AAA 2015 Semi-Finals: 2) Selkirk Fishermen vs. 3) Belleville Bulls

[VanIslander]

AAA 2015 Semi-Final Round Match-Up


Selkirk Fishermen

coach Pete Muldoon

John Sorrell - Billy Breen (A) - Bob McDougall
Steve Payne - Dutch Reibel - Alexander Golikov
Gaetan Duchesne - Bob Carpenter (A) - Randy McKay
Magnus Arvedson - Vladimir Golikov - Duane Sutter
Vladimir Zabrodsky, Vlastimil Bubnik

Victor Hedman - Phat Wilson (C)
Rick Green - Ron Plumb
Ralph Bowman - Fred Whitcroft
Hobey Baker, Darius Kasparaitis

Bert Lindsay
Gilles Meloche


vs.


Belleville Bulls

coach Jacques Martin

Vaclav Prospal - Billy Reay - Vincent Lukac
Joe Juneau - Clare McKerrow (A) - Charles Tobin
Harry E. Watson - Bob Gracie - Ron Duguay
Shawn Burr - Laurie Boschman (A) - Pat Boutette
Martin Gelinas, Jay Pandolfo, Darcy Tucker

Alex Smith - Reg Hamilton
Bob Murdoch - Mark Hardy
Gary Sargent - Arthur Moore (C)
Bert Marshall

Billy Nicholson
Marc-Andre Fleury

​

Click to read more...

 

[VanIslander]

SPECIAL TEAMS


Selkirk Fishermen

PP1: Payne - Breen - McDougall - Hedman - Wilson
PP2: Sorrell - Reibel - A. Golikov - Whitcroft - Plumb

PK1: Duchesne - Carpenter - Green - Bowman
PK2: Arvedson - V.Golikov - Hedman - Wilson


vs.


Belleville Bulls

PP1: Prospal - Reay - Lukac - Smith - Sargent
PP2: Watson - Gracie - Tobin - McKerrow - Hardy

PK1: Burr - McKerrow - Marshall - Moore
PK2: Juneau - Boschman - Hardy - Hamilton​

 

[chaosrevolver]

Power Play
Vaclav Prospal - Billy Reay - Vincent Lukac
Alex Smith - Gary Sargent

Harry E. Watson - Bob Gracie - Charles Tobin
Clare McKerrow - Mark Hardy

Penalty Kill
Shawn Burr - Clare McKerrow
Bert Marshall - Arthur Moore

Joe Juneau - Laurie Boschman
Mark Hardy - Reg Hamilton

That's the Special Teams unit I'll be using.

 

[chaosrevolver]

Just my initial analysis to maybe get some talking going:

Coaching: Even (I think both guys are solid AAA coaches)
Leadership: Belleville (I don't think it's very arguable)
1st Line: Selkirk (One of my favourites in the draft and mine has some offensive issues)
2nd Line: Belleville (I think Golikov sorta stands alone for you while McKerrow is better surrounded for a more effective line)
3rd Line: Even (Yours is more of a traditional 3rd line while I try and make up for my 1st line with one of the better offensive ones in the draft)
4th Line: Belleville (Burr and Arvedson are comparable but I think Boschman and Boulette bring more to the table on a 4th line then your other two)

1st Pairing: Belleville (Wilson is solid for you but I don't think Hedman deserves to be near the first pairing at this level. At least not compared to Smith and Hamilton).
2nd Pairing: Belleville (I actually would take both of my guys over yours. Murdoch slipped way too far and fell under the radar, while I think we would both agree Hardy is effectively used here)
3rd Pairing: Even (I think yours is very solid but seventies outlined the issues they could have moving the puck. I think you got more value but perhaps mine fit better together)

Goaltending: Even (I don't know too much about Lindsay but you seem to have a solid combination. I think Nicholson is one of the better goalies in the draft too).

