Penguins Lull Open Thread
by JDunman on Nov 5, 2008 11:36 AM EST
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Dunman posted this up yesterday afternoon to give us all a lil place to meet up and talk hockey. So I figured I'd move it back up to the top of the page to see what's on everyone's mind now that Pascal Dupuis is due back Thursday , Sid responded to Semin and the All-Star ballots are out. Jump into the convo and join us on your lunch break or anytime during the day. (Might I also suggest minimizing the window at work). ...Frank...
With the Penguins' victory over the Blues now almost three full days past and the next game against Edmonton still two days away, you may be experiencing a bit of withdrawal. I know I'm desperately trying to get my hands to quit shaking and Frank's already been placed in a padded cell.
So, oh great Pensburgh community, what's on your mind? Since there's no game to comment on, let's talk about something else. What teams are impressing you thus far this season? What teams are letting you down? What kind of adjustments would you make to the Penguins lines? How long did you have to wait in line to vote? Is Frank rigging the SPG results (he totally is)?
This thread is open for anything - just keep it clean and keep it relatively polite.
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Well for starters, it looks like Devils/Penguins matchups are taking a significant swing in favor of the Penguins. Marty is out for three to four months.
Yet I can’t help but wonder/fear that Weekes and/or Clemmenson can pull off a Sabourin/Conklin move from last season. Maybe I just still have some allegiance to the fact that you can’t rule anyone out since I didn’t do it to the Pens last season.
Then again I’m a fan.
I guess the only difference is the Penguins had a prominent offense last season and the Devils, next to Parise, don’t.
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Losing Brodeur has to be a savage loss for the Devils, especially for that amount of time. I don’t think we’ll see the type of awesomeness we got from Conklin last season…at least I hope not. We are tied with them right now.
I don’t really wish injuries upon anyone, but it wouldn’t break my heart if a couple Rangers went down…
Let's go Pens!
Apparently that’s not going to happen if they keep drinking their juice. Rumor has it this stuff is like the nectar of the Gods.
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Guess all those articles about the records Marty was going to be smashing are going back on the shelf for a while. Elbow surgery sounds extremely unpleasant to me, ugh.
I thought the same thing. On one hand it’s not career ending, but it’s not like he’ll be breaking more than one record this year. Number of starts or minutes played I think is his only chance.
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It looks like he’ll be doubling his missed games number – at least. That’s something, right?
Let's go Pens!
buh dum tis. I’d imagine he’s not out of the running for the Vezina either. How he won last season still amazes me.
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If Ryan Whitney can be on the All-Star ballot without playing a single game yet this season then I’d put Brodeur’s chances at winning the Vezina at about 50/50.
Yeah, what’s with the baby? I’m not sure if I’m for or against baby pictures, but I motion for puppies in penguins outfits myself..
I think we can definitely make a theme out of it. I was a fan of the picture selection – it portrays the point perfectly.
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With no pens to watch I have been wandering around like a lost puppy and have forced myself to be productive around the house, sniff. The worst part is watching a bunch of players sneak up on the points leaders chart, especially Hossa, wanker.
Well rest assured Angela, we have ourselves a Penguins/Red Wings showdown next Tuesday. If anything can get you through this relatively slow week of Penguins hockey it should be the vibes surrounding that game.
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Mmm, maybe i’ll splurge for that game and watch it at a pub while drinking rye, i’ll be feisty. I’m going to watch your election results tonight as well. After a nine trillion year campaign it better be a neck in neck excitement. It is amazing that your election affects us Canadians economically 100 times more than our own elections. How often do you guys get to go to pens games?
I see Pitt play about five or six times a year. All depends I guess on who they’re playing.
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I have actually never seen the Pens live, but I live in a relatively hockey-less area. The closest hockey cities to me are Nashville and Columbus, and maybe St. Louis (where I caught a Blues/Blackhawks game a few weeks ago). As the Pens are playing in both Nashville and Columbus this season, it looks like my time has finally come.
Hope you enjoyed the election results. I know I did.
Let's go Pens!
Penguins dropped six ranks in Fox Sports’ NHL power rankings.
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Not to knock Power Rankings, but they’re all in order of their W/L percentage. It’s like he basically took the league standings and wrote up a brief summary on their week.
This may just be an early season thing, but if later on a high standing team hits a big slump and a low ranking one starts surging, would the rankings reflect that?
Let's go Pens!
I’d imagine so. I’ve never been a huge fan of power rankings either, ESPECIALLY pre-season power rankings. How can you rank something on an imaginary scale based on hypothetical outcomes of games that haven’t even been played?
As for this set of rankings, it’s still super early, something we’ve heard already and will continue to hear. Even though the Pens dropped a few games on that road trip, the St. Louis win made the team look really good and hopefully gave them a good boost of confidence in the process.
