BoC Gameday—Technically, somebody's getting a "W" tonight

Anaheim Ducks (0-2-0, last in west) at Los Angeles Kings (0-2-0, last in west)
Battle of the Basement

Sorry I've been a bit invisible the last couple of days; I've been steering clear of the blog, mainly because of the frustrating play of the Anaheim Ducks. It's not just that they're 0-2 that bothers me (only once in franchise history have the Ducks started 2-0), but it's the manner in which games are being lost that really sucks.

It's a pattern that dates back to the Dallas series last spring, and I've put a table together that lists the last seven times an opponent has broken a tie against the Ducks. All seven times the Ducks also allowed the next goal for a 2-goal deficit, and in six of seven times the lead was extended to 3 goals, on average less than 20 minutes later.

Game	Time Elapsed Until Deficit Extends to 2	Time Elapsed Until Deficit Extends to 3
G1 v DAL	6:09	12:33
G2 v DAL	15:00
G2 v DAL	0:55	8:49
G4 @ DAL	32:22	40:38
G6 @ DAL	15:32	17:46
G1 @ SJS	4:12	20:20
G2 v PHX	10:11	17:16
Last Seven 1-goal Deficits	7 of 7 12:03 avg	6 of 7 19:34 avg

Now I realize not all BoC readers enjoy deciphering time-elapsed-deficit data tables, so I've also illustrated the problem (using both Duck logos!):


"When you're done chewing off my right leg, please help yourself to the left.
And don't forget the tasty throat!"
So the Ducks need to solve two problems:

• Don't turn one-goal deficits into three-goal deficits. This isn't even an option; if this doesn't get fixed immediately I'll pre-order a Tavares jersey. The Ducks have made it entirely too easy to extend leads, either by overfilling the penalty box or by allowing odd-man rushes. They need some goddamn composure, really.



• Don't fall behind so often; put more emphasis on leading. You have to go back 18 games in the Ducks' schedule to find a game where the Ducks had a lead and didn't win the game. Granted, it's not a theory that's getting tested a lot lately, but it does seem to be the easy fundamental to focus on at this point.

Basically, the Ducks need to stop shitting the bed. Two games in, and the Ducks have scored three goals -- one each from Rob Niedermayer, Ryan Carter, and George Parros -- all scored while the Ducks trailed by 3. That trio of forwards looks to blow out its 13 combined goals from last year, but if anyone who was actually projected to score goals could put the puck in the net, that might help things considerably. So far, Nabokov and Bryzgalov have picked up fairly easy wins, way too reminiscent of the easy wins that the Ducks gave Turco last spring.

As for the 0-2 Kings, Rudy can probably better fill you in, but their problem might be as simple as "let's stop playing the Sharks".

Prediction: Who really can say with this club? Ducks 3, Kings 1. Goals by Klee, Pahlsson, and Pahlsson.

Seriously, Go Ducks.

BoC Gameday—What Scares Me About Your Team

Anaheim Ducks (t-1st in west) at San Jose Sharks (t-1st in west)
Winner of tonight’s game is on top of the west!

Ah, the beauty of a new NHL season afoot, and what better way to kick it off than with a good ol’ Battle of California (competitive version)? Yeah, I know there were some "counting" games already played in Europe, and Ducks/Sharks is the only game on tonight's schedule without some version of national coverage, but I can’t care. Because tonight is Ducks-Sharks, one of my favorite matchups since the lockout. It's a measuring-stick game, a pride game, and an awesome way to start the NHL season (assuming the Sharks have paid their electricity bill this year).

To open this set of Gamedays and this NHL season, Mike Chen and I devised a little cross-state exercise. You know Mike, of course, from Battle of California, though I heard he has some side gig too. Anyways, instead of rehashing our own previews again, we instead decided to write about the opposition this time with three answers to: "What Scares Me About Your Team", a nice outsider's perspective to start the new year.

