The Inside Scoop as a marketing slogan

I was listening to the Fan960 today (local sports radio) and heard an ad for the stations "Flames Zone" featuring blogs by Rob Kerr and Mike Rogers. The pitch was something to the effect of "they spend almost every day with the players and can give you the inside information the other guys just can't." (paraphrased)

I, being both one of the disparaged "other guys" and a potential consumer of such valuable "inside info" (tm), decided to check out the Flames Zone.

First, Kerr's blog -

Every entry is a gameday post of some sort. Here's an excerpt from the latest one:

Flames now find themselves in a tough spot with Vancouver winning last night the schedule really does line up against the local hockey heroes, for no other reason then the Canucks have 2 games left against Colorado. The Avalanche are beaten up and demoralized and are losing by at least 3 goals in games recently. The Flames need to focus on trying to win out if they want top in the Northwest.

...

If you didn’t see live, I didn’t either, Andre Roy was up to his usual high jinks after the game on Saturday. During Hockey Night in Canada’s post game show, they were interviewing Ollie Jokinen when in the back ground a pair of legs appeared out of the Flames door.

They're all pretty much like that. Sometimes he posts something he sees in practice (like the potential line combos).

Err...okay. Maybe Rogers has the valuable inside dope for us?

The Flames outplayed, outhit, and outshot the Sharks tonight but fell 2-1 to the visitors. It’s easy to say the Flames should have won the game, but the bottom line is they didn’t. The game of hockey is about results and the Flames were the losers in this one. The talk will be about how well they played, and rightly so, but they did not produce enough offence to win and even though they outchanced San Jose, they fell short. Offensively, they got the shots, but were unable to get rebound chances because of the strong play of the Sharks in front of Evgeni Nabokov, and also because the Flames did not battle hard enough for loose pucks.

The Flames lost because they didn't win. They didn't win because the game of hockey is about results...and the result was, the Flames lost. Because they didn't score more goals than SJS. etc. Also - battling hard is good.

Hmmm...not much here either Im afraid. Especially not in terms of interesting or informative data yielded via "day-to-day access to the players".

I won't go much further, because I don't actually want to beat these guys up too much. They're radio personalities, after all, and while I don't always agree with either Kerr or Rogers, they are clearly dedicated, hard-working and pretty capable at what they do (qua radio guys at least). Kerr in particular strikes me as a driven and passionate guy who is also pretty knowledgeable.

It annoys me as a consumer, however, when I'm promised inside access and instead given bland generalities. It especially annoys me as a blogger when I'm derided as not delivering value relative to these "connected" media guys when this is the pablum that they serve up. Sure, maybe Kerr and Rogers aren't writers and maybe they save the best content for when they're on air - fair enough. But maybe they shouldn't be, you know, blogging.

Propaganda

On Saturday night the Calgary Flames defeated the Minnesota Wild, allowing them to remain in the lead for the Northwest division over the surging Vancouver Canucks.

No thanks to the boldly incompetent Eric Furlatt, however, whose baffling call washed out a perfectly legitimate Olli Jokinen power play goal. The official justification was "player in the crease", even though that sort of standard hasn't been enforced in the league since the controversial Hull-toe-in-the-paint Stanley Cup game winner way back when.

If you thought that would be the height of the outrage, think again. Eric Francis has an article in this morning's Sun detailing Stephen Walkom's (Furlatt's boss) reaction to the call:

"It was a tough call and a ballsy call, but it was the right call -- a great call," an emphatic Walkom told the Sun. "Our guys are the first to step up if they do make a mistake. I think Mick McGeough showed that years ago. But if they haven't made an error, they shouldn't be chastised for it."

A couple of things here:

1.) It wasn't a tough call in the least. Anyone with a single functioning eye and working knowledge of the game saw that it was the wrong call, immediately.

2.) It's interesting that Walkom brings up McGeough here, since he was another Jackass who went around making obviously terrible calls on potentially pivotal plays. Of course, the league never disciplined him either, instead allowing him to walk gracefully into the sunset of retirement.

3.) Either Furlatt made an error or the league has been enforcing a totally different standard for all the other games played this year (and every year for the better part of the last decade). Which is it?

"If you take a look at overhead, he's actually standing in the blue. That's what Eric sees," said Walkom, who reviewed the goal in slow motion that night.

"Even though at the time of the goal he's not bumping him, if the goalie can't do his job, it's no goal. There was incidental contact and the goalie was distracted and unable to get set for the shot. You can't visually interfere (!) while the goalie is doing his job in the blue paint."

