* – Denotes single-game result in Memorial Cup competition.

That last one still hurts my soul every time I think about it. Sigh.

Okay, I’ve been driving myself nuts over this during the few spare minutes I’ve had to think about it over the last few days. So we’ve got Calgary finishing 44-25-3 and +52, versus Brandon finishing 39-28-5 and +16. After a streaky first half, Calgary came on strong with a post-holiday record of 27-10-0 – one of the biggest second-half improvements in the WHL – headlined by a 15-2-0 run during January and February. On the one hand, that’s great cause for optimism, because yay we kicked ass, but then I’ve also learned to be leery of teams that push themselves from the bubble to home ice on the strength of one long run of nigh-unabated success. Take away the one long run, and you’re left with 12-8-0 for the rest of the second half (though granted, there’s also a 1-5-0 run in there; like I said, streaky), and 29-23-3 all told, which prorates to eighth in the East, about where I figured they’d be at the start of the year. Obviously, that’s not how stuff like this really works, but it’s definitely concerning.

I promised myself I’d never try to do advanced stats on the WHL, and that I’d just enjoy the game, but there are some things that have just confused me with this team that I’m trying to understand. Like their first-half tendency to get into lopsided games, both for and against; the world may never understand that one. Or how both goalies have won goalie of the month this year, yet neither has a save percentage above .900 – for comparison’s sake, Brandon’s starter has the third-best SV% in the League at .916 – or how they managed to give up 36 fewer goals than the Wheaties despite all of this. That last one’s a lot easier: I did some quick math off the goalie-stats page and came up with the Hitmen surrendering just 27.1 SA/60, a ridiculously low shot volume, especially for mistake-riddled junior hockey. Again, to compare: regular-season champion Edmonton’s goalies faced 28.4 SA/60; the WHL’s stingiest team, Tri-City, gave up 29.4 SA/60. We don’t have many underlying numbers, but that seems like a really good one to have, especially when you consider that the Central Division was easily the toughest in the WHL this year. (I wish I could search @WHLFacts’ feed easily so I could find the tweet that had GD versus other divisions; I remember that the Central’s was a ridiculous plus, and the BC’s was a ridiculous minus.)

The Hitmen and Wheaties are tied for the 5^th-best GF total (273) in the WHL, with the teams ahead of them being Edmonton and the three good teams in the Norris West. However, the Hitmen have gotten it done a little more at even strength, with a power play efficiency ranked smack in the middle of the League at #12, while Brandon’s sat third overall. However, to balance that out, the Hitmen also have the fourth-best PK efficiency in the League, while Brandon was way down at #15. Rather strikingly, the Wheaties have more scoring from their top line (1.49 PPG average), while the Hitmen have theirs much more spread out (Jimmy Bubnick’s 1.07 PPG leads the team). And finally, we have the season series: 3-1 by games, 19-13 by goals, both to the Hitmen, with only one of those games decided by fewer than three goals. Make of that what you will.

So what does all that mean? Well, first off, I should probably relax a little: this was a team that I didn’t feel like was getting enough breaks early in the year, and they probably got too many late in the year, so maybe their record isn’t as entirely out of whack as it might first seem. They’re sound defensively, which makes life easier for their goalies, and they have a balanced offence that makes it harder to shut them down compared to Brandon. (The Yahoo! preview of this series pointed to the Brandon top line’s age and last-kick-at-the-can desire as a factor in predicting the upset, but one could easily turn that right around when talking about Jimmy Bubnick and captain Cody Sylvester, the only forwards left over from the 2010 championship team. Stone et al. are clearly better, but I’m not convinced it’s going to be the deciding factor.) The Wheaties will get their goals, make no mistake – Calgary’s goalies are highly streaky, and it seems all but certain that one of them is going to give up a fiver at some point – but I feel like on the whole, the Hitmen match up pretty well against them. It’ll be a tighter series than the standings suggest, but I’m confident the Hitmen will win in six games.

Doogie	Hoop	Matt	Gerard	Result
4-2	4-2	4-2	4-3	4-1
4-2	4-2	4-3	4-3	4-0
1-1	1-1	2-0	1-1	W-L
7	7	4	7	GO
7-7	10-4	6-8	7-7	W-L
35	27	35	35	GO

Thankfully, we no longer have Montreal around to gum up the works yet again. This time, it’s just two teams, and hopefully a pretty straightforward selection. Fair warning: Hoop and I wrote novels. The important bits, as always, are in bold.

So of course, the first game where most of the ‘Hawks play like the ‘Hawks, and I miss it. Ah, well. Wednesday!

Stanley Cup Finals

(3) Chicago vs. (18) Philadelphia

Playoff History: The only previous meeting between the ‘Hawks and the Flyers came in the first round of the 1971 playoffs, when Chicago polished off the nascent Broad Street Bullies in four straight en route to their fourth Finals appearance in 11 years.

1971 QF
4-0

Stanley Cup History: The ‘Hawks have not exactly led a charmed life, winning just three Stanley Cups, the fewest of any Original Six team, and none since 1961, the longest active drought. They were also tied with the Rangers for the fewest Final series appearances by an Original Six team prior to this year, at ten. In fact, since making five appearances in 13 years during the Hull-Mikita-Esposito era (1961-73), the ‘Hawks had only been back to the Finals once, and that year, they ran into a buzzsaw.

1931	1934	1938	1944	1961	1962	1965	1971	1973	1992
2-3	3-1	3-1	0-4	4-2	2-4	3-4	3-4	2-4	0-4

Since the Broad Street Bullies’ reign of terror was silenced spectacularly by the Montreal Canadiens in 1976, the Flyers have become perennial Stanley Cup bridesmaids: they’ve now lost five consecutive Final series, and won only six games in the process, half of which came in the 1987 classic against Edmonton.

1974	1975	1976	1980	1985	1987	1997
4-2	4-2	0-4	2-4	1-4	3-4	0-4

Season Series: The only meeting of the year between the ‘Hawks and Flyers came on March 13, a 3-2 win for the Flyers. Scott Hartnell tied the game with just over two minutes to play, then Chris Pronger scored the winner with just three seconds to go. Michael Leighton made 39 saves — and scored an assist — in the victory.

Doogie Says: The minute the Canadiens eliminated the Penguins in round two, I knew that the Stanley Cup champion was going to come from the West and that it probably wasn’t going to be even close, simply because the East, as a whole, is a shitty conference, and of all the teams there, the only ones that could hope to compete with a Western club had all been polished off by the underdogs. Washington, New Jersey, and Buffalo were all gone early, and with Pittsburgh following soon after, it was down to Montreal, Boston, and Philly, all of whom had made the playoffs in the last week, and none of whom exactly screamed contender.

I do fear that I may have underestimated the Flyers a bit. Certainly, I should’ve seen them coming last round, knowing how many games the Habs had played, and how the Flyers play, and how they’d underachieved due to goaltending injuries throughout the regular season. (I maintain that Ray Emery playing through an abdominal tear directly resulted in the firing of John Stevens back in December.) While they looked dead in the water in round two, with injuries to three important players in Gagne, Carter, and Laperriere, they outlasted the Bruins and staged that epic comeback, thanks in part to Simon Gagne making his dramatic comeback, and Michael Leighton stepping in flawlessly for injured Brian Boucher. Controlling the passive Habs four games out of five proved all too easy after that, especially with Laperriere and Carter making their way back in Game 4.

Yet ultimately, that’s precisely why I can’t lend too much credence to the Flyers as Finalists. Not to denigrate any of their accomplishments, but really, who did they beat? A New Jersey team they’d owned all year (5-1 in the regular season, 4-1 in the playoffs), an offensively inept Bruins team that lost what little it had when Krejci went down to injury, and a passive Canadiens squad that controlled the play exactly one game out of five. Colour me unimpressed. Furthermore, in that one game they did steal, the Habs showed us precisely how you beat the Flyers: move through the neutral zone with speed, dump and chase, forecheck aggressively, force the Philly defence to take penalties. Guess what the ‘Hawks are really good at?

Chicago’s had the much tougher road — Nashville is harder than anyone the Flyers faced, save maybe New Jersey, and it got meaner from there — and in the process of getting here, they’ve had their captain best the franchise record for single-season playoff points streak (13) and tie the franchise record for any playoff points streak, and tied an NHL record with seven consecutive road wins. They have superior skill at just about every position, save maybe goal, and as these playoffs have proven, you don’t need a great goalie to win it all, just good enough. They’ll test Michael Leighton (and Brian Boucher, should he make an appearance) far more than any of New Jersey, Boston, or Montreal did on a far more consistent basis. They’re just the better team all around, and I’ve seen nothing in any of the countering predictions to date that’s swayed me in the slightest. Philly can ride Leighton to victory in a single game, just like they did in the regular-season meeting mentioned above, but the bottom line is, Chicago is simply too much for anyone to handle. ‘Hawks win it in five, ending the longest active Stanley Cup drought and second-longest in NHL history, at 49 years.

