Don Cherry confused me, Episode II
Cam Charron
November 06 2011 11:24AM
Welcome to 'Don Cherry confused me', a new Sunday-morning feature that will chronicle the silly things that Don Cherry says the night before on Coach's Corner. The feature will focus on Cherry's out-dated focus on the game and attempt to get him to understand that things happen in hockey a little bit differently than he remembers them.
Episode Two: Blame the System!
Three goalie controversies worth following
Cam Charron
November 06 2011 10:05AM
There has been a lot of talk in Vancouver recently about goaltenders and whether Roberto Luongo is the right guy to carry this team. But early in the season, this is a narrative that carries across many hockey markets, and, valid or not, the play of a goaltender is one that dominates headlines as the goalie is the most important player on the team. Here are three goalie controversies that bear slightly more weight than the Luongo/Cory Schneider discussions, and may have stronger repurcussions repercussions as well.
Kevin Bieksa, appearance vs. reality
Cam Charron
November 05 2011 12:15PM
There are numbers for everything in sports.
Luck? Sign me up.
I got into a bit of a discussion on Twitter with another competitor in the Province's #ReplaceTheKB competition last night about the play of Kevin Bieksa. Bieksa, I'm sure you're all aware, is a team-low minus-9, has yet to score a goal, and has been on the ice for 21 goals against so far through just 14 games.
May I suggest to you that Bieksa is going through an unlucky streak. This is something that we can quantify with something called PDO. What is PDO? Follow me after the jump.
The Rome-Sulzer conundrum
Cam Charron
November 02 2011 02:26PM
-"The finger biting thing is getting kinda old already, guys"
It's only usually when he's in the lineup that Aaron Rome becomes the de-facto "topique du jour" and not when he's sitting out injured as a potentially replacement for whomever the eighth defenseman is right now.
For readers that are fans of visiting teams, while the Vancouver Canucks may not have a lot of high-end defensemen, they have some depth: Alexander Sulzer, Andrew Alberts, Keith Ballard, and even Chris Tanev, who finds himself in Chicago for some reason, are going to be joined by Aaron Rome in the very near future.
Cody Hodgson: Two-way force?
Cam Charron
November 02 2011 10:41AM
"That's Hod-son. The 'G' is silent."
Given the collective amount of odd Selke Trophy nominees that have popped up over the last 33 years or so, one would think that there's no good way to gauge defensive play in the NHL. I believe my old theory on this was whether or not a guy was liked, and if he was, he was also a guy who succeeded on defense (so long as he had a positive +/- on a good defensive team).
Defense, particularly for forwards, is more than back-checking and shot-blocking, but those are the visible talents that media and fans get to see night-in and night-out. With the advent of advanced micro-statistics, however, we can, for the most part, tell who was on the ice for each on-ice event. Not just goals, as is traditional, but shots, missed shots, blocked shots, faceoffs, hits, giveaways, takeaways, penalties, and, in some cases, scoring chances.
