| UPCOMING GAMES |
| NO SCHEDULED GAMES |
|
LAST 10 GAMES
|
| 4/25 |
MTL 4 at WPG 2 |
Lost |
F |
| 4/23 |
WPG 3 at WSH 5 |
Lost |
F |
| 4/22 |
WPG 2 at BUF 1 |
Won |
F |
| 4/20 |
NYI 5 at WPG 4 |
Lost |
SO |
| 4/18 |
CAR 3 at WPG 4 |
Won |
OT |
| 4/16 |
TBL 3 at WPG 4 |
Won |
SO |
| 4/11 |
FLA 2 at WPG 7 |
Won |
F |
| 4/9 |
BUF 1 at WPG 4 |
Won |
F |
| 4/6 |
PHI 1 at WPG 4 |
Won |
F |
| 4/4 |
WPG 1 at MTL 4 |
Lost |
F |
| Won-6 Lost-3 OT-1 |
|
 Winnipeg Jets
News
Schedule
Roster
| What We Learned: Complaining about NHL officiating? Time to fine these sore losers (Puck Daddy) |
| Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.
No one is ever going to be totally happy with the ways in which the NHL's referees or officials make their decisions. We can all agree on that.
If there's a game in which neither team is whistled for a penalty, both will likely complain that the refs missed calls on the other. If there's a game in which both teams receive 10 power plays, both will complain that the referees were overly harsh in doling out discipline. No one is ever especially happy with calls that go in between those two extremes, either, because unless you win, you aren't happy. And sometimes, even when you do win, you aren't happy.
It's tough to know what, exactly, brought all this to a head in these playoffs. Alex Ovechkin complaining about a league-wide conspiracy in Game 6 after the end of Game 7; Jonathan Toews stamping his feet when his team got clobbered on home ice by its archrival; Sidney Crosby saying the league needs to institute video review for puck-over-the-glass calls; Jonathan Quick abusing officials because the Kings gave the Sharks a two-man advantage in overtime.
Doesn't it strike anyone as being a bit much?
No one likes to lose in October, let alone in the second round of the playoffs, and you might even say that the refs have made a bit of a spectacle of themselves in the last few games. The best thing a ref can do, the old saying goes, is not be noticeable, and things have admittedly gotten a bit out of hand in some instances.
But nonetheless, can you imagine the eye-rolling or outright mockery in Chicago if Henrik Zetterberg had said the same things Toews did after they got creamed in Game 1? Or the uproar if Ryan Callahan of the lionized New York Rangers had complained about a conspiracy to push the series longer? Or the furor if Joe Thornton had done what Quick did after the Sharks gave up a similar late-game 5-on-3 advantage that allowed the Kings to tie Game 1?
What it boils down to is being a sore loser. |
| Posted: 05/20/2013 |
| Lady Byng Finalists: Patrick Kane vs. Matt Moulson vs. Marty St. Louis (Puck Daddy) |
| The NHL announced the finalists for the Lady Byng Trophy on Thursday, as right wing Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks, left wing Matt Moulson of the New York Islanders and right wing Martin St. Louis of the Tampa Bay Lightning are up for the award given “to the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability” as voted on by members of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association.
This is the award given to the highest scorer with the fewest penalty minutes, or at least that’s the way it’s seemed for the last few seasons. As you all remember, defenseman Brian Campbell -- more on that in a second -- won the Lady Byng in 2011-12; alas, he had an elephantine 12 penalty minutes this season, so no repeat.
It’s a fairly worthless award, although Adam Proteau of The Hockey News made an interesting case on XM Radio the other day: That being a player who takes punishment but doesn’t take penalties in retaliation is a unique brand of toughness for an otherwise delicate award.
Of course, that speaks directly to why defenseman should be up for this award every season, and yet Campbell was the first D-man to win since 1954. But we digress …
Who wins the Byng this season? |
| Posted: 05/16/2013 |
| Eulogy: Remembering the 2012-13 Washington Capitals (Puck Daddy) |
| (Ed. Note: As the Stanley Cup Playoffs continue, we're bound to lose some friends along the journey. We've asked for these losers, gone but not forgotten, to be eulogized by the people who knew the teams best: The bloggers who hated them the most . Here is Puck Daddy’s own Ryan Lambert , fondly recalling the Washington Capitals . Again: This is a roast and you will be offended by it , so don't take it so seriously.)
We are gathered here today to mourn not only the loss of the Washington Capitals, but also the loss of their chances of reasonably competing for a Stanley Cup any time in even the relatively near future.