Hoop Says: Let’s start in goal for both teams and it’s not exactly what you would call an elite goaltender match up with Antti Niemi for the Blackhawks and Michael Leighton/Brian Boucher for the Flyers. (Yes, I suspect we will see both Flyers goalies in the final) Niemi has been solid throughout the playoffs for the Hawks but never spectacular in my opinion. Leighton just came off what had to be the easiest three shut out performance in a series in the history of the sport. Needless to say I am not convinced at all in the Flyers goaltending as much as I am impressed by the Flyers defense corps. Advantage Hawks

Moving on to the defense for both teams, and this is a great match up! The Hawks’ top pair of Keith and Seabrook will have the task of shutting down the Richards line, while the pair of Chris Pronger and whatever stiff they throw out with him for the next shift [ed: Matt Carle at EV, Kimmo Timmonen on the PP] will be against the Toews line. It may be a bit of a cold hearted way to look at it, but from what I have seen it is true. Pronger is the Conn Smythe nominee for the Flyers with no hesitation in my mind, and he will see a lot of the Hawks’ nominee, Jonathan Toews. The Hawks can easily go five deep on the blue line while I think Pronger will have to play 45 minutes a night to give the Flyers a chance. Advantage Hawks

Moving up front, the Flyers’ Mike Richards has been great all post season for Philly. Philadelphia has also gotten some great play out of Claude Giroux, and Simon Gagne does pose enough of a threat that the Hawks’ D will have their hands full. Now you look at the Hawks and these guys are three lines deep and also have a solid fourth line. I am curious how the Flyers will try and handle Dustin Byfuglien in front of their net. The Sharks’ theory of “leave him alone” certainly did not work. I suspect that by the time this series is over, Byfuglien and Pronger will have a good hate for each other going. I just can’t see how the Flyers’ D will be able to hold up to the depth of skill Chicago brings to the table. Advantage Hawks

Now let’s take a look at the intangibles, starting with home ice advantage. Both teams have tough barns to play in and both should be rocking the entire playoffs. Listen to how noisy it gets in Philly when they play the Kate Smith rendition of God Bless America. The lid may come off that building! The Hawks’ home crowd is nothing to sneeze at either. When that horn goes and they play the stupid (yes, I said it) Chelsea Dagger song after a goal and I think there will be a few. The Madhouse on Madison will be exactly that. But the Flyers could have destiny on their side being the first team to come back from 3-0 down in 35 years to win a series. However, Mike Richards touched the Prince of Wales trophy so that gets wiped out with that curse [ed: Even though Crosby touched it last year?]. That being said, there is some magic in Philadelphia right now. Advantage Flyers

To wrap it up, I just can’t see a way the Flyers can win this series short of a few Hawks getting injured, or I am incorrect about the Flyers goaltending and they pull off another miracle. I also look at who the Flyers beat in New Jersey, Boston, and Montreal and none of those teams are even close to what Chicago will bring to the table. If Chicago can avoid over confidence then they should roll in this series. The funny thing is I would not be shocked to see Philadelphia win game 1 for that reason and for that reason alone I can’t pick a sweep. Your Stanley Cup Champions for 2009-2010 are…

The Chicago Blackhawks in 5 games

I will take Jonathan Toews as the Conn Smythe winner.

Matt Says: This is a tough one…I’m going to say six games. My gut reaction was the Hawks, simply because, contrary to my pick here (What was I thinking? Brainwashed by my ‘Nucklehead roommate, I guess.), they’ve always been a team I cheered for and enjoyed watching play. But, they’re also overall a smaller team, especially against a team like Philly. And as Doogie mentioned, Philly is getting healthier. Leighton is on a roll, and no matter how poorly the Canadiens played, three shutouts in five games, something is going right…

I have a gut feeling I’m going to regret this, but I’m going to go with my initial gut reaction, and say Hawks in six. Let’s see if I can go from 0 and 4, to 2 and 0, and back to 0 and 1.

Gerard Says: Hawks in 5 due to my confusing predictions of the last round.

1. Conklin is not in the Conference Finals/Finals for the first time since the lockout. He always loses (sometimes actively making his team lose) and has the Conklin Curse.
2. Hossa has shared the last two (losing) teams with Conklin and as such is either a victim of the Conklin Curse or has caught it himself.
3. Loser of the Winter Classic who beat the winner of the Winter Classic to continue.
4. The winner of the Winter Classic has lost the Stanley Cup Finals in the last two years.
5. The winner of this year’s Winter Classic lost to the Flyers (the losers of this year’s Classic) in a loss so epic one may as well call it a transference of Winter Classic powers. [Ed: Or put more succinctly, the visitor in the Winter Classic has made the Finals every year so far -- and lost every year so far.]
6. Philly has stupid Pronger face and haven’t had a goaltender to get behind since Hextall.
7. Byfuglien is really fun to say phonetically, and will likely be a word Leighton is reading over and over while in net.

Chicago will win in 5. And if they don’t, I’m blaming it on the Conklin Curse.

Though I do look forward to Byfuglien knocking out Pronger’s teeth.

	6	2	3	3	7	4	4
	5	1	4	5	4	3	2

So first the “kinda” part. It continues to feel to me tremendously unfair that we dispatched the Wheaties rather handily in the playoffs, winning four straight after dropping the first game, then beat them again quite handily in the round robin (to the tune of 5-1, all goals in the first), and still had to beat them again in order to advance. I knew going into Friday’s game that it was going to be a squeaker, and I wasn’t going to be surprised at all if the Hitmen lost. Why? Because they’d just punted the Wheaties pretty hard, they were gonna come back pissed, and I wasn’t convinced the Hitmen were going to be able to get up for yet another battle against a repeatedly vanquished foe. Sure enough, three minutes and change into overtime, there they were, looking on in disbelief as the host team earned a free pass for the right to get skullfucked by the once and future kings (again). It was like a scene in a zombie movie, where one of the secondary heroes thinks he’s killed the zombie, but it pops back up again, so he puts a decisive round into its head, starts to walk away in that action-movie sort of way…then gets ripped to shreds by that same fucking zombie. Except not funny, because my team was the guy who got torn to hell.

I went over it in my head a hundred times. Why the hell should Brandon get a free pass? It’s not like they lost a hard-fought WHL Final or anything: they got schooled in the semis, for crying out loud! They’d lost to Calgary and Windsor, the consensus favourites by a mile, by a combined 14-4 in the round-robin. They had no business being there at all, and it showed in the final score of the final game (9-1 Windsor). Shouldn’t there be some way to remove the Wheaties from the process altogether? I dunno, make the Final a best-of-three between the top two teams. You still get your minimum-two-but-maybe-three games for gate receipts and TV ratings, and it seems like a much fairer gauge of who the best team in all the land truly is. Or maybe the hosts shouldn’t get a free pass if they don’t make their respective League Final. Something. Anything’s got to be better than this travesty of a result.

Then I stopped and reflected on the tournament as a whole, and came to a realization: the Hitmen simply didn’t play well enough. They got down 0-3 in each of their first two games, mounting a comeback against Moncton and losing 6-2 to Windsor. They became completely passive in their final round-robin game against Brandon after the first, then simply had no answer for Brandon’s tenacity in the semis. (These two things may or may not be related, depending on how you view momentum in a game.) I wasn’t scared of facing Windsor, as such: I maintain that we could’ve beat them, and if nothing else kept the score close. But I do wonder if we really deserved to win, regardless. Having two or three good periods in a tournament we should have dominated is no way to earn the right to play for the prize. Jones wasn’t good enough, the defence wasn’t good enough, the discipline wasn’t good enough, and outside the Jimmy Bubnick-Tyler Shattock-Kris Foucault line, the scorers weren’t good enough. Sure, we were missing Brandon Kozun, but that’s not an excuse: we were still three lines deep in offensive talent. They weren’t aggressively bad, or anything, they just weren’t at their best for most of the tournament, and it showed.

Still, even if we biffed our second consecutive chance to be crowned kings of junior hockey — and possibly the last for several years, given the amount of turnover likely to occur this summer — there’s a ton to be proud of. Two World Junior representatives, both of whom took home awards for their work at their respective positions: Kozun as the nation’s top scorer, Martin Jones as the West’s top goalie and MVP of the conference and league finals (Edit: and top goalie of the Memorial Cup). First overall in the League, for the second year in a row. The first 1-3 comeback in five years (since we ourselves were turfed by none other than those fucking Wheat Kings). Pasting the League’s best offensive team and the presumptive favourites by winning the goalie battle in spectacular fashion. Winning our first WHL title since the days of Moran, Brendl, and Fomitchev. The final result may not have been what was desired, but there’s a hell of a lot to be proud of here, and as the bitterness and pain fade, there are a lot of fond memories to look back on, and when we raise four more banners to the rafters of the Saddledome in late September, those will be the things that we as fans should focus on, not the resentment and disappointment of a single loss, off a single goal.

