Jamie Benn Dazzles; NHL notes

Throughout the offseason, most hockey personalities, when discussing good picks for fantasy hockey, would almost always mention Jamie Benn's name. Jamie Benn is in his third season with Dallas and the Left Winger has been pretty impressive so far in his career. He scored 56 points in just 69 games last season and maintains a clear level of skill.

Going into my fantasy hockey drafts I figured I'd snag Benn in the latter rounds of the draft but to my surprise, he was selected early. In fact, I was only able to draft Benn in one of my three fantasy leagues. In the other two, he was gone before I had the chance to select him. I've tried proposing trades to get him back but so far the owners wouldn't accept any offer for him.

Well last night, Jamie Benn scored what might be in the top 10 goals of the year. Watch:

What I love about this goal is that most goals of the year come from a player dancing through a crowd of players and usually the only quality you see in that player is his skill. With this goal, you see Benn's skill (batting it out of mid air and then eventually a quick move on the goaltender followed by shelfing it), but you also see his effort. He had to work pretty hard to get it deep and once there, he put on a heavy forecheck in order to get the puck back. In my opinion, that quick poke check was the best part of the goal. 

Now will it end up being the goal of the year? Probably not. As I've mentioned before, the NHL filled with talent and it's only a matter of time before someone scores a beauty. But this one should definitely be recognized for it's great effort.

-After we saw the touching memorial by the Jets for Rick Rypien, it was Vancouver's turn to honour their former player. First, I'd like you to read a touching article about Rypien right here. But last night against the Rangers the Canucks had a presentation of their own; this one a bit more emotional.

And in case you want them, here are the lyrics to the song that was playing (It's Not Easy To Be Me by Five For Fighting). This tribute speaks for itself and Rick Rypien will truly be missed.

-The Bruins got what they asked for. Their "style" of hockey is known to be physical and explosive. Their fans are often arrogant and their players are often dirty. Well they got what they deserved last night. A night where 6 of their players combined for 68 penalty minutes, a night where the oblivious Bruins announcer actually couldn't understand why some of the penalties were called, a night where the Bruins coach, the one that's supposed to control his team, got ejected, and a night where the sometimes moronic Bruin fans littered the ice with bottles. Well here's the video showing all of the altercations. The Hurricanes capitalized when they needed and thankfully the Bruins lost 4-1. If only it could have been more.

-Last year NHL fans were given a treat in the Conference Finals. The Lightning-Bruins series was physical and filled with exciting hockey and the Sharks-Canucks series was filled with plenty of offense and big goals. Well this season all four of those teams aren't playing so well. Last night, Vancouver and Boston lost making the four teams from last year's conference finals a combined record of 6 wins and 16 losses. But don't panic because all of those teams are pretty good and I'm certain they'll bounce back.

Best Shootout Team in the NHL?

I don't want to sound like a homer but the New Jersey Devils are, in my opinion, the best shootout team in the NHL. I know the Devils have only had 2 shootouts while other teams haven't even had one yet but bare with me for a minute.

First I want to show you our first two shootouts. Both of them were 2-0 shootout victories, the first coming against the Los Angeles Kings and the second one against the Nashville Predators.

And

Zach Parise has scored the 7th most shootout goals in the NHL since the shootout began back in Zach's rookie season of 2005-2006. Keep in mind, however, that Zach missed ALL of last year's shootouts where he would have most likely scored around 4 goals (he is 5 shootout goals behind the leader). He has two go-to shootout moves. The first being a slick forehand-backhand move and the second move is the same forehand-backhand move but he brings it back to the forehand (he used the first move vs. LA and the second one against Nashville.) This combination makes him, in my opinion, the ultimate shootout weapon. And his stellar 46.9% proves this as well. On top of all else he is also a clutch shooter. His 9 game winning shootout goals is the 11th highest in the league.

Ilya Kovalchuk is known to be one of the most dominant goal scorers in the NHL. He has a blazing wrist shot with tremendous accuracy. He also is known for his crafty stick handling, thus making him a shootout threat as well. He is 29.5% with his attempts which is a solid number and he is already 2-2 this year.

The Devils last shooter is usually Patrick Elias. Elias has been a very consistent shootout player for the Devils. He has a decent 14 shootout goals in only 37 attempts (37.8%) and usually steps up in big attempts (he's 30th in the league with 6 game winning shootout attempts.) Elias' is an underrated forward and once the Devils need him, the world will see how clutch he is.

Well how about on the other end.

Martin Brodeur is currently 2nd in the NHL with shootout wins (and lets not forget all of the games he missed due to injury.) He is only two wins away from the league leader Henrik Lundqvist who has 37. But let me tell you what most people don't know. BRODEUR HAS 6 LESS LOSSES THAN HIM!!! 

This is true. Martin Brodeur has an impressive winning percentage of 54%! (this is a statistic I had to come up with myself seeing as nobody else factors in the Winning percentage.) While I'm too lazy to check up every other goalie on the list, I'm certain that few have a better win percentage than 54%. 

