Deadline Day Fun

This is the day of the year for hockey analysts and for sites like Hockeybuzz.

For a bit of fun, I thought I'd point you to somewhere where things are actually happening today – the web – to distract you from where they might not be – any GM's office. It's been a while since Hockeybuzz has received a good bash from us here...

Based on information from an inside source (T1), I have received the following confidential information about the website. Apparently, Hockeybuzz for their part have are removing all stops for the deadline focused through the use of a strategic three-point plan:

1) Make the website uglier
In anticipation of their biggest audience yet, the crack team decided to remove all content and downgrade their look

2) Try and up their trade prediction proficiency
According to Hockeybuzz Hogwash has shown that Eklund and his team have been successful on a whopping 2.4% of their projections since January 2008 (before that, they were always right...)

One of his sources (a second grade math teacher) told Ek that he could do better simply by predicting that every player go to every single team – a rating of 3.3%; thereby increasing his credibility by a whopping 46%. He is piloting the idea by predicting that Jay Bouwmeester will be traded to every team and resigned by the Panthers.

3) Upgrade at every turn
Upgrade something you heard on TSN to an NHL source. Upgrade figments of the imagination to sourced material:

For Montreal here are some names that they are likely targeting:
-Ian Laperriere, Jeff Halpern, Derek Morris, and Olli Jokinen...
-Stephane Veilleux and Colby Armstrong are other possibilities.

I guess he can say likely because he did due diligence – naming two players from Quebec...


Wow, that was fun. But more fun than that even (I know, amazing) is this little toy. Sure it runs thin after about 6 trades, but that's only to show how true it is to its inspiration.

Have a good day. Hope you all last the hours of McGuire and McKenzie...

Broken Telephone: Hockey History on the Internet

In my real job, I take sourcing and referencing very seriously. I try to obtain all primary sources when I can and always double-check info obtained on the web. I have scolded a few employees over the years for using the highly unreliable wikipedia as a source.

In blogging, things are a bit different. I can tolerate wikipedia if what I read is generally in keeping with what I remember from superior sources. Blogging, by its nature, could not be restrained by the need to check for primary information at every turn. Even so, when it comes to some topics, I find it very irksome when the facts are wrong, or vague.

One of these topics is hockey history. And, that is why this video (found this morning on Eklund's already shaky site) got me going.

Championship Series - NHL - Stanley Cup


The video is rife with erroneous material – presented in a very matter of fact way to a much larger audience than most hockey history sites will ever reach.

1) While it is true that the Stanley Cup became the sole property of the NHL in 1926. The term adopted is misleading. The Stanley Cup was one of the NHL's adopted trophies since its inception, but 1926 marked the year they excluded the other (Western Hockey League) who had recently disbanded.

2) The Ottawa Senators were not the first team to win the Stanley Cup in the history of the NHL as the convoluted wording leads one to believe. They merely won the Cup in the year the NHL assumed sole control of the trophy. The NHL, founded in late 1917, had supplied the hockey world with Stanley Cup winners for 7 out of the 8 years it was presented up to 1927. Much to our chagrin, Toronto won the first Stanley Cup for the NHL. And, by the time Ottawa won that Cup in 1926, they were already the big dynasty with 3 of the 8 NHL Cups going to the Sens.

3) As if to eschew any accuracy in the report whatsoever, we are told that the Stanley Cup is the oldest trophy professional athletes compete for. While the debate can rage over who is first, it is not the Stanley Cup. By the time it was first awarded in 1893, athletes had already been competing for current professional trophies like the FA Cup, the Claret Jug and the America' Cup trophy for years.


All this frustrates me primarily because of its laziness – any of the facts could have been checked in a few minutes time. But also in realising that future arguments over forums, comment posts etc., we'll be seeing this lore repeated and probably misquoted again and again, like broken telephone.


And so for the Habs?
How to connect this to the Canadiens? Well for one thing, the heritage of the Stanley Cup is definitely Canadiens heritage, and Montreal heritage even more so. We' re not about to let our 1924 Cup be called non-NHL by some dodgy American video site. What's more, it only adds to the reasons we should question anything that is said about the Habs (or any team for that matter) on hockeybuzz, as the standards of their editorialising have been shown to be as shoddy as the standards for generating rumours.

