A beautiful way to celebrate the Canucks’ 40th anniversary year: their first President’s Trophy ever.

Congratulations, boys! Next up, the hard-fought path to Lord Stanley’s Cup.

Tim LaHay:

If history is any guide, the team that leads the NHL in regular season points is four to five times more likely than any other team in the playoffs to make it into the Stanley Cup finals, and seven to eight times more likely to win the Cup.

My good friend Tim warms my heart with this well-reasoned post explaining why there’s no reason for Vancouver Canucks fans worry about the supposed President’s Trophy Curse.

A neat article by Elliotte Friedman with lots of anecdotes involving well-known NHL players and historic Russian hockey figures.

The New York Times has an article from Friday about the Zamboni corporation, primarily focused on the fact that the economic downturn doesn’t seem to be adversely affecting the company. Even if you’re not interested in the economic angle, the article is a fun read for anyone that has a soft spot in their heart for the big old brick-lick Zamboni. Here’s a quote:

When Zamboni engineers want to do some on-ice testing, a machine is driven several city blocks beneath a skyline of palm trees and fast-food signs, to the Iceland skating rink, where Zamboni became Zamboni in the first place 60 years ago.

The original machine sits in a far corner of the rink.

“The one from 60 years ago would still make a halfway decent sheet of ice,” Mr. Zamboni said. “Just not as good as the new ones.”

This might be one of the best hockey commercials ever.

Having played beer league hockey (adult recreational hockey, for those of you wondering) for the past seven years, I believe I’ve discovered the key to having fun and feeling like your skills are growing as a team. It’s not something that you might expect, but I think the logic is foolproof.

Wanna hear it?

Here it is: Have a crappy goalie.

I say this because for the past seven years, I’ve played on a mediocre (at best) team, with an exceptionally good goaltender. We’ve had a couple of different starting goalies in this time, but they’ve been pretty consistently good. Better, in fact, than any of our competition.

But here’s the thing. In any sport where there are a lot of teams, they get divided up into divisions based on skill so that the competition can be kept fairly even. The only real way for the league to determine the quality of a given team is to look at their record, particularly wins vs. losses, and goals for vs. goals against.

In hockey, the position of goaltender is key to a team’s success – at least as much so as a quarterback is key to a football team’s success. So if you happen to have a very good goalie, as we have had, you will find yourself in close games with teams that should be beating you handily. This means that you end up playing against teams that have better speed, puck handling, and positional play compared to your team, but you (at least sometimes) have a chance of winning those games when your goalie is able to stop all of their chances, and you capitalize on one of your few chances against their much weaker goalie.

This sounds fine, but the reality of it is that your team ends up controlling the puck much less than the other team, and therefore your offensive hockey skills as a team don’t grow nearly as quickly as they otherwise could. Keep in mind that beer league hockey teams don’t hold practices (at least ours doesn’t).

Now consider the same team, but with a particularly weak goalie. You’d end up in a lower division, playing against teams with much less overall skill, since they’d still be able to get enough goals on your weak goaltender to stay in the games. But overall, your team would control the play far more, get more offensive opportunities, and likely grow offensively much more as a team. You’d probably get better defensively as well, since you’d be compensating for a terrible goalie.

It’s taken me seven years to figure it out, but I think the way to consistently have fun in beer league hockey is to have a relatively poor goalie. Which sucks, since besides being very good, our goalie is also a great guy.

[tags] hockey, beer league, beer league hockey, recreational hockey, goalie, goaltender, playoffs [/tags]

I just saw this sidebar item on TSN’s site called “When I was 19″, which compares Sidney Crosby’s numbers with those of Wayne Gretzky the year he was 19, as Crosby is now.

I knew Crosby was special, but I didn’t realize just how special:

Sidney Crosby is tearing up the NHL scoring race with a healthy lead for the Art Ross Trophy. See how the phenom’s torrid pace compares to that of another superstar who had similar numbers when he was 19. Sidney Crosby (2006-07): 57 GP, 26 G, 70 A, 96 PTS Sidney Crosby (On Pace): 79 GP, 37 G, 98 A, 135 PTS Wayne Gretzky (1979-80): 79 GP, 51 G, 86 A, 137 PTS

Holy crap.

[tags] hockey, Gretzky, Wayne Gretzky, Crosby, Sidney Crosby, TSN [/tags]

This is something I haven’t ever had the pleasure of doing in Vancouver before, play ice hockey outside! As we were headed to Science World on Sunday morning, we happened to drive past a field near our house and noticed that there were a bunch of people skating on a large patch of ice there. It turns out that the field had flooded just before we had a cold snap, and the resulting ice is both perfect for skating on, and totally safe, since it’s only about two inches off the ground.

So we decided to turn right around, bundle up, and head out on the ice. We had a blast passing a hockey ball around, taking Milo for quick zooms around in the stroller, and otherwise just enjoying each other’s company under a clear sky on ice! Thanks to Fran for having the foresight to bring the camera and capture the moment for us to remember. It was so much fun that yesterday I cut out of work at 4pm and headed home to get Josh, and we went back and spent another hour and a half on the ice. I felt like a kid again, playing until forced to go home due to the encroaching darkness.

Today we’re getting slushy snow and rain, so I fear our spontaneous ice rink’s time is already up. I’m really glad to have had the opportunity to lace them up outside though – I’m sure Josh is too young to appreciate how special that is in these here parts.

Note, click on the thumbnails to see full-sized images.

[tags] hockey, ice hockey, ice skating, Vancouver, outoor skating, frozen field [/tags]

Good Lord, this is one of our newest Canucks?