Thoughts on the Goaltending Situation in San Jose

This season, I made a conscious decision not to write about the San Jose Sharks. I live in Chicago and I've witnessed the Blackhawks win two Stanley Cups as an Illinois resident so I've developed a soft spot for the club, I always root for the Montreal Canadiens as my Eastern Conference preference, and I've taken an interest in the emergence of the Blue Jackets, Ducks (blasphemy, I know), Stars, Blues, and Wild. I am a capital-H Hockey fan before any allegiance I may have but when the puck drops on any of the 1230 games in the NHL season, I Bleed Teal when the boys from my hometown are on the ice, without question. Me keeping hushed about the Sharks this year was just a show of some unfounded superstition I had relating to their success.

Well, I'm breaking the silence. We're all allowed to knock our favourite teams when they deserve it and, over the years, my general thought about the Sharks is that they play the most spirited 40 minutes of hockey you will ever see. They've put out a different look every season since I really started following the sport in 2007 but the story has remained the same: they come out strong, they sit back on a lead, they choke. I won't make excuses. It's like that girl that builds up your confidence for a year of cautious optimism and, when you finally ask her out, she just wants to be friends. They show so much promise and, just when you really start to believe that this could truly be the team, they're hitting the links and Pierre McGuire is spouting off about other players' junior teams for a few more weeks.

Sophomore Slumps: 2013-14, Part 1

Every year, the Professional Hockey Writers Association votes for the Calder Memorial Trophy, the award bestowed upon "the player selected as most proficient in his first year of competition in the National Hockey League." A handful of previous winners went on to have stellar careers and, like Teemu Selanne (1992-93), Martin Brodeur (1993-94), and Daniel Alfredsson (1995-96), some are still having productive twilight years. Others, such as Alex Ovechkin (2005-06), Evgeni Malkin (2006-07), and Patrick Kane (2007-08), remain in a class of their own in the league.

Yet for every Brodeur or Malkin, you have your Andrew Raycrofts (2003-04) and Dany Heatleys (2001-02). Over a long enough timeline, a promising prospect may turn into a significant bust. This might manifest as a young player enters his scoring prime or he might just hit a brick wall after a strong debut.

While the jury may still be out on many of the following individuals, each one didn't live up to the promise of their rookie years in 2012-13. 2013-14 was almost business as usual with a full 82 games played for each team so a rough year may be chalked up to growing pains. Let's take inventory of who to look for next season to either bounce back or fade further away.

2-4-T At Frozen Four 2014: Day 2

Saturday at the Frozen Four began with an afternoon open skate at the Wells Fargo Center. They opened the arena from 12:30pm to 2:30pm for fans to come down Broad Street, rent skates provided by Bauer, and traverse around the rink in standard counter-clockwise fashion.

2-4-T At Frozen Four 2014: Day 1

I admittedly don't have a whole lot of college hockey chops, my only real exposure to it being the Hockey City Classic in 2013 at Soldier Field in Chicago. That day featured two outdoor contests, one between Miami (Ohio) and Notre Dame, the other Minnesota versus Wisconsin, on a February day that got more and more frigid as the sun crept below the western edge of the stadium. While I can speak most fluently about NHL action, I'll never turn down an opportunity to take in some puck.

Jaroslav Halak: A Brief History

The date is March 4th, 2010. The Montreal Canadiens are squared off against the San Jose Sharks in a road game at the then HP Pavilion. The score is 2-1 Montreal entering the third period and while they are being outshot 29-19, 22 year-old goaltender Carey Price is holding the Habs in the game. At the 11:18 mark of the final frame, Canadien defenceman Roman Hamrlik commits a hooking penalty against winger Ryane Clowe, sending the Sharks to the power play. A minute and fourteen seconds later, Dany Heatley tips a Dan Boyle shot past Price, tying the game at 2 per side. The Sharks don't relent and just over two and a half minutes after the man-advantage marker, they score again to take the lead and, after the final 4:55 ticks off the clock, the game.

