Before the 2006-07 season started, Lightning coach John Tortorella circled a 14-game stretch between Christmas Day and this past Sunday. “That will be our crossroads of the season,” he said. “The make it or break it part of our schedule.” Now that that period of time is over, Tortorella must be beaming with delight at […]

Well, well, well…it seems as if the thousands of Leafs fans that made the trek from Ontario into Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena last evening had their enthusiastic tone changed very quickly by Mark Recchi, Evgeni Malkin, and Marc-Andre Fleury. After the 8-2 drubbing administered by the young Pens, all that was left of the once-boisterous Toronto […]

By: Mike Dunshee The Bruins gave a rather lackluster effort Saturday night in the final game before the All-Star break falling to the Ottawa Senators 3-0 in Boston. Goalie Hannu Toivonen got the start against Ottawa, his first back to back starts in over a month. Despite the loss, it a good argument could be […]

So as trade rumors have been declared false regarding former captain of the Blackhawks, Adrian Aucoin, I began to research salary commitment, and other such things to see if his departure could help the Hawks. What I found made me sick. Aucoin, who has been a frequent on the injured list the past two seasons […]

By: Mike Dunshee http://www.mikedunshee.com/ mdunsh@inbox.com Without delving to deep into the formulas, my hockey database basically measures forwards and defense averages ( 1.000) being the average) for a variety of different categories designed to measure the all-around game of each player and weighing each factor to come up with an “Overall Factor”. Lets take a […]

After another loss to the Minnesota Wild, the second in a week, the Chicago Blackhawks may have just found themselves out of the playoff hunt. The Hawks, recently passing the halfway point of the season, desperately needed to win the game to remain only eight points out of the 8th and final playoff seed in […]

Isn’t it interesting that these would be the two Leafs chosen to go schmooze with the rest of the supposed NHL elite down in Dallas for the NHL All Star festivities? Kaberle, the sole Leaf chosen to make the All Star game, while Steen chosen for the YoungStars. It might seem like eons ago back […]

Hockey has always been a game of streaks. Left for dead a month ago, the Tampa Bay Lightning has climbed back into the race for the Stanley Cup with a streak of its own. Thursday’s 3-2 shootout victory at New Jersey could very well be the biggest win of the season for Tampa Bay.The Lightning, […]

How To “CAP” The Cap. The Devils were considered to be one of the lower payroll teams to have success in the mid 90’s and early 2000’s but to keep successful, salary had to go up and it did. By their 2002-2003 Stanley Cup run…the Devils had a payroll of just over 50 million dollars […]

The unofficial, “darlings of the NHL”, the Pittsburgh Penguins, are most definitely making such huge impacts on many these days ranging from teams in the NHL, to certain players and even the fans all around the NHL. I mean who could blame you for thinking such things? For one, the Penguins have the dynamic duo […]

Shush! Before you even start in on it. Shush! That was a preemptive Shush. OK. Yes, I realize how far we still have to go. But here is the thing, the Blues who everyone counted out (yes, even most if not all of St. Louis) of getting into the playoffs… for years, those Blues, the […]

After a wild hot streak in December that coincided with the return of captain Alexei Yashin from a knee injury and ended with a shutout win against the rival Rangers at Nassau Coliseum, things have cooled off drastically on Long Island. The Islanders find themselves riding a tremendous slump, winners of only 2 of their […]

The Ones That Got Away……. Every GM, even the great ones, makes moves that baffle their fans and drive them nuts. When a team has won 3 cups in the last 12 seasons and has numerous 100 point seasons since 1993-1994. …fans from other teams have a tendency to either have sour grapes or think […]

By no means do I believe this to the best way of measuring the leagues underachievers, but I thought it might be interesting to list the top 10 most expensive (non-injured) NHLers not named to this years NHL All Star game. Jaromir Jagr NYR ~ 8,360,000Brad Richards TB ~ 7,800,000Mats Sundin TOR ~ 7,600,000Alexei Yashin […]

Date line, January 16th, Seattle, Washington. Far, far away from the land of Snider-ville, though still covered in snow, conventional wisdom would hold that my home town of Seattle would be just far enough away from Philadelphia, that the waves of sadness, depression, and crushing hopelessness that seems to be coming full circle into malaise, […]