East
Rangers (8) / Capitals (1)—Caps in 5
Sabres (7) / Flyers (2)—Flyers in 4
Habs (6) / Bruins (3)—Bruins in 4
Lightning (5) / Penguins (4)—Lightning in 4
West
Blackhawks (8) / Canucks (1)—Canucks in 6
Kings (7) / Sharks (2)—Sharks in 6
Coyotes (6) / Red Wings (3)—Coyotes in 7
Predators (5) / Ducks (4)—Ducks in 7
Okay, I tried. I spent a couple hours doing final research and finding a narrative hook I kind of liked for my final final post-mortem on the Avs 2010-2011, but I can't do it.
I'm tired of this fucking team.
I'm tired of their complete lack of accountability. I'm tired of hearing them barf forth claims that "they tried hard" in loss after loss after loss in which they never led. I'm tired of people claiming that Duchene is progressing instead of coasting.
I'm tired of those ugly fucking blueberry jerseys. I'm tired of the franchise giving up with games to play and sitting out every half-passable professional-level player and trotting out yet still another set of inadequate minor leaguers to play against teams attempting to win games and make the playoffs. I'm tired of the commentary around this team, where before guys get traded they're invisible or interchangeable and after they get traded they're studs with exceptional leadership qualities.
I'm tired of players openly rooting for their numbers in the last days of a season marked by five fewer wins than even I, who called this entire goddamned season, predicted. I'm tired of a smallish team that doesn't seem very fast anymore, I'm tired of players losing fights, I'm tired of a coach who has no idea how to get a team to play in the first period or what in the hell he's supposed to do when he doesn't have a goalie playing out of his mind. I'm tired of slumps. I'm tired of paying Paul Stastny unfathomable quantities of money to put up checking-line performances without doing any checking. I'm tired of pretending bad players are good.
I'm real tired of rooting for a team that's too tight-fisted and stubborn to retain a goalie coach who helped two goalies to career years. Most of all I'm tired of wasting my time thinking about these fucking losers who don't care that they are. They say you learn things in times of adversity. Here's what I've learned about the Colorado Avalanche: fuck you pussies. I quit.
One of Pierre Idiot Trudeau's favorite locutions is "paper tiger". In the decades I have known the man, he has called at least the following things "paper tigers":
Another thing he has enjoyed saying over the years is that the Northwest Division is superb and that a team that wins it is battle-tested and ready for the playoffs in a way that winners of weaker divisions aren't. This year...that seems unlikley to be the case. As of today, the Canucks have gone 17-4-2 against the Northwest--with two of those losses coming after they secured the President's trophy!
They've piled up 36 points in those 23 games, meaning that if you exclude the Northwest, the Canucks have not gone a superhuman 53-19-9 (1.42 points per game), but "only" a very, very good 36-15-7 (1.36 PPG).
Are the Canucks a paper tiger? Almost certainly not. But in the playoffs they're not going to be playing any talent-challenged Minnesota teams, any top-heavy, aging Calgary squads, any three-years-away-from-being-competitive Edmonton rosters, nor even any way-closer-to-Edmonton-than-you-think Colorado Avalanche collections of minor leaguers.
Again, I'm not suggesting the Canucks are anything but excellent. But it does seem reasonable to suggest that the Canucks' 1.36 points-per-game against the rest of the league is a better predictor than their 1.56 against the Northwest. (Which was really 1.71 before those two meaningless games in Edmonton.) The former would put them at around 110 points, a notch better than Washington, and two notches better than anybody else; the latter would put them at 128 points over an entire season, or HOLY FUCKING SHIT territory.
--Collision, grasping at straws
Collision:
Hey, Trudeau, any interest in talking about the Canucks' Presidents' Trophy? I mean, first for the franchise, wire-to-wire domination of the league... And Grimson, how about how it feels to go from champs hoisting hardware to scrambling for the playoffs?
Grimson:
Life imitates art which imitates sport. The most divine of aspirations, the most wholly entombing failures. All that exists occupies space only in order to atrophy; why should sporting dreams be any different? "Say what you will about the tenets of..." Fuck that, Walter. Nihilism is an ethos, just a crappy one...
Collision:
That it?
Grimson:
Sure, why not? I could go on forever. I'll just stop there. I'll leave my heart in the grave, the worms will have to wait a long damn time, damnit, for the rest o' me.
I'll stop there. To answer Sir Edward of Maidenhead (there's a ghastly image), "No thank you, I do not today care to play with madness."
Also, fuck Corey Perry. A lot.
Trudeau:
Jesus. Can I change my MVP to Corey Perry? Fuck. Hat trick tonight.
Collision:
You seen his head? The guy needs them hats!
Trudeau:
He kinda looks like Cancer Boy.
(Presumptive MVP Corey Perry.)
