Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
And Just When You Thought I Was Gone ...
I make a return appearance, just to annoy everyone once again. Unfortunately, this will not be my trademarked rant, I was just popping in to say "hello". While I'm here I thought I might do some predictions regarding tonight's awards ... not that anyone cares, but I will anyway.
Hart Trophy will belong to Sidney Crosby, but Luongo deserves it more.
Vezina Trophy will go to Marty Brodeur, 12 SO is ridiculous.
Lester B. Pearson Award winner will be Vincent Lecavalier, just have a feeling. Wouldn't be surprised if Luongo got it though.
Nick Lidstrom and the Norris Trophy ... get out! Ya think?
Calder Trophy winner will be Evgeni Malkin.
Selke Trophy is probably going to Rod Brind'Amour, Jay Pandolfo might surprise.
Lindy Ruff was again the best coach in the league, and hands down wins the Jack Adams.
Martin St. Louis will win the most pointless award in all of professional sports, the Lady Byng.
Well there are my predictions, someone will have to let me know how I did ... I'm certainly not watching that boring 2 or 3 hours of pointless TV.
Hart Trophy will belong to Sidney Crosby, but Luongo deserves it more.
Vezina Trophy will go to Marty Brodeur, 12 SO is ridiculous.
Lester B. Pearson Award winner will be Vincent Lecavalier, just have a feeling. Wouldn't be surprised if Luongo got it though.
Nick Lidstrom and the Norris Trophy ... get out! Ya think?
Calder Trophy winner will be Evgeni Malkin.
Selke Trophy is probably going to Rod Brind'Amour, Jay Pandolfo might surprise.
Lindy Ruff was again the best coach in the league, and hands down wins the Jack Adams.
Martin St. Louis will win the most pointless award in all of professional sports, the Lady Byng.
Well there are my predictions, someone will have to let me know how I did ... I'm certainly not watching that boring 2 or 3 hours of pointless TV.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
What the fuck is a draft?
I'm not normally a big fan of Hockey's Future. It's a (valuable, I suppose) resource that a lot of people in the online hockey community swear by, but I've just never been into it. I could get into various reasons, but let's be honest, they're irrelevant and you don't care. You want the goods! And, thanks to this post at Japer's Rink, I found an interesting little experiment that HF has been conducting recently. It takes a look at the 2002 NHL Entry Draft five years after the fact:
Basically, 2002 brought Alexander Steen, Matt Stajan, Ian White, and Staffan Kronwall to the blue and white. It also brought Jarkko Immonen (and, for that matter, a handful of what HF had decided are 'busts'), but hey, he's a Ranger now, so he's not the point. The point is that it appears that the Leafs had a very good draft. I know. I'm as shocked as you.
Maybe a little bit more of that magic, eh guys? God knows that this team needs it.
The above 'blockquote' (silly Web lingo) is from this article, whereas the link above (the highlighted word 'experiment' takes you to the Toronto-specific page.We have measured success in selecting by using NHL games player, because it is
fair to all types of players, flashy goal scorers to defensive defensemen.
Overall, NHL teams have gotten an average of 22.5 NHL games per pick out of the
2002 draft class, which is not far from the averages for 2000 and 2001, each
after five years. The Toronto Maple
Leafs have gotten the most value out of the 2002 NHL Entry Draft thus far,
averaging 59 NHL games per pick. They accomplished this despite making
their first selection at 24th overall. The Chicago
Blackhawks came in fourth among teams, despite not picking until 21st
overall.
Basically, 2002 brought Alexander Steen, Matt Stajan, Ian White, and Staffan Kronwall to the blue and white. It also brought Jarkko Immonen (and, for that matter, a handful of what HF had decided are 'busts'), but hey, he's a Ranger now, so he's not the point. The point is that it appears that the Leafs had a very good draft. I know. I'm as shocked as you.
Maybe a little bit more of that magic, eh guys? God knows that this team needs it.
I can only hope Darren Dreger is not lying to me
But, given my past issues with him, not to mention his horrid rumour-mongering and past career decisions, I don't hold out much hope.
Now, McCabe certainly isn't, you know, TERRIBLE or anything, but I've never approved of his contract. For the caliber of defenseman he is (you know, worse than the much more affordable Kaberle), I want him either a lot cheaper or not on my team. I like the guy and all, but I'm not comfortable with Bryan McCabe the player for damn near six million a year. Like Dreger mentions, there's a lot of benefit to the team by trying to dump McCabe. We free up a ton of cap room and have the opportunity to pick up more players, such as a better defenseman (I'll take either Timonen or Hannan, thank you very much).
The bottom line, to me, is that without his breakout offensive first-half of the year last season, McCabe isn't staring at all that money because he not only isn't good enough defensively or consistent enough offensively (i.e. just not fucking good enough) for that kind of money, but he's not nearly the crowd favourite that other guys who've gotten ridiculous contracts (Tucker's $3 million, Domi's $1.5 million back in the day) are. The only reason he has that contract is because he has a big shot and was picking up lots of points on the powerplay at the start of 2005-06. He petered out after his injury, and he hasn't been the same "league leader" player since... well, no shit. He never was. Then again, when have the fucking Toronto Maple Leafs ever been known for their fiscal sanity?
