play with in Toronto at the time!
Well, if you had said that in the first place, I would have agreed with you. Assessing representation in terms of the estimated fan base and putative size of the hockey market is a very different metric than the normal meaning of the word as being proportional to population.
Anyway, thanks for the article. It’s very interesting to see a statistical guru like Nate Silver apply his wizardry to analyzing hockey markets and team performance. I note that he confirms some of the things I said, like the fact that the Greater Toronto Area needs a second team and the Leafs could sell out their arena three times over: he argues, in fact, that the GTA could probably support not two but three NHL teams! He also argues for a team in Quebec city, as I also said.
Another point Silver makes is that the wealthy Canadian teams, most notably the Leafs, are being hobbled by the salary cap which is intended to protect American teams in smaller markets, but it can’t even accomplish that since many of those teams are still losing money. I agree with almost everything in that article except the statement that Canadian teams sell out their arenas – the Ottawa Senators had a hard time filling their arena even when they were one of the top teams in the league, and I suspect that prevails to some degree everywhere outside Toronto and possibly Montreal. But yeah, a lot of the facts in that article could be summarized under the general heading, “The Incompetence of Gary Bettman”.
FWIW, I’ve always thought the same for that reason. I never thought of it in terms of population but rather fanbases. Hockey is a religion there and an afterthought in the majority of the US (not everywhere, but much of it.) Seems like there should be a lot more Canadian NHL teams and it’d be nice to see a Canadian team win a cup again. I had to look it up, but has it really been since 1993?
Then you likely saw Jumbo basically coddle him and hold him up, holding the blood-stained towel against his head, as they skated carefully off the ice.
Cool. Did you go to Hall High in W Hartford?