Really Stephen? Let's take a look at the overhead as you suggest:



And, a closer look at the "controversial" incident:



Firstly, we can safely call "Bullshit" on Walkom's first two assertions that there was "incidental contact" and the goalie was "unable to get set for the shot". Take another look: Glencross isn't "standing in the blue" and he never even brushes Backstrom. Secondly, what the FUCK is Walkom blathering about? "Can't visually interfere..."? You mean, screen? Screening the goalie? That's illegal in hockey Stephen? That's news to me. Hear that, Holmstrom? Time to retire I guess. I wonder how many "illegal" goals have been scored this season according to this suddenly applicable criteria?

Walkom cited rule 69.3 which states: "If an attacking player establishes a significant position within the goal crease, so as to obstruct the goalkeeper's vision and impair his ability to defend his goal, and a goal is scored, the goal will be disallowed."

You mean, kinda like this? -



This was Detroit's tying goal in the final seconds of the game a few weeks back. Notice the foot in the crease, impeding Kipper's movement. It obviously stood up, without protestation.

Now, I'm not crying conspiracy and I don't want to beat a dead horse. I would have gladly let this incident pass had Walkom not come out to praise what was obviously a total fuck-up by Furlatt. Defending the indefensible is one thing - but trumpeting it as exemplary is, well...despicable. Either Walkolm is totally incompetent himself, or he thinks the players and fans around the league are as credulous as 5 year olds. I'm not sure which is worse.

What's perhaps more distressing is the suggestion of a culture within the NHL's officiating where mistakes and ineptitude are not only ignored but reinforced as proper. As if this league doesn't have enough problems already.

*Thanks to those posters here for the valuable animated GIFs.

Items of interest

- I have a gamethread up at SBN. I also penned a short article on Jamie Lundmark today.

- Calgary in Pittsburgh tonight. The Pens are one of those teams you can crush or that can crush you depending on how Crosby/Malkin play (and how the team handles them). They've been fairly decent recently (Calgary hasn't) so it'll be interesting to see how things go.

- Remember when the much hyped match-up between these two squads was Crosby versus Phaneuf? That seems a long time ago suddenly because it seems like gross mismatch currently.

- I'll be liveblogging the action for the Score tonight. Please drop by if you're free.

New Numbers - Seminal work

Due to some excellent work by the more math-inclined bloggers out there, new metrics such as CORSI and on-ice SV/SH% have become very important in the way I think about and analyze the game. Unfortunately, the information about these various new measures and the assumptions behind them hasn't been collated in a single place yet (as far as I know), so, unless you've been able to follow the various discussions across a number of different blogs over the last 12 months, you might not have the whole picture.

As such, I've decided to track down the most influential posts as a reference for those with questions, complaints, comments, etc.

- Zone time, Corsi and Correlation to Winning by Vic Ferrari.

- Winning and Losing you games by Vic Ferrari (individual players contributions to corsi and SV%).

- On-ice Save Percentages By Mudcrutch.

- PDO Numbers By Mudcrutch.

- Outshooting By Mudcrutch.

- Even Strength Shooting Percentage By JLikens.

There's lots of reading there and some fairly in depth math, but I think this body of work provides the basis for my assumptions about variation, randomness, percentages and the value of possession and outshooting in the NHL.

If I've missed any other seminal posts or articles, please let me know and I'll add it to the list.

Gameday Notes and such

- Flames can distance themselves from the charging Canucks tonight, but they'll have to do it against what will no doubt be a very pissed off Red Wings team tonight. Holmstrom is out but Hossa is back. With Calgary's goaltending and PK faltering, this is obviously not an ideal opponent.

- I have a piece up about the Vandermeer vs. Pardy thing over at Flamesnation. Here's my SBN gamethread as well.

- If you aren't reading Copper & Blue and Gospel of Hockey...you should be.

- It looks more and more like the Flames will be facing the BJ's in the first round. That sucks. Since calling up Steve Mason on Nov. 5, they've gone 34-22-4. That's about a 46 win season over a full year. Since adding Antoine Vermette at the trade deadline they've lost just twice. This is not a team I want to face right off the bat.

Ranked even strength production by forwards

I put together this list of NHL forwards, ranked by this season's ESP/60 rate. I removed anyone who hadn't played at least 30 games and added eah players associated corsi rate/60, just for a bit of context. I thought it was kind of interesting, so I figured I'd share it. Keep in mind, this is just for the current season.



The full list can also be found here. All numbers via Behindthenet.ca.

PS - I "marked" a few of the notable Flames players in red.

