So you may have noticed that I’ve yet to comment on the Memorial Cup, a week after the Hitmen’s ouster at the hands of the hated Brandon Wheat Kings. This is very much intentional. If you stalk me on the Internet, you may have caught wind of some rather bitter sentiments regarding the way the Hitmen went out, and I wanted some distance to see if I still felt the same way before saying anything long-form. The answer? Kinda, but not entirely.
Posts Tagged ‘Make the hurting stop’
For anyone who's keeping score
A look back at the great goaltending debate of 2009
The Oilers had a lot of things go wrong this year and as much as people like to bring up the cap I’m not convinced that it limited them this year and given that they’re planning to rebuild I’m not sure it limits them next year. However, at the beginning of the season a list was published of the best goalies of the last 3 seasons who were free agents, and what they were signed at. Let’s take a look again.
- Martin Biron: 77 wins, .914 SV% (10th) – 1 year, 1.4 million per season
- Ty Conklin: 46 wins, .911 SV% (18th) – 2 years, 1.3 million per season
- Nikolai Khabibulin: 73 wins, .909 SV% (23rd) – 4 years, 3.75 million per season
- Dwayne Roloson: 70 wins, .909 SV% (25th) – 2 years, 2.5 million per season
- Mathieu Garon: 47 wins, .908 SV% (26th) – 2 years, 1.2 million per season
- Manny Fernandez: 40 wins, .907 SV% (27th) – unsigned
- Martin Gerber: 55 wins, .907 SV% (28th) – signed in the KHL
- Jason Labarbera: 25 wins, .907 SV% (29th) – 2 years, 1.0 million per season
- Manny Legace: 63 wins, .905 SV% (32nd) - 1 year, 0.5 million per season
- Olaf Kolzig: 49 wins, .902 SV% (36th) – unsigned
- Antero Niittymaki: 36 wins, .902 SV% (37th) – 1 year, .6 million per season
- Brent Johnson: 25 wins, .900 SV% (39th) – 1 year, .525 million per season
- Joey MacDonald: 17 wins, .900 SV% (40th) – unsigned
- Fredrik Norrena: 35 wins, .899 SV% (43rd) – signed in the SEL
- Curtis Sanford: 19 wins, .896 SV% (46th) – 1 year, .6 million per season
- Andrew Raycroft: 51 wins, .891 SV% (48th) – 1 year, .5 million per season
- Curtis Joseph: 26 wins, .889 SV% (49th) – unsigned
(Courtesy Copper ‘N Blue)
Hitmen Game Day
Do Or Die, Part the First
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2 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 1 | |
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4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
It’s safe to say things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. We’ve complained about the officiating before, and that’s all well and good, but while I haven’t seen the other three games, I have seen the boxscores, and I’m unconvinced that the refs jobbed us in two of them. I’m looking at those Moose Jaw goal totals and wondering what’s happened to the D and/or goaltending. Both looked bad in Game 1, and clearly, we haven’t seen much improvement since: you almost wonder why Williamson hasn’t gone with Snider at some point here, and as for the D, well, let’s just say that the Tribe’s goalie got two assists in the first period of Game 4 and leave it at that. Of course, Jason Bast is having himself quite the series so far, with six goals (!!) in four games to this point, and outside of Game 3, Jeff Bosch has been lights-out. From the Hitmen perspective, though, my interpretation of the action and the comments to date is that the boys have got the opposite problem to last year. Whereas last post-season, they got too complacent after pummelling lesser teams, and basically let themselves be beat by the Kelowna Rockets in the final, this year, they seem to be clamming up and letting a lesser team beat them before they can get within a country mile of their peer group — the Blades, the Wheaties, the Americans, and the Silvertips. Instead of playing to win, they’re playing not to lose, and from the sounds of the public quotes to date, that directive isn’t coming from the coaching staff.
So, it’s win or go home for the next three games if Calgary wants to see the light of April. A comeback is far from implusible, of course: just last year, the Capitals came back from 1-3 down to win their series against the Rangers in seven. It’s not terribly common, either, mind you: just 12.1% of series in which the underdog has gone up 3-1 have seen such a comeback in the majors (not counting last year’s Caps win), and I can’t imagine junior would be horribly different — let’s be optimistic and call it one in five. If it’s going to happen, the coaches need to reign the boys in and get them playing confident and physical, more like Game 3 — or for that matter, the last 27 games of the season — and less like they have most of this series. They need to remember what got them here to begin with, and what got them within two wins of the Memorial Cup tournament last year. Play simple, play aggressive, and come at them in waves. They absolutely have to leave everything on the ice tonight if they want any hope of playing again on Saturday.
Prediction: Hitmen 4, Warriors 3. Kozun, Foucault, and Schultz in regulation; MacKenzie Royer scores on a fifth whack in double overtime to send us back to the Crushed Can. Bast with the hat trick for Moose Jaw, because why the hell not.
Useless Historical Statistic of the Day: Playoff Futility
A few months back, when it first looked like the Coyotes were a legit team, I became curious about their current active playoff futility streak — no playoff series wins since 1987, when the Winnipeg Jets defeated the Calgary Flames in a six-game Smythe Division Semi-Final — and how it compared to other historical paragons of failure.
Turns out, it compares pretty favourably, in exactly the wrong way. More specifically, I’m pretty sure they currently hold the NHL record for most seasons played without a playoff series victory. These are the longest streaks I could find:
- Winnipeg Jets-Phoenix Coyotes: 1987-88 to 2003-04; 2005-06 to 2008-09 (21 seasons)
- Quebec Bulldogs-Hamilton Tigers-New York Americans: 1913-14 to 1916-17; 1919-20 to 1934-35 (20 seasons)
- New York Rangers: 1950-51 to 1969-70 (20 seasons)
Note that the Bulldogs-Tigers-Americans franchise streak includes their final four seasons in the NHL’s predecessor league, the National Hockey Association. Note also that all these years are inclusive, and that seasons in which a team did not play — 2004-05 for the Coyotes; 1917-18 and 1918-19 for the Bulldogs — are excluded for obvious reasons. This also means that while the Ottawa Senators did not win a playoff series between the old franchise’s last Stanley Cup in 1927 and the new franchise’s first series victory in 1998, only twelve seasons were completed during that stretch — six as the old Senators, one as the St. Louis Eagles, and five as the new Senators — which puts them down the list a bit.
This list should also give us Oilers fans a bit of perspective, for however bad things seem to be now, we’ve only missed the playoffs four seasons in a row: we have a long, long way to go before we’re as historically bad as these guys.
Dear Oilers,
I’m a pretty big fan. I’ve even supported the idea that you could be a great team with some minor personnel changes and playing as a team. This is not the time to start doing that.
I’ll admit, even in the middle of January I was hoping for a repeat of Quinn’s undefeated streak (35 games) which could have propelled you into the playoff picture. However, doing the math today shows that even if you win every game between now and the end of the season you’d be lucky to get 8th spot (with 96 points). This is not the time to win.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should actively try to lose. At this stage of the game if you break .500 for the rest of the season you’re still only likely to drop down to 3rd pick. And while, yes, Toronto getting first pick would entertain me bitterly (I believe you’re aware that their pick goes to Boston this year) and I realize that there’s no real clearance between the first and second prospects this season it should be up to you to pick between Daigle and Pronger. You don’t want to obsess over what might have been.
