AHL Playoffs: Providence Bruins vs WBS Penguins

WBS Penguins lead 2-1 after a 2OT win on Wednesday. Here are some shooting and save percentages for both teams.

2014 IIHF World Championship - May 15

Below are some GIFs and screencaps fro Day 7 action.

Eastern Conference Final: New York Rangers vs Montreal Canadiens

Below are many charts and graphs.

It Never Ends: 50 More Reasons to Love Tuukka

• The original post: 40 reasons.
• The follow-up: 35 reasons.

It's been a while. I think it's time to add to the list. Here are 50 more reasons to love Tuukka Rask.

The Army Ranger Jacket

During the 2011 Stanley Cup run, the Boston Bruins gave their "player of the game" a vintage Bruins jacket that Andrew Ference bought on e-bay. Read more about it at the end of this post. Last year, their short playoff run involved a padlock necklace that ended up, in hindsight, to be a sad reminder of the impending lockout. This season, Andrew Ference decided to return to the Jacket route, introducing an Army Ranger jacket to the team given to him by a personal friend that is himself an Army Ranger.

After each win, the previous recipient of the Jacket passes it on to the next person they deem to be the player of the game. This is how it has gone so far:

(Credit)

Learn Some Irrelevant, Possibly Incorrect Krejci Things

Don't you ever desperately want to pass the time until the next series, but it's only Monday night, into Tuesday morning, and the series doesn't start until Saturday? And suddenly you're in a black hole of YouTube videos that have nothing to do with the Bruins, and you really miss Blake Wheeler? I looped back around to David Krejci thankfully...and stumbled upon some semi-recent interviews from the lockout when he was over in the Czech Republic.

Here is the video, which, can you believe?! is in Czech! Why would they be speaking Czech in the Czech Republic? I watched a few minutes of this despite knowing it was entirely in a language I cannot comprehend because I'm really bored, I like watching Krejci speak Czech, the set is cool, and it felt like "Inside the Actors Studio" a little bit.

When spontaneous English did not happen, I deferred to twitter to help me find someone to translate the video. And since twitter is awesome and full of great people, this wonderful woman came to the rescue! This interview isn't actually interesting, and doesn't have any worthwhile insight, which makes it even more wonderful that she took the time to translate it for me. Seriously, thank you!

Below is the video and the tidbits that were worth sharing because I'm starved for entertainment.

35 MORE! Reasons To Love Tuukka

Because we can't get enough! And because reason #1 was reason alone to make another list. Make sure you read the first 40 Reasons, of course.

Bruins YouTube: Bear Hockey Rules, History Will Be Made

Bruins Hockey Rules:

• Winter Classic jerseys
• Hibernation always ends in October
• Hang up the phone
• Never tuck in your jersey
• Never date within the division
• Christmas gifts
• Bellyfat
• Always have your victory dance ready
• Never leave early to avoid traffic
• Bear Hunter
• Never disrespect the Garden
• Never disrespect the jersey
• Seat upgrade
• Obey restroom code
• The Bear's Cup

The Bear & The Gang:

• Bear & The Gang Opening Credits
• Bear & The Gang Episodes 1
• Bear & The Gang Episodes 2

History Will Be Made from 2011:

• Bobby Orr: What if Bobby Didn't Fly?
• 4/23/11: History happens in Double OT
• 5/2/11: History doesn't let up
• 5/6/11: History doesn't let history repeat
• 5/17/11: History doesn't act it's age
• 5/19/11: History ets nothing by
• 5/23/11: History doesn't back down
• 5/27/11: History awaits.
• 6/6/11: History makes a statement
• 6/13/11: History works fast.
• 6/15/11: History returns to Boston.

AHL President is pissed NBC refuses to acknowledge the AHL

Edit: read a much cleaner version of this on a much more stable website on Stanley Cup of Chowder here (published as as of 10 am Monday morning)

Dennis Seidenberg: learned to be a champion in PHILADELPHIA.

The AHL President Rants on Twitter

On Sunday evening after the broadcast of the Bruins/Rangers game, the president of the American Hockey League (AHL) went on a mini-rant on twitter that was totally legit. What sparked the tweets was basically the fact that one of the biggest story lines of this series so far is the rookie defensemen filling in on the Bruins blueline - Krug, Bartkowski, and Hamilton - and how two of those three rookies came straight from the AHL and their immediate success in the NHL playoffs can be directly attributed to the AHL.

40 Reasons to Love Tuukka Rask (in case you don't already love him!)

Tuukka Rask! He is pretty great, isn't he? Are you still on the fence about whether or not to embrace him? Here are some reasons that should help make up your mind. Hopefully you will soon be doing what you see in the GIF below without any shame!

We're all Rask fangirls and fanboys at heart.

5v5 Plus-Minus per Game & PDO: 3/22/13

Using statistics from the great Behind The Net, a quick comparison of where a team ranks in the statistic of 5-on-5 goal differential per 60 minutes and where a team ranks in the league standings in terms of points shows that it is pretty accurate. 

The Bruins rank 5th in the league in points, and are 5th in the league in this particular stat as well. 