Numbers rant

I've been dubbed a "stathead" around the ol' sphere a lot recently. Some use the term descriptively, others as a pejorative. I would like to say for the record, however, that I don't find all stats particularly powerful or meaningful. In fact, I downright hate some of them.

Stats I dislike:

Goalie wins.

My new pet peeve. I've said this before and I'm sure I'll have to say it again: goalies don't win games. Teams win games. True, netminders perform a vital function and a good goalie can improve a club's chances of winning, but, in the end, someone has to score goals in order for a team to win the game. And goalies don't score. They don't draw penalties. They don't do a lot of the things that lead to goals for or against.

It's a good rule of thumb that a goaltender with a lot of wins is probably pretty good. All other things being equal, that's true. Problem is, things aren't always equal. Sometimes a great goalie plays for a lousy team. Sometimes a lousy goalie plays behind a great team. In those cases, wins are an extremely poor barometer of the goalie's efficacy. In fact, in both cases the win stat is probably grossly misrepresenting the guy in question.

In the end, SV% is far more relevant stat when assessing goaltenders, because the rate at which a goalie stops the puck is the only contribution he makes to a team's wins/losses. Anyone claiming that "wins" is a more important stat than "SV%" is inverting cause and effect.

Plus/Minus

I actually don't dislike plus/minus as much as most people these days, but I can still admit that it's a flawed stat - mainly because it's sullied by such things as short handed and empty net goals. Parsing situations and counting events makes plus/minus more powerful, as does considering it in context of a team effects (such as quality of competition, quality of opposition and ES SV%). Naked plus/minus absent of these qualifiers can be fairly misleading, however.

"RTSS" stats.

Take-aways, give-aways and hits are three of the most useless categories in the league, because no one seems to agree on what any of these things is. Different arenas count each thing differently and I have yet to see any rational criteria used to judge each of them. The numbers are almost totally useless therefore.

All that said, there are some stats I'd like to see:

Puck battle differential.

I'd really like to see +/- rate for winning/losing puck battles. I think it's a skill that is almost essential in the NHL and it would be interesting to see how a puck battle rates would correlate with wins/GD etc. In addition, it strikes me as something that is potentially trackable, as long as the defintion of "puck battle" and what constitutes a "win" or "loss" is properly defined and observed.

PP/PK temporal efficiency.

Right now, PP and PK rates are based on "opportunities" and "times shorthanded". Clearly, however, not all instances of special teams are created equal: some last 5 minutes. Other last 10 seconds. For example, if Detroit scores a goal during a 5 minute major, they are "1 for 1". If, on the other hand, the Flames have a 10 second PP due to over-lapping minors and they fail to convert, they're "0 for 1". That's fairly ridiculous. A PP scoring rate (or PK success rate) in terms of goals/time unit would probably be a lot more revealing and powerful, especially if it was parsed by situation (one man advantage, two man advantage).

This and that

- To continue in the same vein as "Fallacies abound" below, Jasper over at the excellent Capitals blog Jaspers Rink is a little exasperated with Alexander Ovechkin recently:

Since authoring "The Sequel" on February 18, Alex Ovechkin has racked up six goals and seven assists in a dozen game, a 102-point pace over the course of a full season. He had a ten-game point-scoring streak snapped last night, and has been held off the scoresheet just two times in his past 22 outings.

Not bad.

But do you want to know what is bad? Over that 12-game span mentioned above, AO has a minus-8 rating (including back-to-back minus-2's in his last two games), and hasn't had a plus rating in a single game.

...

Alex Ovechkin, it seems, is bored. Bored enough to take shifts off.

...

In some ways, it's too bad AO isn't a little more motivated by individual accomplishments and accolades (he certainly doesn't have a second consecutive Hart Trophy locked up quite yet), because the team could use a more focused version of the Great Eight right now. And perhaps it's been a necessary break of sorts for him. But it's just about time for him to put the team back on his broad shoulders. It's time for the leader to lead.

Not focused? Bad leader? Bored? These all rang alarm bells in my head, so I looked at AO's ES numbers over the span in question:

+68 corsi, 9.4 SH%, .894 on-ice SV%, 6.8 on-ice SH% (!!), 96.2 PDO.

Ovechkin hasn't been bored recently. He's been unlucky. Theodore has been fairly awful in WAS the past little while (especially behind Ovie for whatever reason) and that on-ice SH% is way, way too low considering who Ovechkin is and who he plays with.

I don't blame Jasper for being annoyed and casting about for explanations - look at WAS ES SH% since Feb 18: 5%! I can't imagine how frustrating the last month or so must have been for Caps fans. But there's no way a club with that kind of personnel up front continues to shoot at 5% 5on5. I suspect Ovechkin's focus and leadership will improve once the percentages go up.