What Scares Sleek about this year's Sharks:

1. Joe Thornton plus offensive defensemen means trouble

The last three seasons, the highest scoring San Jose blueliners have been Craig Rivet 07/08 (74 gp, 35 pts), Matt Carle 06/07 (77 gp, 42 pts), and Tom Preissing 05/06 (74 gp, 43 pts). In each case, it's a career scoring high—none of them have demonstrated tremendous scoring ability away from Jumbo Joe. The lack of a true offensive talent on the blueline has been the Sharks' Achilles Heel, their missing ingredient in a sense. Finally at the end of last year the Sharks inserted an actual offensive defenseman – Brian Campbell – and the results were stellar. In 20 gp, Campbell recorded 19 points, and while that 78-point-season pace might not have been sustainable for a full year, it still showed the potential of using a creative talent behind San Jose’s glut of forwards.

Bring in Dan Boyle, and to a lesser extent Rob Blake. Boyle is a guy who’s already registered a 63-point season and two 53-point years, so he’s shown the ability to play well with top talent in Tampa. I haven’t watched a ton of Lightning games, so I can’t say for sure, but if Jumbo Joe is able to bring out a career year out of the Sharks’ new blueline threat, San Jose threatens to be a Pacific monster this year.

2. Red Wing motivational tactics

I’ve been reading some of new coach Todd McLellan’s motivational quotes over at the Seagate Broadcaster’s Blog, and his overall message has me worried. Not so much the “I don’t just want a hockey player, I want an ingredient” bit; other than some cannibalistic overtones that message is pretty routine. But how about this McLellan gem? “At this point in the season, the words ‘Stanley Cup’ aren’t part of the vocabulary.” First off, McLellan, I don’t think that’s very fair to Marcel Goc, who doesn’t have a very wide vocabulary to begin with. You’re going to take away two of his possibly twenty cohesive words?

But all kidding aside, I think McLellan seems to be doing the right things as a new coach for what’s been a tremendously successful team. He’s making the players better understand their roles for the team’s success, and is making sure that the short-term details that contribute to winning don’t get lost in the long-term goal. Of course, media quotes and on-ice performance can often be two different things, so I’ll reserve judgment, but I have to imagine the Sharks will be well-prepared for opening night.

3. Jonathan Goddamn Cheechoo

Yes, I know that Cheechoo is coming off his worst offensive campaign since his rookie year, and his preseason performance still has some Sharks fans worried, but that doesn’t make things less scary on my end. Cheechoo is the very definition of streaky – even in his good seasons he got hot and cold very fast. I wrote a post in the latter part of the 06-07 season that pointed that out: “4 goals in 2 games against the Ducks, which was preceded by a seven game goalless streak, that followed a 5 goals in 7 game stretch, that followed a 1 goal in 9 games slump, and well, you get the picture.” Also revealed in that post was the trend that Cheechoo scored at a much higher rate against the Ducks and Kings than against any other opponent.

The Sharks figure to have a very good team this season even if Cheechoo has another off year. However, if he gets anywhere near his pre-injury form, the Sharks will be awfully tough to keep up with in the standings this season. I guess my main hope is that Coach McLellan finds Cheechoo to be a very tasty ingredient and eats him, but that probably violates the CBA.

And now, heeeere's Mike Chen!

What Scares Mike Chen about this year's Ducks

1. The Complete Mighty Ducks

Picture this. You sit down and you really want to have a kick-ass marathon of the Mighty Ducks movie trilogy. You've got your shiny Mighty Ducks DVD and your old VHS copy of D3: The Mighty Ducks, but you don't own the second movie and you can't afford the gas to drive to Best Buy and pick it up. But halfway through your viewing of D3, a buddy calls and says that D2 is on the Disney channel RIGHT NOW so turn the channel immediately. That convoluted movie-viewing experience is kinda like what happened to the Ducks last season without Scott "My Captain C, Damn It!" Niedermayer and Teemu Selanne to start the season.