 

[VanIslander]

Just my initial observations:

• The centers match up well, both squads having respected pivots, Selkirk with a bit more offensively accomplished ones and Belleville more evenly distributed defensive ability; Reay is less offensive than Breen but McKerrow seems to have been more defensive than Reibel.
• The wingers are a real mismatch in terms of playoff experience and clutch play against the world's best. Every Selkirk right winger plus Sorrell and Payne have multiple playoff exploits in all-time great championship competition whereas Belleville doesn't, except for Lukac.
• The defenses are interesting and different. A 6th-year pro Hedman is not greenhorn material at this level of competition but clearly has less experience than many, though Hardy only had 5 good years before the wheels fell off and his next ten years were on and off with injuries.
• In goal there's 5'7 300 lbs. Nicholson who was one of the first to go down to make a save and reporters joked that the ice cracked when he flopped; Lindsay was also 5'7 but a more normal 160 lbs.; the former had more pre-PCHA/NHA league championships and the latter was a PCHA all-star with backup Meloche capable of stepping in if needed in a playoff series.
• Special teams play. One team puzzlingly has Prospal on the first pp unit and Burr on the first pk unit; the other has two pp acclaimed bulls at the crease in Payne and McKay as well as more renowned defensive forwards on the pk.
• Behind the bench there's Martin, renowned for his playoff failures, twelve (12) times either missing the playoffs or failing to get out of the first round of the playoffs, with one conference finals run in Ottawa with a President's trophy Hossa-led club that was expected to go to the finals and one bright spot: an unexpected conference finals run for a low seed club in Montreal. On the other bench there's Muldoon, a Stanley Cup champion coach and one of the best coaching records of his era, leading the PCHA in career wins. Martin coached a passive/patient counterstrike style of play that relied a lot on the pp; Muldoon was flashy and feisty and coached balanced squads.
• Leadership is about more than years of captaincy, it's about leading by example in the playoffs and one team clearly has more championship-level game play heroes. (And I don't think it's very arguable.)

 

[Rob Scuderi]

I don't understand what's puzzling about Prospal on the first PP, he's the best PP player of the three you mentioned (Prospal, Payne, and McKay).

McKay on the other hand is a really weak PP option as he wasn't used that way much in his career and not some ES scoring stud who missed his opportunity.

Adjusted PP stats for the post expansion guys

|GP|Career PPP|PPP per season|Usage|Unit Rating|PPP in 7 Best Seasons|GP in 7 Best Seasons
Prospal|978|218|18|53%|+0%|158|560
Payne|613|116|15|42%|+3%|111|534
McKay|932|68|6|18%|+13%|60|513

 

[VanIslander]

McKay led his team in powerplay goals over the season in which they won their first Stanley Cup. And he was a well-respected net presence for screens, deflections and rebounds. Clearly he wasn't used on the pp throughout his career.

Prospal was used a lot on the pp, more than I realized. Hmmm. What was his role?

 

[Rob Scuderi]

McKay led his team in powerplay goals over the season in which they won their first Stanley Cup. And he was a well-respected net presence for screens, deflections and rebounds.

Nice trivia, but that's one of two seasons he had more than 3 PPGs (and over 40 points). I just posted his career and prime pp stats and he's a bad option even this low in the draft comparatively speaking.

For being well-respected for those skills, he wasn't on the ice for many of his teams' power play goals - 18% is really low.

 

[seventieslord]

I'm not your opponent, but I'm going to pipe in when and where I can. I actually planned on doing so last round but life got in the way.

[*]The wingers are a real mismatch in terms of playoff experience and clutch play against the world's best. Every Selkirk right winger plus Sorrell and Payne have multiple playoff exploits in all-time great championship competition whereas Belleville doesn't, except for Lukac.

That is true. And even Lukac, he's not exactly a high performer in championship competition. We've openly wondered in the past why a guy who was seemingly such a better producer domestically than a guy like, say, Lala, didn't do as well internationally (both in numbers and in recognition). My studies have him as the 4th most prolific Czech league scorer after Novy, Hlinka, and Nedomansky, but his international record is nothing like that (41 points in 63 games), so if you were to say that there was really no one with any clutch experience on the wings in Belleville, you wouldn't exactly be wrong.

That said, just because we're in the playoffs, that doesn't mean we completely throw out everything that happened in the regular season, right? I don't think that's how anyone does it here, anyway. Extreme example: Gilbert Perreault vs. Marcel Dionne. One is obviously better, one has an obviously better playoff record. In a playoff matchup, the player with Perreault should not be able to now claim they have the better player. Sure, it helps lessen the gap, but it's still a small piece of their careers.