- I have a piece up over at Flames Nation on Calgary's potential first round opponent(s). My conclusion? Edmonton would be ideal...because they stink.

- Fun fact: Kevin Lalande went 3-0-0 of the CBJ farm team was named player of the week in the AHL. I have a link to the story over at SBN. Clearly he's trying to prove my assertion that a 4th round pick for a minor league goalie was an overpayment.

EDITED to add this link from the new Puck Prospectus (H/T Jonathan Willis). The piece is on a pervasive NHL-wide cowbell: size. Or, more accurately, the mistaken belief that BIG = GOOD -

This is clear evidence that size by itself is often considered an important factor by NHL teams when drafting players. It is far too common a problem to be explained by claiming that scouts saw something in each of these failed draft picks, and that they just didn't pan out. It is systematic and pervasive. Brian Gionta was also drafted in 1998, at #82 overall despite excellent scoring totals. His major problem was his height (5'7”). NHL teams show a definite preference for large players who don't play well over small player who do play well.

Iain Fyffe uses the 1998 Entry draft as a case study to prove his point, although wonders if this misconception is starting to fall away in the "modern" NHL thanks to the renewed emphasis on speed and skill in the wake of the obstruction crack down.

Blogging versus classic journalism revisited

Kevin Carson has a lengthy blog post here proclaiming the practice of blogging (or online journalism) as a superior emerging form relative to traditional reporting. Some excerpts:

The revolutionary significance of Internet journalism lies not in how it generates content, but in the use it makes of existing content. Bloggers make better use of the dead tree media's own content than the dead tree media itself does.

...nobody disputes that print journalism has an enormous army of reporters on the ground, far beyond the resources online journalism has at its direct disposal. But as Lincoln once said to General McClellan, “If you're not going to use that army, may I borrow it?”

...

Bloggers may well be unoriginal, in the sense that they only link to what's already out there rather than reporting new information. But they use what's out there in ways that most traditional newspapers refrain from doing. That is, they put it together. They quote a factual claim from one source, and then immediately provide a hyperlink to information that provides a factual context to the claim. They take bits and pieces of news from different sources, aggregate it, and draw conclusions as to its meaning.

This advantage of networked, online journalism—making better use of traditional journalism's content than traditional journalism itself does—is only one particular illustration of the more general advantage of networked, open-source culture. Open-source culture is about eliminating proprietary boundaries on content, and leaving anyone and everyone free to build on and improve it without regard to organizational boundaries. The main difference between Windows and Linux lies not in what the primary code-writers do, but in what user and developer communities can do with other people's code.

...

Mainstream journalism is heavily influenced by Walter Lippman's model of "professional objectivity," which in practice means the journalist pretends to be stupider than he really is. The journalist, in order to project an air of "neutrality," deliberately refrains both from drawing obvious conclusions from factual evidence, and from going beyond quotes from the spokemen for "both sides" to report factual evidence as to who's telling the truth. Fake "objectivity" means not drawing obvious conclusions from the facts, and pretending not to notice facts that reflect on the truth what one side or the other claims. Appealing independently to an objective factual realm, to present information that doesn't come from "either side," would itself be (according to the current institutional mindset) "taking sides." But to the extent that the "two sides" can't both be right at the same time, truth itself is "biased." There is no way to maintain a pose of neutrality except by avoiding independent recourse to the factual realm.

...

Rather than simply reporting "he said, she said," journalists should provide the information necessary to evaluate the truthfulness of the competing claims. And although most mainstream journalists don't do this, it's a major part of what blogs are all about. Bloggers do exactly what mainstream journalists should be doing, but aren't.

Carson's focus is political in the piece, but most of what he says applies to sports blogging as well. The excerpts above nicely summarize many of the reasons I began - and continue - to blog myself as well as consume a lot of blogger generated content on a daily basis. Im sure this isn't a terribly engaging issue for most, but if you have any interest at all in the ongoing argument between new and old media, make sure to check it out.

Fallacies abound

A couple of days ago, some local radio guys were talking about the recent struggles of the Boston Bruins. Various plausible sounding theories were suggested, among them "they have nothing to play for now" and "maybe they're buckling under the pressure". Yes, both of these things were proffered within minutes of each other, without recognition that they are obviously contradictory.

The funny thing is, I - as well as some others - have been waiting for the inevitable Bruin downswing for awhile. What Boston was doing earlier this year was pretty much unsustainable by the numbers. They were, as I like to say, riding the percentages and were bound to come back down to earth eventually. What we're doubtlessly seeing now is the inevitable correction.

