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2018-19 NHL Season


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Ducks shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic tonight...

 

Anaheim trades: no. 2 goal scorer Pontus Aberg (MIN), seventh defenseman Luke Schenn (VAN), AHLer Joseph Blandisi (PIT)

 

Anaheim acquires: AHLer Justin Kloos (MIN), washed up Michael Del Zotto (VAN), former folk hero turned fourth liner Derek Grant (PIT)

 

Emptying water bottles on a flaming gas factory. WHAT IS GOING ON.

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Ducks win... pop the confetti. First win in literally a month. (Previous win was Dec. 16 at Pittsburgh.) Clearly the Ducks were being weighed down by their No. 1 goal scorer (Silfverberg, injured) and No. 2 goal scorer (Aberg, traded).

 

And boy, have a look at the Wild Card standings in the West:

 

CEN3 - Colorado - 47 GP, 50 PTS

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WC 1 - Dallas - 48 GP, 50 PTS

WC 2 - Minnesota - 47 GP, 49 PTS

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WC 3 - Edmonton - 47 GP, 49 PTS

WC 4 - Anaheim - 48 GP, 49 PTS

WC 5 - Vancouver - 48 GP, 48 PTS

 

Yowza. And that group is 10 points or more behind the rest of the conference.

 

You're either going to have some really dull first round series in the West or some really stupid upsets.

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3 hours ago, Still MIGHTY said:

Ducks win... pop the confetti. First win in literally a month. (Previous win was Dec. 16 at Pittsburgh.) Clearly the Ducks were being weighed down by their No. 1 goal scorer (Silfverberg, injured) and No. 2 goal scorer (Aberg, traded).

 

And boy, have a look at the Wild Card standings in the West:

 

CEN3 - Colorado - 47 GP, 50 PTS

---

WC 1 - Dallas - 48 GP, 50 PTS

WC 2 - Minnesota - 47 GP, 49 PTS

---

WC 3 - Edmonton - 47 GP, 49 PTS

WC 4 - Anaheim - 48 GP, 49 PTS

WC 5 - Vancouver - 48 GP, 48 PTS

 

Yowza. And that group is 10 points or more behind the rest of the conference.

 

You're either going to have some really dull first round series in the West or some really stupid upsets.

I mean, look at Tampa. They’re 9 points ahead of #2 in the league, and 14 points behind their closest rival in the East. They’ll waltz to the President’s trophy. 

 

On on a related note, I think this is the year we really see Tampa take control of their destiny and fulfill everyone’s expectations... and become the “new Caps”. This season could be shaping up to be their 2009-10 with how dominant they’ve been in the regular season, but I have no confidence that they’ll actually get it done. 

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How about those first-place New York Islanders.  Even if only for a game it's fun to say this late in the season especially when I and others left this team for dead.  Barry Trotz is the best coach this team's had since Al Arbour and Mitch Korn's done wonders for the goaltending.  They've been really fun to watch all year.

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7 hours ago, Jimmy Lethal said:

I can't believe losing Tavares made the Islanders better.

 

Or it could be hiring Trotz and having two goalies playing the best hockey of their lives. That could be it, too.

I'm not normally a big believer in the importance of hockey coaches, but it's hard to argue with his resume. From '03-'04 to the present, his worst full season* was 38 wins. The Islanders will get past that this year, barring a complete meltdown. And to do it with three different teams now...

 

* The 48-game season was not on a 38-win pace, but we don't know how those last hypothetical 35 games would have gone. At worst, one bad season out of the last fifteen or so is still extremely impressive.

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On 1/18/2019 at 8:00 AM, Crabcake47 said:

On on a related note, I think this is the year we really see Tampa take control of their destiny and fulfill everyone’s expectations... and become the “new Caps”. This season could be shaping up to be their 2009-10 with how dominant they’ve been in the regular season, but I have no confidence that they’ll actually get it done. 

 

I mean, zero they do in the regular season is going to make anyone think any different about them. I want to enjoy good hockey and I think I'm doing that but they aren't putting those blown leads in the '15 SCF, '16 ECF, and '18 ECF behind them until they actualy win it all. And, frankly, if they don't get it done this year, this core will probably never get it done. They won't have an accumulation of talent this good again for a long time. Apropos for a team called the "Lightning", this is a perfect storm of emerging talent and manageable cap figures. This is the best chance they're going to have, in a given season, to win the Cup.

 

Don't :censored: ing blow this.

 

16 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

So they’re doomed. Got it.

 

I realize you're joking, but as I've said before and I'll say again how tired I am of hearing about the President's Trophy "curse". There are 16 playoff teams; 16 playoff "seeds" if you will. In any given playoff year, 15 of those 16 seeds will fail to win the Cup. So, with unweighted odds, the President's Trophy winner has a roughly 6.25% chance of winning the Stanley Cup. Now, sure, we should probably provide some weights, whatever the hell those might be, because it's far more likely to expect the #1 overall seed to make a Cup run as compared to a #16 seed, of course, but regardless of what weights you apply, the general idea maintains. 

 

If we go back 20 years, which is both a nice round number but also arbirtarily convenient as it turns out, there have been five President's Trophy winners to double as the Cup winner. 20%  26.3%* success rate. If that seems selective, fine, because that means only two of the last fifteen have succeeded. Guess what? Two out of 15 is still a 13% success rate, double the unweighted percent I mentioned earlier. 