Well Brodeur is out right now so let's see how backup Johan Hedberg is doing. He has already stopped all 4 shooters he's faced this season in the shootout and he even stopped a penalty shot the other night.

Well Johan Hedberg is right up there with the best with 20 career shootout wins, 11th most in the league. Additionally, he has a whopping save% of better than .804 which is better than any other goalie who's in the top ten in the league in shootout wins. Hedberg also maintains a very unique way of stopping the puck (shown in the LA game when he stopped Gagne with his two pad stack.)

The Devils as a team have also been very successful in the shootout.

First off, they are HIGHEST in the league in scoring percentage with a 40.2% rate which is 3% more than the second place team. Next, they are 7th in the league in save percentage with .704%, a respectable number. On home ice, they've won a league high 23 times and they're sixth in the league on the road with 21 wins. In all they are third place in the league with 44 wins.

Now there are other good shooutout teams. Pittsburgh and New York are also very capable teams in the shootout as are the Dallas Stars. But right now, I don't think there's a team in the league that can beat the Devils in a shootout.

Post a comment with your thoughts on who the best in the league in the shootout is.

Jets Return Home Goes Perfectly; Remembering Rypien

...Except for the whole winning thing.

When I turned on the game today to watch the Montreal Canadiens take on the new Winnipeg Jets in front of Winnipeg's hockey-hungry crowd, I assumed I would see a great effort by the Jets and the fans cheering throughout the game and helping get the victory.

Well I was half right.

We'll start from the top. Player intros were goosebump inducing. The Jets cheered every player they announced to the ice (one awkward moment, though, when they announced Randy Jones and nobody skated onto the ice but they still cheered him). The Jets literally cheered everyone as loud as possible. They yelled and screeched for star defenseman Tobias Enstrom almost as loudly as they cheered on Jim Slater. And that was just amazing.

Then came what I thought was the best moment of the day. When a whole city gets a team back, you'd expect a lot to be focused on the coming years with a little look back into the past from what the team once was. But the management did not overlook the small detail people literally forgot about.

Rick Rypien

This past summer, the former Atlanta Thrashers signed forward Rick Rypien. Unfortunately, the tough guy committed suicide before the season started. He reportedly was suffering from depression for the last ten years. The tragedy was unfortunately overlooked due to the excitement of Winnipeg hockey. But with the Jets' tribute to Rypien earlier today, he will not be forgotten anytime soon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqJrjsWdLNQ&feature=feedu

The sad memorial video with the opening faceoff was followed with the Canadian anthem which was also a pretty cool thing to see.

But the fans of Winnipeg weren't waiting for a hockey for a pre-game show. They didn't want to just cheer for 5 minutes and then go home. No. They wanted HOCKEY back in Winnipeg. And by the time the opening faceoff came, you can tell there was almost a mixter of sighs of relief and excitement as they were about to get what they wanted. A hockey team.

Well the game didn't go so well.

In fact, just a few minutes in, Winnipeg defenseman Johnny Oduya made a terrible terrible turnover giving Michael Cammalleri a breakaway and he made no mistake about it and shelfed it off of Ondrej Pavelec. The fans remained active, however, and continued cheering on their team. In fact, it actually took the Jets and Johnny Oduya into the second period to have another bad turnover turn into a goal for Montreal.

But FINALLY, 3 minutes into the third period, the fans were able to celebrate their first new era goal, brought to them from the Kazakhstan native, Nik Antropov. Watch here and enjoy.

That goal made it a 1 goal game in the third but Montreal piled on their total and Jets were defeated 5-1 in their debut. But the fans were seemingly cheering during every minute of it.

As put best by CBC: "The Canadiens win it, but it feels like the Jets did".

That's honestly the best way to put it. Hold your heads high Jet fans. It's a long season. Enjoy every minute of it.

UPDATE: I found the video from CBC highlighting the importance of the Jets to the Winnipeg and I highly suggest watching it. It's truly beyond just a hockey team.

Why the NHL is Awesome

I'm a fan of every sport. And therefore, I'm involved in several fantasy leagues a year. Right now, I am in 3 different fantasy hockey leagues and throughout each draft, I noticed something. While in other fantasy sports, it wasn't such a tough decision on a first round pick after the first few selections (e.g. who wouldn't pick Chris Johnson over Rashard Mendenhall?). There's a bit of a difference in hockcey. There are a lot better players in the NHL versus the amount of better players in other sports (we'll use football for the examples). I realized that it took until the middle of the 3rd round in fantasy hockey for lesser superstar players to be picked while Roddy White is a usual 2nd round pick in most NFL drafts (with all due respect to Roddy White who IS an exceptional player. I'm referring to legit superstars). 

I've said in the past that it was fantastic for the NHL to have more stars come up into the league. Crosby and Ovechkin were fantastic players to get us back from the lockout. But right now, there are plenty of superstars to choose from. I considered it a steal in my league by drafting Pekka Rinne in the third round of my most recent draft. Pekka Rinne is legitimately in the top 3 goaltenders in the league. And it wasn't that other participants in the league were just passing over him. They were drafting excellent players of their own. 