Interestingly, the 3 teams with the biggest variation in 5v5 rank and points rank are all southeast division teams: Carolina, Washington, and Tampa Bay - all who have a relatively high 5v5 rank, but are very low in actual points rank. 

I also have a chart for PDO from the last 3 weeks (this week here, last 2 weeks here). 

NHL Realignment 2.0

This post from December 2011 shows the previous proposed realignment. Here is the new proposed realignment:

Boston Bruins Player Usage Charts Through 8 Games

Rob Vollman of Hockey Prospectus creates these amazing Player Usage Charts. Here are the Bruins stats through the first 8 games of this season:

Click for full size

Player Usage Charts are pretty excellent. Their purpose, in his own words:

[To] show how players are used and how they performed at even-strength by mapping the percentage of shifts they started in the offensive zone (horizontal axis) against the average quality of their competition, as measured in attempted shots (vertical axis), with sized and coloured bubbles denoting how well the team performed with them on the ice relative to everyone else.

This handy attachment includes in-depth explanation of how these graphs are put together and how to read them correctly, as well as analysis of last seasons numbers on a team-by-team basis.

When looking at the chart above, you can see (as the quote says) a Horizontal Axis representing Offensive Zone Starts in percentages.

Offensive zone starts is the percentage of all non-neutral shifts started in the offensive zone. A common misconception is that it's the percentage of all shifts started in the offensive zone, but it ignores those in the neutral zone and is therefore perhaps poorly named (like most hockey statistics). Think of it more as a representation of whether a player is used primarily for his offensive talents, or defensive.

The Vertical Axis shows the Quality of Competition numbers (look at the raw data here at Behind the Net):

Quality of Competition is the average plus/minus of one's opponents over 60 minutes, except that it is based on attempted-shots (Corsi) instead of goals. In this particular variation we are using Relative Corsi (explained below). Players who face top lines will have high QoC's while those with the easier task of facing mostly depth lines will have negative QoCs.

What is Relative Corsi (The Bubbles)?

Corsi, another poorly named statistic, is simply a player's plus/minus, except that it's measured in attempted shots instead of goals. In this case it's calculated over 60 minutes, and Relative Corsi is calculated relative to how the team did without him. 

Again, you find all this info and more here.

AHL Hockey: Providence Bruins 4, Manchester Monarchs 3 (10/19/12)

I have only been to a handful of AHL games in the past, but am prepared to attend many more this season as a substitute for NHL hockey. I was pleasantly surprised at what a great game I saw on Friday night between the Manchester Monarchs and the Providence Bruins in Manchester. The Monarchs are the home team, and have traditionally obnoxious fans in my previous experience. There were a lot of Bruins fans there, obviously, since it's the lockout and all. Lots of Boston Bruins jerseys (but not one Providence Bruins jersey...)

Anyway, I had good seats. They were in the front row in the corner, although they were near a handicap exit so they weren't actual seats...they were folding chairs. And there were stupid stickers lining the bottoms of the glass that got in the way of taking pictures. Also getting in the way of taking pictures was the fact that the camera I use is a piece of shit. It's basically garbage since it was my mom's camera, but became so unreliable and useless that she bought a new one and would have thrown this one away if I hadn't tried to use it. It was good enough to get some decent shots.

I was thrilled that Jordan Caron got a hat trick. I hope to get his Providence jersey before the next Bruins @ Monarchs game that I am going to on November 10th. Aside from Caron's 3 goals, Spooner also scored for Providence. Niklas Svedberg in goal got his first win (as did the P-Bruins on the season). There were 2 pretty good fights. After jumping out to a 3-0 lead in the first, the Monarchs came back 3-2 in the 2nd, but ultimately the Providence Bruins success on the power play (THREE power play goals) got them the 4-3 win. Great stuff, lots of fun! Here are some pictures below, and all of my pictures from the night can be found here at my flickr!

Spooner after scoring the 1st goal.

More pictures below!

Favorite Modern Family Episodes

Top 6 favorite episodes from each of the first 3 seasons.

Season 1:

• 1.18 "Starry Night"
• 1.4 "The Incident"
• 1.5 "Coal Digger"
• 1.9 "Fizbo"
• 1.19 "Game Changer"
• 1.11 "Up All Night"

Season 2:

• 2.8 "Manny Get Your Gun"
• 2.17 "Two Monkeys and a Panda"
• 2.11 "Slow Down Your Neighbors"
• 2.20 "Someone To Watch Over Lily"
• 2.21 "Mother's Day"
• 2.22 "Good Cop Bad Dog"

Season 3:

• 3.5 "Hit and Run"
• 3.19 "Election Day"
• 3.4 "Door to Door"
• 3.15 "Aunt Mommy"
• 3.17 "Leap Day"
• 3.11 "Lifetime Supply"

Off-the-Ice Alter-Egos

I normally wouldn't actually try to write something like this the way I did here, but it was helpful for me to express my surprisingly rational feelings about Tim Thomas' greatness on the ice and poor discretion off of it. I think the following reflects the final stage in the grieving process - acceptance.

