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

* Thanks, Kevin Lowe!

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Ducks Gameday—The Littlest Goalie

Anaheim Ducks (27-22-7, t-5th in west) at New York Islanders (24-23-6, 10th in east)

"We're making goalies look like all-stars right now." So says Brian Burke on the Ducks' recent pratfall. Five goals scored in their last six games, zero in their last two. Neglecting the fact that one of those games actually featured an All-Star goalie, I thought I'd show what Burke's talking about--even an undersized goalie like this one can be effective when all the shots go straight at him (thank you, McDonalds Canada):



Prediction: There are still five straight road games before the Ducks return home: NYI, NYR, NJD, DET, and COL. In what city will the Ducks score their next goal? In what city will the Ducks get their next win? In what city will Teemu Selanne make his debut? The way things are going, I suspect all three answers will be the same.

Go Ducks.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

The answers are: NYI, NJD, NYR

Anonymous said...

Nice work Dowdros. I love the littlest goalie.

Miss. Scarlett said...

Sensationale!

Question, how does he not go flying into the net everytime somebody takes a shot? Just asking.

RudyKelly said...

Well, he's better than Cloutier.

Earl Sleek said...

Anyway, here's some stats about the Jekyll-and-Hyde Ducks.

From Jan. 1 through Jan. 18, the Ducks went 8-0-1 in nine games. Here's how they ranked against teams over that stretch:
- 17 standings points (1st)
- .944 win percentage (1st)
- 3.33 gf/game (5th)
- 1.56 ga/game (2nd)
- PP 10/45 22.2% (t-8th)
- PK 5/38 86.8% (4th)

Then Burke ran over a gypsy with his car, and here's how the Ducks have ranked in their six games since (Jan. 19 - Feb. 4, 0-5-1):
- 1 standing point (30th)
- .083 win percentage (30th)
- 0.83 gf/game (30th)
- 3.00 ga/game (t-20th)
- PP 2/26 7.7% (27th)
- PK 4/25 84.0% (13th)

Pretty soon and I'm calling a witch doctor, an exorcist, and anyone else in the curse-breaking industry.

Niekon said...

I'm just about through trying to bust my ass home in order to catch the game during this East Coast trip... over two games without a goal is sickening to me. This was a team that stumbled at the beginning and then started pick it up. Now they are just going for the nosedive.
If they continue to not score I can only expect them to battle the Kings for the bottom slot.

Anaheim is getting the shots... and are managing to somehow stay even on when it comes the penalties. They just seem to fall apart after letting one goal in behind Hiller or Giguere.

Meh... if I get home at some point this evening and the game is still on then I'll check the score and decide whether to play Endless Ocean or watch the rest of the game.
Anything has to be better than all the news outlets covering Super Tuesday, right?

Earl Sleek said...

They just seem to fall apart after letting one goal in behind Hiller or Giguere.

Heck, I'm not even sure if it's even the first goal that's killing them. Lately, the way things are running, if Anaheim goes scoreless through the first 20 minutes, they're done.

Nelson said...

Law of Averages :)

Getzlaf had 18 points in 13 games in Jan. which is great even with the last 4 game slump.

And you can't expect 22% PP and 86% PK when the team wasn't playing at those rates in the previous 40 games.

Earl Sleek said...

Well, word is that Selanne will be making his debut tonight, so maybe the answer to all three questions is "NYI". We'll see, though. There's nothing lately that suggests that I should get prematurely optimistic.

Earl Sleek said...

And you can't expect 22% PP and 86% PK when the team wasn't playing at those rates in the previous 40 games.

Well, I'm not really holding them to the 40-game standard. I think there's plenty of reasons why a PP with Niedermayer would be different than a PP without Niedermayer, and likewise for the PK numbers.

Still, once Niedermayer got on the ice, things seemed to be going rather smoothly and reminiscent of last year. Until six games ago.

I'm confounded by it. Even if I take your 40-game explanation, hey're playing worse than they did at any point in the start the year, and there was a lot of crummy parts on that roster (a bad Hnidy and a useless Mowers, for example).

Earl Sleek said...

Bah. A scoreless first (I'm on tape delay). The Ducks are at this point killing their own power plays, but at least Teemu's shooting.

Still, this probably means a loss. And then a lot of talk about how much they "dominated".