Waking up the following morning, Montreal found themselves sitting in 10th in the East. On the previous night, 7th seed Boston bested conference-worst Toronto in a shootout and 8th seed Atlanta rolled over the New York Islanders in a 6-3 decision. While Atlanta, as well as the 9th place New York Rangers, all had matched Montreal with 66 points, the Thrashers held three games in hand over the Canadiens with the Rangers' one game providing the buffer. As is usual in the NHL, the playoff bubble was a crowded place, but the odds were slowly starting to turn against the team from Quebec.

Recent Skid, Heritage Classic Loss Exposes Lack of Depth for the Vancouver Canucks

During this season's Preseason Prognosis, I commented on the Vancouver Canucks that while the Henrik and Daniel Sedin have historically carried the team to success in the past, their ability to do so has been fading over the past few seasons. Despite some man-games lost this season, it appears that things are as ugly as they initially seemed in British Columbia.

Since the calendar flipped to 2014, the Canucks have been caught up in a freefall down the standings. They have gone 5-15-3 in the new year and are currently in the midst of an 11-game stretch with a 1-9-1 record, beginning on January 27. Through that date they have been overwhelmed by opponents, being outscored 32-15. They lost by a single goal twice in that stretch and the lone overtime loss came in a shootout against Minnesota on Friday following a 1-0 win, their only one, over St. Louis.

Thoughts Following the Conclusion of This Year's Outdoor Games

The outdoor portion of the NHL season has finally come to a close. Chicago embarrassed Pittsburgh on Saturday at Soldier Field and Vancouver hosted Ottawa for the Heritage Classic on Sunday for what turned out to be...an indoor game.

Yes, you read that right. The Heritage Classic was held at BC Place right across the street from the Canucks' Rogers Arena. The venue mostly accommodates Major League Soccer and Canadian Football League events but opened its doors to over 50,000 hockey fans for the all-Canada stick-and-puck spectacle. The period (no, not exclamation point) to the relatively underwhelming play on the ice, however, was the fact that the retractable roof remained closed through the duration thanks to continuous rain.

Men's Olympic Ice Hockey Jersey Review: Group C

With Men's Ice Hockey starting this morning in Sochi, Two Minutes for Typing will be passing out judgement on the aesthetics of the uniforms. Who wears their colours the best and who will we be hoping to see early exits solely due to sporting world-class eyesores? Let's take a look at what we'll be looking at for the next two-and-a-half weeks and apply our patented rating system.

Men's Olympic Ice Hockey Jersey Review: Group B

With Men's Ice Hockey starting this morning in Sochi, Two Minutes for Typing will be passing out judgement on the aesthetics of the uniforms. Who wears their colours the best and who will we be hoping to see early exits solely due to sporting world-class eyesores? Let's take a look at what we'll be looking at for the next two-and-a-half weeks and apply our patented rating system.

Men's Olympic Ice Hockey Jersey Review: Group A

With Men's Ice Hockey starting this morning in Sochi, Two Minutes for Typing will be passing out judgement on the aesthetics of the uniforms. Who wears their colours the best and who will we be hoping to see early exits solely due to sporting world-class eyesores? Let's take a look at what we'll be looking at for the next two-and-a-half weeks and apply our patented rating system.

Martin Brodeur: Sit Down, Man

As many of you likely know, career New Jersey Devil Martin Brodeur has already joined the pantheon of great goaltenders in NHL history. He first made his debut in the 1991-92 season, playing 4 games while going 2-1-0 (0 is ties, remember this was long before the Bettman point was introduced) and by 1995-96 became the uncontested starter in the Devils crease after backstopping the team to a sweep of Detroit in the Stanley Cup Finals the season prior. Through his career, Brodeur would visit the Finals four more times, most recently and forgettably in 2011-12, and would come out with the big prize twice, in 1999-2000 against Dallas and 2002-03 against Anaheim.

Martin Brodeur owns records mostly due to his inhuman body of work. During the peak of his career between '95-96 through 2009-10, a span of 14 seasons, he logged time in 985 games which comes out to an average workload of 70.36 games per season. If you take out the two seasons he played fewer than 70 games (67 in '96-97 and 31 in '08-09) in that span, his average leaps up to 73.92 games per season. Long story short, that is absolutely insane.

Love Is A Battlefield, and So Is The Metropolitan

Remember back in October and early November when the Metropolitan Division was kind of like that carton of eggs you bought at the store, brought home, and realised that just about all of the eggs were busted open already? We all had a good, hearty laugh (or cry, depends on where you live I guess) over it early on, but it appears that we are finally starting to make an omelet.