Ever since the White House "incident" last season and his Facebook posting about it, I have gone back and forth between thinking Tim Thomas is an obnoxious idiot for saying that shit on Facebook and thinking everyone who judges him for it is an obnoxious idiot. The bottom line is that I love Tim Thomas for what he has done for the Bruins and that will never change. But why must he continue to progress into a more and more unlikable person off the ice? While I will always love and appreciate Thomas, I am not so sure that him possibly never returning to the Bruins is a bad thing.

35 Favorite Friends Episodes

Below is the list of my top 35 episodes of Friends. The number is 35 because that is the smallest number I could realistically reduce the list to. I have a hard time narrowing things down, and there are so many great Friends episodes. I tried to pick the same amount from each season. They are listed in chronological order, not in order of favorites. It is listed as Season, Episode, Title, and original air date. Then below that I list each episode in a bit more detail, since the title doesn't always do a good job of indicating all the story lines of the episodes!

Stanley Cup-Winning Goal Scorers 1990-2011(2012)

here’s the list of the goals you’re seeing (listed by year: player (game #, time, period), winning team over losing team, final series game count).

• 1990: Craig Simpson (g5 9:21 2nd), Edmonton Oilers over Boston Bruins 4-1
• 1991: Ulf Samuelsson (ugh) (g6 2:00 1st), Pittsburgh Penguins over Minnesota North Stars 4-2
• 1992: Ron Francis (g4 7:50 3rd), Pittsburgh Penguins over Chicago Blackhawks 4-0
• 1993: Kirk Muller (g5 3:51 2nd), Montreal Canadiens over Los Angeles Kings 4-1
• 1994: Mark Messier (g7 13:29 2nd), New York Rangers over Vancouver Canucks 4-3
• 1995: Neal Broten (g4 7:56 2nd), New Jersey Devils over Detroit Red Wings 4-0
• 1996: Uwe Krupp (g4 4:31 3OT), Colorado Avalanche over Florida Panthers 4-0
• 1997: Darren McCarty (g4 13:02 2nd), Detroit Red Wings over Philadelphia Flyers 4-0
• 1998: Martin Lapointe (g4 2:26 2nd), Detroit Red Wings over Washington Capitals 4-0
• 1999: Brett Hull (g6 14:51 3OT), Dallas Stars over Buffalo Sabres 4-2
• 2000: Jaosn Arnott (g6 8:20 2OT), New Jersey Devils over Dallas Stars 4-2
• 2001: Alex Tanguay (g7 4:57 2nd), Colorado Avalanche over New Jersey Devils 4-3
• 2002: Brendan Shanahan (g5 14:04 2nd), Detroit Red Wings over Carolina Hurricanes 4-1
• 2003: Michael Rupp (g7 2:22 2nd), New Jersey Devils over Mighty Ducks of Anaheim 4-3
• 2004: Ruslan Fedotenko (g7 14:38 2nd), Tampa Bay Lightning over Calgary Flames 4-3
• 2005: none 
• 2006: Frantisek Kaberle (g7 4:18 2nd), Carolina Hurriances over Edmonton Oilers 4-3
• 2007: Trave Moen (g5, 15:44 2nd), Anaheim Ducks over Ottawa Senators 4-1
• 2008: Henrik Zetterberg (g6 7:36 3rd), Detroit Red Wings over Pittsburgh Penguins 4-2
• 2009: Maxime Talbot (g7 10:07 2nd), Pittsburgh Penguins over Detroit Red Wings 4-3
• 2010: Patrick Kane (g6 4:06 OT), Chicago Blackhawks over Philadelphia Flyers 4-2
• 2011: Patrice Bergeron (g7 14:37 1st), Boston Bruins over Vancouver Canucks 4-3
• Not featured in video: 2012: Jeff Carter (g6 12:45 1st), Los Angeles Kings over New Jersey Devils 4-2

I personally remember all of these starting with 1996. Consequently, 1996 is one of my favorites. My favorite is obviously is the Boston Bruins Cup championship, even though that goal was very anti-climactic but still awesome. My favorites are all overtime winners, except for Chicago's, because of how exciting it is and how closely I followed those series - especially 1999 and 2000. Those are 2 of my favorite all-time games, period. I was rooting for the team that ended up winning in both cases. Awesomely, my favorite player in 2000 scored the Cup winning goal, as did my favorite player in 2011!

My least favorites are 1991 because I hate Ulf Samuelsson, and 2007 because I just feel so bad for that player who scored on his own goaltender, and I feel very bad for the goaltender, because I always feel bad for goaltenders for some reason (even Luongo and Hasek).

Some interesting tidbits (all info is from 1990 and on, so exclusively the last 22 years, NOT all time):

Movie Posters and Whatnot

Massive picture post of many minimalist and other varieties of movie posters and a few other random things...

From Warriors to Monarchs

Click read more to view many pictures interspersed with lengthy talk about my memories of my siblings hockey careers as I was growing up. But most importantly, the Lady Monarchs Jersey Quest (photographed) was fulfilled.