Ed Willes on what firing Alain Vigneault means for Mike Gillis:
There are no longer any bodies between Gillis and the door. From this point forward, the success or failure of the Canucks becomes his entire responsibility. There was a time when his unorthodox, moneypuck approach seemed to be working for this team; when the analytics, the sleep doctors and the mind room seemed to have the Canucks at the forefront of something new and exciting in the game.
Now? As it turns out, drafting, trading, and signing free agents is more important to a team than all those fancy new-age diversions and, measured by any reasonable standards, Gillis’s work has been substandard in the game’s traditional areas. This has to change and it has to change with the hiring of the new head coach.
“But the simple fact of the matter is, and this is reality, there are certain times in any franchise’s development when they’ve got to start a new chapter. And that’s where the Vancouver Canucks are at, and it’s as simple as that.”
– Bob McKenzie on the future (or lack thereof) of Alain Vigneault in Vancouver.
James O’Brien (@cyclelikesedins) with some interesting points pertaining to playoff performance:
To me, it’s all an important lesson in sports perception. Toews has been deified by pundits and sports writers as a gutsy, do-it-all player who never says die. While I still think he’s a fantastic, difference-making guy who could very well swing this second-round series if things start bouncing his way, he’s also a useful vessel for various discussions about how nationalism and wild assumptions can paint players into corners (and sometimes influence fantasy owners more than they should).
Really, it’s fitting that Jaromir Jagr is also stuck at zero goals on 28 SOG. The surefire Hall-of-Famer could very well have lost out on a few Hart Trophy nods because sportswriters were eager to hand the MVP to the Hardworking Canadian Golden Boy of the Moment (i.e. Joe Thornton, Eric Lindros, etc.).
While Boston residents and observers may wonder if the aging star really “cares,” he might just be the victim of some poor puck luck. His outstanding playoff resume should speak for itself.
Yet deep down, even some very keen people would admit that they’d probably give Toews the benefit of the doubt much quicker than they would with Jagr.
The official Chicago Blackhawks team site used behindthenet.ca to present the case for this year’s Selke candidates:
According to BehindtheNet.ca’s advanced statistics, Bergeron started just 42.4 percent of his shifts in the offensive end, second-fewest among Bruins forwards, but 47.2 percent ended in the offensive zone, showing how good he was in transition. And Bruins goalies had a .949 save percentage when he was on the ice, as compared to .923 for the season.
…
According to BehindtheNet.ca’s stats, Datsyuk had a Corsi quality of competition rating of 1.340, second on the team and 19th among all NHL forwards to play at least 30 games, meaning he faced the 19th-toughest competition; of the 18 forwards rated ahead of him, the player with the next-best plus/minus was Josh Bailey of the New York Islanders at plus-7.
I don’t think I’ve seen this before.
Ironically, they didn’t reference BTN when talking about Jonathan Toews, instead citing more conventional (and far less useful) stats such as plus/minus.
What were the odds of the Leafs blowing a 4-1 lead in the 3rd period of a Game 7, you might ask? mc79hockey has the answers:
I don’t want Leaf fans to feel too despondent about what they’ve witnessed, so I’ll be kind and round it down to make it sound more common than it is: once every 4757 years, your favourite team will go out of the playoffs like this. Given that it’s a 30 team league, if I’ve done my math right, you’ll see a team go out like this once every 159 years. It’s about twice as rare as a Halley’s Comet sighting.
Leafs fans might not appreciate it but it’s pretty cool that we were all alive to witness such an event. So what if your grandfather saw a bunch of Maple Leaf Stanley Cup wins? Winning a Cup happens to someone every year – who cares. See this happen to your favourite team? It’s a once in sixty lifetimes event. Revel in it.
I’m still in disbelief over this. According to math, the Leafs win in that situation 499 out of 500 times. That’s the purity of a Game 7.