Apparently I suck at reading. When I looked up what the NHL's Norris trophy is, I found this: it goes to the
defense player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position
(Pierre Idiot Trudeau hasn't got time to listen to your bullshit.)
Now, I'd assume that demonstrating great all-round ability to play defense would mean that when you were playing, your team would not let the other team score much. But here comes Pierre LeBrun with an impassioned defense of an alternative position on the matter.
LeBrun: For a while, it appeared Lidstrom was going to run away with his seventh Norris Trophy in a cake walk, but hard-charging Visnovsky of the Ducks has made it quite a race with his league-leading 66 points among defensemen. We also point to his plus-15 rating. And that's where Lidstrom's detractors are pointing to, the Wings captain's minus-1 rating as of Wednesday morning. But I attribute that more to the team's defensive struggles this season and not the legend's own play.
Chara also deserves strong consideration, while Kris Letang, Yandle and Weber also have merit. In the end, I find myself vacillating between Lidstrom and Visnovsky. In the end, even at age 40, "The Perfect Human" still rocks.
Winner: Lidstrom.
So here we see that the plus/minus rating is apparently now not an individual statistic, but one "attribut[able] to [a] team". And that being great at playing defense doesn't mean your team doesn't get outscored when you're...playing defense.
(Bogdan von Pylon isn't just the president of Hair for Fops: he also dresses like a bike messenger.)
I am not shocked by this: as always, Down Goes Brown beat us to the punch:
Norris Trophy
Awarded annually to the defenceman adjudged to be Nicklas Lidstrom.
In other news, It's shopping time!
(Jew Grimson's hair makes me baffled and hostile.)
I believe you can tell a lot about a man just by looking into his face, the paint job of the soul. And I believe that none of these men should be paid a million dollars to do anything.
--Collision, playing for next year's contract...again
Buried in the dull business-as-usualisms in Scott Burnside's latest listicle is a truly surprising hatchet job on former NHL enforcer turned semi-pro fameball Georges Laraque. Apparently when Laraque isn't joining the green party, saying hockey's not ready for out gays, going vegan, appearing on some gawdawful Canadian "reality" show--MORE LIKE UNREALITY SHOW, AMIRITE?--or "rolling" with mixed martial artists, he takes to the airwaves and shoots his mouth off about sports.
Here at Clear the Crease, of course, we welcome this novel development. Vaguely articulate former athletes almost never get the chance to give us their opinions about sports, and that's just a goddamned shame. Who among us hasn't craved access to the semi-charismatic secondary-education-level wit and wisdom of lamp-jawed achievement trumpeters in ill-fitting suits? And who among us would be so churlish as to decry the sound of this barrier falling?
ESPN's own Atlanta-based hockey correspondent and onion-fearer (srsly: look it up), that's who!
In what seems likely to be ESPN's nastiest broadside ever aimed at another (unnamed) media outlet, Burnside has this to say about the man who was "stapled to the bench" for 53 career playoff games ( by my count).
3. Enough already, Georges
Has there been a player in recent memory who accomplished so little on the ice but talked so much off it than Georges Laraque?
It created hardly a ripple when the Canadiens bought out Laraque's contract, which then-GM Bob Gainey foolishly bestowed given Laraque's negligible on-ice impact; but disappearing gracefully has hardly been Laraque's style.
The ubiquitous "expert" has weighed in on various topics in recent days and months, including the Zdeno Chara hit on Max Pacioretty and whether Montreal coach Jacques Martin has lost the Habs' room. We had to snicker when Laraque suggested that had he been on the ice, Pacioretty would not have been ridden into the stanchion at the Bell Centre. Were that true, hundreds of players who played alongside Laraque (well, that's a stretch since Laraque spent many nights stapled to the bench in many NHL cities) owe him a debt of gratitude for having saved them from similar injury. If they only knew how lucky they were.
Then, to suggest in recent days that Martin has lost touch with his players is just more waste material. The coach guided the underdog Habs to a shocking Eastern Conference finals appearance last season and has them pointed toward the playoffs again this spring despite injuries.
Not sure what's more shocking, that Laraque continues to offer up such misguided opinions or that he finds a forum for them.
The oddest part for me is that Burnside doesn't name the "forum". Does ESPN have a reason to put French Canadian TVA Media on blast without naming names? Curious. As for the rest, it's probably just bog-standard pundit-hatred from a guy who sees himself as a real trench reporter. Right?
--Collision, instigator penalty, got his ass kicked
Roenick sad face courtesy of the internet.
