MvsW #0112 QoD

Marek vs Wyshynski #0112 (Apr 25, 2012) Question of the Day:
Who deserves the Vezina trophy?

Jon Quick.  Henrik Lundquist might be the best goalie in the league, and he certainly has been over the last couple years.  However, to me, the measure of a MVP (and I tend to look at the Vezina the same way) is to try to guess what would happen with to the player's team without that player on the roster.  If you took Lundquist away from the Rangers, I think they would've been a decent (but not good) team this year.  I think they would've still ended up in the playoffs.

If you took Quick away from the Kings this year...  well, they barely made the playoffs anyways, right?  If they got anything less than the stellar season that Quick turned in, it's safe to say that they would've landed out of the playoffs.  In fact, with average goaltending, I would guess that the Kings would've finished well out of the playoffs, while still being good enough to not end up in the top of the draft, making this year a colossal waste.

I may come back to this at some time and take a good hard look (with numbers and stuff!) at trying to figure this situation out.  Probably be plugging in some average and replacement level goaltender numbers in for each team and using that to get a better idea of the performance each goaltender gave their team over that line.  We'll see if I get to that, but it's certainly an idea.

ESPN Sucks: Faux-Moneyball Analysis

Friday's Puck Headlines at Puck Daddy contained an inexplicably stupid nugget from ESPN:

NHL fans lost an entire season due to hard-line owners seeking a tight salary cap. So it’s shocking that since the empty 2004-05 season, payroll is linked even more with winning. Before the lockout, a 10% increase in spending was worth about 5.8 team points (roughly three wins) over a season. Since the lockout, that number has ballooned to 9.2 points. The Wharton researchers theorize that this counterintuitive trend is a result of the CBA’s producing a tighter range of spending between teams. “Each dollar became that much more valuable,” they concluded.  

Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford agrees: “Despite not having as big a gap, $16 million between the cap and the floor, teams that consistently spend at the top will still have an advantage in getting top players.” He also says low-payroll teams can succeed only for a short period. Nashville earned the Western Conference’s fourth seed this year with a slightly below-average payroll. But the team is winning on borrowed time. “The Predators are at that point where they’re either going to spend toward the cap or risk losing top young players,” Rutherford says. “So from a consistency basis, you can see the advantage for the teams that are able to routinely spend at the upper end.” 

The portion of the piece discussing hockey is quoted above, and there are several things that stick out as being blatantly and stupidly wrong just on the first read.  I have no idea why Wyshynski would link to such an awful piece, but hey, I guess it gives me something to talk about.

First of all, it's not shocking that payroll should be linked even more with winning (if it even is - I'll get there in a minute) - part of the idea of cost certainty was that you had limited dollars to give out, so the way you used those dollars becomes more important.  Furthermore, you couldn't make mistakes and pay your way out of them (which notably ended up not being the case - ask Wade Redden!).  The idea was that across the board, no one would have to spend as much to try to compete, but cost certainty undeniably makes the money that you do spend more important.

It's also worth pointing out that frequently, the floor or near-floor teams are not just victims of circumstance - they're quite often in the poor house because they build shitty teams, and then bemoan the fact that no one comes to their games.  Consequently, that more money tends to mean more wins should strike no one as a surprise.

The second thing that immediately jumps out: Nashville has succeeded for a lot longer than a "short period".  Nashville has been one of the 5 most successful teams in the regular season since the lockout, along with New Jersey, Vancouver, San Jose, and Detroit.  You'll notice that Nashville has also done so on a much smaller budget than those other four teams.  Rutherford's Hurricanes are 17th, though I suppose you can point out that they lucked into a Stanley Cup in the strangest year ever.

In any case, Nashville has clearly outperformed at least 80% of the teams in the league, and have done it on a shoestring budget.  They may never have finished #1 in the conference or something, but they've been remarkably consistent about remaining in playoff contention, and that's more than you can say for the 'Canes.

The third point is the fact that the comparison from the article of "increasing payroll by 10%" is highly unequal between the two time periods as well.  If you ran a cap-floor team in 2012, you had to spend around $48,000,000, and the cap was around $64,000,000.  You can only increase your payroll by 10% three times, so the entire difference between the top and the bottom of the league is condensed into only three such payroll jumps (and magnified further by the increased number of points in the league - getting there in just a second).  Prior to the lockout, team spending ranged anywhere from under $20,000,000 to over $70,000,000.  A payroll increase of 10% for a team at the bottom of the pay scale still left you in the bottom of the pay scale, and you could increase your payroll by 10% many more times.  The method of comparison is incredibly disingenuous and misleading.

