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"