I'm in favour of moving him, but I want as much as possible in return. He's not a terrible player, just really overpaid. And really stupid. Who can forget his pre-lockout comments? Yeah Bry, I hope you're able to get by now that Toronto's paying you out the ass. Fucking 'tard.
Bryan McCabe still has four years remaining on a deal that averages $5.75
million per year. He also has a "no movement" clause which some suggest he
would waive for one team, the New York Islanders. If the Islanders can't
re-sign Ryan Smyth or Jason Blake, they'll need to make a splash. The
Maple Leafs won't initiate a discussion, but with 8 defensemen soon to be under
contract they might listen. Freeing up valuable cap space to enable the
Leafs to be a contender for top free agent players is very appealing. This is a
distinct possibility.
Now, McCabe certainly isn't, you know, TERRIBLE or anything, but I've never approved of his contract. For the caliber of defenseman he is (you know, worse than the much more affordable Kaberle), I want him either a lot cheaper or not on my team. I like the guy and all, but I'm not comfortable with Bryan McCabe the player for damn near six million a year. Like Dreger mentions, there's a lot of benefit to the team by trying to dump McCabe. We free up a ton of cap room and have the opportunity to pick up more players, such as a better defenseman (I'll take either Timonen or Hannan, thank you very much).
The bottom line, to me, is that without his breakout offensive first-half of the year last season, McCabe isn't staring at all that money because he not only isn't good enough defensively or consistent enough offensively (i.e. just not fucking good enough) for that kind of money, but he's not nearly the crowd favourite that other guys who've gotten ridiculous contracts (Tucker's $3 million, Domi's $1.5 million back in the day) are. The only reason he has that contract is because he has a big shot and was picking up lots of points on the powerplay at the start of 2005-06. He petered out after his injury, and he hasn't been the same "league leader" player since... well, no shit. He never was. Then again, when have the fucking Toronto Maple Leafs ever been known for their fiscal sanity?
I'm in favour of moving him, but I want as much as possible in return. He's not a terrible player, just really overpaid. And really stupid. Who can forget his pre-lockout comments? Yeah Bry, I hope you're able to get by now that Toronto's paying you out the ass. Fucking 'tard.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Maybe the last title was a bit deceiving.
Haha, I guess we are absentee bloggers. Who knew?
But um, yeah. All three of us are working (Steve pretty much full-time, Jared at like eight hundred different places, and me for the first time ever), and there just isn't a whole lot going on in Leaf-land right now. Since we're using this as a Maple Leafs-only blog and not an NHL blog in general, well, there's not a lot for us to say. Unless you want to hear our thoughts on the Sundin and Antropov contracts, but frankly, I don't give two flying fucks about thinking about that.
The Stanley Cup playoffs are finally over, as the Anaheim Ducks beat the Ottawa Senators. I don't know about the other guys, but I only made one wrong prediction all playoffs (which would be taking the New York Rangers over Buffalo in round two). This, of course, means the OFFSEASON~! is here, which means we should finally have things to write about. Of course, even that won't last too long, and it's still three months before training camp (a time that has never had interest to me, personally, as a hockey fan) and four months before the start of the season, so things may be bare for a little while. I've talked to Steve about opening this up to Toronto sports in general, so that he can blog about the Blue Jays basically daily while I chime in every now and then with "what the fuck why doesn't this guy have a higher OBP trade him now". We'll see how things go on that. I'm open to it just to find more shit to write about here.
But we haven't forgotten (ok, maybe Jared has) about Bring Back Potvin, so if you continually check this blog in hopes that we'll finally write something to kill like ten minutes of your day, don't bail out just yet.
After all, Ottawa didn't win, now did they?
But um, yeah. All three of us are working (Steve pretty much full-time, Jared at like eight hundred different places, and me for the first time ever), and there just isn't a whole lot going on in Leaf-land right now. Since we're using this as a Maple Leafs-only blog and not an NHL blog in general, well, there's not a lot for us to say. Unless you want to hear our thoughts on the Sundin and Antropov contracts, but frankly, I don't give two flying fucks about thinking about that.
The Stanley Cup playoffs are finally over, as the Anaheim Ducks beat the Ottawa Senators. I don't know about the other guys, but I only made one wrong prediction all playoffs (which would be taking the New York Rangers over Buffalo in round two). This, of course, means the OFFSEASON~! is here, which means we should finally have things to write about. Of course, even that won't last too long, and it's still three months before training camp (a time that has never had interest to me, personally, as a hockey fan) and four months before the start of the season, so things may be bare for a little while. I've talked to Steve about opening this up to Toronto sports in general, so that he can blog about the Blue Jays basically daily while I chime in every now and then with "what the fuck why doesn't this guy have a higher OBP trade him now". We'll see how things go on that. I'm open to it just to find more shit to write about here.
But we haven't forgotten (ok, maybe Jared has) about Bring Back Potvin, so if you continually check this blog in hopes that we'll finally write something to kill like ten minutes of your day, don't bail out just yet.
After all, Ottawa didn't win, now did they?
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