Ok, 3rd month of the season. I don’t think we’re done with the coaching changes. I’d say Columbus and Colorado are the next teams to make a change. The Avalanche look flat in every game I’ve seen this season.
I’m trying to find a stat that shows the percentage of time a team that is losing in the last minute of a game scores after they pull the goalie and go to 6 skaters. My estimate is about ten percent but any ideas if this stat is kept and where to find it?
Tootoo is such a punk. His hit on Miller is as cheap as they come!!!
Nope, Shanahan didn’t declare open season on Ryan Miller. No way, no how.
Markov goes under the knife again: a ‘minor’ arthroscopic surgery to clean up some scar tissue that’s causing some inflammation and discomfort. Apparently the new ligament is intact and strong, though. Out an additional 3 weeks, at least. So they say; this news comes from the same people who said he’d be ready for the start of the season.
Poor guy - how frustrated do you think he is with life right now; first the severed Achilles, then the knee injury, followed by the knee injury, followed by this…
Tootoo is wearing a yellow jersey in that video… he’s hoping Shanahan will get confused and think he’s a Bruin. He’s been seen with tape on his jersey: T[del]ootoo[/del]hornton. :rolleyes: 
It sure as hell backfired on St. Louis yesterday.
Blackhawks are looking good.
You know what - Trotz should get suspended for that along with Tootoo.
If he can’t control his players he should bench them, and if he doesn’t bench them he should be responsible for what they do on the ice.
No one to my knowledge tracks such a stat.
The closest thing I could point you to would be GFOFF/60 for goalies tracked by Behind the Net.
It’s not really what you’re looking for, but it gives you at least a sense of which teams are excelling at scoring with their goalies pulled (to be taken with a grain of salt as the sample sizes are about as small as one can get so the extrapolation out to per 60 minutes allows for large variation). Unfortunately, it doesn’t differentiate between the times teams pull the goalie late in the game to try and equalize or when they leave during a delayed penalty call.
The NHL has gone with a new 4 division alignment with divisional playoffs. I’m absolutely furious with the change. I can guarantee you that it won’t be long before the best team in a conference gets absolutely screwed with a brutal second round matchup while a team in the other division gets an undeserved easy one. This seriously waters down the regular season as achieving the #1 seed means nothing.
And it’s absolutely asinine that teams in the Eastern conference have a 4/7 chance of making the playoffs while teams in the West have a 4/8.
Not 4 divisions. Four conferences. WTF?
They can call them whatever they like; they’re clearly division. It’s just a re-tread of the 1980s divisional format.
I’m really looking forward to the return of the Norris division, let me tell you.
Anyway, Ottawa faced the dreaded Tampa trap and I have to tell you, I wasn’t impressed. Ottawa obliterated so badly in the first period that Tampa went to a 1-2 man forecheck in the second period, which was much more effective.
The trap really isn’t an issue for an intelligent, talented team. There will be lanes and a skilled passer can hit a forward in motion going through them. Once that happens it’s basically game over for the trapping team; you have the offensive busting through the neutral zone with speed against a flatfooted defence that’s caught out of position with at least two forwards behind the play. Ottawa had several chances for breakaways in the first period that they just missed connecting on; in the third Zach Smith blew through the trap for a breakaway.
Also, Tampa’s defensive zone coverage is just awful. Foligno’s winner was an absolute embarrassment: four Tampa players down low defending against three Ottawa players. Both players away from the puck were wide open on the play. How do you let that happen?
This is a stupid move. I hope the NHLPA votes against it - that seems to be the final hurdle.
Seriously, this isn’t really that hard of a problem to solve, is it? You have an even number of teams that is divisible by 2, 5, 6, 10 and 15 (other than 1 and 30, of course)…make something work with that. No one really believes that there’s going to be an expansion to make 8 in every conference, right? And there probably won’t be a contraction given the fact that Canadian cities are practically begging for a team.
They’ve managed to create a problem of something that had the possibility of an elegant solution.
Gods, I hate this league. The BOG are so freaking stupid is a coincidence that the chair of the BOG is the owner of the Bruins…?