For the last time, congratulations to the 2009-10 Calgary Hitmen, and thanks for the memories.

After a lot of thinking, I’m beginning to feel like they’re right, at least to some degree, for a couple of reasons. For one, the talent disparity that we used to see in evidence whenever the Montreal Canadiens played, say, the Kansas City Scouts is largely gone. Yes, at the extremes, there’s still a clear difference between good and bad — anyone who’s seen a Blackhawks-Oilers game in the last two years can attest to that — but on an average night, the difference between two teams is much more granular than it’s ever been. Part of that is due to improved scouting, as teams scour not just the wilds of Canadian junior, but European junior and pro leagues, American college and high-school, and even occasionally (though all-too-rarely) Canadian university hockey. Good players are everywhere, and while you can question the decision-making and efficency of some teams, there’s no question that most of the stones are at least getting turned over, and that there’s talent to be found under every one of them. There’s also the fact that coaching, athletic training, and psychological training are much better now than they’ve ever been. Players get feedback on what they did wrong, can see the video of the error for themselves, and know what to do for next time. Guys can spend a dozen hours or more per week in the gym, building their aerobic base and their strength. Players learn how to deal with hostile crowds, can talk to trained professionals about their confidence and about off-ice issues that can prove to be a distraction. All of this leads to the average NHLer being much more skilled, fit, and resilient than they’ve ever been, and there’s much less disparity between the best and worst in at least the last two categories — and arguably the first, as well — than we’ve ever seen. And then, of course, we have the redistribution of talent brought about by the salary cap, which teams are still learning the ins and outs of five years later. All of this leads to a situation where it’s much more likely that the outcome of a game, for example, can hinge on a fortuitous bounce one way or the other, because on any given night, there’s not that much to choose from, relative to 30 or 40 years ago.

The other main reason is that high-level hockey seems to be a barely-controlled chaotic system, which I think is a product of the way the game’s developed over the last half-century or so. In that time, we’ve seen the introduction of the slap shot, drastic changes to goalie equipment and play style, meaningful east-west play, heavy shot-blocking, composite sticks, and mid-air redirection of the puck as an intentional play, to name just a few things. Many of these changes come in a sort of delayed chain-reaction. Slap shots begat changes in goalie equipment. Changes in goalie equipment combined with the butterfly style led to much more shot-tipping. The evolution of the modern east-west game — not just skating up and down your lanes, but cutting across the ice and creating holes through both skating and puck movement — started by the Winnipeg Jets of the 1970s and perfected by the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s, made it difficult to play man-to-man defence, especially for the more lumbering brutes of the defensive trade, necessitating more shot- and pass-blocking, from all members of the lineup. Combine these changes with worsening ice conditions — especially in warmer climes and during the latter stages of the playoffs, as the weather gets warmer everywhere — and increased overall athleticism — leading not only to faster players and more violent collisions, but more abuse to the aforementioned ice through the course of a game — and the puck winds up spending much of its time hopping here, there, and everywhere, rolling, flipping, on end, what have you. Sometimes unpredictable things happen like, say, the puck hitting a rut on its way in from centre ice and hopping over a goalie’s glove, or a puck pinballing in off three sets of legs in front of the net. At a certain point, physics takes over and there’s little you can do to predict it.

All of which leads me to last night’s game between the Hitmen and the Spitfires. Sure, it ended 6-2 Windsor, and appeared for all the world, from the boxscore, to be the coronation of the first Memorial Cup repeat in 15 years. If they can abuse the only team that appeared to be any real competition to them going in, what hope does anyone else have? Except when you actually watch the game, it becomes clear that bounces played a huge role in the final outcome. The first Windsor goal came off a Michael Stone shot-block: the puck bounced just under his ankle, in the tiny space that was there, and fooled Martin Jones. The second, just a minute or so later, deflected off the stick of a backchecking Ben Wilson. It’s 2-0 five minutes in, a hole from which the Hitmen never recovered, but it was off two unfortunate bounces. From there, I felt it was actually a fairly evenly-played game, with both teams getting their share of the bounces: a shot that rang off both posts behind Martin Jones and out at one end, a tip by Matt MacKenzie going two inches wide because the puck started rolling mid-pass at the other, and so forth. A ton of close calls that could’ve been in or out, based on ever-so-slight variances in human performance — so small as to be irreproducable — or the condition of the ice or what have you. From the four-minute mark of the first to the 19-minute mark of the third, the balance of scoring was 3-2 Windsor. That was the game I saw, and that game in no way resembled the 6-2 final scoreline.

Sure, some nights a team gets outplayed, full stop…but others, the bounces go the other guys’ way and obscure the balance of play. Maybe I’m being a blinkered fan here, and maybe I’m not lending enough credence to score effects, but what I saw last night was a team that could compete with the best in major junior, that suffered just a couple of breakdowns, but otherwise played an admirable road game without their best forward. If they play Windsor again on Sunday, with Brandon Kozun healthy enough to play, I see no reason to think that they can’t win the Memorial Cup. That doesn’t mean that they will, of course, but it does mean that the gap between the Windsor Spitfires and the Calgary Hitmen is not what yesterday’s score would have you believe.

This is “Chelsea Dagger,” a song by the now-defunct band The Fratellis. You may know it better as “that dumb but catchy thing they play when the Blackhawks score.” With the Blackhawks set to play the Canucks tomorrow, it seems like an appropriate time to dig that out, given that I’m hoping the Canucks hear it so many times it becomes embedded in their nightmares. You know, again. Which leads me neatly into last night’s game, because holy shit, the Hitmen scored a lot of goals. The problem is, and this may also be a blessing, is that they didn’t entirely play their best game last night, and you know the Americans are going to be reeling from this spanking and out for blood. The blessing is, Mike Williamson has plenty of ammo for Video Time at today’s practice: heck, maybe he can even throw in a tape of the Kelowna series from last year, as an object lesson in the dangers of overconfidence, at least for the eight or ten guys who weren’t here for that one and don’t carry the memories of that defeat seared into every sulcus of their cerebral cortex.

Of course, there’s another good reason why the Hitmen weren’t exactly at their peak last night: this game was pretty much over by the middle of the first period. After a tentative first few minutes in which teams went through the traditional feeling-out process that often accompanies these cross-conference playoff games, Ian Schultz found a hole in the Americans’ defence and sprung Cody “Fernando” Sylvester, who scored his tenth of the playoffs, matching his regular-season total in something like a quarter of the games. A couple of minutes later, the Americans took the first of back-to-back penalties, when Eric Mestery cross-checked Brandon Kozun to the ice near the boards. Matt MacKenzie sailed home his fifth of the playoffs, and it was 2-0 Hitmen. Immediately thereafter, another Tri-City penalty, another MacKenzie goal. After the TV timeout, in which I dug out my pizza and began eating, Misha Fisenko drove around a T.C. defender and scored his first of two on the night, and I couldn’t even jump up and down because I had supper in my lap. 4-0 Hitmen eleven minutes into the game, and that was all she wrote for Drew Owsley, until now the best statistical goalie in the playoffs by a mile. The Hitmen killed a Del Cowan penalty with ease, it that was your score after one.

The second period started with another Americans penalty, in which backup Alexander Pechurskiy, the only player with an NHL game under his belt in this series, came up huge. At even strength, however, Brandon Kozun was left all alone in the slot with enough time to skate to the net, steal a drink from the goalie’s water bottle, then skate back and take the shot that gave him his eighth of the post-season. Tri-City’s defence was absolutely pathetic on this night, but Calgary’s started to slip more than a little after establishing a five-goal lead. After spending the majority of the last ten minutes of the period in their own zone, the Hitmen got a bit lucky with another huge breakdown by T.C., resulting in Fisenko’s second of the night with under a minute to go. 6-0 after two.

The third period…just kind of happened. I’ll be honest, I was scarcely following the play in the third period; I just sort of let it unfold in front of me and passively observed it without recording much. It was a pretty chippy period, as the teams started to foment distaste for one another with various behind-the-play shots and uncalled hacks and whacks. While the Hitmen got into minor penalty trouble late, they were able to get into the lanes when they had to. A bullet of a goal by Ben Wilson, a late shorthanded chance by Ian Schultz, and a fight between Cody Beach and Brock Sutherland were the only real events that got my attention at all. It’s very hard to care when you’re watching a six-goal (later seven-goal) game.