You take those guys out of the mix, add in some bad broadcast-on-cable-TV replacements like Todd Bertuzzi and Doug Weight and it's just a chemistry experiment gone awry. And while Scotty N played well upon his return, you could sense that something wasn't quite right with last season's Ducks, even from all the way up in the Bay Area. So now Brian Burke's guys have no off-ice distractions, Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf are a year older, and the Norris Twins get a full 82 games together. Yeah, that's not good.

2. Brendan Morrison

Oh, stop laughing. I'm not talking Brendan Morrison by himself, I'm looking at what Brendan Morrison could possibly do for the rest of the team. Morrison's a playmaker. Teemu Selanne's a goal scorer. Goal scorers need playmakers to make them even better (see: Cheechoo, Jonathan). If Morrison clicks with Selanne in an Andy McDonald-minus-the-freakish-neck-muscles kind of way, that gives the Ducks two pretty strong forward lines. We know Perry and Getzlaf will get their points but what about secondary scoring?

Last season, I don't think I was the only person who laughed when Burke signed on Todd Bertuzzi's diminished scoring abilities. We know that Selanne still has it but if Teemu's got a partner that can actually dish him the puck, he becomes that much more of a threat. Teams with one scoring line don't usually accomplish much (hello Vancouver), but when you start spreading that around, that's when the proverbial shiznit hits the fan.

3. Pronger/Niedermayer

You could say that this point is an extension of the first one, but that one was really more about off-ice distractions and general roster discombobulation. This is about having two Norris-quality defensemen who can handle 30+ minutes a night, play special teams, send out a great outlet pass, and shut down the opposition's top scorer. With all due respect to the Detroit blueline, there's simply no team that can match what Anaheim can do -- that is, have one Norris-candidate on the ice at all times.

Put it this way -- the old adage of line matching doesn't work if you have either a healthy Pronger or Niedermayer on the ice. You can't try to avoid the shutdown defenseman because they're both capable of it. Hell, stick me out there with my limited beer-league skills and I'd still probably be a +30 for the year (Burkie, I'm a free agent and I'll sign for the league minimum). This combination scared me when Pronger first came to Anaheim and it still scares me today. And it's just not fair.

So that's our takes, looking trepidly at some of the new aspects of the opposing team. How about you, readers? What in particular this year scares you about facing either of these teams? Feel free to leave your own answers (even if you aren't a Ducks or Sharks fan) in the comments.

Prediction: Ducks 3, Sharks 1. Goals by Perry, Pahlsson, and Morrison. Just like in the Ducks opener of the 06-07 season, though, Rob Blake actually scores Corey Perry's goal. Adds Mike Chen, "By the way, Sleek's watching the game on Tivo so everyone text him 'Pronger broke his leg' intermittently."

Update 10:01: Mike sneaks in a prediction too: Sharks 4, Ducks 2. Goals by Marleau, Boyle, Roenick, and an empty netter by Grier. And soft crying in the rafters from Jeff Friesen.

p.s. I posted a PuckToon today that mixes metaphors about strange cap-motivated roster moves made throughout the Pacific Division. Enjoy!

[9:30 am edit -- even more Sleek guest appearances on the ol' internet! In addition to posting on James O'Brien's new blog, I was also a guest on the LCS Hockey Radio Show last night. I haven't even heard the whole thing, but feel free to give it a listen as we push through some technical difficulties, I hurriedly mis-describe Patrick O'Sullivan as "a poor man's Brian Rolston", and I pull a correct Caspian Sea trivia answer out of my ass.]

Go Ducks.

Ducks/Wings: Cautiously Pessimistic

On Tuesday, I gave some reasons why I’m cautiously optimistic about the Ducks facing the Wings. Today let’s look at the other side of the coin: why Detroit scares the crap out of me.

