National Hockey League

LAST TIME OUTSIDE Sidenote, crazy how different our roster is 3 years later.

Lundqvist received a great deal of criticism for his performance last season. He deserved that criticism. After posting seven consecutive years with a .920SV%+ (.921, .923, .930, .926, .920, .922, .920) he posted a .910SV%. By many fans, especially Ranger fans, not only was he no longer considered elite, but he was not a "good" starter in the NHL. During the last playoff, Lundqvist posted a .927SV%. He was the main reason the Rangers beat Montreal in the goaltender duel against Carey...

The NHL has done well with selling tickets at all the outdoor games the past 10 years but they may have a real headache in trying to sell tickets in South Bend, Indiana next year. Up until now every outdoor game in the US had teams that were a reasonable drive to the venue but Boston is 900 miles from South Bend and that drive in late December is risky because of possible lake effect snow from Buffalo to Toledo on I-90. I-80 is an alternative but still risky that time of year. Chicago is...

The NHL scoring race this year has been so volatile that it seems every few games the rankings shift dramatically behind the current points leader. Taylor Hall, Johnny Gaudreau, Connor McDavid, Blake Wheeler, Claude Giroux, Alex Ovechkin, and Anze Kopitar are among the players all leading their teams in scoring and in hot pursuit of the points scoring lead. However, three players at the top of the scoring race are clearly distinct from the rest of the pack: Nathan MacKinnon, Evgeni Malkin,...

With the pre-playoff break, I wanted to delve down and try to see exactly what we have here. I'm going to look both at this year's stats alone and the past 2yrs stats together to try and get a clear picture of what our players actually are. These are all the stats that I've learned to depend on as the most useful and accurate ones to assess hockey performance. This is my best assessment of the roster we have - and I'd love to hear your guys' own assessments as well. Feel free to add your...

The Vegas Golden Knights have had the most unexpected expansion season in NHL history, however for this Cinderella story to continue well into the playoff season, the Knights will have to face what most would consider their toughest opponent of the season, the Los Angeles Kings.

The Cinderella story and historic run continues for the Golden Knights. In their first ever playoff series the Golden Knights shut down the Los Angeles Kings in a four game sweep. Though Vegas dictated much of the pace of that series, it was far closer than most people seem to realize.

September 20. 1990 was when hockey was born in Tampa Bay and I was there. ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A crowd of 25,581, more than 4,500 above the National Hockey League single-game record, turned out Wednesday night to see the Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Kings, 5-3, in an exhibition game at the Suncoast Dome. Phil and Tony Esposito called in favors to promote that game and found 3 media backers to help promote the game - Nanci Donnellan from WFNS, Tedd Webb from WFLA Radio and Chris Thomas...

Tracking the moves of the NHL's most active GM.

I've had an idea about changing the offside rule for a while now - I can't remember exactly when I first had it, and I may have seen it somewhere else. If this has been proposed before, feel free to post a source so it can get credit. Essentially, what I am proposing is a dynamic blue-line, very similar to offside in soccer. The offside line would no longer always be the blue-line, but would instead be a line parallel to the blue-line located where the furthest back defender is. The...

This was inspired by a thread on another forum and the research done by another poster, but I think it merits some discussion. It doesn’t make sense that in the 11 years since Lowe was “fired” from the Oilers, three GM's have come through the door and almost all the moves look and feel indistinguishable from the GM before them. Some Bruins fans rip on Chai, but at a time he was an undisputed brilliant executive. But becoming....this? It doesn't make sense. After doing some research into...

The TDL is approaching, and all the trade discussion seems to revolve around mortgaging a team's future for rentals. Myself, I don't agree one bit with this approach; it is evident that buying at TDL is a prime example of the practice of buying high, and often times you won't get much bang for your buck. Below is a list of all the 'expensive' trade deadline rentals from 2015 to this date (this cutoff is based on my own knowledge of these trades; I don't want to review deals which I don't...

As I promised in the RFA/prospect write-up, UFA players from the KHL are also getting a write-up from me, so here it is. Although I must say that with UFAs it is much harder to make predictions, as it's almost impossible to guess the final destination, so a lot of stuff written here is just my personal view on things, take it with a good grain of salt. Let's start with some simple number: 12 UFA players moved from the KHL to the NHL in the last off-season. Some are doing fine, some have...