You tend to hear a lot of talk about how one team or another has a "window" in which they can reasonably win the Stanley Cup. San Jose, for example, has had its window open and close so many times — by the media's reckoning — that Doug Wilson finally installed a revolving door to save on energy.
Another team for whom we hear entirely too much about their "window" is the Washington Capitals.
But the thing about that is if it was open at all any more (and frankly, it probably wasn't), it was open in the way that smokers crack their window on the highway, and that horrible high-pitched sound of wind rushing in so loud that you can't hear the radio any more was the voice of a thousand Alex Ovechkin apologists who wanted nothing more than for that incredible back half of the season to once again be reality, rather than outlier.
Just as death is inevitable, so too was this result; the kind of slow, heavy train you could feel coming miles away if you touched your hand to the track, its whistle a deep and mournful cry carried to you by the wind.
Of course the Capitals were going to trip in the first round. It couldn't happen any other way. Because, with the Capitals goes the Southeast Division, and nothing in the history of hockey has ever been more fitting than the last-ever champion of the worst division in the history of professional sports than losing at home to a six-seed that finished the regular season with one fewer point.
|
| Posted: 05/14/2013 |
| What We Learned: Pittsburgh Penguins have to get rid of Marc-Andre Fleury (Puck Daddy) |
|
Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.
One of the things people said constantly throughout the Pittsburgh Penguins' six-game series victory over the New York Islanders was that their play was well below the expected level of quality.
In fact, the most common refrain was that this particular brand of awful play -- rife with defensive irresponsibility and baffling lack of execution for a team that was pretty much incredible from start to finish this year -- was probably only good enough to get them past a try-hard pretender like the Islanders.
Against a real team, it was generally agreed, this kind of play would result in them losing the series in short order, probably pretty badly.
But that kind of talk ignores two things. First, we were told repeatedly by just about everyone that if there was any team the Penguins, not exactly fleet-of-foot, didn't want to take on in the playoffs, it was these New York Islanders. And yeah, they had their hands full throughout, but still never really looked to be in all that much trouble; the scores were close, yes, but they still only needed six games to put these guys out of their misery.
Second, and more important, is that — lo and behold — the second they took Marc-Andre Fleury out of the crease, they won both games. That's not to say that Tomas Vokoun really won them either game, because he didn't. He posted a shutout in Game 5 because almost any goaltender in the world (with at least one notable exception) would have, but he was also victimized on occasion by the bad defensive work that didn't help Fleury much either.
But the fact of the matter is that if you have pretensions of winning a Stanley Cup, your goaltender has to at least be league-average. The Penguins, with their galaxy of stars and excellent coach and top-quality GM, have that goal. They do not have that goaltender. People will argue that Fleury is a winner, insofar as he won a Stanley Cup. Four years ago. Since that postseason, when he posted just a .908 save percentage and a not-good 2.61 GAA, his save percentage has crept above .899 precisely zero times. This year, when he gave up 14 goals on 128 shots in four games before Bylsma dead-bolted the door to the doghouse from the outside.
Or at least, he should; there's only so many times an entire team can roll its eyes and think, "Oh no, not again," like a pot of petunias, before it's the only reasonable course of action.
I don't know how much longer we need to suffer through the narrative that Fleury is any good at all before it crumbles to sand and is scattered by the wind. That is, if it hasn't done so already behind save attempts like this and this and most notably this .
I mean, look, the fact of the matter is that apart from one good playoff run five years ago in which he fell a game short of winning the Stanley Cup for that not-quite-ready Penguins team, he has always been sub-average, and now things are getting markedly worse .
|
| Posted: 05/13/2013 |
| James Reimer’s 43 saves help Maple Leafs stave off elimination vs. Bruins (Video) (Puck Daddy) |
| TD Garden has been a house of horrors of late for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but with their season on the line in Game 5, they survived to see another day thanks to a 2-1 victory. Game 6 is Sunday at Air Canada Centre.
After a scoreless first period, the Maple Leafs grabbed the lead on a Tyler Bozak shorthanded goal, their first since the centerman scored one on Feb. 7 versus the Winnipeg Jets.
As we see many times, a big save on one end of the ice leads to a goal on the other. That's what happened two minutes before Bozak's first of the playoffs when James Reimer, who finished with 43 saves, robbed Patrice Bergeron on the doorstep to keep the game scoreless:
Clarke MacArthur's goal 1:58 into the third period would stand as the game winner after Zdeno Chara cut the Toronto lead in half midway through the final period.
Maple Leafs fans spent the rest of the third period living and dying with each and every remaining scoring chance. Boston would outshoot Toronto 19-4 in the third, but Reimer stood tall stopping 18 of them to keep their season alive for at least one more game.
