Monday statgeek: In defense of Mikael Grabovski

Volatility measures the number of total goals per 60 minutes a player was on the ice for. The idea is that goals are more likely to occur when certain players are on the ice.

It took a couple of weeks, but it appears that Tom Renney has officially nixed the dreaded 10 - 14 - 6 - 77 penalty killing unit that was responsible for ten powerplay goals against. Last night against Chicago his top unit on the first powerplay of the game for the Hawks was Andrew Cogliano, Dustin Penner, Jim Vandermeer and Ryan Whitney. Shawn Horcoff saw just 25 shorthanded seconds and the defensively inept Tom Gilbert has been placed on a unit with Theo Peckham.

Anachronistic Skyline Footage Night in Canada

Word to your mothers; mine pointed out this slight factual innaccurary during a phone call Saturday night. This is CBC's skyline view of downtown Vancouver, purpotedly taken live around gametime before the Vancouver Canucks took on the Detroit Red Wings.

Some CFL thoughts headed into final week

The last few weeks of the CFL season are usually 'playing for nothing but pride' time, but this year has actually had one of the more compelling playoff races in recent years.

Maybe it's just because both teams started off so bad. Maybe it's because the talent pool is pretty lousy this year. But both the Edmonton Eskimos and BC Lions have been hot lately--the Esks have won 5 of 6 and the Lions 4 of 6, with both of their losses coming in overtime.

Sidney Crosby fights, Jarome Iginla doesn't

Kaboom, Niskanen. I don't particularly like fighting, and when you're losing the game, it's certainly a bad idea to have your star player off the ice for 5+ minutes.

Dion Phaneuf: The Shakespearean Tragedy

Dion Phaneuf may go down in history as that guy who made a career out of being really really good in junior and playing on the strongest World Junior team we'll ever see. Everything after the lockout, and, well, Phaneufs career has really gone to shits.

How Sportsnet One succeeded last night

There were three sporting events that Rogers Sportsnet had the exclusive Canadian rights to that would interest viewers in the Pacific timezone last night: the clinching World Series game, the Canucks game, and the Toronto Raptors/Sacramento Kings tilt.

Two thoughts involving Leafs and Canucks

It's already Tuesday and I only just watched the crazy end to the Montreal/Toronto CFL game this week, so I may as well just do what I do best and draw unsuspecting Toronto Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks fans to this blog by having them type their favourite teams into Google and having this post pop up.