Alumni in the Pros - April 2009

[Al DeFlorio]

[quote David Harding]Cartoonist Darby Conley invokes Ken Dryden as a metaphor for perfection in today's Get Fuzzy.[/quote]
Darby must be old.::cheer::

[marty]

I thought this one was somewhat appropriate for the forum a few weeks ago:

Get Fuzzy 2

[David Harding]

[quote Al DeFlorio][quote David Harding]Cartoonist Darby Conley invokes Ken Dryden as a metaphor for perfection in today's Get Fuzzy.[/quote]
Darby must be old.::cheer::[/quote]Wikipedia says Darby was born in 1970 and grew up in Knoxville and attended Amherst.

[CKinsland]

See:

http://comics.com/get_fuzzy/?DateAfter=2009-04-26&DateBefore=2009-04-26&Order=d.DateStrip+DESC&PerPage=1&x=31&y=16&Search=

CK

[Rita]

From the TBRW awards thread:

[quote Jeff Hopkins '82][quote admin][quote Larry72]In looking at the eLynah posts since the end of the season, I think there are actually more this year with three former Cornell players with teams in the Stanley Cup playoff hunt.
Douglas Murray - San Jose
Byron Bitz - Boston
Ryan O'Byrne - Montreal[/quote]

FYP[/quote]

LOL![/quote]

Wow. Sometimes the emphasis to have the best record is over-rated. I think there is something to be said about having to scratch and claw your way in and being the "underdog".

Should be an interesting off-season in SJ. They ousted Ron Wilson because he could get the team to the finals.  Lots of questions, maybe I'll post some in the JSID hockey thread.

Good thing about Sharks being eliminated, Randy Hahn (TV pbp guy) will lose the "beard".

[ugarte]

[quote Rita]From the TBRW awards thread:

[quote Jeff Hopkins '82][quote admin][quote Larry72]In looking at the eLynah posts since the end of the season, I think there are actually more this year with three former Cornell players with teams in the Stanley Cup playoff hunt.
Douglas Murray - San Jose
Byron Bitz - Boston
Ryan O'Byrne - Montreal[/quote]

FYP[/quote]

LOL![/quote]

Wow. Sometimes the emphasis to have the best record is over-rated. I think there is something to be said about having to scratch and claw your way in and being the "underdog".

Should be an interesting off-season in SJ. They ousted Ron Wilson because he could get the team to the finals.  Lots of questions, maybe I'll post some in the JSID hockey thread.

Good thing about Sharks being eliminated, Randy Hahn (TV pbp guy) will lose the "beard".[/quote]
The real story is Anaheim's disappointing regular season. SJ caught a bad break with the Ducks dropping to 8.

[RatushnyFan]

You need to be able to beat the Ducks if you expect to win the Cup.  The Ducks are better with Jonas Hiller in net and the late season tinkering seems to have worked.  I like Getzlaf and Bobby Ryan a lot, they both skate hard all the time.  Defensively they've improved as well, even though they dumped Montador (I thought he was a solid contributor).  Despite all their improvements, shame on the Sharks for not dispatching the Ducks in 6 games!

P.S.  Note that the Sharks did better when Douglas played more minutes (they won 2 of 3 games when he played 18+ minutes and lost all 3 games when he played less).  Hardly the causal factor but an interesting aside.  Just play the kid

[Rita]

[quote RatushnyFan]You need to be able to beat the Ducks if you expect to win the Cup.  The Ducks are better with Jonas Hiller in net and the late season tinkering seems to have worked.  I like Getzlaf and Bobby Ryan a lot, they both skate hard all the time.  Defensively they've improved as well, even though they dumped Montador (I thought he was a solid contributor).  Despite all their improvements, shame on the Sharks for not dispatching the Ducks in 6 games!

P.S.  Note that the Sharks did better when Douglas played more minutes (they won 2 of 3 games when he played 18+ minutes and lost all 3 games when he played less).  Hardly the causal factor but an interesting aside.  Just play the kid[/quote]

And Rob Blake logged well over 20+ minutes a game and was a net -5 for the series. Murray was a net -1, and that was in one game where he was a -1, the rest of the time he was even. I know +/- is a not a perfect measurement, but it does say something about one's ability to take care of the defensive zone.

[BCrespi]

[quote RatushnyFan]You need to be able to beat the Ducks if you expect to win the Cup.  The Ducks are better with Jonas Hiller in net and the late season tinkering seems to have worked.  I like Getzlaf and Bobby Ryan a lot, they both skate hard all the time.  Defensively they've improved as well, even though they dumped Montador (I thought he was a solid contributor).  Despite all their improvements, shame on the Sharks for not dispatching the Ducks in 6 games!

P.S.  Note that the Sharks did better when Douglas played more minutes (they won 2 of 3 games when he played 18+ minutes and lost all 3 games when he played less).  Hardly the causal factor but an interesting aside.  Just play the kid[/quote]

While there certainly may be something to Murray's stronger presence in the wins, I fear it is probably more closely related to the awful NFL cliche, "X team wins Y amount of times when they run the ball 25 times a game!"  Well yeah, they can play a running style if they're winning!  An NHL team can play its best defensive defensivemen (and rotate their entire units) in games that it is winning as well.