The fourth and final point is the reason why this piece should've never been written, and betrays the fact that those doing the research for the piece didn't know anything about the NHL.  The reason you get more points per million dollars spent in today's NHL compared to the pre-lockout NHL is because everyone gets more points, no matter how much they spend!  The advent of the charity point for losing in overtime/shootout means that everyone gets a bunch of extra points each year.  Any measure in which you compare points earned under the current CBA, to the pre-2005 CBA, will always show that there are more points up for grabs under the current CBA, because there are so many more points awarded to NHL teams nowadays.

A quick check of hockey-reference.com shows that in 2004, the league average for standings points was 87, whereas in 2012, it was 92.  That's about 150 extra standings points in the system, that weren't originally there.  And remember, there were charity points from 2000-2004 for overtime losses, though not nearly as many as we currently have.  If ESPN was including numbers in the pre-lockout points/payroll figure from pre-2000, that would make the difference look even bigger, because in 1998-99, the league average for standings points was just 82 points.  Is it any wonder that you should see an increase in standings points earned by nearly any measure?

Anyways, the important thing to remember here is that ESPN sucks.

On Junior Seau

Junior Seau died this Wednesday, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.  He was 43 years old.  He was one of the best linebackers in the NFL over his career, and will very likely end up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  He was frequently the only bright spot on some truly atrocious San Diego Chargers teams, and he was one of the most respected people around the NFL.  He played high school, college, and NFL football in the southern California area, where he was revered for his play on the field, as well as his conduct off of it.  Seau was one of the most charismatic and down-to-earth stars in the area, and he was also extremely committed to charity work, including founding the Junior Seau Foundation.

One of my aunts used to work for the Chargers, and as a result, I got to meet him very briefly after a game, when I was somewhere around 13 years old.  I hadn't yet grown into the full frame that I now have, but I was a decently sized kid at the time.  I was probably about 5' 9" or so at the time, and about 180 pounds.  I've also always had very large hands - I don't mean fat sausage-fingers or something, but just very big, long, wide hands.  I played football and hockey, so I wasn't a stranger to big guys, and size advantages that other men have held over me have never really merited any particular notice from me.

All of that said, when I first shook Junior Seau's hand, I was stunned.  It is the only time in my life that I can recall being taken aback at the size of another man.  He was just so god damn huge!  Not huge as in fat, but huge as in "I am the best linebacker in the NFL and I am made of pure bone and muscle" kind of huge.  His head was big, his neck was big, his shoulders and his chest were huge, and his hand enveloped my own.

I know that in my lifetime, I have met taller men, and wider men, and maybe even stronger men, but I have never yet met anyone who radiated the sort of presence of "big-ness" that Junior Seau did.  I had shaken hands with a 6' 3" 250 lb giant.

And then that giant leaned down and said softly, "Nice to meet you".



I highly doubt that I will ever again in my life meet anyone as big as Junior Seau.

MvsW #0111 QoD

Marek vs Wyshynski #0111 (Apr 24, 2012) Question of the Day:
Who should win GM of the year?

Definitely not Dale Tallon, despite the fact that he's nominated for the award.  Dale Tallon dicked up hard, as he is prone to do, and was rewarded for it by failing into a division title because the Capitals inexplicably shit the bed for the entire regular season.  Everyone points out that the reason Tallon signed all the UFAs this off season was to hit the salary floor.  Of course, that ignores the fact that he signed 7 UFA's to hit the 2011-2012 salary floor (and notably, the last year of this Collective Bargaining Agreement), and instead of giving them money just for this year's floor, he handed out a total of 28 years and 112 million dollars.

The Panthers ended up being one of the worst division winners of the last 30 years, and Tallon will point to that (meaningless) banner as proof of his success this year.  And hey, I guess you could call it a success.  But the point is, he got a very small improvement this year, at the cost of future years.  That strategy works when you're trying to get over the hump and win a Cup, where the "future costs" will be due when your window has closed.  Instead, Tallon's short-term and uncreative accounting will have "future costs" right when this team is trying to become an elite team behind guys like Huberdeau, Gudbranson, and Markstrom.