I point this out because it struck me, listening to the FAN960 twist themselves into pretzels in an effort to diagnose the Bruins "ills", how fallacious "psychological" explanations of team success at the NHL level likely are. I began railing against this type of stuff awhile ago when people started using the "lack of leadership" meme as a kind of post hoc explanation of the team's relatively disappointing results. This can also happens with individual player assessments, where a lack of expected performance is explained away as some kind of innate mental flaw of the guy in question. Sometimes the guy just isn't that good and is a victim of unrealistic expectations. And sometimes he's a victim of the fundamental attribution error -

In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect) reflects our erroneous cognitive tendency to predominantly over-value dispositional, or personality-based, explanations (i.e., attributions or interpretations) for the observed behaviors of others, thus under-valuing or unacknowledging the potentiality of situational attributions or situational explanations for the behavioral motives of others. In other words, people predominantly presume that the actions of others are indicative of the "kind" of person they are, rather than the kind of situations that compels their behaviour.

People are human, so Im not totally discounting the possibility of idiosyncratic or psychological processes having some effect on a guys (or teams) performance. What we have to keep in mind when evaluating players in the NHL, however, is that these athletes are the best of the best in the world - and it takes more than just physical prowess to make the show. 99.9% of the players who have problems "playing through it" or "buckling under pressure" or "have a bad attitude towards hard work" have been weeded out at this point. Which means usually what we're doing when we apply these ready-made bromides to players/teams in the NHL is casting about for easy answers when the entity in question isn't meeting our (often) subjective expectations.

Link Policy

I've had a lot of emails recently asking me if I'd like to do a link exchange.

Folks, I don't do link exchanges. Not because I'm an arrogant dick or I think your blog/site sucks etc but because if I did exchange links with everyone who asked, I'd have a bloglist longer than an elephant phallus, rendering it cluttered and useless. I use my sidebar to read blogs that I know and like - if yours becomes one of those, a link will go up. If not, not. I would expect nothing less when it comes to linking to this space.

I don't get it

As the Flames tromp their sorry asses through the bucolic splendor of New Jersey this evening, I can't help but wonder why Brent Sutter will be watching the team from the opposition bench. Especially in light of this piece that appeared in the Calgary Herald today:

Brent Sutter sounds every bit the frustrated Alberta rancher lost in an urban jungle.

Homesick? You bet.

Thinking of walking away from his job as head coach of the New Jersey Devils to move back to his farm and family?

Also true.

"The hockey side, that part's been fun," the New Jersey Devils head coach says from his office on the west side of the Hudson River, across from the madness that is Manhattan.

"It's the other things. "It's hard to explain to anybody. My situation is somewhat different than a lot of other coaches in the NHL. I own a major junior team.

I own a ranch. I'm 2,800 miles from all that.

I have a family, and I'm 2,800 miles away from them."

Which begs the question - why, when the Darryl Sutter helmed Calgary Flames were looking for a coach, wasn't Brent Sutter here?

Let's provide some background. Brent Sutter is the owner, GM and former coach and President of the WHL's Red Deer Rebels. He's also the winning-est coach in the history of Canada's world Junior team (having never lost). He spent 7 years in the guts of the Western Hockey League, developing the kind of ass kickin', dirt chewin', farm boys that Darryl values so much. In fact, the two doubtlessly collaborated in choosing and then developing Dion Phaneuf into what he is today.

Brent was hired by the New Jersey Devils in the summer of '07. He coached them to a 46 win season in his first year and has guided the club to the top of the EC standings, despite lacking Martin Broduer for most of this season.

With all this in mind, some things strike me as unavoidably true:

1.) Brent Sutter is an excellent coach.
2.) Brent and Darryl Sutter share similar perspectives on hockey.
3.) Brent was available when the Flames were searching for a head coach (likely both before and after the failed Playfair experiment).

We also know that Darryl has no problems with surrounding himself with favorites and family. Duane Sutter was hired this past off-season as the Flames "Director of Player Personnel". So there's no cries of "Nepotism" to be avoided here. That ship has sailed.

I have no idea whether Brent could have done more or less with the Flames collection of players relative to Keenan the last two seasons. It's impossible to know, although given his success at every level, it's doubtful Sutter would have done worse. Either way, Im not openly condemning Keenan here or pining for an alternate universe where Brent was hired instead of Iron Mike. It's just that the fit is such a natural one, it makes me wonder why it never happened in the first place. Especially with Brent now openly considering resigning from the Devils and so he can return home.

