NHL 2011-2012 Season General Thread

[fulltarget]

REIMINISTER OF DEFENSE SHOULD BE RETURNING SOON. BLEED BLUE AND WHITE.

Joe Colbourne has played 10 games with the Toronto Marlies in the AHL, scored 9 goals and earned 9 assist earning 18 points, with 0 PIMs. He is the top offense leader in the AHL right now with most points and goals. Now tell me that's not a Center you would love to have? and Kessel (this guy is going to end up with an 100pt season soon, right now he is also also the top offense leader in the NHL with most points, goal, p/m and has one assist less then the leader Karlsson in Ottawa)... THANK YOU BOSTON!!!!!

[ugly]

Yeah, it's a pretty weird season so far. Usually you expect some strange teams or players at the top of the standings or stats, but it usually levels off after a couple weeks.

Ottawa is suddenly the ultimate comeback team. Toronto seems like a fairly strong team (although, to temper your enthusiasm they have played a lot of weak teams early in the season). Boston is terrible. Vancouver seems right there with them. Florida is suddenly not terrible.

At least Winnipeg seems like they're starting to get competitive. Kane had a horrible start, but he's starting to bury the puck.

And what happened to Detroit? They start out 5-0. Then they get thumped by Washington on their way to losing 6 straight and only scoring 6 goals in the process.

Edmonton - I think that shows you how important smart players are to a team. Hall and Eberle were pretty good last year. But adding Nugent-Hopkins really made them a threat. Drafts always seem to focus on players that are big goal-scorers, and they especially love anyone who might be a power forward. But smart players are the best players. And, unfortunately, that's probably the most difficult thing to scout for.

But a lot of people seem to think that Edmonton is stacked up front but without defence. They do have a lot of potential on the blueline. They have Smid, Whitney, and Barker - all fairly recent top 10 selections. Defencemen take a longer time to develop. Goaltending might also be an issue, but as Chicago showed, you can win without great goaltending. And I think goaltenders are becoming the oversupplied position. If you think back to the mid-90s, there were only a couple of truly great goalies in the league - Hasek, Roy, Belfour, Brodeur - then there was everyone else. Now it doesn't seem like there is really an elite tier of goalies. You could probably take any of the top 10 or 15 goalies in the league and they'd all be pretty good candidates for the all-star team. A lot of teams even have 2 very capable goalies (Boston has Thomas and Rask, Vancouver has Luongo and Schneider, LA has Quick and Bernier).

[WiseGuy]

Bluejackets have Mason.

[Mike-KT]

As my favourite Sens blog, http://6thsens.com wrote

In the seven games that Ottawa has won, the teams that they have beat have had a combined record of 29-32-12. In the eight games that the Senators have played against these opponents (Toronto x 2, Carolina, Winnipeg, Florida, Minnesota, Columbus and the New York Rangers), Ottawa has outscored the opposition 32-24 and all but one of the games was decided by one goal. Conversely, the five opponents that have beaten Ottawa have a combined record of 32-17-2. In the six games that Ottawa has played against these teams (Toronto x 2, Philadelphia, Washington, Detroit and Colorado), they have been outscored 29-15 and have had three games decided by just one goal.

When I was at the Sens/Leafs game on Sunday both teams looked pretty terrible, especially in their own end. Ottawa was better with puck control and breaking out of their end, but the game left me wondering how either team is succeeding.



Also what's with Kyle Turris and trying to be the worst player to ever hold out for so long?

[Derfel]

you selected one good night to comment on standings

and i am interested derfel

I tried PM - FULL.

[gOOCH]

jimmy howard hasd a baby, thats what happened to detroit

and i cleared some of it, ty

[Mike-KT]

While i think the leafs performance is surprising, Burke did hit a number of home runs in terms of trades last year. It also helps that Lupal went from being a salary dump to a useful player. If only Cheechoo could have done the same

[Derfel]

Okay gooch, PM sent.

The one team I can't seem to get a handle on this year is St. Louis. Beating the Canucks last night, they looked good. But can it last, or will they fizzle yet again?

Oh, and LOL @ Columbus. I feel sorry for them, really.

[ugly]

Yeah, St. Louis is a tough team to gauge. They seem like they have a lot of young talent that should be improving and seemed like they're on the brink of making a big jump for the last season or two. But they haven't really managed to improve.

And I think they may have been burned by Halak. Halak was a hot goalie for one play-off. And he looked even better because he was playing behind a weak Montreal team that really needed to back in defensively and hope for a few lucky bounces to win play-off style hockey. They just backed it in, blocked a lot of shots and cleared out rebounds the best they could and hoped to win some games like that - they insulated Halak a lot. Luckily for Montreal and Halak, they were up against Pittsburgh, who run a terrible offensive system of bitch grinding and taking terrible angle shots and jamming at it in front of the net in close and never taking shots from dangerous areas of the ice. This played right into Montreal's hand. Halak just needed to cover the bottom of the net in close, and Montreal's defence just needed to block the point shots, and Pittsburgh barely even tries to work the puck into the high slot. So Halak's job wasn't that difficult. But, since the Penguins were the defending Cup champions that made Halak look like a hero.

Montreal was smart about it and knew what was going on, and sold Halak while his value was inflated. Meanwhile, the Blues figured they had solved their goaltending issues, but are stuck with a big contract, and getting better results from Ottawa castoff Elliot who is making almost league-minimum. Just look at their stats.

And, yeah, you start to feel sorry for some of these smaller market teams like Columbus that can't seem to build a team. There are teams like Washington, Pittsburgh, or Edmonton who are shitty for a few years, seem to land some really good high draft picks (and are lucky enough to have those draft picks when there are can't-miss prospects like Ovechkin, Malkin, and Crosby), and then are back in the mix a few years later.

Then you get teams like Phoenix and Columbus that just can't build a team even though they draft fairly high year after year.

Look at Phoenix's draft history. People say it isn't a hockey market and nobody shows up to games, but nobody wants to see a loser. From 1996 to to 2003 the only players they drafted that have played a significant number of games in the NHL was Danny Briere, and Fredrik Sjostrom and Trevor Letoski (both 4th line, fringe players). How does that even happen?

Same with Columbus. Leclaire was a very good goalie, but just couldn't stay healthy. Nash is very good. They got burned by highly talented players who just couldn't put it together with Zherdev and Filatov (having a strict coach like Hitchcock isn't great for developing offensively talented players). But it's just year after year of top 10 draft picks that haven't been able to be become more than below average players.

And then they manage to get a rookie of the year goalie in Mason who, for some reason, has barely been able to make a save since.

[Mike-KT]

BLEED BLUE AND WHITE...THANK YOU BOSTON!!!!!

I don't recommend looking at tonight's boxscore