And, of course, I'm not saying all his wingers are better than all your wingers either, just that focusing solely on championship plays is too small a piece of the puzzle in and of itself.

[*]The defenses are interesting and different. A 6th-year pro Hedman is not greenhorn material at this level of competition but clearly has less experience than many, though Hardy only had 5 good years before the wheels fell off and his next ten years were on and off with injuries.

I wouldn't say this is exactly true. hedman is in his 7th year now, but just in his 3rd as an impact player in which he did anything that would earn consideration in a draft like this. I mean, no one's drafting him because he was a 21 minute rookie and sophomore on a non-playoff and cinderella team, or because he was a 23 minute player on two more non-playoff teams. It's the last two-plus seasons (185 games including playoffs as of today) in which he's played at a level that is AAA worthy (it's actually much more than AAA worthy if we're being totally honest), but that's just over two regular seasons worth of games. Yeah, he's a greenhorn at this level, big time.

As for Hardy... I don't think it's really fair to say the wheels fell off. If you read up on his career progression, he was more offensive-oriented early on (and was the #1 defenseman by TOI on a team that had ATD level defenders on it) and when that ability slipped and he lost his PP minutes, he transformed into a 20 minute defensive, physical, crease clearing kind of guy, for fairly successful teams. Basically he spent seven full years being exactly the player you like to glorify at the MLD level, and that's after the wheels came off, as you say, and before that, for five seasons he was a huge all-situation minute eater with pretty good offensive numbers. He had a very solid, very long career at a time when careers weren't very long.

[*]In goal there's 5'7 300 lbs. Nicholson who was one of the first to go down to make a save and reporters joked that the ice cracked when he flopped; Lindsay was also 5'7 but a more normal 160 lbs.; the former had more pre-PCHA/NHA league championships and the latter was a PCHA all-star with backup Meloche capable of stepping in if needed in a playoff series.

Nicholson was not 300 pounds; he was closer to 220.

It seems that from 1900 to 1909, if Nicholson wasn't winning the cup or league championship, then he was leading his league in GAA and/or wins, almost annually. He had an excellent prime, and though I recall Iain Fyffe's deep analysis concluding he was a tier below the goalies of the time who made the HHOF, I'm sure Lindsay has to be a tier below him:

From an old bio of mine, with Lindsay added:

|Reg.|||||||St-Cup||||||
Name/Leagues|GP|W|L|T|win%|SO|GAA|GP|W|L|T|win%|SO|GAA|Cups
Nicholson/8|177|87|86|1|.503|11| 4.03 |8|4|2|2|.625|1| 1.88 |2
Hern/6|134|90|41|2|.684|5|4.07|14|10|4|0|.714|0|3.86|4
Lesueur/6|167|96|68|1|.585|6|4.36|9|7|2|0|.778|0|4.44|2
Moran/5|208|100|106|0|.486|2|5.27|4|4|0|0|1.000|1|2.00|2
Lindsay/7|164|80|83|1|.491|4|5.31|5|1|4|0|.200|0|4.95|0

of course, almost all of this is team stats, and anything numerical that we have about goalies from back then reflects on their team as much as it does them. About the only thing we can rely on is if they kept getting into more games, then their team must have thought they were doing alright. We can look at quotes too, and although little is known about Hern and Moran as individuals, I've seen lots of reports of Nicholson being excellent, as well as Lesueur. I can't say as much for Hern or Lindsay (doesn't look like you found any either).

I'm sure a guy like Lindsay deserves to be picked somewhere (career length alone gives him value, and also once Nicholson is gone, is Lindsay not the obvious "next best" from the era?), but it does seem strange seeing him occupy the same spot in the pecking order as Nicholson (AAA starter). Should one rise or should one drop?

[*]Special teams play. One team puzzlingly has Prospal on the first pp unit and Burr on the first pk unit; the other has two pp acclaimed bulls at the crease in Payne and McKay as well as more renowned defensive forwards on the pk.

As Rob mentioned, it's not Puzzling seeing Prospal on the PP at all.

As far as Burr goes, why is that puzzling that he's on a penalty kill? He has outstanding PK stats for this level (30% usage, 11% above average results) over a long sample, and had two good seasons of selke recognition too. Depending on what your definition of "renowned" is, he could arguably be the most renowned defensive forward in this series.

