Can leave the NHL for RussiaItalics, interpretation and bold added by me.
NHL-proffset Marcus Nilson to be the next American in KHL.
He is practicing right now with CSKA Moscow and the team's website claims that Nilson is ready for the club.
Marcus Nilson, 30, is currently on a visit to Russia. He wants to test life in Russia and see if the country is something for him to continue hockeykarriären in.
But the situation is complex.
He belong to the Calgary Flames and has a year left on the contract. But the Flames will not bring any significant dose of an ice age (wont get much ice time as a Flame? - ed) to the Nilson next season and the break has been on the road a long time.
CSKA Moscow, which Nilson trained with, and Lokomotiv Jaroslav, Johan Åkerman club, has appeared as potential employers for Nilson.
According to CSKA's home page has now Nilson decided to CSKA.
There he will be American number three since Mikael Wahlberg and Mika Hannula already exist in the classic armeklubben, who won 32 championships in the old Soviet Union.
I'm no CBA expert, but I assume that if Nilson decides to not report to training camp, the Flames can suspend his contract (and cap-hit) for the year. That shaves $1M for the approximate 3M the Flames need to dump prior to October 9, so good news.
*ITEM! The Flames have officially released their prospect camp schedule. Included are on-ice practice sessions as well as the prospect tourny between the Flames, Oilers and Canucks futures:
The first on-ice session for the prospects is scheduled for Saturday, September 13th beginning at 10:00 am. A total of 25 players will be participating in the prospects camp (3 goalies, 8 defensemen and 14 forwards). On Sunday, September 14th the Flames prospects will participate in an exhibition game against the Edmonton Oilers prospects in Camrose at 7:00 pm, followed by an exhibition game against the Vancouver Canucks prospects on Monday, September 15th also in Camrose at 7:00pm.
Twenty-five kids are expected to attend, including Backlund, Jonsson, Negrin, Nemisz, Wahl, Greentree and Irving. The two day "tournament" starts Sunday and takes place exclusively in Camrose, Alberta. I dont know what coverage - if any - the tourny will garner, so it's likely a "be there or be square" kind of thing for curious fans.
*Item! I've been playing with the stats over at hockey analysis, mainly the GF/GA with/against per player stuff I introduced in the Phaneuf post below. What most interested me was the effect Jarome Iginla had on scoring last year across teammates (and vice versa). First, the raw stuff:
Now, the differences:
I simply subtracted the teams GF/20 rate for each player with/without Iginla for the first table, and then did the same thing for Jarome himself (with/without each player) in the second table. Excluded were guys who played less than 100 minutes with him. I also converted the difference to /60 minutes (rather the /20 rate) in the second column because it renders the effect more visible.
Not surprisingly, everyone's GF rate went up when they were on the ice with Jarome (aside from Vandermeer - the caveat being that Jim played 1000 minutes away from Jarome, most of it outside the Flames. His number is therefore meaningless, really). Notables are Phaneuf (2.1 GF/60), Aucoin (3.219 GF/60), Regehr (2.02 GF/60) and Lombardi (1.857 GF/60). Of course, the effect is so big in part because of the huge drop-off of scoring talent when Iginla's line left the ice. You'd go from Jarome to Conroy's shut-down line playing tough minutes to Lombardi trying to keep his head above water with Yelle, Nystrom or Moss and then the graceless chaos of Primeau, Godard, Smith et al. on the 4th line.
Iginla, being who he is, wasn't as effected by his teammates. Only Phaneuf (+0.738), Tanguay (+0.873), Aucoin (+1.371) and Sarich (-1.776) seemed to exert any sort of real influence (again, ignore Vandermeer's number).
Take from that what you will. I think of this stuff more as a curiosity than instructive at this point.
*ITEM! Desjardins has finally released his ES goaltending stats from 07/08. His analysis - which compares actual results to "expected" results based on the number and quality of shots faced - shows that Kipper marginally outperformed his expected SV of .910 and GAA of 2.40 last year (actual - .914 SV% and 2.29 GAA). That's not bad, but it's certainly not in the elite realm of, say, Henrik Lundqvist, JS Giguere or Martin Broduer, all of whom vastly bettered their expected stats.
In fact, Kipper was a middle of the pack goaltender by this metric last season, coming in below "lesser" guys like Khabibulin, Price, Labarbera, Legace, Biron, Gerber (!!), Osgood and Theodore.
For a cap hit of 5.83M, Kipper *has* to be better this year. Yes, Im saying it again.
(aside - look at how kind Minnesota is to it's goaltenders: Backstrom's .918 SV% and 2.21 GAA were actually nominally below his expected figures of .919 and 2.20. Lemaire runs a tight ship.)
(aside #2 - there's Kolzig and Smith side by side at the bottom of the list. Poor, poor Tampa Bay).
