Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Welcome to the Big Leagues, Kid: 2013-14 Week Six First Career NHL Goals

Welcome friends. Another week of goals awaits us, but something seems different. While we haven't seen things taper off in dramatic fashion, this week 6 of our 9 goals were scored by defencemen. Well, putting the biscuit in the basket from the back-end certainly is a different beast than from the front lines. Let's take a look at what we have here:

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

On Forecasting the Market for Goaltenders

Let's take a little trip into the not-so-way-back machine. The year is 2006, a few weeks before the start of the '06-'07 season, and goaltender Rick DiPietro is entering into a pact with Garth Snow and the New York Islanders that would pay him $4.5 million per year. Doesn't sound too crazy does it? He had been playing with the big club since 2000 and was steadily becoming a serviceable netminder at 25 years of age. One figures the Islanders wanted to pay him what they felt he was worth to the organisation and solidify him as the present and future of the team's crease.

But wait! While a $4.5 million cap hit doesn't make you bat an eyelash, the 15-year term to the deal might seem a little strange. It was certainly the first of this magnitude and especially unheard of for a goaltender. Even Evgeni Nabakov, unquestioned elite starter in San Jose, and Martin-freaking-Brodeur, both of whom had signed the same year, couldn't wrangle more than 4 and 6 years, respectively, from their owners.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Welcome to the Big Leagues, Kid: 2013-14's Weeks Four and Five First Career NHL Goals

We had a healthy dose of first career goals in Week Four but things seemed to taper off the following week. Since this is beyond late anyways how about we do two weeks all together? Sounds good to me so here we go.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Welcome to the Big Leagues, Kid: 2013-14's Week Three First Career NHL Goals

Welcome to Week 3 of first NHL goals. The excitement keeps on rolling, especially if you happened to be watching the league on Thursday the 17th when six guys populated the list. Let's jump right in, shall we?