Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it. There's been a lot of talk about what this season has meant for the Washington Capitals in the hours leading up to, and then immediately following, their final game of the remarkably eventful 2011-12 season. Wysh had a pretty good recap of the reasons the Capitals felt this little run to a pair of one-goal Game 7s against the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds in the Eastern Conference — both having been heavy favorites — vindicated the Dale Hunter system of everyone playing defense and collapsing to within three inches of the crease, and it's perfectly reasonable for people to feel that way. Certainly, no one expected these Capitals to do much damage in the postseason given that they frittered away a division they were picked to dominate. But the thing that everyone seems to forget is that, again, they were picked to dominate the Southeast, be a superpower in the East and the League at large. If the team tuned out Bruce Boudreau, and it appears they did, then wasn't his replacement, whoever it happened to be, more or less expected to get this far? Therefore, it becomes a question about what changed, and really, what didn't. Let's not forget, Boudreau came in originally and let guys like Alex Semin, Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Mike Green have their run of the rink. Two-minute shifts? Sure! Goals aplenty? You bet. But in the end, what did it get them? Bounce-outs, and if you believe the talk, disappointing ones at that. So Boudreau changed the style, focusing more on defense, tethering Ovechkin and Co. to an extent, and … getting the same amount of success. Under each of the two clearly definable Boudreau regimes, the team lost in the conference quarter- and semi-finals. Which is of course notable because the latter is exactly how far Hunter got in his first chance at the tiller, despite doing everything in his power not to: like limiting Ovechkin to fewer than 20 minutes a night in every game in this series save for Saturday's Game 7 and the three-overtime Game 3, in which he played 35:14 — or, if you prefer 17:37 per three periods of play. This therefore vindicates Hunter only as far as it vindicated Boudreau; which, with a roster like this, and given the "choker" label being hung liberally on the former Caps coach this time last year. The philosophy changed radically under Hunter, and worked only as far as it did for Boudreau. Why? ( Coming Up: Team USA, international ass-kickers; getting stupid about Patrick Kane's drinking; Parise's future; Could Brad Stuart return to the Sharks?; Kevin Lowe says Ryan Murray is the top player in this year's draft class; Suter/Weber questions; Pancakes Penner's revenge; Bruins pumped for Dougie Hamilton; Alfredsson retirement watch; Leafs/Penguins trade?; Lundqvist is King; Alex Burrows runs and hugs a goalie; and Winnipeg Jets fans are burning Coyotes jerseys.)

Posted under NHL

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about … Continue reading ?

Posted under NHL

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about … Continue reading ?

Posted under NHL

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it. Another NHL season has come to an end and this might be the stupidest postseason yet in the Eastern Conference. This year, the Florida Panthers will be the third seed in the Eastern Conference despite being a thoroughly sub-mediocre hockey team. This is not in any way a revelatory statement. Anyone that watched this squad slump its way into the playoffs over the past few weeks will have seen just how easy it was to make it in the Southeast Division this year, with disappointing Washington making little effort to prevent the abominable teams usually littering its awful division from making it. If nothing else, you could always count on Alex Ovechkin and Co. to do that for you. What you may not know about the Florida Panthers, though, is that not only are they not a good team, they are quite literally the worst team since the lockout — i.e. when we got the shootout and all that bad stuff — to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs. How much worse are they? They finished the season with just 38 wins, for one thing. They lost more games than they won despite playing in probably the worst division in the league. No team has even made the playoffs winning that few games since the institution of the shootout, though Montreal and Boston had 39 each in 2010. And prior to this year, no team has locked up a top-three seed as a division winner with fewer than 43. Florida and Phoenix (42) both got in under that particularly low limbo bar this season. But perhaps wins aren't the greatest indicator of a team's success, and certainly, Florida would like to hope so, given that it only had 32 non-shootout wins this year — tied with titans like Buffalo, Carolina, and Colorado. So let's instead focus on its goal differential, which was appalling. Minus-24. Only nine other teams in the League were to that bad. It's the worst goal differential for a playoff team since the lockout, with the runner-up standing as Ottawa's minus-13 in 2010. They finished fifth that year, which you'll remember as the season in which Philadelphia and Montreal got into the playoffs with 88 points apiece. All of which is a long way of saying that the Panthers have perverted the playoff system once again — the other time being in 2002-03 when Mike Keenan's squad bored the pants off everyone en route to 26 overtime games, only four of which they won. You almost have to admire Kevin Dineen's squad for its commitment to mediocrity, and that comes from the top. I said when the Panthers made all those early-July signings that Dale Tallon had amassed an impressive collection of middling NHLers, probably enough to make a mediocre NHL team. They didn't get quite that far. Again, they had one more win than the 11th-place Jets, who we can all agree are terrible. Florida is now the ninth Eastern Conference team to make the playoffs with a negative goal differential since the lockout. By comparison, only one Western team (the 2009 Blue Jackets) has qualified with fewer goals for than against. There was a lot of talk about the need to change the system in 2010, when two 88-point teams made it in the East, but if this doesn't convince people that the system is broken, then nothing will. But how do you fix it? ( Coming Up: Future for Selanne, Iginla; Ovechkin back on track; Devils' 5-on-1; Dave Tippett is an OK coach; Stamkos hits 60; Montreal GM search goes to Chicago; thumbs down for Penguins critics; Hartnell promises blood; and the Canucks are the most hated team in the NHL.)