If I had to point out a player who had a truly bad game, it’d probably be Jaynen Rissling, who looked like a 16-year-old rookie defenceman in this game. He looked lost on his coverage, made a couple of bad turnovers to preserve T.C. pressure, and just generally seemed nervous and perhaps overmatched. I’ll be curious to see if Rissling trades chairs with Peter Kosterman, the other youngster who’s seen action in these playoffs due to the injury to Kyle Aschim (which I’ll be honest, I have no clue what it is). On the other hand, in addition to the pair of two-goal men, Martin Jones earned the third star for his shutout, to go along with Eastern Conference Final MVP (yeah, I forgot to mention that last time, didn’t I?) and WHL Goaltender of the Year (woo!) honours this past week. Game 2 goes tonight at 8 (late start due to the Roughnecks playoff game at 1). I expect a much better and better-prepared Tri-City team, and apparently, so do the Hitmen; let’s hope they’re as ready as they say they are.

	2	3	6	4	6	4
	4	2	3	3	1	1

So yeah. I didn’t actually post anything on the conference final this time around, partially due to illness, and partially due to finals. My bad. I’ll make up for it a little here before looking at the stats and figures for the Ed Chynoweth Cup Final (silent “E” in Chynoweth, apparently) between Calgary and Tri-City.

To be honest, I didn’t really expect the Hitmen to win this series. I mean, I guess you shouldn’t be surprised when the regular season champions earn a berth in the League final for the second consecutive year, but at the same time, these Wheaties were the highest-scoring team in the Dub by 45 goals, they had five players in the top 20 in League scoring (Calgary had only League scoring champ Brandon Kozun), and they were hosting the Memorial Cup, and when was the last time a Memorial Cup host went out before the League final? Plus, Brandon had seriously had our number, to the tune of 3-0-1 in four games this year, with the only loss being a SOL in the first game of the year. They owned us. There was no cause for optimism, no real reason to believe that things would change. I mean, just look at how the NHL playoffs have turned out, at least through the first round: even the upsets have at least made sense when you look at the season series.

I think the turning point might have been when Ian Schultz scored the OT winner in Game 2. To that point, the Wheat Kings had been the demonstrably better team, yet Martin Jones had finally started to put on the kind of goaltending performance we’d been expecting all playoff. Then in Game 3, despite outshooting the Hitmen 21-10, the Wheaties emerged from the first period down 4-0! While Matt Calvert scored a natural hat trick shorthanded in the second period (!!) to make it close, the Hitmen were able to regroup and earn the 6-3 victory with their best period of the series to that point. In Game 4, it was a similar story, this time with the Hitmen going down 2-0 early then clawing their way back with four consecutive goals before Brenden Walker made it a nail-biter late. In Games 3 and 4, there were times when the Wheat Kings looked like the dominant team I expected, but then there were times when they looked decidedly average, like they were expecting things to fall into place for them as a matter of their talent, much like the Hitmen seemed to at times during their series last year. While Calgary also had their decidedly lacklustre moments in both games, Martin Jones held them in when they maybe didn’t deserve it, then timely goals from Tyler Fiddler (two goals in 0:19 in Game 3, the latter into an empty net) and Kris Foucault (two goals in 1:36 in Game 4) helped carry them to victory. Finally, in Game 5, a game I expected Brandon to pull out all the stop for, the Hitmen played their most complete, dominant game of the entire playoffs, and arguably the entire season. They outshot the Wheat Kings 27-12 and outscored them 3-0 through two periods, partially due to a horrendously untimely and costly Toni Rajala penalty (recapped by yours truly in the comments here) but mostly due to sound fundamentals in all three zones. When co-captains Matt Calvert and Brayden Schenn took matching misconducts 68 game seconds apart, you knew there would be no returning from this hole, that frustration had overriden all good sense this Wheat Kings team had, and that against all expectations, the Hitmen would not only oust the Brandon wheat Kings, but do so in their shortest series to date in these playoffs, at just five games.

So now we look forward to the Tri-City Americans, a team I don’t think I’ve ever seen in person, now that I think about it. Actually, wait, I have. I’m looking at the game sheet, and I remember Pechurskiy playing that game because it was right after he’d mopped up for the Penguins when they got shellacked by the Canucks in Vancouver on Hockey Night. But other than that and their snazzy logo (and weird jerseys with the stripe curling around under the arms and back behind the nameplate — you have to see it, I guess), I got nothin’. While the WHL’s official site breaks it down over here, let’s take a gander at the relevant stats:

• First, the special teams. Regular season ranks out of all 22 WHL teams; playoff ranks amongst all 16 teams and amongst the final eight, to alleviate some of the sample size problems created by teams ousted in the first round.
  • Calgary Regular Season: 29.0% PP (1st), 87.5% PK (1st)
  • Tri-City Regular Season: 28.0% PP (2nd), 78.5% PK (15th)
  • Calgary Playoff: 23.9% PP (8th/4th), 82.0% PK (3rd/1st)
  • Tri-City Playoff: 28.6% PP (4th/1st), 78.8% PK (7th/5th)

  Both teams have a killer PP, though TC’s been better in the playoffs, but the Hitmen have a decidedly better penalty kill in both the regular season and playoffs. Slight advantage Calgary.

• Tri-City scored 272 (3rd) and allowed 193 (4th), while Calgary scored 269 (4th) and allowed 177 (2nd). Calgary finished 52-17-3 (107 pts, 1st overall) while Tri-City finished 47-22-3 (97 pts, T-4th overall). Advantage Calgary.
• Tri-City keeper Drew Owley has put up outstanding numbers, ranking first amongst playoff goalies with at least 180 minutes played at 2.14/0.931; Calgary’s Martin Jones put up 2.61/0.905, which while not completely inspiring, is much better than it was. In the regular season, on the other hand, Jones led the League with a 2.21 GAA and was 4th with a 0.919 SVP; Osley had a 2.51 and 0.918 (both 5th). Let’s call this slight advantage Tri-City, though again, Jones has come on stronger lately.
• Brandon Kozun led the WHL in scoring with 32-75-107 in the regular season, and leads with 7-19-26 through three rounds of the playoffs. Tri-City’s lone regular season entrant into the Top 20 was Brendan Shinnimin (27-55-82, 14th), and he now places 3rd on the playoff list with 8-14-22, just behind Kozun and recently-eliminated Craig Cunningham of Vancouver. The Hitmen and Americans each have four entrants in the Top 20 in playoff scoring, though all four of Tri-City’s top scorers have bested Calgary’s second-best, Joel Broda. Then again, Calgary’s also gotten a more balanced scoring attack, with twelve total players in the Top 40 compared to Tri-City’s eight. While Tri-City’s top end has performed slightly better than Calgary’s, depth always tends to win me over in the playoffs. Advantage Calgary.
• Season series. In their lone meeting this season, the Hitmen defeated the Americans 3-0 at home on January 31, with Martin Jones recording a 35-save shutout. Advantage Calgary; I really have nothing else to day, since nothing other than Pechurskiy stands out to me about that evening. (Though I see now it came right after the Wheaties beat us 6-3 on the strength of five goals in 11 minutes; now that evening, I do unfortunately remember.)
• Playoff history: N/A.

I’m not going to actually come right out and make a prediction. I don’t want to do that, because that requires thinking, and I hate doing that when I don’t have to regarding junior hockey. It should be pointed out, though, that despite the much greater disparity in regular seasons standings points last year compared to this year (24 vs. 10), the Kelowna Rockets played a style that stymied the Hitmen utterly in their late-season matchup, and had brought in a late-season ringer in Mikael Backlund; the Americans, in a one-game sample, didn’t, nor did they bring in anyone of that calibre at any point during the season. Calgary, meanwhile, imported an entire line plus from Kamloops that’s proven an important part of their late-season surge and playoff effort. Plus, while last year’s Hitmen had basically strolled through the playoffs on the strength of pure talent alone, this year’s team has had to work for their spot in the final battle, especially against the high-flying Wheat Kings last round. I think the best thing I can say is that I’m less scared of this final than I was last year’s, but by no means am I going to unequivocally state that they’re going to win, and that the Wheaties will get their shot at vengeance. Too much can happen over the course of a seven-game series for me to commit that strongly about something I’m so emotionally invested in. I’m just going to sit hunched forward on the edge of my seat, watching and yelling frantically and waving my flag like a maniac, and hope for the best; it’s all I can really do.

