Finals forecast

It's down to the rematch I see.

Both excellent teams this year, with Pittsburgh being a lot closer than they were previously. They don't have Hossa, but the whole club has improved leaps and bounds under Bylsma. If the puck bounces right or if the injuries favor them, they could be on the winning side this time.

That said, I still prefer Detroit. They have superior depth and have looked basically untouchable through the entire post season. Assuming Dastyuk and Lidstrom aren't out long term, I think they take it in 7.

Is there a more spoiled fan base in all sports than Red Wings supporters? I honestly don't think so.

Anything you can do, I can do better...

Apparently, the same day the Flames will officially announce the firing of re-tread Mike Keenan, the Edmonton Oilers will be announcing hiring of re-tread Pat Quinn. I've never personally thought much of as Quinn as a coach, so this is good news - both because he's now working for the Edmonton and it means he won't be working for Calgary.

Maybe he's a good presence in the dressing room

Mirtle is reporting that the Canadiens have allegedly offered Alexei Kovalev a one year, $6M contract to stay in MTL.

Just in case you didn't know, Kovalev will turn 37 in February and settled right back into his 65 point career normal pace this season after some percentages and bounces on the PP made him seem like a demi-god in 07/08. He didn't even top 2.00 ESP/60 this year and his corsi was a negative one (in fact, marginally worse than Plekanec, Lang, Higgins, Koivu, Latendresse and Andrei Kostitsyn). He was decent again with the man advantage (5.25 PPP/60) but not so mind-blowingly good that it in any way validates 6 large. He led Montreal in points but probably only he played a bunch while Lang, Koivu and Tanguay missed huge chunks of time to injury.

In short, Gainey is either truly desperate or...well, I'm not sure how else to explain this offer. Personally, I don't even know if I'd pay Kovalev half that amount.

Is it safe?

So apparently Pierre McGuire is a finalist for the Wild GM position. If he lands the job, does anyone else picture his entry discussions with players playing out like the infamous Marathon Man scene:

McGuire: "Do you get it?"
Player: "Get what?"
McGuire: "Do you get it?"
Player: "I don't now what you mean."
McGuire: "Do you JUST get IT?"
Player: "I can't tell you if I get it until you tell me what 'it' is."
McGuire: "Do you get it?"
Player: "Yes, yes I get it completely."
McGuire: *quietly* "Do you get it?"
Player: "No. I guess I don't really get it at all."
McGuire: *reaches for sharp torture implements*

UPDATE - Damn. Apparently it's going to be Chuck Fletcher.

Question for regular readers of this space...

...is Richard Pollock cribbing me or do we just think really, really similarly? Read the linked article and then take a gander at some of my old stuff.

Post journalism, revisited

Being involved as I am in "new media", I'm captivated by the changes and upheavals going on in the MSM and classic journalism. A few months ago, I shared a lengthy dissertation on the subject by Kevin Carson.

In a similar vein, here's a recent op-ed piece by Professor Robert Picard on what's killing the old guard:

To comprehend journalistic value creation, we need to focus on the benefits it provides. Journalism creates functional, emotional, and self-expressive benefits for consumers. Functional benefits include providing useful information and ideas...

These benefits used to produce significant economic value. Not today. That's because producers and providers have less control over the communication space than ever before. In the past, the difficulty and cost of operation, publication, and distribution severely limited the number of content suppliers. This scarcity raised the economic value of content. That additional value is gone today because a far wider range of sources of news and information exist.

The primary value that is created today comes from the basic underlying value of the labor of journalists. Unfortunately, that value is now near zero.

...

Today, ordinary adults can observe and report news, gather expert knowledge, determine significance, add audio, photography, and video components, and publish this content far and wide (or at least to their social network) with ease. And much of this is done for no pay.

...

Unfortunately, journalistic labor has become commoditized. Most journalists share the same skills sets and the same approaches to stories, seek out the same sources, ask similar questions, and produce relatively similar stories[...]Across the news industry, processes and procedures for news gathering are guided by standardized news values, producing standardized stories in standardized formats that are presented in standardized styles. The result is extraordinary sameness and minimal differentiation.

With this stuff in mind, take gander at Robin Brownlee's defense of Darren Dreger today over at Flamesnation. All of his points about protecting sources, the fluidity of deals in the NHL and the need to present information "now" in order to feed demand and avoid being scooped are all probably fair given the landscape these guys operate in. Which is often why I find so little value in what is produced via this method. I think the criticism of Dreger's fluff piece and Brownlee's resultant protestations are probably both simultaneously valid. '"N" is the best we can do under "X", "Y" and "Z" conditions' doesn't change the fact that "N" (to my mind, at least) is pap. "You're doing it wrong" is my response, even if I'm somewhat sympathetic to the circumstances.

There's a push by the overlords at my other place to get accreditation for the various contracted bloggers. While I wish them well in their endeavors, the possibility holds absolutely no interest for me whatsoever.

Round 3

Im a bit late and my predictions thus far have been *ahem* a little off, but why watch the post season if you can't be wrong about who's going to win?