By request, cross-posting this to FBOH from a main board thread Hurricanes attendance trend in a series of images: This is of course a global view, which shows the overall "bottom out and rebound" trend that goes along with having not played a playoff game since 2009. But the real action is here, in per-game attendance: Just a bunch of squiggly lines, but I wanted to be sure we could see the raw data. Note that the red line is this season, and the blues go from dark to light as you go...

I would like to share with you team rankings based on the ELO rating system. This is purely mathematical based on wins and losses. Each team has a score. That score increases or decreases based on wins and losses. The amount of change is based on the score of the opponent.

Motivation: As a Red Wings fan, I've experienced the entitlement of a team capable of staying competitive for over a decade, followed by the unfamiliar frustration of a team that's not used to being bad. My fanbase is split between those [rightfully] wanting to win games because of pro sports' competitive spirit and pride, and those [rightfully] wanting to tank for the chance at a better future. Notice I called both sides right: I don't blame the fans for their divide, but the system creates...

As of this season, Alexander Ovechkin must score 237 goals in order to better The Great One's all time goalscoring record. In this thread I do some back of the envelope calculations to estimate with what probability that will happen, and plot the results. Key assumptions: I assume that he will play 5 more seasons. One could of course assume more or fewer. There are two main sources of uncertainty with this calculation: how many games will he play, and at what rate will he score. In each...

Ranking the top 31 centers in the NHL.

Wanted to see what everyone's thoughts are on this, it's no secret among the big 4 NA leagues that the NHL is dead last in popularity. I'm torn on the matter and I'll explain why. Pros: -The fans are generally knowledgeable, that isn't to say there are not bandwagoners but the ones who are, are nowhere near as annoying as NBA bandwagon fans are. I don't love when opposing fans take up half of PNC Arena but at least most of those guys know the game, and their own teams history, -The players...

Thinking about the high turnover in NHL head coaches (leading all professional sports leagues), I did a bit of a back-of-the-napkin math on NHL head coaches and their tenure with a given team who made the Stanley cup Finals over the past 30 years, and here's the breakdown: Note that this represents how many years the coach has been with that specific team, not overall experience. So Pat Burns, for example, made the SCF in his 1st year coaching the Canadiens (lost) and won the SCF his 1st...

As crazy as it may sound, we're now a little more than 15 years removed from the lockout season and into to the salary cap. Hence, I think we're more than far enough into this era to evaluate who the best and worst franchises have been during this stretch. In my opinion: 5 Best 1. Pittsburgh (3 cups, 4 finals, b2b titles, 14 straight PO appearances & most PO series won) 2. Chicago (3 cups in 6 years) 3. Los Angeles (2 cups in 3 years) 4. Boston (1 cup, 3 finals, 2 President's Trophies and...

I've long wondered why the NHL doesn't have a unique award for the defenseman who scores the most points in a season. Benefits: Honors the best offensive defender in the league. A perfect corollary to the Selke Award, which honors the best defensive foward. Unlike the Selke, it's not a subjective award. He who gets the most points wins. There's precedent for creating new awards. The Rocket Richard was introduced in 1999. The trophy was donated by the Montreal Canadiens to the NHL. Are you...

I mentioned this the day of the trade, but with the Karlsson transaction having included Chris Tierney and Rudolfs Balcers ( :cry: ), the trade extended the life of a chain of deals that can be traced unbroken back all the way to the 1993 draft and the Sharks' first round pick that year. So in honor of that, I have spent the last few days creating what might be my magnum opus: a complete visual reference to the greatest trade tree in Sharks history and possibly one of the greatest in NHL...

It's hard to believe that in the early 1970s, over 95% of NHL players were Canadian in origin. This figure has been on the decline for the past 40+ years, and by 2015-16, the majority of NHL players were not of Canadian origin. It seemed to begin to change when the WHA Winnipeg Jets imported several Scandinavians to their roster for the 1974-75 season. Once the Jets became the top team for the remainder of the WHA, it paved the way for Swedes and Finns to cross the Atlantic, and make a...

I thought with the CHL season starting, and with NHL camps starting to make cuts, it would be interesting to see what notable prospects have been sent back to the CHL, Europe or AHL camp. I got this idea after checking out the Soo vs Saginaw tonight to notice that Morgan Frost was already back (a bit of a surprise, I thought he'd last a bit longer in camp), while Saginaw is without Bode Wilde. Try not to clog this thread up with marginal guys. Lets try to keep it to 1st rounders of the last...