[KeithK]

[quote BCrespi][quote RatushnyFan]You need to be able to beat the Ducks if you expect to win the Cup.  The Ducks are better with Jonas Hiller in net and the late season tinkering seems to have worked.  I like Getzlaf and Bobby Ryan a lot, they both skate hard all the time.  Defensively they've improved as well, even though they dumped Montador (I thought he was a solid contributor).  Despite all their improvements, shame on the Sharks for not dispatching the Ducks in 6 games!

P.S.  Note that the Sharks did better when Douglas played more minutes (they won 2 of 3 games when he played 18+ minutes and lost all 3 games when he played less).  Hardly the causal factor but an interesting aside.  Just play the kid[/quote]

While there certainly may be something to Murray's stronger presence in the wins, I fear it is probably more closely related to the awful NFL cliche, "X team wins Y amount of times when they run the ball 25 times a game!"  Well yeah, they can play a running style if they're winning!  An NHL team can play its best defensive defensivemen (and rotate their entire units) in games that it is winning as well.[/quote]
On the Sharks radio broadcast jamie baker pointed out (after game 3) that the Sharks switched to having Murray and Ehrhoff covering the Ducks top line and how they were matching up much better than Vlassic and Blake had early on the series. So in this case there may be some causation to the correlation between Murray's playing time and the team results.

[BCrespi]

[quote KeithK][quote BCrespi][quote RatushnyFan]You need to be able to beat the Ducks if you expect to win the Cup.  The Ducks are better with Jonas Hiller in net and the late season tinkering seems to have worked.  I like Getzlaf and Bobby Ryan a lot, they both skate hard all the time.  Defensively they've improved as well, even though they dumped Montador (I thought he was a solid contributor).  Despite all their improvements, shame on the Sharks for not dispatching the Ducks in 6 games!

P.S.  Note that the Sharks did better when Douglas played more minutes (they won 2 of 3 games when he played 18+ minutes and lost all 3 games when he played less).  Hardly the causal factor but an interesting aside.  Just play the kid[/quote]

While there certainly may be something to Murray's stronger presence in the wins, I fear it is probably more closely related to the awful NFL cliche, "X team wins Y amount of times when they run the ball 25 times a game!"  Well yeah, they can play a running style if they're winning!  An NHL team can play its best defensive defensivemen (and rotate their entire units) in games that it is winning as well.[/quote]
On the Sharks radio broadcast jamie baker pointed out (after game 3) that the Sharks switched to having Murray and Ehrhoff covering the Ducks top line and how they were matching up much better than Vlassic and Blake had early on the series. So in this case there may be some causation to the correlation between Murray's playing time and the team results.[/quote]

I could definitely see this being the case, but that doesn't really change the fact that Murray can't play as many minutes when his team is behind later in the game as he's not exactly Brian Leetch with the puck on his stick.  Nevertheless, I certainly would have loved to see more Murray on the ice, selfishly.

[jkahn]

Haven't read this anywhere yet, but the Caps' Simeon Varlamov has a chance to equal Ken Dryden's 1971 feat of winning the Cup after having played in only six NHL regular season games.  Not real likely to happen, but we've seen a lot of unusual endings lately.

[Killer]

Damn, gets a big picture, but he's gonna be a healthy scratch:

http://www.boston.com/sports/hockey/bruins/articles/2009/04/30/identity_crisis_finally_solved/

[ugarte]

[quote RatushnyFan]You need to be able to beat the Ducks if you expect to win the Cup. [/quote]
True, but tautological. To win the championship you have to beat everyone else. Some paths are harder than others, though, and I don't want to front-load the challenges. I'd rather have the Red Wings playing the Sharks in the conference finals than the Ducks in the second round.

Not that Chicago or Vancouver would be cakewalks. The West is deep this year.

[ftyuv]

[quote ugarte][quote RatushnyFan]You need to be able to beat the Ducks if you expect to win the Cup. [/quote]
True, but tautological. To win the championship you have to beat everyone else. Some paths are harder than others, though, and I don't want to front-load the challenges. I'd rather have the Red Wings playing the Sharks in the conference finals than the Ducks in the second round.

Not that Chicago or Vancouver would be cakewalks. The West is deep this year.[/quote]
That's not true at all. Style of play, psychology, etc are all factors. You can have a situation where A beat B, and C beats A, but B beats C.  In other words, one could imagine a team that is generally dominant but for whatever reason just doesn't match well against the Ducks. That team would stand a much better chance if some other team knocks the Ducks out for them.

Think, for instance, about how the mediocre Dolphins always seem to beat the Pats, who are better overall.  At least, that's what I'm told; I have trouble caring enough to follow a sport where plays are 8 seconds long and have two minutes between them. ::snore::