Grew up watching and cheering for the Montreal Canadians with my Dad. Although, occasionally, I'd cheer for the Bruins or Nodiques just to piss him off. When Roy got "screwed" into staying in a game he didn't want to play anymore, I followed him to the Avs. I've been an Avs fan since. Four sentences. Bham.

I also gotta side with Ender on the whole stats debate. They're never really a "true" reflection of performance...after all, 95% of all statistics are false, including this one.

Anyhow, I'm actually at work right now, hence the shortness of this post (and the earliness), but I just needed a breather. Later all.

I may even review "Postal" later...

By the way, the site seems to work fairly well (if not at Ff standards) with Google Chrome. I don't mind it so far, it's wicked fast, and has a few neat features. I don't think I'll switch of Firefox yet though. Chrome may be faster, but it's missing a few key features for me...multiple search engines (search box), a bit more customization would be nice too. Maybe once it gets on it's feet a bit more...who knows...

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Former Oiler Jarret Stoll signs with the LA Kings for a buttload of money. To quote Ender on this:

LA is crazy

Pretty much. I mean, are they expecting him to be 2006-vintage Shawn Horcoff, scoring 20+ while holding off the NHL's best and brightest? If not, who the hell is going to do the checking on this team? Fine, Stoli got murdered at it last year, but look at the Kings' depth. Who else would they turn to, if they gave Stoli the cherry minutes needed to put up $3.6M worth of goals?

I guess it's another year of Jason LaBarbera as tragic hero, like Mathieu Garon before him. Poor Kings fans.

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While I hate to steal Ender's thunder, especially since I have my own thoughts on the matter, this post has been in the makings since Jonathan first broke out the hockey cards to inspire some late-August postings, and Robert at EotP's post on his father and Jean Beliveau gave me the excuse to tell my own hockey "origin story".

Edit (15:37): After noting the length, I decided to move this into a separate article.

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I was going to come in here and bitch about other software (namely Photoshop and Illustrator), but to be honest, I don’t think that it’s worth it. If you want the power and freedom that you can get with one or the other, you have no right to complain.

Instead, I’d like to write a different rant. I hate stats.

I have a feeling that most of the hockey bloggers out there (Watch out! there’s another stat!) put numbers together and call them stats without really looking to see whether or not they say a) anything at all, or b) what they want them to say. Let’s face it, anyone can pull numbers proving that their team is better than the other team - if you ignore enough variables.

And hockey is a game of variables. Nearly 20 players hit the ice each night, and if they’re at all like me, sometimes they’re alert and focused and sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re fighting a bit of a virus, and sometimes they didn’t sleep well the night before because of their newborn child. Sometimes they just had the best day of their lives, and sometimes they just had the worst.

Yes, you can argue that these should even out over a career, and yes, these things should be more stable as a career goes on. The issue is that from game to game, it does make a difference. Let’s say Hemsky has a horrible day. Against which team is that going to show up more, Detroit or LA? Let’s say that he has a great day. Who is that going to show up better against, Dallas or Phoenix?

In my opinion, anyone claiming to use stats to be unbiased, rather than just blatantly using stats to try to back up their opinion to make a more convincing-looking argument does not understand statistics, and I’m ok throwing their opinion right out the window.

In the Northwest last year, Calgary was a team held together by Tanguay and Iginla, with nothing else of note. Vancouver was held together by Luongo, with their first line potting a goal now and again. Minnesota is a defensive machine, built as a team and won the division. Colorado overpaid for Smytty, and while good offensively couldn’t deal with the injuries.

This year, Calgary has Iginla, and nothing else of note (ok, ok, Cammalleri). Vancouver has lost 2 or 3 top 6ers, and added nothing. Minnesota will continue being a team machine, so player changes won’t likely affect things. Colorado has laughable goaltending, but their offense is still one of the best in the division.

If all else were equal in the conference (no inter-conference trades, which, stats-mongers isn’t true, and even changes in conference or in goalies being shot at can drastically alter shooting percentage), At first glance I’d see both Calgary and Vancouver bailing, and Colorado praying for a goalie hot streak. Minnesota should be fine though.

Which brings us to Edmonton. Last year they were a decent team on paper, but couldn’t put it together. They brought a sports psychologist in, everyone got injured, and they were on with a bunch of people younger than me leading the way. I personally assume the big change wasn’t the injuries, but rather it just took that long for the counseling to really set in. That and Pisani and Garon. I’m not going to talk about Pisani because people have done that to death, but I will talk about Garon tomorrow. See, I’m a goalie, and since most people seem to be afraid to talk about goalies, I guess I’m the go-to guy.

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