While the Atlantic Division was chugging along to start the season, their neighbors in the Metro were struggling to even stay relevant. If we look at the standings on December 1, the second place Washington Capitals, with 30 points, would not even qualify for a Wild Card spot in the Atlantic. Whether the Atlantic is starting to falter or the Metropolitan is starting to catch up, things are starting to get interesting out in the East.

An Open Letter to NHL Broadcasters

Dear NHL Television or Radio Personality,

I appreciate your service in bringing professional hockey to fans across North America and around the world. Your knowledge and insight is a valuable source of commentary to the consumption of the sport. That said, could you please please PLEASE stop with all the incessant Olympic talk.

Yes, The Anaheim Ducks Are THAT Good

For those of you unfamiliar, NHL.com has a weekly column called “Super 16”. It’s a piece written by Corey Masisak every Friday that takes a pulse on 16 different teams and ranks them in whichever order he believes they are trending. It has been labeled “Power Rankings” in the past but they changed the format and the name coincidentally when they decided to start using fancy stats. At the end of the day it’s just an arbitrary list but it makes for an interesting read if you like hearing where NHL staff writers see the league heading week to week.

I was perusing last week’s rankings and I was a little struck by what he said about Anaheim, most notably this: “Anaheim has the highest PDO (shooting percentage plus save percentage) at even strength in the League. There's a very good chance that number (103.7) will regress. The Ducks are also well behind the Blackhawks and Blues in goal differential, meaning they are winning more close games but that's not typically a sustainable ‘skill’ in larger sample sizes.”

It’s really cute to see the journalists on NHL.com jumping on the advanced stats wagon. Sure, I did as well in the past year and I probably don’t use all the numbers correctly, but I do this for fun and not for a paycheque. When I read those sentences, I just get the feeling that Masisak is putting a lot of big words on the page without fully understanding how to use the information he’s giving us.

My question is: Why can’t we just accept that the Anaheim Ducks are legitimately good?

Let's All Get Excited About the Winnipeg Jets!

As you may have heard, the Winnipeg Jets recently fired head coach Claude Noel, the first bench boss of the revamped franchise. In 177 games with the club, Noel lead the team to an 80-79-18 record which adds up to a .503 points percentage and no playoff appearances. I’m sure you can imagine that this wouldn’t make the grade for many organisations and, with little turnover as far as the roster goes since the move from Atlanta, a change was bound to be made.

Is Toronto's Luck Starting to Run Out?

One thing I love about sports, and part of the reason you watch whether you realise it or not, is seeing a team defy all odds. It’s why you pull for the underdog during the Superbowl, or you cheer on any team playing the Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees, or pop in your “Mighty Ducks” VHS tapes every once in a while. If every game went to the best team on paper then there would be no point in playing, would there?

But while this is an easy attitude to have during any isolated event, the statistics tend to catch up over a big enough sample size. Every sports team in the history of forever has preached the “just focus on every play/shift/possession at a time” but those, good or bad, add up as a season progresses and more often than not we can start to weed out the pretenders from the contenders given a decently-sized body of work.

Live Blog: WJC Gold Medal Round, Sweden v Finland

00:00 - Arbitrary Prediction: Sweden 1, Finland 3

00:00 - Sweden skates right to left, Oscar Dansk in net. Finland skates left to right, Juuse Saros in net

Live Blog: WJC Bronze Medal Round, Russia v Canada

00:00 - Arbitrary Prediction: Russia 3 Canada 4

00:00 - Russia moves right to left, Andrei Vasilevski in net. Canada moves left to right, Zachary Fucale in net.

Live Blog: WJC Semifinals, Canada v Finland

00:00 - Arbitrary Prediction Canada 3, Finland 2 (Overtime)

00:00 - Canada goes left to right, Zachary Fucale in net. Finland goes right to left, Jusse Saros in net

Live Blog: WJC Semifinals, Russia v Sweden

00:00 - Arbitrary Prediction: Sweden 5, Russia 2

00:00 - Sweden moves right to left, Oscar Dansk in net. Russia moves left to right, Andrei Vasilevski