Training camp’s all about establishing chemistry and figuring out which players go where. ESPN’s Sean Allen provides some insight and here are the highlights: Zach Bogosian seems to be penciled in to make the team, and Allen figures him to hit the 40-point mark, but I highly doubt it. I think their top powerplay quarterbacks [...]
Where to begin? The defending Cup champs are so well-balanced and talented from top to bottom that the fact they managed to land Marian Hossa means they’re the heavy favourites to repeat again, which hasn’t happened since 1997 and 1998 when, you guessed it, Steve Yzerman and the Wings did it. It almost came as [...]
Todd Bertuzzi has yet to find a home. Since his Vancouver days, the burly winger has never spent more than a full year with any team. First, he was traded to Florida for Roberto Luongo, but promptly shipped to Detroit at the deadline. He wasn’t as effective as Ken Holland had hoped for, despite putting [...]
The Hockey News’ Rankings in the Yearly Yearbook were released, and for the West they’re as follows: 1 Detroit Red Wings 2 San Jose Sharks 3 Minnesota Wild 4 Dallas Stars 5 Anaheim Ducks 6 Edmonton Oilers 7 Chicago Blackhawks 8 Calgary Flames 9 Nashville Predators 10 Phoenix Coyotes 11 Vancouver Canucks 12 Columbus Blue [...]
Chicago Blackhawks Strengths: -Two prime young prospects in Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. -Good talent with Martin Havlat and Tuomo Ruutu Weaknesses: -They added Sergei Samsonov -Lack a quality top pairing defenseman -Lack depth up front -Khabibulin makes way too much money. Question Marks: -Can Ruutu and Havlat stay healthy? -Are Jonathan Toews and especially [...]
I was going to write up team by team reports, and I may still do that for some teams, but I decided to first post some numerical evaluations of each team in nice and easily readable table format. I have divided each team up into Forwards, Defense and Goaltending and then divided each of those [...]
Ok, it’s time to get back in hockey mode and start looking to the upcoming season which is less than a month away. But first, let me look at a handful of good and bad off season moves. The Good Ryan Whitney: While Whitney doesn’t get the media attention of his teammate forwards Crosby, Malkin [...]
Time for the second round predictions. Like the first round, the second round features some intriguing matchups and also like the first round, none of those match ups are divisional rivals. NY Rangers at Buffalo NY Rangers (road) Buffalo (home) Predicted Winner Buffalo (Good) Fair Odds +135 -155 Overall Record 42-30-10 53-22-7 Home/Road Record 21-15-5 [...]
Here are my first round predictions for the western conference. My eastern conference predictions will come later today. What is interesting about the western conference matchups is that the the home team has won every single game of each of the regular season series except for the final game of the San Jose-Nashville series in [...]
Today and tomorrow I am going to post my first round playoff previews/predictions. Here are the western conference preview and tomorrow I’ll post my eastern conference preview. Detroit vs Edmonton Season Series November 3: Edmonton 4 at Detroit 3 (OT) November 17: Detroit 5 at Edmonton 6 (OT) March 18: Detroit 4 at Edmonton 3 [...]
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David Johnson