Also, there was that nice Habs connection about typos. Gainy's mis-spelling far from funniest though. I like Ilanders best...

Price Update

For anyone who's inetersted, they're giving away these cool glasses to anyone who gets their comment published on hockeybuzz.com.

They make the goalie you are watching look the spitting image of Patrick Roy.


In his blog entitled: Habs add Insult to Injury in Toronto...Is Carey Price the Best?, a blogger all hopped up on a win over the 14th place Leafs wrote this:

Overtime and a shootout were enough to prove that Carey Price was more than just the MVP in this one. The Leafs were coming off an embarrassing loss against Phoenix. You know they wanted to rebound, shut the media up, and do it against the one team they usually have success against. But Carey Price was also coming off a loss, and you saw him play last night...does he seem like the type of guy who loses straight games? Let me ask you this: When the game was on the line, with Jason Blake taking that last shot, did you even have a shred of doubt Carey would save it? He made 42 saves look as easy as the ones he made in the shootout. All this talk about Patrick Roy is hard to deal with, but the facts remain that they are similar in more ways than they can imagine.

It's not in the attitude, the mannerisms, or even the style. It's the confidence of not even having to put up the best numbers to be the best. Carey Price through nine games this year has a modest 2.71 gaa, and a .916 SA. He has no shutouts. Yet even you Leaf fans must admit you haven't seen anything quite like him since St. Patrick was playing against you in Maple Leaf Gardens. No disrespect to Brodeur, or Kiprusoff, or Luongo, but Price has something about him that makes you feel like he's just not beatable. I'm not trying to blow this out of proportion nine games into his NHL career, but if you think I'm this confident about him, imagine how his teammates feel. Imagine how his opposition feels. Imagine how Cristobal Huet feels, as he is the leading vote-getter among goalies up for All-star honors in the East, yet he knows this kid is better than he'll ever be. I'll leave the conversation on this final note: Patrick Roy's best season in the NHL was his second to last, where he put up a 1.94 gaa, and a .925 SA. The numbers never really mattered with Patrick, what mattered was he always made you feel like you would win, and that's how Carey Price makes you feel.

(Sorry I had to put the whole quote in, as I kept trying to cut but couldn't believe what I was reading)

Can I put this bit again:

It's the confidence of not even having to put up the best numbers to be the best.

Well, how could I argue with that? Good thing Carey was confident Kovalev and Kostitsyn would both score in the shootout when he let in that late goal. I guess he was just having a bit of fun with us all.


I don't want to be too much of a downer. I like Carey Price. I like that he is on our team and not another team. I like that he appears to be confident. I like that he is a whole lot more down to earth than some of the people watching him. I like how he dismisses talk of being the next Patrick Roy without argument. I even like his mask.

But aren't some of us getting just a little carried away (see exhibit A, above)?

If I have to ignore the stats as I've been told, then can't I at least judge whether Price gives the team some unworldly advantage to win. Let's see:

Game 1: Won by a single goal, played very well
Game 2: Lost to the league's best, played well
Game 3: Won in a shootout, played extremely well in the shootout, not as well in the game
Game 4: Lost in a shootout
Game 5: Won a tight game, played very well
Game 6: Won in OT
Game 7: Won, but let in 4 goals. The team gets credit for this win with 7 goals I think
Game 8: Lost in regulation, let in some abnormal goals
Game 9: Won in a shootout

For someone who sounds like they should have their hall of fame waiting period waived, these 9 games don't seem to match the story. In Patrick Roy's time, when we had the arcane tradition of tie games, Carey would be looking at a 4-2-3 record (11 points from 9 games).

So, I'm not going to get too carried away just yet. I will not call for Cristobal Huet to be traded. I am going to sit back, relish the 2 points and look forward to watching Price develop into a reliable NHL goalie.

I won't be able to say I told you so down the road, but I really only care about one thing in hockey: the Habs winning... (the Cup).