Best/Worst: Captains in the Atlantic

-

Oh yeah, Captains in the Atlantic, a maritime tale. I love the sound of that. So what I'm gonna do is power rank the captains of each team, starting in the NHL Atlantic division. What I'm looking at is my opinion on these fellas. How I feel about their on-ice and off-ice "leadership" or whatever. So let's do that... Oh yeah, teams without a Captain, I will select their most veteran 'A' and they will be ranked, ok....

The Best: Erik Karlsson of the Ottawa Senators

This is an easy one. He is one of the best players in the game today, and one of the best defensemen of all time. While he seems to be injury prone, he has two Norris trophies to his name and single-handedly carries the Senators. Being the best player on your team is crucial, being the best ever (or one of) is icing.

Henrik Zetterberg of the Detroit Red Wings

Detroit sucks. They suck so bad. But they haven't always and Zetterberg has been a loyal guy. Now while that can cost you accolades, Zetterberg can rest on his laurels at this point. He won the Stanley Cup AND Conn Smythe in 2008. He has Olympic gold, and World Championship gold and may very well go in to the Hall of Fame when he hangs them up. Over 1,000 NHL games played and 0.9 PPG. That's good.

Zdeno Chara of the Boston Bruins

Chara is a beast. He pretty much killed a guy and was basically the epitome of defense in the NHL for over a decade. He is another guy at the end of the career, but multiple Cup wins, and loyalty to his team is key here for Chara.

The Worst: Max Pacioretty of the Montreal Canadiens

Controversial pick, I guess? But, look at the reality of Pacioretty's career in Montreal... He is a career 60 point guy, which isn't enough offensive production to get over the fact that he played a huge factor in P.K. Subban - one of the NHL's best players - being ran out of town. Pacioretty doesn't produce as he should, and Chara should've killed him. Anyways....

Other thoughts:

Bozak was the factor for the Leafs, and his play is abhorrent. He shouldn't be allowed on the ice. He is overpaid and a liability. 

Kyle Okposo? Is he alive?

Steven Stamkos is injured ALL THE TIME. Honestly, one of the best scorers in the world, but he never plays. He has missed so much time, you'd be better off taking a chance on a cheaper player that can put of 50 points per year.

That's it for the Atlantic.
...
Derek who?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Small Market Stars: Who's Left in the 2018 Playoffs

-
Image
you can follow me on twitter HERE Carey Price of Anahim Lake, BC (pop. 1,500) taunts Peter Budaj, of Banska Bystrica (pop. 76,641) over his big city roots There are a LOT of small market teams left in the NHL playoffs. It's not 100%, but there is no doubt that this year's second round is dominated by the little guy that could. Though in this league, that translates to fickle ownership groups that have used their brains in hiring competent hockey personnel. Anyways, I thought it would be interesting to go through and find out who the teams small market stars are! That is, a player on a small market team (though I'll do a player from each, so Pittsburgh fans don't chew my ass) that performs at a high level, and is from literal butt-fuck nowhere. Maybe somewhere in Saskatchewan. Let's go. 1. Tampa Bay Lightning - avg attendance: 19,092 Well, if anything is certain, it's that the NHL has a reaaaaal loose handle on what it allows to be recorded as att...
Read more

What did Jim Rutherford ever do?

-
Image
"This blog can fuck itself, for all I care" - Jim Rutherford This time I'm flying blind. I admittedly don't know much about the Penguins. I don't think I do, I won't pretend I do. I know very little about Penguins' GM Jim Rutherford. So, I just assume he stinks - because all GM's stink, to some degree. So, I am going to take a year-by-year look back over Jim Rutherford's entire NHL General Manager career. Rutherford started his hockey career as a goalie in the Red Wings organization. After his retirement as a player, he joined the Whalers, from Hartford, as a General Manager. This guy has 3 Stanley Cups, and I'm about to be completely unfair about the little depth deals he has made over the course of his career. This is the 3rd in a multi-part series "What did _____ ever do?" where I rank the performance of NHL GM's. We take into consideration how the GM chose to handle the NHL Entry draft and any transactions made over t...
Read more

The Curious Case of Cam Ward: An Attempt to Quantify "Luck" in Goaltending

-
Image
As a WHL guy, a Canadian and a sucker for the underdog, I'm a big fan of Cam Ward. I think he is (at least was) a good goalie, with some very bad luck. So, I am going to go back and watch a bunch of goals from his most recent seasons and skew the data to agree with my hot take. I will also take a look at Carey Price's current season as I think he is the closest there is to the consensus #1 goalie in the world. The perfect juxtaposition for Cam Ward. I've also included Corey Crawford (2017-2018) for those that take issue with Carey Price's inclusion in this report. My goal was originally to look at his best statistical season (2010-11) and his worst statistical seasons (2005-06, 2006-07), however due to the availability of game footage, that won't be possible at this time.  The determining factors in looking at these goals are: Deflection by teammate ( DxT ), Deflection by opponent ( DxO ), Own Goal by Teammate ( OGxT ), Breakaway/Defensive Failure ( DEF )...
Read more