The Maple Leafs have made a habit of not making things easy in the postseason. Five of their last seven playoff series dating back to 2001 have gone seven games. Will they make it six of eight?
Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy |
| Posted: 05/10/2013 |
| What We Learned: Why ‘letting them play’ is nonsense in the NHL (Puck Daddy) |
|
Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.
No one is going to sit here and disagree that wide-open hockey is preferable to the brand displayed by teams trying to grind out wins.
No one likes board play. No one likes a thousand guys standing in the neutral zone during breakouts. No one — as we learned when the Rangers did it last year — likes the focus to be on blocking shots. No one likes obstruction.
For this reason, we are told so very often that the most important things officials can do in the playoffs is "let the boys play."
It's a fun concept. When the whistles are away, teams are allowed to play at 5-on-5 hockey which is obviously the best way to determine which is better. Ideally, all 60 minutes of every playoff game would be played at even strength. But the problem with this insistence on letting guys play is that when you do so, they tend to start committing penalties, and that, in turn, necessitates that, at some point, some of the infractions actually have to be called.
So while it's all well and good to say that for the sanctity of any individual game to be upheld, the referees should certainly not start blowing the whistle and sending guys to the box, the fact of the matter is that it's their jobs to do so. Guys break the rules, guys go to the box.
This, for some reason, doesn't make sense to people at all times.
Take, for example, Brian Strait's penalty on Sidney Crosby in overtime yesterday afternoon, a call which resulted in the Penguins' power play overtime game-winner. That it was called in overtime was somehow this egregious thing, according to Mike Milbury and Jeremy Roenick and a thousand thousand Internet commenters, a decision made by a referee overstepping his bounds.
Had this call — which was the right one because Strait got beat on the inside, took his hand off his stick and pulled Crosby down from behind, easy-ish fall or not — been made in the first period, the number of eyebrows it raised around the hockey universe would have been precisely zero. This is the kind of thing that typically happens when a coach puts a decent enough defenseman like Brian Strait on the ice in a high-leverage situation against a generational talent like Sidney Crosby, after all.
But that it happened in overtime was somehow outrageous.
|
| Posted: 05/06/2013 |
Yahoo!Sports
|
| GAME STATS |
|
GP |
W |
L |
OT |
| HOME |
24 |
13 |
10 |
1 |
| AWAY |
24 |
11 |
11 |
2 |
| TOTAL |
48 |
24 |
21 |
3 |
| MAY STATS |
|
GP |
W |
L |
OT |
| HOME |
|
|
|
|
| AWAY |
|
|
|
|
| TOTAL |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| SOUTHEAST DIVISION |
| Team |
GP |
W |
L |
OT |
PTS |
GF |
GA |
| WSH |
48 |
27 |
18 |
3 |
57 |
149 |
130 |
| WPG |
48 |
24 |
21 |
3 |
51 |
128 |
144 |
| CAR |
48 |
19 |
25 |
4 |
42 |
128 |
160 |
| TBL |
48 |
18 |
26 |
4 |
40 |
148 |
150 |
| FLA |
48 |
15 |
27 |
6 |
36 |
112 |
171 |
| EASTERN CONFERENCE |
| Team |
GP |
W |
L |
OT |
DF |
PTS |
| 1. PIT* |
48 |
36 |
12 |
0 |
46 |
72 |
| 2. MTL* |
48 |
29 |
14 |
5 |
23 |
63 |
| 3. WSH* |
48 |
27 |
18 |
3 |
19 |
57 |
| 4. BOS |
48 |
28 |
14 |
6 |
22 |
62 |
| 5. TOR |
48 |
26 |
17 |
5 |
12 |
57 |
| 6. NYR |
48 |
26 |
18 |
4 |
18 |
56 |
| 7. OTT |
48 |
25 |
17 |
6 |
12 |
56 |
| 8. NYI |
48 |
24 |
17 |
7 |
0 |
55 |
| 9. WPG |
48 |
24 |
21 |
3 |
-16 |
51 |
| 10. PHI |
48 |
23 |
22 |
3 |
-8 |
49 |
| 11. BUF |
48 |
21 |
21 |
6 |
-18 |
48 |
| 12. NJD |
48 |
19 |
19 |
10 |
-17 |
48 |
| 13. CAR |
48 |
19 |
25 |
4 |
-32 |
42 |
| 14. TBL |
48 |
18 |
26 |
4 |
-2 |
40 |
| 15. FLA |
48 |
15 |
27 |
6 |
-59 |
36 |
|