DET vs. CHI

Im nothing but impressed with the Blackhawks thus far. That said, they're playing the team they can only hope they grow into. Detroit has looked every bit the Stanley Cup champion in these play-offs and I fully expect them to make the finals again. CHI has the upper hand in net, but so did CBJ and ANA.

Wings in 6.

PIT vs. CAR

The Canes have really messed up my predictions this year. I thought they were a better team than they showed during the regular season (their percentages were crap for a long time) but I honestly don't know how they've gotten to this point.

The Penguins on the other hand beat the crap out of the Capitals, which is no small feat. The turn around under Bylsma is a real one, making the Pens a legit contender.

Pits in 7.

Whatever the outcome, I expect whoever comes out of the West to beat whoever comes out of the east this year; neither EC club has the sort of forward or defensive depth boasted by Chicago or Detroit. It'll take a run of injuries or a great run of bounces to deliver the cup to the East this season methinks.

Evidence mounts

Last summer I wrote a little piece on the value of drafting goaltenders. I was less sure of my conclusions then, but I've become more confident of my position as time has passed. The support the analysis has received from a number of people I consider bright hasn't hurt either.

On that note, Richard Pollock published a piece at Puck Prospectus today that echoes my thoughts on the matter pretty closely:

Half the netminders who were considered their team’s starters in the NHL this season were drafted in rounds many consider to be a crapshoot. In fact, five goalies were drafted in the eighth and ninth rounds (rounds which do not even exist anymore). So, in effect, there are as many goalies starting in the NHL that were drafted in the first round, as there are goalies who (by today’s draft rules) wouldn’t have been drafted at all (a.k.a.—undrafted free agents).

Actually, three goalies who were not even drafted (Backstrom, Roloson and Hiller) had dramatic effects on their team’s play to close this past season. Backstrom was nominated for the Vezina Trophy, Dwayne Roloson played almost every game for the Oilers in the second half of the season and Jonas Hiller has continued his strong regular season play with tremendous playoff play.

...

Considering the cost, or lack thereof, of making such a selection, I wouldn’t be surprised to see teams look for diamonds in the rough more often than drafting a goaltender with a first round selection.

Next time your team is considering drafting a goaltender in the first round, maybe they should instead try to sign Swedish free agent netminder Jonas Gustavsson.

Sounds about right.

Tracking Kevin Lalande

Lost amidst the other, far more immediately relevant deals this past deadline day was a fairly innocuous swap between the Calgary Flames and the Columbus Blue Jackets: Calgary moved Kevin Lalande for a 4th round draft pick. At the time, I was surprised the Flames managed to get anything as high as a 4th rounder for what was a at the time an ECHL goalie who had been previously drafted in the 5th round. Seemed like a steal, even when the return was so modest.

The Blue Jackets installed Lalande as their AHL starter (since their previous starter and back-up were up in the NHL at the time) and he promptly won 3 straight games and was named AHL player of the week. Since then, I've kept a closer eye on the former Flames property and am starting to come to the shakey conclusion that Calgary may have traded away their best goaltending prospect.

First, some background. Lalande spent 3 seasons in the OHL with the Bellville Bulls. His SV% over those three years was consistently good to excellent: .920, .916 and .919. He finished 4th, 3rd, and 3rd in the OHL in terms of SV% in each of those years respectively. In 04/05, his rookie season, his .920 SV% was the best of any freshman puck stopper in the league. He was named to the all-star team in 05/06.

His first few games as a pro didn't go so well for Kevin and may be the reason he was relegated to a third stringer by the organization. In 7 games for Quad Cities, he won just twice and stopped just 88.8% of the pucks he saw. That was last year, most of which he spent in the ECHL with the Las Vegas Wranglers, where he put up far more respectable numbers over a longer period (.932 SV% in 27 games played). Since then, Lalande has managed sparkling percentages where ever he's played: ECHL (.925 SV%), Quad Cities (.929 SV%) and Syracuse (.927 SV%).

What's significant is, as far as I can tell, neither the QC Flames nor SYR Crunch were good teams this season. The former placed 5th in the West Division and had a GD of -4. The latter were 5th in the North Division and actually worse defensively, allowing 10 more goals against than the Flames and had a nominally worse GD (-12). So it's not like he was playing behind juggernauts that were limiting the opposition to perimeter shots and winning each game by 4.

In addition, Lalande outperformed all his peers this season. No other Flames 'tender posted an equal or better SV% than Lalande. Ditto Syracuse, aside from Calder shoe-in Steve Mason who played a mere 3 games in the minors before being called up to save the Blue Jackets season.

Now, to some degree, I'm reading tea leaves here: Lalande hasn't even seen 1000 shots at the AHL at this point in his career, so we're talking small sample, potential for misleading results, yadda yadda yadda. Still, looking at Lalande's results both past and present shows a lot of arrows pointing in the right direction. And while Im not big on the value of goalie prospects in the first place, I find it's generally a good rule to try to keep the best ones around. Of course, maybe he's just a really, really good Junior/ECHL/AHL goalie and little else. Something to keep an eye on, anyways.