 

I was quasi-trolling on HF boards a week or so ago when Ovechkin scored his 700th career goal in the NHL. I mean, I'm right, it was absolutely the 700th goal he's scored in NHL sanctioned competition, but it was only (lol, "only") his 639th regular season goal; the other 61 come from the postseason. But, you know, as hockey fans, we're so conditioned to treat the postseason like the be-all and end-all; Ovechkin himself got so much :censored: over the years because his teams never won the Cup. His Caps teams, as well as the Sharks and Lightning of today, are derided to :censored: because of their great regular season successes and subsequent spectacular postseason failures. And I'm not here to turn the tide on that at all.

 

What I am here to say is that, when it comes to talking about player statistics over the courses of their careers, we seem to only ever mention regular season numbers and get nothing mentioned practically ever about their playoff numbers. Did you guys know that Sidney Crosby is only three goals away from 500 NHL goals? Or that Wayne Gretzky once had a 100-goal season? True story. 1983-'84. 87 (reg.) + 13 (playoffs). Tell me what those numbers add up to. Gretzky scored over 1,000 goals and recorded over 3,000 points in NHL games. Sounds cool, doesn't it? But we never talk about this stuff. We talk endlessly about the importance of postseason success, but we only ever seem to mention regular season statistics when it comes to the players themselves.

 

Ass. :censored: ing. Backwards.

 

*cancelled season doesn't count, of course

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So the Blackhawks and Capitals combined for 13 goals. 

 

Yeah. 

Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (CHL - 2018 Orr Cup Champions) Chicago Rivermen (UBA/WBL - 2014, 2015, 2017 Intercontinental Cup Champions)

King's Own Hexham FC (BIP - 2022 Saint's Cup Champions) Portland Explorers (EFL - Elite Bowl XIX Champions) Real San Diego (UPL) Red Bull Seattle (ULL - 2018, 2019, 2020 Gait Cup Champions) Vancouver Huskies (CL)

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On ‎1‎/‎18‎/‎2019 at 8:20 PM, Jimmy Lethal said:

I can't believe losing Tavares made the Islanders better.

 

Or it could be hiring Trotz and having two goalies playing the best hockey of their lives. That could be it, too.

 

It's both. The Isles built around Tavares in a way that made him the only person on the team. While it allowed for personal growth on his behalf, the rest of the team fell behind. No team can win with one player. With that barrier removed, the Isles' locker room eased up, and they began to play as a team. Rather than always throwing the puck to Tavares (who missed the net or dumped and changed 90% of the time anyways) they pass to the D, who passes to the corner, who passes to the slot, who takes a shot, who scores. The Isles are playing like a team for the first time in years and it's showing. Not to mention that a franchise player like Tavares, who is the ONLY PLAYER that franchise seems to care about is gonna be a cancer in the locker room. A leader cannot be a centerpiece, ESPECIALLY when that "leader" has the personality of wet cardboard, as JT does.

 

And of course coaching plays into the winning too. Trotz' style is a defensive one, something the Islanders desperately needed. The lack of change in the personnel on the blue-line shows that it wasn't the players, it was all coaching. Trotz has turned this team around, and in one year he's done what Capuano/Weight couldn't do, which is build a team that works as a team. The D are finally playing strong on their points, getting shots on, and not caving in the zone. Leddy and Boychuk are finally playing the way they were when they were first picked up by the Isles, and seem to have rekindled that 1-2 punch they've got both in shooting, and in the defensive zone.

 

Our goaltending is playing a HUGE role in our success, too. Lehner is stepping up in a way no one figured he would, and part of that is Lou Lamoriello giving him a chance despite his addiction/mental health struggles. And aside from that, him and Griess are just playing INSANELY well, regardless of second-chances or anything like that. Goaltending coaching has made all the difference, as well has the Isles finally having a starter-and-backup situation, rather than a starter-and-starter situation. As much as I love Jaro, having two starters is gonna kill both goalies' confidence. Having Lehner as a solid starter and Greiss as a goalie who's a startable-backup is a much needed building block for the team.

 

Everything's coming up Islanders, and I couldn't be happier. Our future is bright, even if the wheels come off this season. For the first time in my life, I'm proud to be an Islanders fan.

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4 hours ago, Brass said:

How in the hell did the Devils not get a chance to trade Will Butcher for Connor McDavid before Chiarelli was fired?

 

Wondering the same thing...apparently Datsyuk's agent has said today that he's not opposed to returning to the NHL next season when his KHL contract runs out. I was hoping Chiarelli would pull a Chiarelli and try to sign him to a 12x8 deal or something hah

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Nicholson's helpless yelp that there must be something in the water that makes everyone bad at their jobs sort of stung me. I think he's right. They've made all the right moves (every move a right one!) in drafting top players, hiring proven coaches, hiring a general manager who went to the Final twice in three years and won one, bringing in the president of the estimable Hockey Canada, and even building a state-of-the-art facility. But everyone in Edmonton just sucks. 

 

Can it REALLY be the "media pressure" of playing in a one-sport town where the one sport is the nation's most popular, like they say is the case in Montreal? I really don't want to believe that's a valid excuse. Why even have this sport if no one can bear to be seen playing it? But there's no media pressure in Raleigh and they're about to go ten years without playoffs too.

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

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I don't think all of Edmonton's moves have been the right ones. In fact, they've made quite a few bad ones. They haven't really drafted well outside of the ones they were gifted into draft and even one of those didn't work out in Yakupov.

 

I really think for a full change to be made, they need to clean house in the front office, especially with the Old Boys Club of the Dynasty Oilers, but Katz is such a fanboy of those teams. Even Nicholson was brought over from Hockey Canada because of his connection to those guys and their state-of-the-art facility also has its own issues. 

 

There's just so much wrong with the organization.

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