Another Flames gameday - Canes Country

- Another day, another gameday thread at SBN. Thanks to those of you who stopped by and commented last night. To anyone who hasn't, you should give it a try - SBN's functionality makes commenting and following a gamethread really smooth and easy. I know, I know - signing up for an 'account' is a pain in the ass. It doesn't take very long though and once you're done, you're done. Then you can go visit Mirtle at From the Rink and tell him how wrong he is about everything.

- I'm back liveblogging for the score this evening. Here's the link if you want to following along there instead (as well).

- Has anyone else had problems clicking the red "stats" button below the game scores at NHL.com? I was having issues with both firefox and safari (nothing would happen when I clicked the button to see the extended stats, etc), but figured out a go-around: when you type in www.nhl.com/scores, your browser will re-direct you to www2.nhl.com/scores. Simply highlight the "2" in the www string in the address, delete it and press enter. Your browser should refresh at www.nhl.com/scores where the stats button is actually active.

Of course, I don't know if this has been an issue for anyone else. If not, please ignore my rambling.

Flames/Flyers gameday links

- I have a gamethread going up at SBN in a few minutes. In it, I discuss some of the Flyers strengths and weaknesses.

- Another piece appears over at Flames Nation, where I look at the new potential lines and match-ups. TLP's gameday post is there as well.

- Matt has a good couple of posts on the Jokinen trade (he's not a fan). Tom Benjamin weighs in here as well. While WI waxes poetic about Lombo's possible mental state after the deal. Seems the speedster was more popular than I thought.

XMP3 Contest winner is...

...Brent G! Who guessed Leopold outright. Congrats, Brent, and make sure to send me your details via email so I can ship all the fancy technological wonderfulness your way.

Thanks for playing everyone. It was interesting right up until the last day.

Deadline

- As I've done the last two years, I'll be following Jay Onraits hilarious blog on TSN. Recommended.

- My Flames coverage will appear elsewhere, as mentioned. That is, if Sutter ends up doing anything.

- First trade of the day is Antoine Vermette for Pascal Leclaire. Both players grossly underperfomed this season, so it seems a sensible swap. My thoughts? CBJ wins this trade. I have a feeling Leclaire had himself a "Raycroft rookie" year under Hitchcock's system last season and isn't any where near that good in actuality. And you know what I think medicore goalies are worth (nothing).

As for Vermette, he's been a 20 goal guy since he broke into the league, aside from this year. His SH% is 6.38%, whereas it was around 13% previously. He's almost guaranteed to rebound, especially if he lands on Nash's line.

- Oh god, Damien Cox is on TSN today. Coxbloc must be thrilled.

- Another day, another contribution to Cycle Like the Sedins. This time, James asked me what I'd o if I was Sutter at the deadline. Any regular reader of this space can probably guess my moves.

- Stuff is already starting to fly around. James Mirtle and Oilers/Flames Nation are both keeping track of all the moves being made.

Im surprised the Leafs claimed Gerber. I guess he's better than Curtis Joseph and Justin Pogge in terms of being a back-up.

- Dallas claims Morrison off of waivers. Hate to tell you this, Hull, but...Brendan Morrison sucks.

- How is it both Gerber and Morrison were claimed off of waivers, but not Miro Satan? That's craziness - he's by far the most useful player out of the 3.

- It's been said that Deadline day is "Christmas #2 in Canada". To be honest, I think I like today more than Christmas. Does that make me a bad person?

- Rumors are, the Flames have a deal in place for Jokinen: Lombo, Prust and a 1st rounder. Yikes.

- Good to see the EDM Oilers doing absolutely nothing. Actually, I would prefer they go into "buy" mode just to ensure future mediocrity.

- Lots of stuff has happened while I was away for lunch. Here's my quick takes on the trades that stood out:

- Guerin for a 5th round conditional? Really? I mean, the guy hasn't had a great season, but that's absolutely peanuts. Surely he should be worth more than Kevin Lalande? Speaking of which...

Sutter moved Lalande to CBJ for a 4th rounder. An ECHL goaltender for...well, anything is a steal, let alone a draft pick inside the top 4 rounds. I have no idea why Howson would do such a thing.

- Pahlsson to the Blackhawks makes all sort of sense for Chicago. They just got a lot better methinks, with a center who can play the tough minutes.

- The 3-way deal that saw EDM get O'Sullivan was shrewd move on the Oilers part. I think they got the best player in the deal, since Cole was having a lousy year and wasn't going to return anyways. Not sure why LAK gave up on O'Sullivan like that - I mean, Williams is a good player, but really, really, fragile.

