Archive for July, 2011

Nashville proved to be an equal competitor to the Hawks, splitting the season series at three games apiece.  They finished the regular season with a 44-27-11 record. The Preds went into the playoffs as the fifth seed and lost to Vancouver in five games in the second round. The Hawks were two points behind the Predators in the Central Division standings last year. With the team from last year still intact, they will look to be just as tough this year.

  Photo courtesy of Hockey Broad. Her excellent site should be on your favorites list.   Well, at least he’ll be playing for a good team. Metallurg is usually up there in the standings. #ItShouldHaveBeenBoynton From Life As A Hockey Widow: (if you were not aware, “Hockey Widow” is Brent’s angelic wife) Off to the KHL! Sometimes, well most of the time, things don’t go as planned.  This is one of them.  We have been back in the Syracuse area visiting family for over a week now, and Sopes and Paul returned to Chicago two days ago.  I received a phone [...]

The Blues have been making a splash in the free agent market this off-season. They are looking to position themselves as the dark horse in the race for the Central Division. Last year the Blues went 2-4 against the Hawks. They finished 38-33-11 last year and missed the playoffs by five games. This season, the Blues won’t be the punching bag of the division like they had been in previous years.

As I have mentioned in my previous post, I am a big fan of the advanced hockey stats being done at behindthenet by Gabriel Desjardins.  In this article I am going to explain some of the techniques I use to interpret those stats and how I use them to evaluate hockey in general and the Chicago Blackhawks in particular. I am going to talk about 4 stats in this article; Quality of Competition, Quality of Teammates, Zone starts and Zone finishes.  We will talk about  ‘+-/60 minutes of ice time on”, and ‘+-/60 minutes of ice time off”  and maybe a [...]

  Here’s a set that I did during the Wings-Sharks playoff series but never got to use. It’s a parody based on scenes from the Coen Brothers movie No Country For Old Men (if the title didn’t make that obvious enough for you, then thanks for stopping by Wings fans). Since I do plan on continuing my series “The Detroit Model” during the hockey dog days of August – and since it’s never a bad time to poke fun at Detroit – I felt these were fitting. Enjoy.   Word on the street: Babcock will actually be showcasing this haircut next [...]