Aside: I think there's something interesting about Tallon and Kris Versteeg's success this year.  Remember, a big part of the reason why Versteeg has wandered across several teams while scoring 25+ goals a year, is because CHI had to prematurely jettison him as a cap casualty after winning the Stanley Cup, because of Dale Tallon's supreme screw-up as the Blackhawk's GM in accidentally allowing him to become a quasi-free agent.  As a result, Versteeg (and others) ended up getting paid more than CHI would've wanted.  


In the end, Versteeg ended up getting traded several times over, until he ended up in Florida, reunited with the man who originally screwed up his second NHL contract, Dale Tallon.  It makes me smile to imagine that Dale Tallon somehow actually planned all this back when he botched the RFA qualifying offers.  "Barker is going to end up sucking anyways..." and "If I mess up with Versteeg now, then later on after I get fired, I'll be able to reacquire him 3 years later..."

Anyways, back from that tangent, I suppose I should point out that my answer to the question is probably David Poile.  If nothing else, I can point to Tyler Dellow's chart of NHL team records over this CBA (since the lockout) and note that the Predators are one of the 5 most successful teams since 2005, and have done it while spending way less than most of the rest of the league.  To some extent, I think this is probably the best argument - a GM's job is about a lot more than "right now" and more about where you're going next year and the year after, and how you're going to get there.  Of course, reaching those levels of success with obstacles other franchises don't face (namely, their finances and ownership situations during that time) makes the case even stronger.  Poile ought to have one of these on his desk.

Further than that, I've honestly been impressed with the testicular fortitude that Poile has displayed this year, while trying to walk a very fine line.  We've previously discussed the Suter/Weber situation here on StB.  Poile has been dealt a tough hand, but he's played it masterfully.  Maybe it will blow up in the end, with Weber and Suter walking out, but no one can point the finger at Poile for it at the end of the day.  Most GM's would've dragged the contract issues into the media, used it as an excuse to trade the player and save their own skins, and probably have gotten a rather poor haul in exchange for a #1 defenseman, rather than risk losing him for "nothing".

That "nothing" is misleading though - the "nothing" is a chance at postseason success, and a chance to convince the player that you're building something real, and to get them to commit to being a part of it.  Poile isn't throwing in the towel on Suter or Weber - he's trying to get them to stay, and he's playing the whole thing out publically in a manner where no one is the bad guy, helping keep things friendly between franchise and player.  In doing so, he's continued to help a fledgling fan base (relatively speaking) continue to grow, by giving it something to cheer for, rather than stomping on all their hearts and blaming a greedy franchise player for the heartache.

Poile has also handled the mess that is Alexander Radulov in a similarly masterful manner for years, which has finally culminated in his being able to bring in a first-line forward in this most critical of years for no cost at all.  Poile has committed to this season and to the fans and to his star players.  Maybe it won't work out in the end, but it's been a tough hand from day 1 in Nashville.  He's done some great things with that hand, and all of it has been culminating into this one season.

Over the last several years, we've seen a lot of GM's go all out to lose intentionally, and usually in a pretty dramatic fashion. There's a whole lot of incompetent folks at the front of NHL front offices, and the way the NHL has incentivized losing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  If nothing else, I'd like to see a GM be rewarded for being smart instead of lucky.  And I'd really like to see an NHL GM be rewarded not for going all out to lose and rack up draft picks, but to be rewarded for following a plan and building a team and going all out to win games.

MvsW #0110 QoD

Marek vs Wyshynski #0110 (Apr 23, 2012) Question of the Day:
Which of the eliminated teams is in the most trouble?

I'd have to say the Sharks.  The Canucks might be a bigger clusterfuck, and consequently, they'll be a lot more entertaining to follow this offseason.  Of course, a large part of that comes from the fact that they still have a good team put together for next year, and are facing a lot of pressure to commit the organizational equivalent of building a brand new house and then burning it down because the wood floors got scratched.  The Red Wings have been on the downswing over the last couple seasons, so their position isn't a shock.  Additionally, most scouts that I've seen still rate the Red Wings' prospect depth as being pretty decent, with guys like Tatar, Jurco, Smith, and Nyquist.  Pittsburgh has some interesting decisions to make, but no one can deny that they have a pretty solid team entering next year.