- Biggest joke of the day? Derek Morris for three (!) roster players (Kalinin, Dawes and Prucha). Horrible overpayment for pending UFA Morris, who isn't all that great anyways. Sather screws the pooch again.

- How abut those Coyotes? They added Upshall, Kalinin, Dawes, Prucha, Lombardi and Prust today (and whatever they got back for Telqvist) and lost a back-up goalie, Derek Morris, Daniel Carcillo and 41 point-man Olli Jokinen. Now that's how to sell at the deadline.

- The biggest moves may be the ones that didn't happen - namely Bouwmeester stayed in Florida. That's a mistake in my opinion, but we'll see how it goes. If the Panthers lose in the first round and Jay bolts in the off-season...ouch.

Deadline gear-up link-o-rama - Updated

Tomorrow's the big day and the hockey blogosphere is aflutter with anticipation. Following is just a small sampling of some of the good stuff out there.

- My new SBN overlords have a nifty little Trade deadline hub which will aggregate all the deadline stories in the SBN universe as they appear. My Flames coverage tomorrow will appear there, while I will stick my general comments in this space.

I believe Flames Nation and Oilers Nation will be gearing up there coverage as well.

- Matt discusses the deadlines potential winners and losers.

- Lowetide looks at 10 questions facing the Oilers heading into tomorrow.

- Puck Daddy wonders if Pronger is headed back to St. Louis. I've never really understood all this "Pronger is available" talk given that he's signed to a decent contract through next season. Wyshynski rationalizes it thusly;

...Dumping salary can be more vital than holding the line on them. The Ducks have a summer of unprecedented potential player turnover ahead of them, and shedding the final year of Pronger for younger players and picks would help with the flexibility.

But I don't really buy that myself. Hell, the Ducks just added a small portion of salary via the Kunitz deal, plus they have over $7M needlessly invested in the crease (meaning they are much more "cutable" costs elsewhere). If anything, the Ducks should be looking to keep Pronger given their high potential turn-over, his at-or-below value contract and the fact that plugging the resultant hole he would leave in the roster would be a monumental task.

- Peripherally related, Kevin over at Barry Melrose Rocks takes James Duthie to task for dusting off the old "bloggers are loners in their mothers basement! So their (trade) discussions are worthless!" thing. I wonder how long this baseless smear will stick around? While I know a lot of bloggers that speculate on potential trades and such, there's only one that is famous for pulling stuff out of his ass and calling it a "rumor" (no link for him...you all know who Im talking about).

- Earl Sleek gives us an in-depth run-down of the Ducks situation. Only Montreal is close in terms of pending free agents, so this is likely to be one hell of an interesting deadline for Anaheim fans, especially since the club is battling for it's play-off life currently. His conclusion? Everyone is staying.

- Finally, Jaspers Rink take a long look at the Capitals prospects for moving...uh...prospects for some help.

Update - things are already getting interesting. Flames have plucked Nycholat off of waivers (meh), while Pittsburgh has dropped Miro Satan into the waiver pool. I know the dude's been a disappointment relative to expectations this season, but he hasn't exactly been useless. He's on pace to score more than 20 goals and his ES stats aren't exactly terrible. They aren't good, but they aren't terrible.

Is he a player of interest for Calgary? Could he shore up the forward depth with Bourque et al injured, or would he just be another "Bertuzzi" needing shelter in the top 6?

Whether the Flames are interested or not, I can't see Satan lasting the day on waivers.

- Also: check out the Forechecker's Mysterious NHL rumor Generator. Great stuff.

Assessing the trade fodder

Only two more days till what I'm sure will soon will be declared a National holiday in Canada: trade deadline day. Probably a good time to suss out the sellers, buyers and what's on the market.

Matt has the Standings up over at Battle of Alberta, which is a good place to start. While the final play-off spot is very much still in contention in the West, I think we can safely write-off NSH, STL, PHX and COL, all of whom would need the combination of a ungodly good run and a fall from grace by those above in order squeek in. So, they'll be sellers.

It's a little more clear cut in the East: anyone below PIT currently is looking towards next year. That list includes TOR, OTT, TBL, ATL and NYI.