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I agree with you Frank, it’s still really early in the season. At this time last year Ottawa had lost like 1 game, and we all saw what a mess they became after the All-Star break. Or the Leafs, who started showing up after the trade deadline. November = too early to make predictions (at least in my book).
On that note – is it Thursday yet?
Almost. Almost. Checking out the Oilers/Blue Jackets game tonight to see what we may be up against tomorrow. 2-1 Columbus so far.
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I checked out baseball prospectus site that had small comment about Crosby’s ‘injury’ last week. A very large number of ticked off baseball fans wondering what the hell hockey stuff is doing on their site (all bloggers who pay a sucscription fee) and a lot of people commenting that a hockey prospectus would be great due to, in their opinions, NHL stats lacking… see c&p’s below
I’ve been developing new measurements for success on special teams – very happy with my results so far, but lack the statistical expertise to truly understand standard deviations and statistical relevance in minor changes – just brush strokes now (although still an improvement on the impoverished state of hockey statistics)
So count me in for a Hockey-Prospectus. I will pay for it and it is a sport dying for more analysis and better stats.
I have read a bit about prospectus and it’s meaning, couldn’t really find good explaination of said word with sports, so would the power rankings be something along the lines of a hockey prospectus, or is it just more of a stat style that would pertain to fantasy hockey?
Personally, and I speak only for myself when I say this, but I don’t think power rankings do more than start up some conversation around the team. And frankly, on a day like today I thought it was worth debating the real purpose of the power rankings. So far it just seems everyone is in a general consensus and that is the fact it may very well have no meaning.
I’m surprised there isn’t a hockey prospectus, but at the same time I feel that if you want to find the info you can more or less get it easily. The Hockey News does a fair job of covering prospects years in advance and normally follow them up through the juniors and well into college. I’d imagine a site/book like that would be quite the effort.
What exactly are you developing in terms of special teams measurements? Kinda hard to follow without the details I suppose haha.
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In my opinion, and I know i’m a couple days late, is that baseball is obsessed with statistics. The game has been keeping track of every little thing since it started. I think that has more to do with the number of “statistical opportunities” in baseball. A batter bats at least 3 or 4 times a game, facing a pitcher that pitches to a minimum of 27 batters, both left and right handed, etc. The way baseball is designed you get a lot of 1 v. 1 that takes a lot of variables out of the equation.
Hockey on the other hand is hard to quantify. The game is always moving and flowing, there isn’t a way to remove the majority of the variables. [Different people on the ice, shots from different places on the ice, etc.]
In terms of a hockey prospectus, I’d love one. Die hard baseball fans in general follow their minor league systems and have great stats to determine how good players are going to be. I think it’s a lot harder to figure out what makes a great minor league hockey player. So, i’m not sure who would be able to put a hockey prospectus together, but I’d love to read their hard work.
I’m with ya. I’d definitely admire the work, but I don’t want to be the one involved on the stat side of things. I’m pretty sure my head would blow up.
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oh no no noooo, i’m not developing any special teams measurements, that was copy paste(c & p’s) from baseball prospectus. There happened to be few fantasy hockey players on said baseball site who mentioned that hockey seems to be lacking indepth stats/projections: call it ‘prospectus’ etc., naming behind the ice(dotcom, maybe)…? as one ‘ok’ site but not as much ‘brain power’ as you will, put into it. Baseball does have these books/sites that have been around forever, apparently, that put in grand effort to following and tracking. My question was more or less whether or not there could/should be more advanced stats, projections, and maybe a broader perspective of present and future NHL teams and players.
That kind of stuff can be a little tricky to find for some players (esp. european prospects) but I found a ton of information searching around OHL/QMJHL/WHL team sites last year when I was doing a little prospect research. I’m not a real stat-y person though. Goal, assists, PIM +/- etc. is usually all I want to know.
I also feel like projections are really tough to make for prospects because we draft them so young. An 18 y/o can gain so much size, speed and strength in the first few years of their career, or conversely not develop as much as he was projected to.
Plus, I feel like the top prospects are pretty well covered in hockey. Like John Tavares (as an aside, 27pts in 17 games so far this year, crazy) or last year, Stamkos. It’s for the lesser known players that this type of site would be most useful, I guess. Then again I’m really only familiar with the OHL – so I can’t give a complete opinion w.r.t players in the us college system or anything.
I remember last season when you were rocking pretty solid player profiles on the young guns. Good stuff. Tavares still playing with Oshawa?
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ooooo ok. I was kinda confused. If you want, you can blockquote the text next time by highlighting it and clicking the blue quotation mark symbol four in from the left above this box.
As for your question, I guess it couldn’t hurt. I’m kinda a sucker for stats and I’m sure plenty other bloggers and writers would hit it up too. It would be pretty interesting to see now that you got me thinking.