[*]Behind the bench there's Martin, renowned for his playoff failures, twelve (12) times either missing the playoffs or failing to get out of the first round of the playoffs, with one conference finals run in Ottawa with a President's trophy Hossa-led club that was expected to go to the finals and one bright spot: an unexpected conference finals run for a low seed club in Montreal. On the other bench there's Muldoon, a Stanley Cup champion coach and one of the best coaching records of his era, leading the PCHA in career wins. Martin coached a passive/patient counterstrike style of play that relied a lot on the pp; Muldoon was flashy and feisty and coached balanced squads.

Just curious, did you talk about Martin like this all the times you've had him?

[*]Leadership is about more than years of captaincy, it's about leading by example in the playoffs and one team clearly has more championship-level game play heroes. (And I don't think it's very arguable.)
[/list]

I dunno dude, that's kinda like saying "my guys are better goal scorers because I say so", when the numbers show that the other team's guys scored way more goals. If we're talking about leadership, one major indicator should be how many players have been captains, how long, how often, how successful and how respected they were.

On Belleville we have the captain of a Dynasty, a PCHA captain and an expansion team captain. Nothing too extraordinary aside from Moore, perhaps the best leadership resume in the draft.

On Selkirk I see Wilson, who got into the HHOF and maybe that lends some cred, but other than that you're really reaching. I mean, it's all well and good to say some guys have leadership because they were a "good guy" or went deep in the playoffs a couple of times, but compared to guys whose teams actually made them a captain... come on.

 

[VanIslander]

Nicholson was not 300 pounds; he was closer to 220.

I didn't pull it out of thin air. I'll find the link when I have time, including the reference to reporter jokes about the cracking ice.

 

[seventieslord]

A look at any picture will tell you that the 300 number is little more than legend.

(I know you didn't pull it out of thin air, it seemed familiar and it's indeed in my 2011 bio, taken from LOH).

Even that source has him at 250-275, but it implies that's in full equipment, and like I said, pictures do not corroborate even those numbers.

 

[Elvis P]

You can see His SIHR-listed weight of 220 pounds.

 

[chaosrevolver]

Well this picked up. I'll add some points tomorrow night.

Good luck in the series VanI

 

[MadArcand]

I didn't pull it out of thin air. I'll find the link when I have time, including the reference to reporter jokes about the cracking ice.

He's listed as 5'10" 220 lbs.

Certainly doesn't look like 5'7" 300 lbs. balloon would:

 

[VanIslander]

He had a long career. Gaining weight as he got older might explain the reporters' comments.

 

[seventieslord]

He had a long career. Gaining weight as he got older might explain the reporters' comments.

I agree, and that was pretty normal in those days too.... but 300?

 

[chaosrevolver]

Just my initial observations:
[*]The centers match up well, both squads having respected pivots, Selkirk with a bit more offensively accomplished ones and Belleville more evenly distributed defensive ability; Reay is less offensive than Breen but McKerrow seems to have been more defensive than Reibel.

Wouldn't disagree. I think both sets of centers definitely bring different qualities and both could be very effective.

[*]The wingers are a real mismatch in terms of playoff experience and clutch play against the world's best. Every Selkirk right winger plus Sorrell and Payne have multiple playoff exploits in all-time great championship competition whereas Belleville doesn't, except for Lukac.

I don't completely disagree here either. My wingers do not necessarily possess a great amount of "playoff exploits" but I think we still need to look at regular season, and guys like Lukac, Prospal, etc. can be effective. I think we can also agree that Juneau had some very solid playoff performances given your exact quote in the bio I chose: "all in all, even including his thirtysomething end-of-career years, a very good 79 points in 112 career NHL playoff games"

I think for the most part my wingers fit well with my centers too with Prospal's playmaking accomplishments fitting well with Reay and Lukac, while Juneau brings a great element of two-way play and playmaking to McKerrow and Tobin.

[*]The defenses are interesting and different. A 6th-year pro Hedman is not greenhorn material at this level of competition but clearly has less experience than many, though Hardy only had 5 good years before the wheels fell off and his next ten years were on and off with injuries.