First, let’s consider the age argument. It would seem that the primary concern here is that Khabibulin should be primed to fall off a cliff any year now because previous generations of player did, which is awfully nice to know but really quite irrelevant, especially considering the fact that this team just got a near-career year out of a 39-year-old ‘keeper. The fact of the matter is, players understand and implement nutritional and training principles better now than they have at any point in the League’s history, and are in better overall physical condition than at any point since the game’s very earliest days, when multi-sport professional athletes playing hockey in the winter and lacrosse or rugby in the summer were common. Put more succinctly, I believe that 40 is the new 35, and that we will continue to see more players put up serviceable numbers well into their late 30s. (As an example, Brendan Shanahan put up nineteen consecutive 20-goal seasons, his most recent at age 39, and scored 40 goals as recently as age 37. Until this most recent half-season, he’d been averaging over 18 minutes per night for as far back as Hockey Reference has numbers, about ten years.) I don’t think it’s valid to presume that players today will follow the same progression curve that their forebears did, because they operate fundamentally differently, showing up to camp in elite physical condition instead of playing their way into it. We’re still several years away from having a sufficient amount of data to predict when the modern NHLer takes that irrevocable nosedive into athletic senescence, but as it stands right now, I would postulate that playing a 36-year-old goaltender for a significant number of games (i.e. more than 50) should not present a real problem, so long as he’s stayed in shape to this point.

Comparing Khabibulin to his team

The other argument revolves around his mediocre-to-bad save percentages while a member of the 2005-08 Chicago Blackhawks. Above is a table showing Khabibulin’s points percentage, save percentage, and goals-against average as compared to the team average for his entire career, with the Chicago numbers blocked off separately. (Ironic aside: one of his worst regular-season performances, at least relative to his backup, came in his Stanley Cup-winning season of 2003-04.) In 2005-06, I don’t think anyone would deny that he was at best not helping matters, and at worst a big part of the problem, but at least in terms of save percentage and goals-against average, he outperformed the team average (that is to say, he was better than his backup) in all three years. At the very least, this tells me that Khabibulin was far and away the best option on the team for all three of those years. Could there have been better goalies on that team? Sure, probably. However, I would suggest that the raw numbers, which have been cited repeatedly as a problem, would be influenced by the quality of the team. I know, the accepted wisdom of the Edmonton Eulers is that individual players don’t have a significant impact on a goalie’s save percentage, and that may be so, but I would counter by saying that we understand, and even expect, that a goalie is going to have a sub-.900 SV% on the penalty-kill. You’re down a man, defensive coverage is stretched to the limit, and breakdowns will inevitably result in high-percentage chances and goals. Would it not be logical, then, to extend the same consideration to bad hockey teams? That’s not to say that we should forgive that abysmal .886 in 2005-06, of course, nor is it to say that universally, better teams will have better goalie numbers (see: the 2005-06 Oilers), but that all other things being equal, the same goaltender will probably put up worse numbers on a worse team. It’s no surprise to me that Khabi’s SV% increased in each of the next three seasons, because the team itself got better each year. The larger change from 2007-08 to 2008-09 (.909 to .919) could also be due in part to the fact that Joel Quenneville was a bit more concerned about defensive responsibility than his predecessor, Denis Savard, in addition to the overall improvement in the play of the team. You can argue that there were better options out there that should have at least been considered — leaving aside the usual caveat that no one wants to play in Edmonton anyway — but that doesn’t necessarily mean the option that the Oilers ultimately went with was a poor one.

When I started this article, I hadn’t planned on it turning in to the Nikolai Khabibulin Show, because to be honest, the real question marks for me are behind him. Let’s start with Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers, the designated backup for this season. To be blunt, I don’t have much faith in him; never mind the statistics, he looked shaky in his first-star turn at Madison Square Garden last November, when he withstood a siege in the final forty to squeak out a 3-2 shootout win, and he’s only looked worse from there. I can see that he’s trying to play something of a hybrid style, more akin to that of Martin Brodeur than most other modern goalies, but let’s be honest: JDD is no Marty. Aside from relative talent level, of course, part of the problem is the fact that Deslauriers spent much of his early pro career being jerked around by the Oilers. They pulled the plug on their own minor-league team after his rookie year, and shared affiliation with others for a couple of seasons, forcing him to play behind other teams’ prospects — an even greater problem for goaltenders than skaters. They finally got him a minor-league team he could start for in 2007-08, but then made him spend most of last season in the press box, because three-goalie rotations are traditionally the mark of a successful hockey club. Whatever abilities he had have been at least somewhat squandered and suffocated by the terrible arrangements the Oilers made over the last few years, to the point where I think his ceiling is now much lower than it was when they drafted him seven years ago. He just didn’t get enough net time as a young man to build up both the skills and the confidence to take the next step, and confidence is an important thing for a goaltender more so than any other position, certainly based on my own limited experiences in net. Maybe a new goalie coach and a greater opportunity with the NHL club will help him to some degree, but at this point, he’s a career backup, and I wonder even then if he’ll be able to hold off future prospects as they mature into NHL-ready goalkeepers.

The prospect he should be worried about now is Devan Dubnyk. No, a .906 SV% in the AHL isn’t entirely confidence-inspiring, but as I noted with Khabibulin, I don’t think SV% is a number that can be considered entirely without context. The 2008-09 Springfield Falcons were, in a word, fucking awful. In fact, they had the worst record in the AHL last season at 24-44-12 with a -70 GD. I’ve already mentioned Rob Schremp as one person who had a bad year on that bad team, but I think Dubnyk is, frankly, much more likely to rebound into an NHL player at this stage of his career. Certainly, a sub-.910 SV% is kind of to be expected given the number of injuries and ECHLers inflicted on that team. There’s no guarantees, of course, but I have a lot more faith in him without even seeing him than I do in Deslauriers. As for judging his play personally, well, I’ve never seen the kid play, or if I have, it was at a pre-season game several years ago, of which I no longer have any recollection. My thinking is that for 2009-10, Dubnyk should focus on being The Guy in Springfield and putting up good numbers, so that he comes into camp in 2010-11 ready to wrestle the backup job from Deslauriers. While I think he’s probably the better goaltender, certainly in the long term, I can’t imagine he’s ready for the NHL job this year. I have to hope that he will be soon, though; as unconcerned as I was about Khabibulin’s age now, when his final year rolls around, there has to be a succession plan in place, and frankly, I’d rather he be succeeded by the kid that was developed properly in the minors than the kid that wasn’t.

But I decided that at some point, I should really start engaging myself with the team again, so I figured I’d take a quick peek at the standing roster and see where the question marks lie, so as to gain a better understanding of what we’re up against. For staters, I count four players who seem to have gained one-year reprieves with the firing of head coach Craig MacTavish: Dustin Penner, Robert Nilsson, Marc-Antoine Pouliot, and Rob Schremp.

Penner has a number of defenders on the ‘sphere, none more so than Derek “Coach PB” Zona, who’s written a small tome on the subject. Suffice to say, I think that if Penner can consistently apply himself physically — not in terms of battering guys, which isn’t really his game, but just in terms of raw applied physics, i.e. mass and leverage — he should work out just fine on the top line. (The unstated implication with all these IF-THEN statements, by the way, is the “ELSE trade_in_january = 1;” portion.) He should also go back to seeing more time on the PP, from which he was inexplicably removed for much of last year; he’s got the frame and the hands to do the job in front of the net, though that’ll also require the PP to be more balanced, in terms of both Souray lasers up high and Hemsky craftiness down low. He’ll probably continue to be a piñata in certain sections of the fanbase, but I think if anyone’s going to get the most out of him, it’s an old hand like Pat Quinn.

Nilsson has always had the talent to be a second-line, soft-minutes type of guy, who will occasionally blow your damned mind with how awesome he is, but will also disappear often enough that he leaves you wanting more than the 60 points he’ll probably top out at. Sort of a poor man’s Alexei Kovalev. Or Kent Nilsson. Anyway, as it stands right now, I see Nilsson as the seventh man in the top six, with Horcoff, Hemsky, Penner, Cogliano, Gagner, and O’Sullivan all standing ahead of him in no particular order, and that probably means press box time at some point this year. Out of everyone, he and Schremp seem like the most obvious trade bait, though who’s going to give up what we need (a veteran checking centre) for what we have (a couple of soft wingers), I haven’t a clue. The best argument for him is that he’s cheap ($2M cap hit), and that he can’t really be as bad as he was last season, especially with that glaringly small number of secondary assists. Even granting that we probably still talk about primary and secondary assists in too simplistic of terms, and that different styles of player will naturally accumulate more of one than the other, it seems wildly unlikely that he winds up with that few again if he gets significant minutes with the Kid Line. Maybe the real question is, will he impress the coach enough to earn the opportunity? Will the opportunity come even if he does prove himself?