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Just to clarify on that, I also despise “media” stats. That’s a term I dub stats like, for example, this one that comes to mind from the Rangers this season: “In 1994 the Rangers won an international cup and later went on to win the Stanley Cup. Now in 2008, the Rangers are winners of the Victoria Cup. Could the 2008 Rangers repeat the 1994 team?”
NO. They can’t, for many reasons. First off, to base their potential success off past instances which involved players no longer on the team is horrible grounds for predictions. Secondly, the game has changed tremendously since 1994. I’d prefer if you’d just not speak rather than say this gibberish.
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Completely off topic, it is officially winter here with snow and all=hockey, my son Tomas is goal & points leader on his team w/+3 rating =hockey, and sad, he is still a Flames fan (working on it, he is only 8 years old, so you have to forgive him). As far as fans go on this part of the continent, Canucks fans are the most loyal and exciting. I am all by myself here, ‘all by myself, no one was looking, all by myself’’ name that tune and there could be a prize for you; )
Unfortunately the first song to come to mind is Madonna, but I hope I’m wrong. My days in radio often lead to an embarrassed past.
You gotta break him out of that Flames mentality. My friend used to live in Calgary and said that Flames fans are a tried and true bunch. And while Edmonton fans may easily match in comparison, he still says nothing topped the Montreal faithful (where he went to school).
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Well, you all know about my not so subtle love of Montreal, but when I was first choosing a team to follow (it’s a long story, how I came to like hockey) I really considered those Flames. If it weren’t for those 10:00 starts I’d probably be rocking my Iginla merch right now. How I ever chose the Pens is still a bit of a mystery, which comes up often at family gathers with my Red Wings loving uncle (who I had to hide from all summer after the Cup).
I wanna hear the story! Clearly we don’t have any anything else to do with a nine year break from our team, please tell me I don’t wanna be productive around the house anymore, please. III"""MMM begging you to give me ‘no doing stuff’ excuse.
It’s not really an interesting story, unfortunately. I had a friend come to stay with me for a week when I was in my first year of university, during our reading week (which is in Feb.) and we ended up snowed into my dorm room watching the winter olympics for like 5 days. (We braved the cold a few times, but it was pretty gross weather.) We watched a lot of hockey, and I’m being serious when I tell you the announcing was my favourite part of the game (love sportscasters). We also watched a lot of curling and that event where you ski around and shoot targets, but that’s not really relevant.
And then after five days I just called my dad and announced that I was making a conscious decision to be a hockey fan and could he find out for me where that Jerome Iginla guy from the olympics played. Thus my almost Calgary fandom. I have no background in hockey, no family that plays (minus a few cousins who played like local minor hockey who I used to be dragged to watch, and hated it) and really no reason at all to be a hockey fan. I just decided on a whim, and ended up really liking it. (And my dad is still amazed that I watched more than the first period of the first game, even though he bitterly wishes that I’d chosen football as my sport of choice.)
Oh, my family would love you as it is pretty much a ‘if you don’t watch/love hockey, there is clearly something wrong with you’ , but to my Dad’s credit he has gotten me into many other sports. Used to watch Toronto Blue Jays Gaston, Olreud, Alomar etc. (yes I am dating myself here), big into F1 for several years, several years ago, but seem to always stick to hockey, except when I was in a huff after lockout and ignored the hockey world out of stubborness for a year or so. I think it is biathalon, skiing around shooting at targets, which shouldn’t be an olympic sport at all because it is lame. Make your Dad a deal that you will watch his football if he watches your hockey; )
I think everyone went into that huff of ignoring the sport for a year. Those will forever be known as the Dark Ages of the NHL.
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Sad, not Madonna! Calgary woman, originally from Peterborough, Ontario (kind of fun name dropping here, I did get tohang out with dudes like Neilson and Domi and King). I have been watching hockey since I was 5 or so years old, and as long as I can rememeber the flames have not impressed me. Yes I will be as bold to say boring, conservative dump and chase hockey, always. That being said I had brother who played (yes, always dragged to the rink, annoyed) to triple AAA level and fabulous hockey. Also have cousin who was career ‘minor leaguer’ in NHL, once Peterborough Petes player, and now managemnt or something of poor sad Toronto Maple Leafs. My point is that I have been very in-tune with hockey for so many years and am very aware of fans and their loyalties. Calgary has the most ‘bandwagon jumping’ fans I have ever seen. I spent a lot of time in Vancouver and from what i’ve seen, through good or bad, they are the most loyal, way more loyal than Calgary fans. I don’t know much about Edmonton fans, they elude me, as when I do encounter them, they are hammered beyond recognition. How much fun would the All Star game in Montreal be this year?