No other team crashed the way the Sharks did.  No one else underwhelmed like the Sharks.  The Sharks watched their championship window slam shut in their face.  They lack flexibility to make significant roster changes.  They lack prospect depth to inject fresh blood via promotions to the NHL or trades to acquire roster players.  The Sharks have pretty much blown their load, as far and as hard as they could.  And it still fell well short of their goal, and they have nothing left with which to reload.

The Burns and Havlat trades were their last two shots of the cannon, and this season has largely amounted to standing on the wall of The Alamo, screaming "You'd better not try it, look at this big cannon we've got here!" and hoping no one notices that they're out of ammunition. Funny thing about the NHL though, is that you can't really hide the fact that you're all out of bullets.  Someone will always call your bluff.  Now everyone knows that they don't have anything left, and as Marleau and Thornton get older and the team slinks back out of the playoffs, they have nothing with which to pull themselves back up the standings, and will likely have to bottom out for a year or two.

MvsW #0109 QoD

More edits: As I said before, I was pretty busy between training for a new job, and housework.  Over the last week, it's been continuing my academy, and a trip to Las Vegas with two of my favorite people.  I haven't even been able to watch much hockey lately, but hopefully I should be able to start getting into a better schedule now.  Also, apparently this post was also caught in my misunderstanding of the scheduled post within Blogger, but I should be good to go on that now.  


Also, The Elder Scrolls Online!!!  I'm crossing my fingers.

Marek vs Wyshynski #0109 (Apr 20, 2012) Question of the Day:
Which band would be worse than Nickelback for the NHL awards?

If I mention Sugar Ray here, it gives me an excuse to link to this awesome post that I did at James O'Brien's Cycle Like Sedins: Rob Scuderi Hates 90's Alternative Rock.  I got a big kick out of writing that.

As for the question, I don't have a real answer.  I don't listen to the radio anymore, I don't follow pop music (I can count the number of Lady Gaga songs I've heard on one hand), and I do not have an encyclopedic amount of knowledge in the subject.  I guess my answer would have to be something really dirty, just to watch Gary Bettman's head explode, and the suspension video Shanahan would have to make as a result.

So as to not completely dodge the question, I'll point out I've personally always thought that some NHL names would make for great band names.  Todd and the Bertuzzis sounds like a Motown group.  The Zarley Zalapski Experience?  There's got to be plenty more of them out there.  Feel free to chime in.

MvsW #0108 QoD

Marek vs Wyshynski #0108 (Apr 19, 2012) Question of the Day:
What team currently down in their series has the best chance to rally for a series win?

Edit: Again, this was supposed to get posted earlier, as in, before the Penguins were eliminated on Sunday afternoon.  Instead, I look silly saying that the Penguins had a chance to make a comeback, when they're already eliminated.  Whatever, I still think the point stands, and I think every other series going on is fairly boring.

Even when I answer these late, I try to answer them as if I were actually answering it at the time that it was asked.  In this case, this question was asked after Pittsburgh had convincingly won their Game 4, 10-3, finally getting on the board while still being down to Philadelphia, 3-0.  I don't think the fact that Pittsburgh won by such an overwhelming score means anything, with respect to the entirety of the series, outside of being further illustration of the fact that anything can happen in this series.  And that's the primary reason why my answer is Pittsburgh.

The Flyers/Penguins series is probably the strangest one I've ever seen.  Anything can and has happened.  I wouldn't be surprised to see a 1-0 game, nor a 11-10 one.  I wouldn't be surprised to see PIT make a comeback from 3-0, or to see Philadelphia settle down and skate through an Eastern Conference full of upsets to a Cup Final.  I wouldn't be surprised to see James Neal come back from a too-short suspension to score a winning goal in overtime of Game 7.  I wouldn't be surprised to see Max Talbot and Jaromir Jagr both score hat tricks in a 10-0 demolishing of the Penguins in Game 7 in Pittsburgh.

No other series has that sort of feeling.  Vancouver seems like they're lost in the woods that Bryzgalov was lost in earlier this year.  The other series in the West very much have an air of finality about them, and I don't give the slightest damn about any of the other awful series in the East.  But in the PIT/PHI series, anything can happen, and PIT coming back from 0-3 is maybe the least of it.  I wouldn't be surprised if Chris Pronger returned in Game 7 with a bloodied eyepatch (shades of Curt Schilling!), ate Sidney Crosby for a pre-game meal, declared himself Stanley Cup Champion, and dared anyone in the NHL front office to deny his proclamation.