Pouliot is a bit of an enigma. He was Sidney Crosby’s linemate in junior, in case you hadn’t heard, but he was actually drafted before Strong Muscular Legs even entered the Q (2003). He’s shown flashes of brilliance at times (Dennis’s favourite thing to cite is “the penalty-shot game against Toronto on Hockey Night”), in which he was, in fact, really good. He’s also shown flashes of rookie-level failure to read the game, such as when he went on a terrible change against Detroit that ended with a last-minute goal and an Oilers loss. It’s been suggested that maybe part of his struggles, most evident in the early season, are due to conditioning. We should be able to scratch that one off the list this year. It’s also been suggested that maybe he’s not happy with his role, backed up by the fact that he balked at a fairly flattering comparison to Guy Carbonneau, a three-time Stanley Cup champion, the man who battled Wayne Gretzky to a standstill in the ’93 Finals, and the namesake for the Q’s version of the Selke. That one’s less easy to deal with, and one has to hope that maybe a fresh voice telling him basically the same thing, and another year of maturity, will correct that. (Or failing that, competition from Patrick O’Sullivan. At least, this is what people tell me.) Whatever the case, it seems clear that the Oilers have put their eggs predominantly in his basket, whether out of stringent belief in his abilities or the simple lack of external options (Oilblog favourite Blair Betts recently told Dan Tencer that the Oilers weren’t an option). Bonus stat: last year, Pouliot was third amongst regular centres on the team, winning 48.3% of his 211 face-offs. It’s not spectacular, but put against the abysmal numbers of Gagner and Cogliano, it’s better than a swift kick in the ass.

Finally, we have Sugartits, Hockey Jesus, Banana Hammock, Robimus Prime, and Popcorn (wait, really?). Schremp has long been derided in the ‘sphere as much for the worshipful following he has at Hockey’s Future as for his actual on-ice failings, to the point where he has more Oilblog nicknames than he does NHL points (and almost as many as he has NHL games). Last year was not kind to Our Man Robert, following up a PPG season in the A in 2007-08 with a 42-pointer, sullying what was a fairly decent cup of coffee in the Bigs (three points in four games, not looking completely awful). Now, granted, the entire Falcons club, from top to bottom, had an abysmal year, one of those years you’re happy to escape from in one piece with the hopes that next year can’t possibly be that bad. But between that, and the difficulties the Oilers had in getting him to sign his second contract, and you have to think that this is shit-or-get-off time for our erstwhile Lord and Saviour. With Kyle Brodziak gone and Liam Reddox’s job potentially in jeopardy, there are openings on the fourth line to be had for Schremp, Jean-Francois “Mr. Zero” Jacques¹, and Gilbert Brule. The problem Schremp faces, however, is similar to the one that Nilsson faces: he’s got to not only give ‘er every night and make the most of his situation, but that he’s got to root for multiple failures further up the lineup in order to play his “optimal” position, unless Quinn is more of a line-juggler than I’d previously imagined. Oh, and then there’s the fact that he generates nearly all of his offence on the power play. While he’s got as much of a fresh start as everyone else I’ve prattled on about, much like Nilsson, Schremp looks like prime trade bait, though unless he’s thrown in on a larger deal, he’s probably not going to fetch more than a pick at this point. Update: Especially not when he says dumb shit like that. Jesus Christ, Robbie.

To be clear, I’m not talking about J.F. Jacques and Gilbert Brule in this for a reason. While a lot of virtual ink has been spilled about Jacques’s struggles to convert his AHL offence into NHL numbers, and Brule’s suffered from a combination of injuries and excessive expectations with the Blue Jackets organization, they never seemed like they were in MacTavish’s doghouse the way these four guys were. Penner and Pouliot were press-boxed on multiple occasions, which did not necessarily correlate with their on-ice performance, Schremp was pretty much told through the media that MacT was done with him, and Nilsson bounced from the second to fourth line with great frequency. Certainly, the new coaching staff should give all of them a new lease on life, but if they don’t perform up to reasonable expectations this time, they should have no one left to blame but themselves.

¹ Yes, I know, he finally scored a goal last year. Shut up.

Last week, Ender jokingly suggested to me that maybe the Oilers’ losing was a good thing, because preseason success seemed to be a harbinger of regular season failure, and vice versa. It was a fun thought, and certainly, one look at the 2006 preseason should tell you where that idea comes from. On the other hand, it seemed a bit illogical: surely there shouldn’t be any relation at all between pre- and regular season results, should there? I mean, the good teams will probably still be good, and the bad teams will probably still be bad, but there’s a lot of room for slosh in a sample of only 5-8 games: the Oilers have started many a season firing on all cylinders in October and November before coming back to Earth in January, while the Flames have started all three post-lockout years with their skates tied together, and made the playoffs every time, winning the division in 2005-06.

It wasn’t an idea that I gave much further thought to until Tuesday night, when the Oilers got clubbed 4-0 by the Flames, and did so while looking pretty much like total shit the whole way through. So I decided to see if there was anything to this idea, and grabbed the last three years’ preseason data, fired that into Excel with the regular season standings, and checked to see what came out of the wash.

Part 1: Visual Inspection

Taking a page of sorts from LittleFury, I made the top 10 teams in the preseason, by points percentage, green, the next ten yellow, and the final ten red with white text. The teams are sorted according to the NHL’s own standings. The results are below.

While there is somewhat of a trend for good teams to clump a bit at the top, and bad teams to clump a bit at the bottom, there’s all kinds of spread here. There’s top five preseason teams in the bottom five of the regular season standings, and vice versa. You could maybe say that 2005-06 “looks” less messed-up than the rest, but I don’t think you can say that with any conviction, and I don’t think I can even honestly say that I see it, since I was spoiled by doing the second test before I got around to making those highlights.

Part 2: Linear Regression

After that, I did a quick linear regression to find out if there was any linearity to the data, and if that linear trend pointed in a given direction. The figure below shows plots for the three seasons, and trendlines for the same, as well as a line for the pooled data of all three years.

That would be a big, fat nothing. There’s a very small but significant (p = 0.016) correlation between preseason and regular season results in 2005-06 (R² = 0.19), which as I noted before, you might almost be able to see in the raw data if you squint really hard at the table, but the other two years are below 0.04, with no significance whatsoever (p >> 0.05 for each of them), with the three-year pool clocking in with an R² value of 0.07 (I ran out of time to check the significance, but I’d lay down money it’s not). Between that number and just looking at the scattershot nature of the data, it seems fairly obvious that there’s no real connection between preseason and regular season success.

I was going to do further statistical testing, but (a) it seemed pointless by this juncture, and (b) I couldn’t find anything that worked quite the way I needed it to other than — you guessed it — linear regression. So there we stand.

Limitations

It’s somewhat ironic that the greatest limitation of the study — the small sample size of the preseason — is also one of the reasons why there is a difference. I mean, five to eight games can easily deceive you in a way 82 can’t. While there’s all sorts of problems with even a full-season sample, it’s not nearly as problematic as a stretch that comprises 6-10% of a season. I said what I needed to say on this at the top of the post, so we’ll move on.

A second problem here is that I only have three years’ worth of data here. Obviously, pre-lockout data would complicate matters, due to the differing rulesets, but if I had to guess, I’d say that it probably wouldn’t make that much of a difference — the mean points percentage would drop a smidge, but otherwise the trend, or lack thereof, should probably be about the same — but even aside from that consideration, it’s not easy to find pre-season results, especially the further back you go. Yahoo! has 2003-04, but I would rather have all the data from the 30-team era rather than just the one year. The net effect of all this is that I can’t definitively say that the significant trend from 2005 is the outlier and the clouds of nothing from 2006 and 2007 are the reality, because it’s two years of one and one of the other, and because I haven’t run anything prior to 2005, but it passes the smell test, so I’m gonna go with it, at least for now. I’m not sure why 2005 was so special: it was power-play city that year, so that could be a reason, though I’m not sure why special-teams play would be any more significant, or any more likely to carry forward, than final results. It’s something that’ll require further study, though again, I’m not sure how to get a hold of that data.

The final and most galling limitation is the Bettman point. Yes, the sometimes-two-sometimes-three-point system rears its ugly head again, because it kept me from running a chi-square test on the data, which I kind of wanted to do as a third check. Since the chi-square test checks the distribution of the experimental data against a model prediction (in this case, the preseason being the “model” and the regular season beng the “experiment,” with the null hypothesis obviously being that the preseason predicts the regular season), I needed the two columns to have the same sum, which was not, of course, the case. I did a bit of fiddling with the numbers, including “percentage of points awarded,” but I couldn’t get anything that really worked well, so I eventually abandoned the pursuit, which is too bad, because it really would’ve completed the set.

Interpretations

Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, what can we actually say from this? Put simply, the preseason has no bearing on regular season results. You could argue that, depending on how a team played its last couple of preseason games, it might be an indicator of how the early season goes, but even that seems like a pretty sketchy proposition, when you consider what all goes into a preseason record.

