Everything Else

Tell Your Statistics To Shut Up: The Analytics Debate Now

By 1316

Wednesday will kick off our ninth season doing this, and in that time it feels like we’ve gone from one side of the statistical debate to the other. I know we were one of the first to start using Corsi and zone starts and whatever else to try and get to the truth of what we were seeing. And now it feels like we spend a lot of time trying to convince people that yes, Mark Arcobello does indeed suck and stop trying to get us to believe otherwise.

When trying to explain this to my non-hockey inclined friends, I used to try and tell them that hockey was anywhere from five to ten years behind baseball in its statistical revolution. That seems pretty silly now, and there’s a big reason why. If only it were that close.

Everything Else

Wheel It Out Here, Carnac: C.I.’s Season Predictions

By 1517

Usually I do this myself, but this year the whole crew is chiming in so you can hang us all out to dry in April. Let’s kick this pig…

Hawks Point Total and finish in the division 

Cieslak – 104 points, 2nd

McClure – 102 points, 2nd (lose on ROW)

Feather – 110 points, 1st

Fearless Leader – 108 points, 1st

Leading Scorer 

Cieslak – Kane, 91pts

McClure – Garbage Dick, 90 points

Feather – Kane, EIGHTY-THREE

Fearless Leader – Kane, 89 pts

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Sitting With My Broken Glass – Around The NHL – Metropolitan Division

By 1232

The last stop on the TCI 2016-2017 World Tour is the Metro (no, not nearly this cool). The Metropolitan Division was home to both last year’s Cup champions and President’s Trophy winners, who are always the truer champions because an 82 game sample size is so much larger than four discrete seven game series. Here is a chart with proprietary, arbitrary, and made-up stats to prove that point by your own logic.

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But Then The Seasons Turned And The Darkness Came – Around the NHL – Atlantic Division

By 1352

ROR Escape

The mythical Flortheast, not quite a winged beast from Lord of the Rings, but an oddly cobbled together division that begins in the swamps of Florida and travels all the way up the ass crack of the continent to Ottawa, which I’m reliably informed is one giant IKEA that a couple hundred thousand people have never quite been able to escape from. Let’s barely learn about some hockey teams.

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I Hate Myself and Want to Die – Around the NHL – Pacific Division

By 1874

And so now we move west, young men and women to the hellhole that is known as the Pacific Division. Once the place where Vancouver collected 100 points by merely having a pulse, the division has seen a bit of a makeover since realignment. The Kings, Ducks and Sharks have all taken turns setting the coast on fire while Canada weeps. Where does this year leave us? Follow the jump, suckas.

Everything Else

Notes On The Cycle

By 1535

Just a few quick notes on tonight’s what-have-ya, contested mostly by guys who will be running a rink in Medicine Hat or the like in five years.

-I was most interested in watching Forsling and Kempny. Both showed composure on the puck, especially Kempny. It’s hard to get a read on him in particular when he’s still not facing the quality of players he’s going to in a couple weeks, but at least he showed a willingness to skate himself out of trouble and try and find a pass. Unfortunately for him, there were like two forwards on his team who could receive said pass cleanly.

As for Forsling, same thing but man is he small. Even if he’s willing he’s going to get crushed by NHL bodies. This is probably what will send him back to Sweden this year. There are small d-men around the league. Jared Spurgeon comes to mind. Toby Enstrom is another. Spurgeon is quite sturdy though, something of a fire hydrant. Enstrom is just really smart with great hands. Forsling has maybe two or three games to show he has the latter.

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Maybe They’re Lookin’ For Answers – C.I.’s Season Preview: Cleaning Up The Rest

By 1431

We’ve been through the biggest questions the Hawks face coming into this season. Next week we’ll spend tooling around the Central Division and Western Conference to see what the Hawks are up against. But for today, let’s try and clear up whatever we haven’t gotten to for the Hawks.

-The working theory for most of the summer, and until they actually show up in camp we have no reason to think any different, is that Marian Hossa is going to slide down to the third line to form some kind of checking line with Marcus Kruger and GTBD (goofus-to-be-determined). Quenneville mentioned it at the convention, Hossa and Kruger have talked about it at the World Cup. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire and all that.

On the surface, this seems like a pretty good idea. Hossa is slowing down, he still has defensive instincts matched by very few, Kruger does as well, and perhaps if they really wanted it to they could free up Toews to not have to keep battling the Kopitars, Seguins, Getzlafs, and whoever else’s of the world. That might free Toews to do more scoring, even if there’s just farmland runoff on his wings.

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Maybe They’re Lookin’ For Answers – C.I.’s Season Preview: Can Patrick Kane Repeat Last Year?

By 1396

Well, probably not. But these posts can’t be three words long.

It’s amazing what can happen for a player like Kane when he gets an actual line with which to play. After spending years with the likes of Michal Handzus and Andrew Shaw and Kris Versteeg or centering a line or whatever other jokers and punters the Hawks could drudge up rather than just playing him with Toews, Kane got Brad Richards two years ago and finally a center and other winger in Panarin and Anisimov. It resulted in an Art Ross and Hart Trophy.

And the Hawks needed all of it with Saad and Sharp gone, Hossa falling off, Toews not being able to produce a top line’s production all by himself, and basically no bottom six for most of the season. The problem for the Hawks is that they might find themselves in the same bind again this year. And this time, other teams are not going to be fooled by the names of Toews or Hossa and leave their best out against them instead of Kane’s line.