It’s not just that the NHL screws everything up, it’s that they do it so often.
I’m really struggling to understand the rationale behind this.
[QUOTE=Rysto]
The trap really isn’t an issue for an intelligent, talented team. There will be lanes and a skilled passer can hit a forward in motion going through them. Once that happens it’s basically game over for the trapping team; you have the offensive busting through the neutral zone with speed against a flatfooted defence that’s caught out of position with at least two forwards behind the play. Ottawa had several chances for breakaways in the first period that they just missed connecting on; in the third Zach Smith blew through the trap for a breakaway.
[/QUOTE]
I’m glad someone else said this. Watching the game tonight I was just mystified as to why Philadelphia, or anyone, would have trouble cracking this allegedly super-unfair trap. I was expecting a horrible grind, from what I’d heard, and instead the Senators were charging in like crazed shoppers at a Boxing Day meth sale. The game could easily have been 7-2 if they’d taken a few more shots early on.
A few weeks ago people were seriously talking about how the rules might have to be changed to make the trap illegal, and tonight Ottawa just ripped it apart (and they aren’t the first team to do it; Tampa Bay is what, 12th?) Time and again what was happening was that Ottawa was moving into the offensive zone with superior momentum.
It’s worth nothing that Ottawa came from behind to win the game, a situation where a trapping team should be even tougher to beat, right? Yet they tore through the Lightning again and again. What was Philadelphia’s problem, exactly?
I don’t know how serious such suggestions actually were. People have been crying about the trap for years and years to the point that it’s reached mythical proportions.
In the end it’s just an efficient use of personnel no different from any other efficient defensive scheme. Besides, how would one make a trap illegal?
Firstly, they’d have to define what counts as a trap and what doesn’t. Is having 3 or more guys in the neutral zone a trap? Is only having one fore checker indicative of a trap? Is having more than one player attacking a puck carrier part of a trap?
Then they’d have to create penalties for refs to arbitrarily call anytime they felt a team violated any of these rules.
I don’t think it’s possible to eliminate the trap without completely changing the way the game is played, so I don’t think “serious” talk about eliminating it is anything more than sour grapes.
It’s not an unfair system. It’s not an unbeatable system. It’s not a system that abuses some loophole in the rules to gain an advantage. It’s just a smart way of setting up one’s team to defend against getting scored upon and it’s been around in one form or another since the 70s. Chances are, attempts to limit or remove it will just lead coaches to morph it into something similar but not quite the same like they did after the lockout.
For some reason they struggle against it. They certainly have the players with the ability to beat it, so it leads me to believe that Laviolette just isn’t that good a coach.
That’s what I find puzzling, though. As you point out the Flyers have players as skilled as Ottawa does, and Laviolette seems to be able to beat OTHER teams.
Of course, sometimes another team just gets in your head. The Leafs and their denizens are absolutely flipping out over the fact that they can’t bear Boston, never mind that
- Four games isn’t much of a data sample, and
- Recently, nobody has been able to beat Boston.
Yay realignment 
It’s no secret that Mr. Illich was one of biggest agitators for a change and the Wings got what they wanted. I don’t know how many years we’ve had to watch the team flip back and forth to the West coast every playoff round, and stupid games that last till 2 in the morning, 3 or 4 with overtime fairly often.
I just found out, and thought I would rub it in, I’ll be going to the All-Star weekend in Ottawa.
A weekend in Kanata. I’m so, so sorry.
Kanata is just a suburb, right? I’ve never been to Ottawa before and hope to have a bit of time to see a museum or two.
Yeah, it’s a clone-townhouse-big-box-store-shopping-area-surrounding-a-commuter-highway suburb (note, I’m a snob who lives in the big city hehe).
I’ve never been to Scotiabank Place, but from the outside it’s a nice arena. I’ve only driven past it as I had a friend who used to live in the boonies well past Kanata. It’s really only 20 mins or so from downtown Ottawa, so you’ll be able to visit stuff if you’re driving. I don’t know what the transit situation is, but I know OCTranspo does get out to Kanata.