Hedman, like seventies said, has only really had three very solid years as a top pairing guy. I remember a lot of Tampa fans concerned after the first couple seasons because he wasn't progressing as much as some hoped. I don't know necessarily agree with seventies that he is drop material but I also don't think he's a first pairing defender.

I found quotes spanning ten or so seasons about Hardy being consistent and reliable. While his style of play may have changed due to some injuries, I don't think he is in the same conversation as Hedman here.

[*]In goal there's 5'7 300 lbs. Nicholson who was one of the first to go down to make a save and reporters joked that the ice cracked when he flopped; Lindsay was also 5'7 but a more normal 160 lbs.; the former had more pre-PCHA/NHA league championships and the latter was a PCHA all-star with backup Meloche capable of stepping in if needed in a playoff series.

I think Seventies already covered that Nicholson is at least on the same level (if not higher) than Lindsay based on what we have been able to find. I am becoming a little less convinced with Lindsay but I'd like to potentially see some good discussion on him (I'll have to check out a bio of him).

Would like to see the documentation on Nicholson, who I think clearly now was not 300 lbs and 5'7 for most of his career. I would say whatever article you got that from clearly exaggerated or was just misinformed.

[*]Special teams play. One team puzzlingly has Prospal on the first pp unit and Burr on the first pk unit; the other has two pp acclaimed bulls at the crease in Payne and McKay as well as more renowned defensive forwards on the pk.

While it has been covered, Prospal and Burr fit perfectly on the units they are on. Shawn Burr seems to have gone greatly overlooked as a defensive presence in this draft, but there is a good amount on him about his impact killing penalties.

Prospal, as mentioned by Scuderi, is actually more accomplished than Payne and McKay on the PP. I believe I read that he was on the half wall a lot as a set up man (but not sure where I found that quote so I may have to look for it).

[*]Behind the bench there's Martin, renowned for his playoff failures, twelve (12) times either missing the playoffs or failing to get out of the first round of the playoffs, with one conference finals run in Ottawa with a President's trophy Hossa-led club that was expected to go to the finals and one bright spot: an unexpected conference finals run for a low seed club in Montreal. On the other bench there's Muldoon, a Stanley Cup champion coach and one of the best coaching records of his era, leading the PCHA in career wins. Martin coached a passive/patient counterstrike style of play that relied a lot on the pp; Muldoon was flashy and feisty and coached balanced squads.

While I am hardly a huge fan of Martin (I am a Habs fan after all), he has guided teams to ten playoff appearances in fifteen seasons. While I know it's easy to point at those years where Ottawa lost in the first round (especially to Toronto), it's hard to ignore the abysmal goaltending that ultimately killed them a lot of the time.

Martin himself is effective, as you said, in a passive/patient counterstrike style with a solid defensive focus. That's exactly what I tried to build by having three lines that could score, and also some players who are familiar with the coaching style of Martin. Players like Prospal and Juneau played under Martin in years where the team had successful seasons.

I won't pretend to know much about Muldoon. Although I was surprised to see that his team finished first at times despite a losing record. (IE: 14-16 in 1923 but they finished 1st).

[*]Leadership is about more than years of captaincy, it's about leading by example in the playoffs and one team clearly has more championship-level game play heroes. (And I don't think it's very arguable.)

Maybe, but I don't think it can be argued that my team has a great leadership core with Art Moore being captain.

I think you might be stretching the "championship-level game play heroes". I get a guy like Wilson had success in the Allan Cup, but are we putting that on the same level as NHL playoffs and things like that? I've always liked him but due to him being an amateur player, he is a bit harder to place I find. Even then, who else after that had a ton of success in "championship-level game" scenarios? I know Breen had some success in a losing effort in the 1904 Stanley Cup Challenge, but did he have more success than that one year?

 

[Elvis P]

He had a long career. Gaining weight as he got older might explain the reporters' comments.

I agree, and that was pretty normal in those days too.... but 300?

Nope. If you look at the pictures MA and I posted, not only is he a puppy in MA's picture, he's a grizzled, seasoned, weathered old man in my picture (just look at his craggy face) and he's the manager/goalkeeper of the Tecumseh Hockey Club.