For starters, there’s the rosters. Specifically, the rosters that frequently have little more than the minimum required number of NHL veterans (eight) in the first half, when coaches are usually more interested in development and scouting than winning. You cannot reasonably judge a team of 23 NHLers based on the work of up to 13 guys who might never see a minute of meaningful NHL time, and if they do, it likely won’t be in the tenure of the current coaching and management crew, given how long those guys tend to last in most NHL cities. This is also why I really couldn’t be bothered when the Oilers rookies went 0-2 in their own tournament, yet beat both the U of A Golden Bears and the ACAC All-Stars. It doesn’t involve players who will actually be deciding the games that matter, so why sweat it? Even later in the year, there’s enough non-NHL players involved that it’s hard to take the results as being indicative of anything; kind of like the last 20 games of the 2006-07 season.

Related to this is the schedule. The preseason frequently starts with crazy stretches like four games in five nights or five in six, to say nothing of the stuff they’ve been doing in Europe the last couple of years. Teams will often play split squads during those stretches, with minimal overlap between sub-teams, and certainly none over more than two consecutive nights. One team might have more vets than the other, and be an “A” team of sorts, while the other has more kids and scrubs, a “B” team. A-Teams, as a general rule, will clobber B-Teams, though on any given night, anything can happen. The results of both the A- and B-Team will be combined, since they’re all wearing the same shirts, so you have no cohesive whole to make your comparison with, and frequently less-than-fair competition to generate the results against in the first place. Granted, you don’t exactly have a cohesive whole during the regular season, either, with trades, signings, callups, reassignments, and injuries all tweaking the roster throughout the years, but it’s at least mostly cohesive, unlike the preseason, when most of the roster can change from one night to the next.

Next, there’s coaching. As noted above, training camp is a time for development and scouting. Coaches will do crazy shit like playing 19-year-old sophomore scorers on the penalty-kill, or break up established lines and add kids and minor-leaguers to the mix, for the sake of seeing what these guys have got, and if anything good comes out of the wash. I guess it’s the Yukon Cornelius approach to talent evaluation: you never know when you might accidentally strike gold while randomly throwing your pickaxe in the air (see: Thoreson, Patrick; Gagner, Sam). Anyway, when lines are out of whack, kids are playing tough minutes, and guys who don’t normally kill penalties are out there doing just that, you get results that are in no way indicative of how the team is actually going to play when the games count. How Craig MacTavish coaches against the Florida Panthers in September is nothing like how Craig MacTavish coaches against the Minnesota Wild in March.

Finally, we have the players themselves. Guys get rusty over the summer, and need time to get the system back in their heads and the chemistry back with their linemates. They’re probably going to be going for a slow burn, to ease their way back into things, so they don’t hurt themselves by doing too much, too soon. Coaches don’t want key players to get hurt, either, something the Oilers have learned from past experience, and something the Penguins are learning now with Gonchar gone for most of the year. Sure, players are going to want to be at 100% by the time the season starts, but if they play their first preseason game at 60% or 70%…does anyone really care? Obviously, if you lay an egg like the Oilers did on Tuesday, no one’s going to be too thrilled with it, nor should they be, but it’s hardly a sign of the Apocalypse on Ice. Also, much like during the regular season, you have to trust that after a horrible effort, the professionals will be able to get their shit together and do it right next time.

Conclusion

So what does all this mean for the Oilers, in the end? Absolutely nothing. Maybe they’ll be good. Maybe they’ll struggle out of the gate, then turn it around. Maybe they’ll be Godawful. No one can know for sure until the games are played, though we all have our ways of making educated guesses (and speaking of, I guess I have more work to do this weekend). What this post should prove, however, is that preseason results shouldn’t be one of those ways, or at the very least should be used with extreme caution, since you could probably throw darts at a chart of the 30 teams and be just as likely to pick out the final results from that as you would from the pre-season table alone.

They have hockey south of the Mason-Dixon. Ice hockey!

As you may have heard, I went to Nashville last week, and stayed here. No, really, I did. The hotel itself was fantastic, but eventually, I decided to leave the hotel and go on a little tour. After that, it was off to the good ol’ hockey game.

Oh, the good ol’ hockey game is the best game you can name, and the best game you can name is the good ol’ hockey game.

A bit of background first. The Tennessee Titans are the biggest show in town, next to the Opry. This is to be expected, really, given that the NFL is the biggest thing in the United States, period, and not really overly bothersome. The fact that the Titans are the only other major-league team around does work to the Predators’ advantage, however. Gate C-4 at the Nashville Airport is a Southwest gate, and is done up with various Preds pictures and posters (many featuring the Southwest ad on the arena boards). The airport also has more Preds ads than Calgary has Flames ads and Edmonton has Oilers ads, which really surprised me. The sports bar at the hotel gives equal memorabilia space and mural space behind the bar to the Preds and Titans, and even one-ups that with a large mural of Tomas Vokoun in net for the Preds underneath the primary big-screen TV. They also have minor collages about baseball, football, boxing, and hockey, with quotes attached. While the other sports’ quotes were inspirational, hockey’s was that old Rodney Dangerfield chestnut, “I went to a fight, and a hockey game broke out.” It’s not exactly Roch Carrier (or his Vancouverite analogue), but give ‘em credit overall for trying more than, say, Dallas, which didn’t have a damned thing.

The first thing that struck me when I arrived were the various oddities outside the arena. When I get my pictures developed, I’ll try to remember to upload them, but in the meantime, imagine a giant inflatable cat with a giant inflatable pylon behind it, which kids can play on, with a giant inflatable hockey player, which the kids can’t play on, with kiosks to the side where you can get a free Predators blanket if you’d just like to sign up for the NHL MasterCard. Also of interest is the fact that the front of the arena is all transparent, so you can look inside and watch people milling about before the game. I did see radio trucks outside, as well, though I didn’t know which one was actually broadcasting the game (unless one was English and one was Spanish).

I was originally going to try to take some pictures inside, but I saw a sign that said cameras were not allowed, and some cops were going through purses with flashlights. I decided to play it safe and blow off my remaining pictures (it was a disposable camera; my digital crapped out on me). I get to the door, and no one asks to see my pockets, and worst of all, there’s people four feet inside the door snapping pics with impunity. Buggers and damn.

When I got inside, I found out that the program was free. Yes, that’s right, free. It also did not contain the sort of useless information the hefty, thirty-page, $5 Flames magazines contain. It was, I think, eight pages, and included the rules of the game, information on the organization and its various community endeavours, a few purchased ads, and the rosters in the middle. No muss, no fuss. I also got a free schedule magnet, to go with my Calgary Hitmen magnet, no doubt. The first place I went from there was The Fan Zone, the Predators’ official merchandise store. I’d never seen those Godawful third jerseys up close and personal before, and was surprised to learn that, while they’re still unforgivably ugly, they’re actually kind of soft to the touch, even more than my Habs’ vintage jersey. In the end, I determined entirely by accident that I am actually a car-flag collector (my aunt gave me a Flames one during their ’04 run, and Ender picked up a pair of Oilers flags for me during last year’s run), and bought a Preds car flag for $20. Author’s Note: Bad move, in hindsight. Should’ve gotten the jersey.

On my way into the store, I noticed the Wall of Pucks. This is a little monument dedicated to all the season-ticket holders who kept their tickets through the 2004-05 season. We kind of take for granted that the team will still be there in the morning here in Canada, when at least a half-dozen teams could have — maybe even should have — folded out of the mess that was the second lockout, including the Predators. I’m fairly certain the Predators don’t take for granted the support base they’d managed to secure over their first seven years. Another entertaining thing I saw on the concourse: a talking robot, which looked like a cross between something from Lost in Space and early Doctor Who. I wish I could find a picture of it, because it simply defied description.

Getting to my seat was a bit tricky. The higher rows of the lower bowl are mysteriously enclosed in their own box, which can only be accessed from one side. A little confusing, but it worked out okay once I realized that I needed to take the next entrance. Anyway, as I looked around me, I noticed that the lower bowl looked for all the world like a fucking Ikea. It was the same brilliant yellow with a blue trim that was only a bit darker. My seats were blue, as was the floor in part of the lower bowl. Also striking was the fact that they had raised three banners without winning a damned thing: inaugural season, first playoffs, and “7^th man” award to the fans. I mean, I get that they haven’t had time to establish a winning tradition, but there’s no sense in raising superfluous banners. Won’t they look kinda silly beside the division, conference, and Stanley Cup championship banners that will one day populate the rafters?

I wonder if the Sedin twins sprang fully formed from the top of that sign?

Before the game started, a computer-generated video played of various “enemy” teams skating along one of Nashville’s rivers, smashing up the General Jackson tour boat, and generally making a mess of the place. They stop dead as they hear a low growl. A large computer-generated tiger in Predators colours leaps into action, smacks some guys around, sends some more falling through the ice, and then takes his place between the spires atop the BellSouth Tower. Out from one of the entryways comes the team mascot…Gnash. For the record, no, Matt was not involved in the naming process, though I can see how you might get that impression. Gnash is, as you’d expect, a sabre-toothed tiger furry dressed in Predators gear. He did not brandish an annoying drum at any point during the game that I can recall, which is an immediate improvement over Harvey the Hound, particularly when he’s in my section.