MvsW #0107 QoD

Marek vs Wyshynski #0107 (Apr 18, 2012) Question of the Day:
What do you expect to hear in the Flyers/Penguins handshake line?

Edit: This was supposed to get posted before the game today, but apparently I don't understand how the new post scheduling in Blogger works.  

Better question: What's the over/under on number of players who skip that handshake line?  After the way the Penguins gooned it up and earned themselves a few suspensions (though not nearly long enough), I think PHI would be totally justified to skip the handshake line entirely.  Moreover, for Philadelphia, who invented goon hockey with the Broad Street Bullies of the 70's, whose fans are noted as among the most hostile in all of professional sports, for that franchise to skip the handshake line entirely would be one of the funniest statements I could ever imagine.  I'm not sure if it would be hypocritical or ironic for Philadelphia to do so, but it would damn sure be hilarious, and more than that, it would be an absolute shitstorm for the NHL to deal with - another situation on which the league as a whole would undoubtedly screw the pooch once again. In all likelihood, it would the highest possible level of trolling we may ever see.

My answer to the question:
Bylsma: "Hey, where's Flower?  Did he skip the handshake line?"
Malkin: "Who cares, my mom made borscht!"
Crosby: "I don't know, come to think of it, I haven't even seen him around the last couple of weeks"
Meanwhile, a similar conversation happens amongst the Flyers...

MvsW #0106 QoD

Marek vs Wyshynski #0106 (Apr 17, 2012) Question of the Day:
Who is the biggest "MIA" player so far in the playoffs?

I have never in my life seen a performance as bad as the one Marc-Andre Fleury put in for the first several games of the PIT/PHI series.  The only thing that might be close is the time I had to fill in as goalie for my rec league team, and nearly (but not quite!) blew an 8 (!!!) goal lead while my team simultaneously almost had to forfeit for not having enough eligible players after several ejections and penalties.  Of course, picking on a goalie who is rocking a 0.837 SV% after having bounced back with two decent games is easy - it's like shooting fish in a barrel, stealing candy from a baby, or taking shots on Marc-Andre Fleury!

I am extremely happy at the number of people who've taken MAF's struggles this series so far to point out the fact that he's never been that good.  The guy has never been much more than a league-average goalie, but because he plays on a good team in a bad conference, and gets a lot of national TV coverage, he has a completely bogus reputation for "clutchness" or frequently considered some sort of great goalie.  As I recall, Fleury's rebound troubles this playoff are nothing new, being something that he has struggled off and on with throughout his career, though I thought he'd more or less turned the corner on that.

All of that said, I eagerly look forward to 2-3 years down the road when he turns in some more average or sub-average playoff performances but is dragged by his teammates on another long Penguins run, and the narrative is once again that Fleury is a "money" or "clutch" type of goalie.

MvsW #0105 QoD

Marek vs Wyshynski #0105 (Apr 16, 2012) Question of the Day:
What are your feelings on a "suspend to the injury" culture?

I already sort of addressed this the other day, but...

It's stupid and inconsistent, and I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if eventually it bites the league in the ass in some sort of legal manner.  I can totally see a situation in which a court declares the NHL to have been negligent in terms of allowing risks greater than could be reasonably anticipated by participation in the game to have existed and perhaps even tacitly approved of such.  When the NHL loses a massive lawsuit to players on the issues of concussions (and this day is coming - the NFL already has such a class-action suit on it's hands), then we're going to see plays like Duncan Keith's (which, by the way, I think is by far the most egregious of anything we've seen this season, regular season or playoffs thus far) punished with some big (in the 10's of games, not 1's) suspensions so that the NHL can attempt to fix the environment that has been allowed to exist in the NHL.

Aside:  I've started a new career this week, and it's the kind of thing that's pretty demanding.  I've also had some other stuff going on around the house that has needed dealt with, but I should be back to posting again this weekend. I picked a stupid time to come back to writing, knowing that I had the career thing coming up, though a good chunk of this housework was unanticipated - trying to figure out what the hell the previous home owners did with this sprinkler system is a trip.  Anyways, this weekend I'm planning on having another pretty good post on this issue.