 

[VanIslander]

Stanley Cup ringer enters series

HHOF Fred Whitcroft will dress up for the series and comes in with experience in this role. The big, fast, accurate shooter was a hired gun for teams in three years of Stanley Cup challenges and he delivered the goals with 14 goals in 8 Stanley Cup challenge games against the best of his era. He joins physical defenseman Bowman on the third pairing, will see shifts on the top-6 occasionally as coach tests line chemistry in game situations, and he will replace McKay on the 2nd powerplay unit. McKay has scored 20 powerplay goals to lead his team one championship season but his peak performance in that regard is not matched by careerlong experience in the role so he will not be a part of the unit. Kasparaitis will sit out the series.

See his bio here.

...a solid, compact frame that would have better suited a defenseman, but he also possessed great speed, on-ice agility, and a gift for nifty stickhandling-- the tools of a prolific scorer. As a result, Whitcroft often played the middle ice positions of cover point and rover.

 

[seventieslord]

I think Whitcroft adds the benefit of credible PP scoring over McKay, and also is a better puck mover than kasparaitis. But what are his credentials as a defenseman? Just that he played rover? I hope that's not all you're going by, because that's not enough IMO.

(I can't help but feel this topic has come up one other time, and I can't remember if I brought up the concern or if someone brought it up to me, and I also can't recall whether the concern was valid in the end or not)

 

[Hedberg]

I think Whitcroft adds the benefit of credible PP scoring over McKay, and also is a better puck mover than kasparaitis. But what are his credentials as a defenseman? Just that he played rover? I hope that's not all you're going by, because that's not enough IMO.

Lappage's The Kenora Thistles Stanley Cup trail in the Canadian Journal of History of Sport and Physical Education apparently (I can't locate the original article and am only working off a citation in another article) mentions Whitcroft as cover-point, although that doesn't seem to reflect the Kenora lineup.

I agree, and that was pretty normal in those days too.... but 300?

The idea that Nicholson weighed 300lbs is something I badly want to believe, but yeah, he looks barely over 200.

 

[VanIslander]

The idea that Nicholson weighed 300lbs is something I badly want to believe, but yeah, he looks barely over 200.

Indeed.

• I took the 300 lbs. reference straight from a quote that seventieslord admitted he had put in the bio he constructed on the guy.
  
• If reporters used to joke about his weight that suggests for at least PART of his career (not covered in the photo), he was clearly overweight and they simply exaggerated his weight.
  
• When a guy is 5'7, to be 200-220 lbs. would look pretty tubby.
  
• But like tubby Turk Broda, being overweight needn't in itself be a deterrent if the style matches (Nicholson was known to go down on the ice, to "plop" as reporters put it).

 

[seventieslord]

Indeed.

• I took the 300 lbs. reference straight from a quote that seventieslord admitted he had put in the bio he constructed on the guy.

• 
  
  Can you please clarify? I don't see this number in my bio. As I said, I see 250-275 in the quote from ultimate hockey, and it implies that may have been including goalie equipment.
  
  

  [*]When a guy is 5'7, to be 200-220 lbs. would look pretty tubby.

  
  ...less so when he's 5'10".

 

[VanIslander]

A look at any picture will tell you that the 300 number is little more than legend.

(I know you didn't pull it out of thin air, it seemed familiar and it's indeed in my 2011 bio, taken from LOH).

Even that source has him at 250-275, but it implies that's in full equipment, and like I said, pictures do not corroborate even those numbers.

The last line you either added when you 'edited' the post, or else I just missed it.

A few minutes ago I took some time to track down where I had read it. It was from the book Hockey's Most Wanted(2002):

https://books.google.ca/books?id=rX...AC#v=onepage&q=billy nicholson hockey&f=false

 

[seventieslord]

The last line you either added when you 'edited' the post, or else I just missed it.

you're right, the last two lines were added in an edit 11 minutes after the initial post.

However, I was wrong to say that. I can't see 300 in there anywhere, and the bio has never been edited. I was referring to the "legendary" weights of 250-275 listed by UH`.

A few minutes ago I took some time to track down where I had read it. It was from the book Hockey's Most Wanted(2002):

https://books.google.ca/books?id=rXl...hockey&f=false

I knew you didn't pull it from thin air

But they don't even have his height right; I wouldn't trust them on his weight. It's a fluff book anyway, isn't it?

We have pictures from the turn of the century and 1914 and he's not close to 250 in either. 220 is believable, in the 1914 picture.