Takes and trash talk from both ALL sides of the NHL's most obscure PATHETIC* rivalry

* Thanks, Kevin Lowe!

Monday, December 11, 2006

NHL Baloney Award of the Week forgets Teemu

I hate myself for being this petty, but NHL.com, as part of its “Hype Thyself” campaign, has once again come out with its Players of the Week, chosen by some east-coast guy with an early bedtime. This week Mr. Bedtime put together a 3-man listing of Brodeur (3 wins, 2 GA), Lecavalier (4g, 3a in 3 games), and Ovechkin (1g, 6a in 3 games).

For those that are keeping track at home, that means of the 27 weekly awards given out thus far, only 9 have gone to the western conference. Of those 9 westbound awards, only 3 have gone to non-goaltenders.

Now, to be fair, the east coast is where the scoring is at. To date, the eastern conference teams have scored 133 more goals than western conference teams, so I guess I’m not surprised that the offensive awards have been east-slanted thus far. Still, let’s take a look at last week’s stats:

Player

GPGAPts+/-PPGGWGTeam Record

V. Lecavalier

3

4

3

7

+5

1

1

1-2-0

A. Ovechkin

3

1

6

7

ev

0

0

2-1-0

T. Selanne

3

4

3

7

+5

1

1

3-0-0

Hm, a close one, eh?

Still, as a theoretical "tiebreaker", the Ducks played both the Lightning and the Capitals last week, beating them both in regulation. In the first game, Teemu outscored Ovechkin 2-1, and in the second game, Teemu outscored Lecavalier 2-1. Says Selanne (on a different topic):

Aw, don’t worry, Teemu. I suspect you don’t really care, and neither do I. It’s just Monday and I needed something to gripe about.

Maybe I can cheer you up with a game of “What’s scarier?”

  • The fact that J.S. Giguere has more wins this season (19) than 26 teams?
  • The fact that the Ducks could sport a .500 record the remaining 50 games of the season and still have 4 more standing points than last year?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ugh...reading Duck stats makes being a Canuck fan more painful. I remember the fun days when Anaheim was terrible...then again those were pre-homicial Bertuzzi so why keep looking that way?

Good points on Selanne and the NHL.com awards. Like the sun, often it's best to not stare directly at what their braintrust dubs "content".

Anonymous said...

...and more wins than every team in the East except Buffalo...

Yikes.

Anonymous said...

I'll support your case for Selanne over Ovechkin and Lecavalier. I have a similar beef with Fredrik Norrena not being chosen.

Like Brodeur, Norrena had three wins. But he only gave up one goal two Brodeur's two. Freddy stopped as many shots Tuesday at Colorado (42) as Marty did in almost two of his games combined (47). I'm just sayin'.

Kent W. said...

The Selanne Photoshop made me laugh quite heartily. Well done.