Hello out there, we’re on the air, it’s hockey night tonight. Tension grows, the whistle blows, and the puck goes down the ice. The goalie jumps and the players bump, and the fans all go insane. Someone roars, “Bobby scores!”, at the good ol’ hockey game.

The game begins. Pretty good pace, and fairly physical, to boot. During the first TV time-out, the Predators have their own promotion for moving some poor schmuck from cruddy seats up near the top to much nicer seats in the lower bowl. Unfortunately, theirs is called “Windex Up Against the Glass.” What’s wrong with that, you say? As the lucky winners make their way down the steps, two or three of the cheerleaders (let’s call a spade a spade, here) pranced down ahead of them and began mock-washing the glass in front of their seats. I could tell by the looks on their faces that even they thought this was the dumbest thing on skates since the last novelty jersey night in the minors. I would have been more sympathetic, but really, they were getting paid to be there.

The scoreboard also provided some unintentional comic relief in the form of “Fang Fingers” (remember the San Jose Sharks “chomp?”), the mascot playing the drums to “We Will Rock You” giant-size on the arena and skyline, numerous classic movie clips to introduce various events, and even another CG predator animation. I spent most of the first period laughing myself sick over all the wonderfully silly things to see around the place.

Ph34r my Fang Fingers!

And now for some highlights:

First Goal: The guy behind me saw Scott Hartnell break into the zone and was yelling “Pass it to Kariya!” My immediate observation is that he was nowhere near open. Instead, Hartnell passes it off to Arnott, who sends it to a streaking Kariya, who is now open, and deposits it into the empty side of the net.

Second Goal: I had no idea Erat actually booted it to his stick in front of the net. I thought it was just a really sweet stickhandle, and that Cujo was too stunned to pokecheck, or something. It worked, anyway. Also of note, even if Cujo’s stick had gotten the puck, it would’ve been at least a penalty shot, if not an awarded goal, because he actually threw it, according to the replay.

First Fight: Dunno how it started, since the play was moving away from them as they got going, but it was pretty good, while it lasted. Gratton and Hordichuck tuckered out way too quickly, though. If you’re not even going to dance for 30 seconds, is there much point? Come on, now. Advantage: Gratton.

Coyotes Goal: Some nice footwork to keep the puck in the zone before Sjostrom deposited a beautiful wrist shot behind Vokoun. Not much else to say about this one, though I’m wondering now who that Yandle kid is; that was his first assist. Author’s Note: We know who that Yandle kid is now, clearly.

And so ends an eventful first period, with the score 2-1 Nashville, but the balance of play not even coming close. The Predators were firmly in control of this game already, and while the scrap may have briefly sparked the Coyotes, it was clear to me that the home crowd was going to go home happy tonight. The Predators started slow. The Coyotes are just plain bad.

Author’s Note: I was more right than I could’ve imagined here. The Predators finished with the third-best record in the NHL that year, three points back of Buffalo and Detroit, with this game kicking off a 17-2-3 run after an 0-3 start; the Coyotes were a 29^th-place lottery team, buoyed only by the Flyers’ improbable horribleness.

During intermission, I went and got some nachos with barbecue pork. Barbecue pork is popular in Nashville, I think, because I also found barbecue pork sandwiches at the hotel food court and near my gate at the airport. While I was in line, I heard a guy enthusiastically telling his buddy that he saw “the boxing match.” That’s hockey fer ya: two sports for the price of one. Sadly, this came at the expense of the cheerleader routine. Ah, well.

Let me also take this time to register my dismay that the Predators haven’t yet rid themselves of Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll, Part 2.” I think by now we all know the kind of man he is, and if you don’t, Google him. The short version: he’s like Graham James and David Frost, but flies halfway across the world to do his shit. His music does not belong in any arena, ever.

While we’re on the subject of music, the Preds’ goal music is, well, unusual. And totally Nashville. Specifically, the chorus of Tim McGraw’s “I Like It, I Love It” was slightly modified to include a Preds reference, and a video of Tim singing along in a Preds jersey was added along on the scoreboard. Not exactly typical, but hey, you gotta play to your audience. Speaking of playing to your audience, they actually have a live band at the arena, who plays between periods on the CMT stage above the Zamboni tunnel. I don’t like country, but I have to say, that is the awesomest idea, ever, and totally in line with the spirit of Nashville.

Second period: Where players dash with skates a-flash, the home team trails behind. But they grab the puck, and go bursting up, and they’re down across the line. They storm the crease like bumblebees, they travel like a burning flame. You see them slide the puck inside, it’s a 1-1 hockey game.

Third Goal: Suter deflects a Timmonen point shot behind Cujo on the PP. I’ve already begun to suspect by this point that Phoenix is done for the night. They just don’t look like a team that believes it can come back from two down, even against the winless Preds. I don’t really blame them, though, given their own record, and given that this is the first time the Preds have actually played like the Preds this year.

Fourth Goal: I gleefully announced “The rout is on!”, hoping to see things get out of hand just to find out how the fans would respond to an old-fashioned brawl. I’ve never seen one in person, either, though I know the Preds can at least give a full-line effort.

After two, the score is 4-1 Predators, and the Coyotes look like they just want to get the hell out of town. On the bench and on the ice, they look dejected and defeated, which is not something you want to see late in the second period of a game that is still well within reach. Three goals is hardly insurmountable, even at that point: just ask the Oilers.

I noticed during one of the intermissions, possibly the first, that the PA announcer gave an almost identical speech regarding “advanced safety features” preventing the puck from going into the stands as the one in Calgary. I figure the NHL just gives ‘em a script, which they (more or less) follow to the letter.

Third period (last game of the playoffs, too): Oh, take me where the hockey players face off down the rink, and the Stanley Cup is all filled up for the champs who win the drink. Now, the final flick of a hockey stick, and-a one gigantic scream. Well, the puck is in, the home team wins the good ol’ hockey game.

The Coyotes came out with a lot more jump in the third period, and actually managed to put together some decent pressure at a couple of points. But really, the third period was noteworthy for two things, neither of them goals.

Second Fight: This one gets going when Georges Laraque cleanly clobbers Darcy Hordichuk. I didn’t see this because it was along the near boards in the corner, which made it impossible to see from my angle, but I saw him struggle to his feet after the scraps started. Looking at the replay, I wonder if he got inavertantly kidney-shot; certainly, I wouldn’t think he’d be down that long if he just got hit in the ribs or hip. There was a delayed reaction, like it took everyone a sec to realize that Darcy wasn’t getting back up, then all bets were off. Seidenberg wrestled with Smithson, Roenick tangled up Weber, but left one glove on, declining to fight, and the main event became Boynton vs. Tootoo, which was a pretty decent fight (advantage: Boynton). Curiously, no one actually went after Laraque, who I’m gradually beginning to realize really doesn’t like to start fights, just accept challenges. Not very useful in an enforcer. Nashville gets an extra two, and play resumes.

Third Fight: Six and a half minutes after the first melee of the third, Dan Hamhuis lays a late hit, a good two or three seconds after the offside whistle, on Chris Gratton, and everyone gets into it again. Stunningly, Laraque again remains unpaired, which is convincing me that either (a) Gretzky is trying to turn him into a power forward, about five years too late for it to do any good (there is evidence to support this), and won’t let him, or (b) he simply won’t fight unless someone asks. Bizarre. Author’s Note: Turns out it’s the latter. And only if it’s someone in his weight class. Or something. Anyway, once again, the main event is not the original scrap, but one of the side duels, this time Morris vs. Fiddler (advantage: Morris), took centre stage. I don’t think this one’s worth an instigator, myself, since Fiddler appeared to throw the first punch, and definitely threw several more, even if none of them actually hit, which pretty much negates any instigator, but I guess the refs just saw Morris pounding the crap out of Fiddler and gave it to him anyway, which…yeah.

Little else of consequence happened thereafter. While the Coyotes clearly won all three major bouts tonight, it didn’t help them on the scoresheet (an option that can be enabled in certain modes of recent NHL 2K games). Final score, 4-1 Predators, with the home crowd happy. Yes, even with the fights. See, I don’t get why Gary Bettman is apparently trying to kill fighting in the game, but it can’t be for the sake of new markets, because this new market loved it. I can live with hockey remaining a niche sport, as long as it’s fun to watch, and this game tonight was fun to watch, period. It had a good amount of everything, and not too many penalties (only seven outside the fighting all night), and I don’t think we see enough games with that mixture of ingredients anymore, which is rather unfortunate.

Oh, the good ol’ hockey game is the best game you can name, and the best game you can name is the good ol’ hockey game.