Winter Classic Day, as the Flyers face the Bruins in Fenway Park at 2:00 on NBC, CBC and RDS. Only one other game tonight as the Thrashers are in Buffalo.
The Habs wrapped up a 6-1 road trip last night in South Florida with a 5-4 win. Markov has 11 points in the seven games since his return, including three helpers last night.
In other hockey news, Canada and Sweden received byes to the semifinals of the World Junior Hockey Championship, with Canada edging the U.S. 5-4 in a shootout. On Sunday, Canada will play the winner of the Russia/Switzerland quarterfinal, while the Americans play Finland tomorrow for the right to face Sweden in the other semi.
And over the pond in Davos, Switzerland, Dynamo Minsk defeated Davos to win the Spengler Cup, Europe’s oldest ice hockey invitational tournament.
Impressive win by the Dallas Stars last night. Hopefully, that’s a sign of things to come. No stupid 3rd period goals let in by Turco. Eriksson with a short handed goal on his way to a hat trick. Another tough game against Vancouver coming up on Saturday.
Ottawa’s sixth, and I still have trouble believing they’re actually that good. They insist on starting Pascal Leclaire, who has the worst save percentage of any starting goalie in the NHL, unless you count Vesa Toskala as a starter.
At least to my observation, Leclaire’s an awful goalie who lets in a huge, huge number of terrible goals, especially on long, stoppable shots. I have trouble believing a team can make the playoffs with a goalie this bad. But they’re in the mix so far.
Brian Elliot didn’t exactly set the league on fire when Leclaire was injured. Maybe this is just the result of having two years with Gerber as the starter, but Leclaire hasn’t looked that bad to me. He is allowing too many softies, but his save percentage is more a function of the terrible defensive coverage in front of him than anything else. This week has been a microcosm of his game: brilliant against Montreal, put Ottawa in a hole against Colorado that they couldn’t dig their way out of, and ok against the Islanders(but he allowed an awful goal to allow the Islanders to tie in the third)
To be honest, I’m not sure how they’re doing it. Spezza has been slumping badly for a lot of reasons, chief among them being that he’s been trying to play with a bad back, he’s had trouble finding chemistry with other players and he’s been sacrificing some of his offence in an attempt to limit his turnovers and bad defensive play(he’s had moderate success at this, but as the season has gone on he’s clearly felt the pressure to score to try to get on Team Canada and he was trying more and more high-risk plays as the season went on). Kovalev has been, well, Kovalev. Kuba and Shannon have come back to earth after scoring above their talent level last season(Kuba definitely should have have been traded at last year’s trade deadline rather than being re-signed). Phillips and Volchenkov are up and down. Neither Picard nor Campoli are looking like they were worth the heavy price that Murray paid to acquire them. Karlsson is years away from being NHL-ready, and I am just flabbergasted that the Senators have been stupid enough to keep him in the big leagues. Have they paid no attention at all to what’s happened to Luke Schenn in Toronto? Cheechoo, to no one’s surprise, is at best a marginal third-line player in the NHL right now. Michalek is as streaky as ever, and Daniel Alfredsson is hurt. The PP is atrocious(not that we ever get them) and the PK is up-and-down.
I guess it’s a matter pf perception, because he’s just awful in my eyes. But in my defense, the numbers are on my side:
His save percentage is amazingly bad, and
It’s not a function of being peppered with too many shots because Ottawa gives up fewer shots than any team in the league except the Kings and Blackhawks, both elite teams.
If you look at the number of shots a team gives up it’s a very strong indicator of how good the team is; the 10 best teams at preventing shots are all good teams. The few who give up a lot of goals are the ones with crappy goalies. The highest ranking team in shots allowed that’s a genuinely bad team is Toronto (11th), who have absolutely atrocious goaltending.
I don’t have anything personal against Leclaire, but the sum total of evidence that he’s a good NHL goalie is one good year with Columbus and the fact he’s from Quebec. IMHO, he’s playing terribly and has cost the Sens at least 4 or 5 points.
Team USA has been announced.
Lots of youth (13 players under the age of 25), with only Jamie Langenbrunner, Chris Drury and Brian Rafalski having Olympic experience. The old guard of Modano, Tkachuk and Guerin is nowhere to be seen.
From nhlnumbers.com, a $10M cap hit would be the highest in the league. Ovechkin is at 9.538, Crosby is at 8.7, and Nash is at 5.4, but that will jump to 7.8 next year.
It remains to be seen what the salary cap will be for next year. There’s been talk that it could come down quite significantly (economy), but nobody’s quite sure yet. I doubt he’ll get $100 million; if he does get that much, it’ll probably be a longer term deal than ten years.
Major upset at the World Juniors, as the Swiss defeat Russia in OT. They will play Canada in the semis. The Swiss program has won a few shockers. The junior team won a bronze medal at the 1998 World Juniors (David Aebischer in net.) More recently, they beat both the Czechs and the Canadians in the round robin of the 2006 Winter Olympics.
And the St. Louis Blues have fired Andy Murray. Davis Payne, the AHL coach in Peoria, is taking over on an interim basis.
Did you see the Kings kick some Shark ass? San Jose out shot them something like 45 to 20 but the Kings won 6-2. The second period ended with the Kings winning 6-0 and average a goal every three shots.
Halak shuts out the Panthers 2-0, for the first home win for Montreal in a month. He can do no wrong it seems. Just to throw out a theory; perhaps Price should be the one dangled as trade bait. (I don’t think this should be done, I’m just playing devil’s advocate.) I still think he’s the one with the bigger upside, perhaps he could fetch a better package than Halak.
Gainey has said repeatedly that they’re sticking with Price, and so it is Halak who will be gone by the trade deadline.
I think the longer they wait to trade him, though, the worse this whole starter/backup “controversy” is going to get for both goalies…Price’s stats are nearly identical to Halak’s, but the offence doesn’t produce in front of him, and so Price gets all the blame. What’s he supposed to do - stop the pucks and go score at the other end? He was right last year; he’s either on a pedestal or under a bus, and IMHO this year Halak hasn’t actually played enough games for the fans to start doing the same to him. Make Halak the starter, and as soon as he has a bad streak, he’d be torn to shreds just as much as Price is now. Which is why they should keep Price - he is generally considered to have more talent and skill, and more potential. Go with that.
What the Habs need to do, though, is sign Plekanec right now, or they’ll lose him as an UFA.
Alright. Detroit got Zetterburg and Cleary back, and finished a key road trip 3 out of 4. Looks like things may be about to be set right in the world. Although Holmstrom managed to get put on IR and the D men hurt don’t look to be healing quickly, so we will still have to see.