new jersey
Tonight, the Toronto Maple Leafs will host the Atlanta Thrashers at the Air Canada Center. Atlanta is hoping to catch the Boston Bruins for the 8th seed in the East and snag a post-season berth, while the Maple Leafs are looking to continue a playoff of their own - the quest to get out of the bottom five.
NOTE: Newly signed Brayden Irwin will not make his debut tonight. He will likely see action Thursday or Saturday.
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The Leafs are looking to post their third straight win as they roll into Pittsburgh for this Sunday afternoon tilt. On the surface, this may seem like a run-of-the-mill Sunday game as there is no obvious importance in a matchup between the defending Stanley cup champs and our basement-dwelling team. However, there are a multitude of underlying storylines that should make this a very interesting game. [more…]
The most common complaint I hear from fans, media and even some hockey people revolves around the point system and the three point game.
Having done extensive point system analysis, alerted of a record shootout pace and declining overtimes, coupled with a scoring dip to the lowest goals-per-game average since prior to the lockout, a conclusion seems to come simple enough.
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Submitted by Michael Stephens (a.k.a. Baumgartner)
The Toronto Maple Leafs have the League’s worst penalty kill, sporting a 73.0% success rate. They have been shorthanded 252 times this season, surrendering 68 goals. Through 71 games this season, they average 3.5 penalties (252ts/71gp) each night.
Around January 15th, this vaunted penalty kill was even worse, an abysmal 68.9%. Ron Wilson was smugly talking about how he had to teach his boys how to flip the puck down the ice and out of the zone.
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Final Deadline Trades:
Alexei Ponikarovsky to Pittsburgh for Luca Caputi and Martin Skoula
Martin Skoula to New Jersey for a fifth round draft selection.
Lee Stempniak to PHX for 4th and 7th rounders.
Joey MacDonald to ANA for a 7th rounder in 2011.
Wrap-Up: That looks to be a wrap on Brian Burke's trade activity for the 2009-10 season. The Stempniak deal was obviously a form of loss-cutting on a pending UFA, but it's a bit painful to remember who we sacrificed to acquire him in November of 2008 in two albeit underachieving first rounders in Alex Steen and Carlo Colaiacovo. The Leafs will not draft until the third round this year, and Burke did not succeed in that sense, however he moved the only piece realistically capable of fetching a second rounder for a semi-established young asset with the potential to replace Poni at an immediately cheaper price in Luca Caputi. It looks as though no takers could be found on either Wayne Primeau or Garnet Exelby, who look sure to now enter the FA market July 1.
There seems to be details yet to unfurl surrounding the Tomas Kaberle situation this deadline, as once again Leafs fans were teased into believing a deal was pending (involving Hodgson, as it was reported, or possibly Alzner from Washington) only for what looked to be an imminent deal to be flatly denied by Brian Burke in the end. There are rumblings that Kaberle might have nixed a deal in similar fashion to the Jeff Carter situation at the '08 deadline.
From Garrett Bauman:
With the Olympics wrapping up (and in the process Canada securing the record for most gold medals, capped off by our Men's and Women's hockey teams), the focus among hockey fans now shifts to the NHL trade deadline.
While there are few untouchables on the Maple Leafs' roster, speculation is that only a handful of players are likely to be dealt between Monday and Wednesday. Here's a look at some of the speculation surrounding the most-talked about candidates to swap jerseys.
Setting up a goal for the Leafs in lieu of a playoff spot, making up seven points to get out of the NHL basement is a good start .. but just how difficult will it be?
Let's find out together.
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For the second time in four days the Maple Leafs will face off against the New Jersey Devils, this time at the ACC. In what seems to be the most nonsensical decision made in recent memory by NHL schedulers, come this Friday the Leafs and Devils will have faced off three times in one calendar week. What's up with that?
As you are all undoubtedly aware, the Leafs have a few new faces in the fold, and we are all eager to see what Phaneuf, Sjostrom, and Giguere bring to the table as members of the blue and white.
Note: I won't get into trade analysis here; that has already been covered in excellent fashion by the MLHS crew in prior posts.
The Leafs took to the ice today in preparation for Martin Brodeur tomorrow night. It featured some interesting one on one drills for a few key players, and one defenceman who claims the future of his career and the Maple Leafs would be better suited if he were traded.
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Alec has asked me to add my two cents hereabouts from time to time, and I've agreed to do so with some trepidation.  For those of you who don't know me, I'm Junior, from Heroes in Rehab: the blog.  I don't want to step on the toes of any of the other contributors on the site, so I want to contribute something a little different from the others. What follows is, at it turns out, a bit of a (lengthy, sorry about that) manifesto for what I hope to produce in the coming weeks for you all. Some of it's even about hockey and the Leafs!  I don't really see my self as the Stuart Smalley of Leafs Nation, and the affirmations I offer will be far from daily, but...well, just read, won't you?
One lousy heart-stopping, craptastic win-that-almost-wasn’t against the Thrashers Predators (update: oops, thanks Nights, I'm an idiot. Stupid interchangeable southeastern teams!). One crummy “W†from a five game road trip through the Southeast, the division where NHL hockey goes to die. The Maple Leafs can’t be happy with the way that worked out. When the trip began ten days ago, it seemed obvious that the Leafs were expecting to get pasted by Ovechkin and the Caps (first clue: starting Vesa Toskala); after getting the better of Bruce Boudreau’s squad a couple of times earlier this year, it was essentially a foregone conclusion that the Blue & White would have the least amount of fun in a DC amphitheatre since Abraham Lincoln, and that’s exactly how it worked out. But they had to be hoping for more out of matches against Dixie’s puck-playing tomato cans: Nashville, Atlanta, Tampa and Florida.
Of course we know now that it didn’t work out that way. Much to the chagrin of the local populace, Ron Wilson, Brian Burke and the team have arrived home with only two points to declare at Customs. As far as road trip expectations go, this is the equivalent of a “buddies road trip to Vegas†turning into “an insurance seminar in Peoria.†[more…]
The Pittsburgh Penguins are one of three teams without a shutout this season. They have been shutout four times, allowing 15 goals. They've scored 98 goals in wins and a paltry 12 in losses. Of the 44 goals they've allowed in losses, 15 come by way of shutouts.
The latest takes on it's infamy as the record-breaking shutout by a most deserving, Martin Brodeur.
The New Jersey Devils are one of five teams that have not been shutout this season. Brodeur's three shutouts for the Devils this season set up and then smashed the all time shutout record.
In honour of the new shutout record at 104 - and counting - the following are the to-date shutouts and numbers in the NHL in 2009-10.
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Just wanted to share a fantastic bit of work done by Nights, one of our many enthusiastic and intelligent readers, who evaluated how the NHL landscape would look without the first 8 games of the season during which the Maple Leafs struggled mightily. Great work! [more…]