Altogether, that's 9 obvious "sellers". Here's a list of their relevant trade pieces:

ATL
- Marty Reasoner, C (1M, UFA) - *bet you he goes to CBJ*
- Niclas Havelid, D (2.9M, UFA)
- Kari Lehtonen, G (3.0M, RFA)

COL
- Tyler Arnason *wretch*, C (1.675M, UFA)
- Ian Laperriere, C (1.15M, UFA)
- Jordan Leopold, D (1.5M, UFA)
- Andrew Raycroft *snicker*, G (800k, UFA)

NSH
- Steve Sullivan, RW (3.2M, UFA)
- Radek Bonk, C (1.475M, UFA)
- Greg DeVries, D (2.5M, UFA)
- Greg Zanon, D (725k, UFA)
- Ville Koistinen, D (700k, UFA)

NYI
- Bill Guerin, RW (4.5M, UFA)
- Doug Weight, C (4.3M, UFA)
- Mike Sillinger, C (2.2M, UFA)
- Andy Hilbert, C (675k, UFA)

OTT
- Mike Comrie, C (1.118M, UFA) *I'd laugh my ass off if they traded him*
- Chris Neil, RW (1.1M, UFA)
- Filip Kuba, D (3.0M, UFA)

PHX
- Steve Reinprecht, C (2.0M, UFA)
- Derek Morris, D (3.917, UFA)
- Olli Jokinen, C (5.25M, signed till 9/10)
- Ken Klee, D, (561k, UFA)

STL
- Keith Tkachuk, C/W (4.0M, UFA)
- Manny Legace, G (1.399M, UFA)

TBL
- Gary Roberts, LW (2.07M, UFA)
- Mark Recchi, RW (1.5M, UFA)
- Matt Pettinger, LW (468k, UFA)
- Marek Malik, D (1.156M, UFA)
- Cory Murphy, D (186k, UFA)

TOR
- Nik Antropov, C (2.05M, UFA)
- Dominic Moore, C (900k, UFA)
- Brad May, LW (310k, UFA)
- Curtis Joseph, G (700k, UFA)

34 players altogether, most of whom I figure will be in play on March 4. From a Flames perspective, I would guess Guerin, Leopold, Roberts, Recchi, Reinprecht, Sullivan and Zanon would all potentially be of interest. I included Jokinen here even though he's signed for one more season due to persistent rumors that he might be available at the deadline.

What this doesn't include, of course, is potential rentals or salary dumps from teams currently in the running. I'll add those in no particular order here:

- Scott Niedermayer, D
- Jay Bouwmeester, D
- Brendan Morrison, C
- Todd Marchant, C
- Steve Montador, D
- Patrice Bergeron, C
- Manny Fernandez, G
- Maxim Afinogenov, RW
- Tim Connolly, C
- Ales Kotalik, RW
- Teppo Numminen, D
- Todd Bertuzzi, RW (wishful thinking on my part)
- Cory Sarich, D
- Nikolai Khabibulin, G
- Christian Backman, D
- Darryl Sydor, D
- Mikael Samuelsson, RW
- Ty Conklin, G
- Erik Cole, LW
- Dwayne Roloson, G
- Karlis Skrastins, D
- Richard Zednik, D
- Craig Anderson, G
- Kyle Calder, LW
- Tom Preissing, D (on waivers today)
- Marian Gabork, RW
- Martin Skoula, D
- MA Bergeron, D
- Niklas Backstrom, G
- Alex Tanguay, LW
- Saku Koivu, C
- Alex Kovalev, RW
- Brian Gionta, RW
- John Madden, C
- Bobby Holik, C
- Scott Gomez, C
- Chris Drury, C
- Wade Redden, D
- Paul Mara, D
- Dmitri Kalinin, D
- Daniel Brier, C
- Mike Knuble, RW
- Martin Biron, G
- Miro Satan, RW
- Peter Sykora, RW
- Ruslan Fedotenko, LW
- Hal Gill, D
- Mike Grier, RW
- Matthias Ohlund, D
- Taylor Pyatt, LW
- Kyle Wellwood, C
- Michael Nylander, C

That's an additional 51 players, and the list isn't exhaustive. I left off guys like Mike Cammalleri who, despite being a pending UFA, are likely to be kept by their clubs for the stretch drive and play-off run. Obviously a lot of these guys won't actually be in play either and a lot of them will be pricier than just a mere pick or prospect.

All in all I think this pretty much comprises the GM's shopping list heading into the deadline. Anyone there catch your fancy? What would you be willing to move for him?

Tampa in Town

- I'll have a gamethread up around 3pm today so check it out. Im really digging some of the functionality at SBN so far.

- James O'Brien requested an "All Decade Team" from me this week. My picks were posted today over at Cycle Like Sedins.

- My weekly fantasy piece for rototimes.com should go live sometime this evening or tomorrow. This one is a "hot or not" tour through the Pacific division.

- The XMP3 contest will be ending with the trade deadline on Wed. If Sutter does indeed stand-pat, then I'll have to figure out another way to give the Satellite radio away.