As I'm writing this, I'm imagining the responses I'll receive. The fans of other sport leagues will just assume I'm overrating the players in my favorite sport and downgrading the players in the other ones. Hockey fans might blindly agree with what I'm saying without even thinking twice about it. All I'm asking is that you take a second to think about this. The 2005 lockout was so destructible to the NHL and it's truly unbelievable to what we've accomplished just 6 seasons later. Now go through just a few teams in the NHL and think of their top 3 players. Like for the Devils you'd have Zach Parise, Ilya Kovalchuk, and Martin Brodeur. The Rangers you'd have Brad Richards, Marian Gaborik, and Henrik Lundqvist. Now do the same for a few teams in the NFL. You'll realize the difference in star power.

Now I'm not trying to brag about how hockey is better. I'm just trying to reiterate the point that the NHL bounced back very strongly from their 2005 break. It came from a sport that's ignored almost completely to a sport that any given game you'll see an amazing goal, save, or hit (but still ignored by ESPN). This drastic change isn't just gonna stop. In a few years, I'm hopeful that my 3rd round draft pick will be even better than my 1st round draft pick of this year.

Keep growing NHL.

2011-2012 Bold NHL Predictions

First off, I apologize that I haven't been posting all too much this year. I've been quite busy and honestly, this lack of posting may continue throughout the year. But every now and then I'll try to write something good up. Which brings me to this idea.

The idea of these bold predictions were taken from Puck Daddy, the Yahoo! hockey blog. For the sake of giving them credit, here's this years predictions by Puck Daddy: http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/What-We-Learned-20-bold-predictions-for-the-NHL?urn=nhl-wp13920.

I copied the idea over and made my own list last year. I enjoyed doing it so I decided that I'll do it again this year.

So without further ado, here are my predictions:

1) Evgeni Malkin will have the best season of his career and he'll win the Rocket Richard Trophy (most goals in the league), the Ted Lindsay Trophy (most outstanding player), and the Hart Trophy (league MVP).

2) Rick Nash also will have a career season and he'll lead the Columbus Blue Jackets into the playoffs.

3) Just for the heck of it, I'll add the Minnesota Wild to the list of Western Conference Playoff teams.

4) For some reason, everyone forgot how good Ilya Kovalchuk and Zach Parise are. The Devils somehow "shock" everyone and make the playoffs with flying colours.

5) The Edmonton Oilers improve a little bit and only finish 3rd in the Northwest division.

6) The New York Islanders will finish the season just out of 8th place and will have to wait yet another year to make the playoffs.

7) The Toronto Maple Leafs will indeed make the playoffs and their bandwagon will be loaded, looking a little something like this:

8) Remember the Vancouver Canucks? Ya they'll win that Presidents Trophy thing again.

9) Corey Perry will take a step back and finish with less than 90 points this season.

10) Despite their active offseason, the Panthers will still be pretty bad.

11) The Lightning will struggle this year and JUST miss the playoffs while the Capitals will easily finish 1st in the East yet again.

12) The Nashville Predators will finish first in their division, second overall in the conference, with the next years Vezina winner leading them.

13) Phoenix and Anaheim will both miss the playoffs this year.

14) The Los Angeles Kings and the Buffalo Sabres, who both made big signings in the offseason, will finish in first place in their divisions.

15) There will be a moment where people will believe that 5 teams will make the playoffs at of the Central (Detroit, Chicago, Columbus, St. Louis, Nashville) but the Blues will fall apart at the end of the season and just miss the playoffs.

16) The Winnipeg Jets will be hot at the beginning of the season but cool off by the end and just finish outside of the playoff race but it will be a successful opening season nonetheless. 

17) Jaromir Jagr will be solid this year for the Flyers and will finish with 45-50 points.

18) Montreal will be very streaky this year and will make the playoffs in the last week of the season.

19) This year's Winter Classic on January 2nd in Citizens Bank Ball Park between the Rangers and Flyers will be not as good as it should be, thus making the NHL office come up with a new plan for the yearly game.

20) The Washington Capitals will win the Stanley Cup

Conference Standings:

Eastern Conference

1- Washington Capitals

2- Buffalo Sabres

3- Philadelphia Flyers

4- Boston Bruins

5- New Jersey Devils

6- Pittsburgh Penguins

7- Toronto Maple Leafs

8- Montreal Canadiens

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9- New York Rangers

10- Winnipeg Jets

11- New York Islanders

12- Tampa Bay Lightning

13- Carolina Hurricanes

14- Ottawa Senators

15- Florida Panthers

Western Conference

1- Vancouver Canucks

2- Los Angeles Kings

3- Nashville Predators

4- Chicago Blackhawks

5- Detroit Red Wings

6- San Jose' Sharks

7- Minnesota Wild

8- Columbus Blue Jackets

--------------------------------

9- St. Louis Blues

10- Phoenix Coyotes

11- Dallas Stars

12- Anaheim Ducks

13- Edmonton Oilers

14- Calgary Flames

15- Colorado Avalanche