The “but they play in the Central Division” argument is fundamentally weak

Look, I think it’s about time someone other than a Detroit blogger came out and said it, but the abuse of this argument is nuts. Yes, in the two seasons since the division-heavy schedule started, the Red Wings have accumulated 81 standings points from its weak sisters CBJ, CHI, and STL (84% of the 96 points possible).

But the mere fact that the Red Wings beat weak teams does not mean that Detroit is overrated—it means that Detroit could be overrated—and that’s a key difference. Beating bad teams doesn’t reveal a lot about a team, but beating good ones does. The Red Wings have done very well eliminating both Calgary and San Jose, two impressive series wins, and I think they’ve shown throughout the year that they are more than soft standings points.

Lidstrom and Hasek, two guys I’m kind of wishing were dead or severely limping

Lidstrom, plain and simple, deserves the Norris Trophy—I’ve never been exactly clear on what criteria to use, but I would trade either Pronger or Niedermayer straight up to get Lidstrom, so I figure that’s enough of an argument. His play in his own end is a thing to marvel, so much so that any offense he provides is gravy. And yeah, he gives shitloads of gravy.

Strangely, I don’t think it’s going to be a big key for the Selanne line to score that much against Lidstrom and the checkers. Rather, I think it will be important that the Selanne line occupy that defense for as many minutes as possible to free up some Nick-less shifts for Getzlaf & company.

But even then there’s the Dominator, Mr. Effing Hasek. Detroit fans have been reminding me that Hasek has never lost a series for the winged wheel, and I don’t think he intends to start that now. While the Ducks have dispatched some pretty awesome goalies already in Backstrom and Luongo, one key difference is that neither of those goalies had any previous playoff experience. It was a new gig for them, and though they both were really impressive, they couldn’t pull of the Giguerian debut needed to stay alive.

Hasek has no such problems. The guy has been stopping playoff pucks since ’91, and this will be his 110th playoff appearance (36th for Detroit). This will be the first time the Ducks have faced Hasek in the postseason. He’s the kind of goaltender that keeps me up at night seething—and he might have that effect on a few Duck players, as well.

The long layover has killed the Ducks in the past

• In 2003, the Mighty Ducks swept the Minnesota Wild in the WCF, earning an 11 day break before the Stanley Cup Finals. Anaheim dropped both G1 and G2 of that series to New Jersey, scoring zero goals in the process, and would eventually lose the series in seven games.


• In 2006, the Mighty Ducks swept the Colorado Avalanche in Round 2, earning an 8 day break before the WCF. Anaheim dropped both G1 and G2 of that series to Edmonton, scoring two goals in the process, and would eventually lose the series in five games.


• The Ducks last played a week ago Thursday, eliminating the Canucks in G5 and earning an 8 day break.

See the ol’ “rust” pattern? Now to be fair the Ducks have done well after some layoffs (8 days after sweeping Detroit in ’03, 6 days after beating Minnesota in ’07), but those have always happened in the first round. Later round layoffs have really killed this Anaheim team in the past; here’s hoping they rediscover their game sometime early in G1 this time.

Karma will be the death of me

Towards the end of the season, one of my buddies checked the standings and reported, “The Ducks are only two points behind Detroit for first in the west.”

My scolding reply: “That’s not important—how many points we got on the Sharks? What is critical right now is that the Ducks hold the Pacific; what is not critical is that we catch Detroit. First or second, we are going to have home ice against tough opponents. The only time 1 vs. 2 will matter is if both top seeds survive to G7 of the western conference finals, and what are the odds of that?”

Dammit, mouth!

I can feel the karma coming, too. This has all the makings of last year:

• The Ducks and Sharks both advanced the 2nd round of the playoffs, and both had leads in their series.
• The Ducks won their 2nd round quickly, while the Sharks self-destructed and ruined a WCF Battle of California.
• And hell, the Kings even missed the playoffs again, too!

But there may just be one key difference this year, hopefully one strong enough to sway the winds of inevitability. This time Pronger’s on our side.

Go Ducks.