Why, Flames fans sound just like Philly fans. In 2006-07 when the Flyers were absolutely HORRIBLE the Flyers games were empty as anything. Then in 07-08 when they decided they wanted to compete again, games were sold out left and right and the fans were back to their regular, ol obnoxious selves.
That’s awesome that you have such close ties to hockey. It must make for some interesting stories with family regardless of the level of play.
I’m from New Jersey, but make it out to Pitt at least once a year. I’m also lucky enough to live within an hour of New York, Philly and the Devils’ arena. So really, I can see them year round when they play within the division.
The All-Star game in Montreal is going to be insane. I can’t imagine what those streets are going to look like on the night of the game. It sure beats the Atlanta game, that’s for sure. I’m glad the NHL went with Montreal, in honor of the whole centennial thing. Good move.
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er, that should read “WOW, Flames fans…” It’s getting late. Typos galore at this hour…
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Pickin’ up what you’re layin’ down, I think my typos came along with one more glass of a wonderful Argentinian Malbec. The state of the ‘Saddledome’ is terrible! Calgary is doing very well economically, oil & gas(which I thankfully have not had to sell my soul for thus far) and most of seats are purchased by these corporations for entertainement, not the true fan, if there are any. You get an entire lower bowl partially filled with people who know nothing about the game. The most exciting section in the entire rink is the one with the atom or bantam or close to that age group (say between 6 and 10 years old) hockey team that spent their entire budget to go to the game, and are in the nosebleeds. I like good hockey games and every Flames game i’ve gone to I have spent more time watching Harvey The Hound than the game. So we need to devise a plan… Get tickets for Allstar game and have a blast in Montreal as well.
It’d be pretty rad if I could land tickets to the ASG. I’d probably drive up for it, just for the quasi-historic aspect of it all. I’m never one for All-Star games, although I can respect the marketing aspect of the league. I just have an issue with 8-6, 7-6 scores and no hard hitting.
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I think the actual game could be just a warm-up to wicked awesome night in Mo., I’ve wanted to visit since I was wee. The skills competitions seems rather fun as well. Parlez-vous francais? And you did use ‘rad’ which is awesome! C’mon, drinking loads of terrible draft beer, heckling with other fans, savagery and debauchery could maybe sway you towards 8-6, 7-6 scores and no hard hitting?
Well… You opened up that one, q’est que c’est la probleme avec le francais et tu(s)/vous? My french isn’t great, conjugations a bitch, but what did you do?
Well ok maybe it wasn’t you, but zee french love everyzing in life, food wvine beautiful vimin(words meant to sound like french accent) how could they possibly hate you?… Sleep now, g’night tommorrow we finally have a game… with Dupuis, hopefully, one of zose beautiful vimin lovers, did you notice that Quebecois make up/made up a large portion of great NHL goalies?
Hey, I have nothing against the French. I don’t know why they do against me. In 2006 I took a trip to Montreal with my bi-lingual friend and one of our mutual English speaking college friends. He ordered in French before me at the A&W, I went next and the woman made it obvious that she didn’t speak English. So, I had him translate my order for me politely, placed my order and slid to the side. Just as my female friend came up to make her order, the woman behind the counter majestically realized she could speak English and proudly greeted with, “Hello, and velcome to A-hend-W.”
Still gets me every time.
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Insane sounds like a good word. They were already promoting it a lot when I was there a few weeks ago. This year is an exciting one for hockey in Montreal (especially with their team starting off so well this year).
Isn’t Montreal one of those cities that is always excited about hockey?
I am jealous. Very, very jealous. Down here, the only four hockey fans get together once in a while.
Let's go Pens!
True enough – but this year’s it’s extra exciting The ads are all over the city for Montreal’s 100 years of hockey. Their slogan is History Plays Here/ L’Histoire se joue ici. There are even nice little Habs 100 banners hanging from all of the street lamps.
Very daunting I agree, but a complete and comprehensive yearly, either in a book or on a site, look at the entire spectrum: minors, up and comers, newly drafted, veterans, rookies, all leagues etc. might be interesting. You make a good point though that so much can change from 18 years of age and up. One of Baseball Dudes (been given a tittle, yes) mentioned that hockey just didn’t have the ‘depth’ that baseball did in determing or accepting the validity of said stats/projections that could be produced, so a waste of time. It is a bit like a game of darts and as much as the clever math people do their thing who knows?
Baseball stats are just nauseating. They will break down EVERY little thing about the game. Three bases may lead to three different stats. For example, saying something like, “Every time Hank Aaron came to the plate with a runner on third and two outs they walked him.” Then they’ll break down that stat with runners on first and second, one out of no outs…it’s really just an endless spectrum of statistics.
Pitching is no different. They do earned run average, WHIP, BB/9, K/9, win pct…blah. It gives me a headache just thinking about it.
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Well I’m glad I was wrong then. Because I much prefer Green Day over Madonna any day.
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