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Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it. On Saturday night, the Sharks shut out the Dallas Stars and helped to solidify their chances of making the playoffs considerably. At the end of that game, their chances hovered just above 62 percent, up from a little less than 46 percent the night before, according to Sports Club Stats . Huge turnaround, especially because a loss there would have been disastrous in a Pacific Division in which two points separates first from fourth and, likely, a lack of a postseason berth. We can, I think, all agree that the Sharks missing the playoffs would be disastrous for the organization. This wouldn't be a case of the going from 101 points to 56 to 95 in three seasons, it would be an old team failing to capitalize on one of its few remaining years to reach a Stanley Cup Final before almost every one of their superstars gets too old to legitimately compete in the ultra-tough West. Of course, that also ignores the fact that the Sharks not missing the playoffs — sneaking into the eighth or, if they're lucky, seventh spot — is likely to be equally disastrous. The owners will make a few bucks, but they'll get flattened by Vancouver or St. Louis in a relatively short period of time and all that will have been accomplished is the extending of their season by about two weeks at best. History will show that the tragedy for these Sharks wasn't the binary option of making or not making the playoffs, but rather being in this position at all. It's a fairly curious case, after all. This was a team that smothered the Detroit Red Wings two playoffs in a row. This was a team that advanced to the Western Conference Finals in both those postseasons. This is a team that's eclipsed 100 points six of the last seven seasons, and won the Pacific four years running in relative walks. If anything, the team improved on paper over the summer. And yet here we are on April 2 with the Sharks' playoff lives very much in doubt. It's clear now that Antti Niemi probably wasn't what Doug Wilson thought he was when he got signed, at least, not if Thomas Greiss is able to put up comparable numbers. It's clear that Martin Havlat hasn't been what they wanted even when he was healthy. It's less clear, but getting clearer, that neither Joe Thornton nor Patrick Marleau are what they used to be, with the two combining for 134 points this season after putting together 143, which was itself disappointing, in 2010-11. Both retain fairly good underlying numbers relative to the quality of their competition, but two straight seasons of sub-average performances have to be worrying on some level, especially because Marleau gets incredibly favorable zone starts. [ NHL Playoff Death Watch: Pacific teams are in a war; Buffalo Sabres are in trouble ] It seems, from the outside at least, that the Sharks organization bought into the idea that it could remain as successful as they had been with the old guard — let's throw Dan Boyle in there with Thornton and Marleau for good measure — even as nearly everyone else in the division got into an arms race of young talent. Yes, Joe Pavelski (who at 27 isn't particularly "young" these days) and Logan Couture are great players, but they're also not on the level of a Loui Eriksson or Anze Kopitar or Keith Yandle. It, apparently, cannot. Teams are improving, the Sharks are coming back to earth in a very real way. ( Coming Up : The end of the line for George Parros in Anaheim?; Blue Jackets playing spoiler; Red Wings are getting healthy; Barry Trotz and the Predators get win No. 500; Ilya Kovalchuk is good; Peter Laviolette timeout works again; Mike Smith is awesome; Ken Hitchcock changes; Ray Whitney gets point No. 1,000; Jay Bouwmeester scores for the wrong team; and the No. 1 overall pick is on the move.)

Posted under NHL

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about … Continue reading ?

Posted under NHL

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about … Continue reading ?

Posted under NHL

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about … Continue reading ?

Posted under NHL

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it. I'm not one of those people who thinks that professional athletes can't be MVP candidates unless their team makes the playoffs. That takes a rather dim and nuanceless view of what constitutes "value," because imagine how bad, say, Calgary would be if Miikka Kiprusoff were plying his trade elsewhere. That said, I honestly no longer see how anyone at all can support Steven Stamkos, he of the loftiest goal total in the league and pretty much the only reason the Bolts aren't a lottery team, over Evgeni Malkin of the Penguins. Even as Stamkos has continually filled opponents' goals with pucks — he was the league's first to 50 when no one else had more than 40 — Malkin carried one of the best teams in the league, one dealing with injuries to the world's best player and its own best defenseman to a 11-game win streak that was snapped on Sunday, and even then, his team still got a point. I will say that the "you gotta make the playoffs to be an MVP" crowd has one thing right: It's probably not easy being as mind-bendingly good as Malkin has been in the thick of a playoff hunt in the most difficult division in the league. Three teams in the Atlantic have 92-plus points. The same number as in the rest of the league combined. And under that weight, Malkin has been simply dazzling, picking apart all comers to the tune of a league-best 88 points in just 64 games. That's seven less than Stamkos, and he has eight more points and just nine fewer goals, which is no small feat. This weekend, against the Devils and Flyers, Malkin had three points, which you might consider unspectacular. But consider this: Prior to the Penguins ambling into town for those contests, those Devils had conceded a total of eight goals in their previous eight games, and the Flyers had allowed 11 in eight. In short, these are staunch defenses that Malkin and the Penguins picked apart for seven total goals and took three points in the standings, closing the gap on a Rangers squad whose eight-point division lead seemed insurmountable just two weeks ago. Now it has been reduced to just one, and lies at Malkin's feet. ( Coming Up : Ominous injury for the Blues; Patrick Kane is in Beast Mode; Bryzgalov's huMANGous turnaround; Craig Anderson coming back; why the Panthers are in the Southeast driver's seat; the Red Wings are hurt; Bruins need a wake-up call; we weep for Svensanity; Cory Sarich blows up Taylor Hall; Zajac on the mend; in praise of BizNasty; Dion vs. goal cam; Varlamov rules; and a Rick Nash trade to ... Anaheim?)

Posted under NHL

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about … Continue reading ?

Posted under NHL