Norris:
This always goes to a pillow-soft guy with gaudy offensive numbers, but this year, St. Nick Lidstrom can't win his 7th in 8 years, because he's going to finish with a +/- of basically even. Also if there's any justice in this fallen, degraded world, there's going to be no small Red Wing fatigue when it comes to handing trophies out, given the aforementioned 6 of the last 7 + his teammate Pavel Datsuyk's 3-or-is-it-4 straight Selke trophies (see below). Literally: Red Wing fatigue would be life's first indication that there is such a thing as justice.
Duncan Keith, Chris Pronger and Zdeno Chara are by 1.6 kilometers the league's most potent defensemen, but each labored for a team that suffered dramatic slumps, and my token attempt at research came up with this (italics mine):
to the defence player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position
So that means it's Kris Letang. He plays in all situations and his team managed to soldier on after losing the best player in the game (by .6 miles): Sidney Crosby.
Vezina:
Henrik Lundqvist. His numbers were almost identical to Roberto Luongo's, except in two areas: first, he played six more games last I checked; second, he put up 11 shutouts to Luongo's three. And I don't think anybody would argue that the team in front of Lundqvist is better than the one in front of Luongo. "Markedly inferior" is in fact the phrase that comes to mind--particularly when it comes to the backup goalie position: Luongo has a rookie who played brilliantly behind him whenever needed; Lundqvist had a competent veteran backup who got injured, and has now started something like 18 consecutive games during the season's most difficult and crucial stretch.
I excluded Tim Thomas simply because he didn't play enough games. Fucking great goalie, though. Honorable mention to Craig Anderson on the Senators.
Selke:
Another bullshit award, this one is supposed to go to the "forward who best excels in the defensive aspects of the game", but every year it in fact goes to the highest scorer who once played on a checking line. The only question for me about that matter is should I scream "FEH" or "FAUGH"?
Whereas the actual best defensive forward in the game is probably Manny Malhotra or some poor faceless bastard toiling in Buffalo, I'm inclined to give the nod to the a Rangers forward, since that team plays some mammoth defense, without the major defensive advantage the Canucks have: the ability to dominate possession in the opponent's end, where it's tough for them to score. But they're all pretty interchangeable, and the Rangers already got an award, so...I'm not making a pick here.
Honorable Avs mention goes to "Radar" O'Reilly, who, at 20 years of age, gets trotted out there against the best offensive players the game has to offer and doesn't often get abused.
Adams:
Lemaire. Not even a debate is possible on this matter. Without his team's best forward, with an aging goalie and a faceless crew of defensemen, he took the exact same roster another coach had led to 11-24-5 and coaxed them into a streak of 26-13-3, including a face-melting 11-1-1 in February.
Calder:
For the longest time, I was sure I was going to have to give this to Logan Couture, who scored like 10 million clutch goals for the Sharks blah blah blah then I realized this is my post and my vote and that that kid Jeff Skinner? On the Hurricanes? Is a fantastic player. So Jeff Skinner.
Lady Byng:
I loathe the bagging-on-it that this award gets. In my mind/heart/soul--and in my blog posts--this isn't a punchline:
the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct
combined with a high standard of playing ability
I want to give the nod to Paul Stastny, but part of being a sportsman/gentleman is showing up all the time, and the guy just disappeared for long, long portions of the season. So, in most earnest thing anything on this site will ever see, probably, I say Milan Hejduk who tied a franchise record with his 11th consecutive season of 20 goals, many of which seemed to come in 4-1 trouncings where the Duke was the only Av to show up.
Honorable Avs mention goes to Cody McLeod, because another part of being a sportsman/gentleman is sticking up for your teammates and trying like a bastard to fire them up and get a win.
Masterson:
For "perserverence, sportsmanship and dedication". You know what? I'm giving this one to myself for sticking with a team that can't win a fucking game slash an organization that won't spend a buck.
I thought about giving it to a fan who actually displays sportsmanship--i.e., doesn't pile on every time something goes pear-shaped--but I'm tired of being nice. Fuck it. Chris Collision gets the Masterson.
Then there's a raft of service-to-the-game awards. Lester Patrick:
outstanding service to hockey in the USKing Clancy:
best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice ... and has made a noteworthy humanitarian contribution to the communityMessier:
great leadership on and off the ice during the regular seasonThis is genius--"during the regular season". I love it.
NHL Foundation:
core values of hockey to enrich the lives of people in a community
Nothing to say about any of those, except what the hell is with all these leadership-&-service suckups?
Hart:
I had a fucking brutal time with this one.
the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team
Finally, I just started going team-by-team and asking myself "who's the one guy who, if you take him off the squad, completely changes the complexion of their game?". Most teams, though, lost guys for extended periods and carried on well, without folding or appearing to be completely demoralized.
So the winner of the 2010-2011 MVP? The 2009-2010 Craig Anderson, who, in his absence, proved that the loss of one player's best year can well and truly annihilate an entire season of his team's chances of looking like competent, competitive professionals.
