There are good reasons to keep Alain Vigneault around
Cam Charron
May 07 2012 03:50PM
Forgive me for saying that the first story that caught my eye when I was perusing the National Post's sports section today was about the unsolved murder at this weekend's Kentucky Derby. I do like mystery, and frankly, there's more at stake about a body being discovered in a horse stable than the intrigue surrounding who will coach the Vancouver Canucks next season.
But Iain MacIntyre was the one who had that story, and he offers a pretty sober take on the situation. There are all kinds of summits and conversations that need to take place, but if Mike Gillis has his way, he'll have convinced ownership to let him hang onto his guy for next season.
Dennis Bernstein wrote the best recap of the Canucks playoff loss
Cam Charron
May 01 2012 02:02PM
If you're a Canucks fan, you probably had no idea who Dennis Bernstein was until a few weeks ago when he decided to start trolling a fanbase. When you click on his articles at The Fourth period, you're greeted by a mugshot of a man who isn't smiling. He is probably angry at how lousy his haircut is.
That is Dennis Bernstein. We focus a lot on narratives at Canucks Army, or, so to speak, we focus a lot on making sure that narratives are consistent with fact. There's nothing wrong with a good story, but there is something wrong in getting the components of the story wrong. Anyway, here is a fact: Dennis Bernstein wrote a piece on the Canucks' loss to the Los Angeles Kings called "Beached Whales", and it is really the worst thing you'll ever read.
Vancouver goaltenders: A historical comparison
Cam Charron
April 27 2012 11:41AM
I work with a few numbers to judge goaltenders, usually in the modern era dealing with even strength save percentage, quality starts and blow-ups, looking for the right balance of overall value and consistency.
There is a bit of an issue with doing that over a year-to-year span, however. NHL save percentages have crept up since 1984 when the league started recording shots on goal, with better goaltending and better overall defensive schemes, keeping goals off the board.
So how can we stack Roberto Luongo up against his Canuck kin? Not by overall save percentage, since Kirk McLean's .901 in 1992 is probably much more impressive than Dan Cloutier's .901 a few years later. Luongo owns six of the top seven save percentage seasons in franchise history, with Cloutier's 2004 mark coming the closest to him.
Our friend Bruce Arthur at the National Post has suggested over Twitter several times about the prospect of coming up with an "era adjusted save percentage" statistic mirroring OPS+ in baseball, but I'd like to go a little further. What I really want to know when judging a goalie is "how valuable was he," as in, "how many goals did he save the club?"
Can we pinpoint when the Canucks started sheltering Cody Hodgson?
Cam Charron
April 25 2012 11:08AM
Yes, we can.
Read on.
Canucks scoring chance totals: Playoffs
Cam Charron
April 24 2012 03:57PM
What follows here is a table that's quite data-heavy.
As you probably know, we count scoring chances at Canucks Army. After every game, we post a recap with a table of players on both teams, the number of scoring chances they were on the ice that were for their team, and the number of scoring chances that went against their team.
So for the playoffs, we've tallied it up. For what we define as a scoring chance, click here.
