Bingo, i believe. It was an ongoing gag 2 years ago how he'd post every month about how inevitable the avalanche decline would be - and that this (soon to happen!) tailspin would be the definitive signal of advanced stats victory. First it was that we'd miss the playoffs despite a great start, then that we'd never, ever win the division and were insane to even imagine so. And he harped all that year about how Roy was the worst coach in the league (still does actually). Well that Jack Adams trophy and Central banner hanging in the rafters apparently still keep him up at night.
My worry is that this bozo, and others like him, do have some impact. You see the same lazy arguments Lambert introduces repeated endlessly by other fans - and media. I by no means want to overblow the significance of a yahoo blog hack, but have you not noticed the book on Colorado somehow become an open and shut case? Despite actually proving most stat-heads wrong that season we have ultimately become the case study for why all analytics are forever infallible. Never is it mentioned that our loss to Minnesota could have had anything to do with injuries, nor last seasons 'regression'.
(edit: in fairness, he took a similarly obtuse angle on Calgary all this season)
To be honest it does feel like the media enjoys dumping on the Avs and the reason being because they are the Avs. I don't really see anything else that would make them want to do it.
Everyone in the hockey world agreed that we needed to upgrade our D. We went out and got a highly touted prospect that will be a top-4 guy sooner rather than later (like within 2 years, in my estimation - AND a guy who is already better than half of our D from last year) AND we went out and got a guy who just finished playing the most minutes (regular season AND playoffs) from a team who went to the final four. (they wanted to keep him too - just not for that 3rd year)
So here is my question : Why is it OK for a team like the Montreal Canadiens to sign 35
at that time (soon to be 36 yr old) Andrei Markov to a 3 year - $17.25M contract without much fanfare, a move that went largely unquestioned but when we make that kind of addition to our roster for a guy that's similar and 6 months younger, we've made a terrible mistake - paying him $4.5M per year???
There is a clear and evident double standard in the media as it pertains to the Avalanche and I don't think it's something that can really be ignored. It exists. This is not a Beauchemin thing...it's an Avs thing.
If the Edmonton Oilers had signed Beauchemin to the same exact contract, they would have lauded that signing and claimed it was a "coup" that they were able to snag a d-man with so much experience, and yadda-yadda-yadda. If we had signed Sekera to the Oilers contract, they would have found some way to make that look bad as well - either 'too much term or too much $$$ per year for a guy who's production don't justfiy the dolalr amount'.
It's rather pathetic.
I'm just glad the media is content in failing to mention that the Avs finished the season
35-23-7 after their horrible 4-8-5 start and switching up their d-zone system. And that's without our best d-man for most of that.
The Avs ARE making the playoffs next year and we'll be looking to make some noise as well. It doesn't matter what corsi-box-score-reading morons think.
