Puck Talk
Puck Talk
More random hockey thoughts while waiting for the opening night of the Beanpot to start in a few hours…
-If I can plagiarize something I wrote on the message board recently, let me begin by recognizing one of the most interesting subplots of the NHL season thus far. I posted this on the board on January 27th…
By the way, this could be the best rookie class (and obviously with the lockout it makes sense) in a long, long time. You've got Crosby and Ovechkin of course. But then the Svatos kid from Colorado is having a very good year. The Phanouf (or however you spell it) kid from Calgary. Boyes has been good for Boston. Lundqvist for the Rangers. Vanek with Buffalo. I watched Anaheim the other night on OLN and they've got two good rookies. Kunitz and Beauchemin. There's Parise with NJ. Oulette and Whitney with Pitt. The list goes on and on. Like I said, it makes perfect sense that you'd have more good rookies than normal after missing a year but still. There's far more young talent than I can ever remember.
That was just a list of guys I came up with off the top of my head. There are others. Petr Prucha has 25 goals for the Rangers. The Coyotes have two good rookie defensemen leading the team in ice time. Ryan Miller’s been very solid in goal for Buffalo. And Hannu Toivenen, of course, was playing well for the Bruins before he got hurt.
Just something that bears mentioning. All that young talent certainly bodes well for the future of the league. I think Lou Brown said it best in Major League…”there’s two or three potential all-stars in there!”
-A quick review of the playoff picture as of the first week of February…
Definitely In (10 or more points ahead of the 8th place team in their conference): Carolina, Ottawa, New York Rangers, Buffalo and Philadelphia in the East. Detroit, Dallas and Nashville in the West.
Definitely Out (10 or more points behind the 8th place team in their conference): Pittsburgh and Washington in the East. St. Louis, Chicago and Columbus in the West.
On the Bubble (Everyone else): Tampa Bay, New Jersey, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Atlanta and the Isles in the East. Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, LA, Colorado, Anaheim, Minnesota, Phoenix and San Jose in the West.
So you can basically treat it as 7 teams fighting for 3 spots in the East and 9 teams competing for 5 spots in the West. It’s still pretty wide open.
-The Bruins front office has made plenty of mistakes in the last few years (hello, Alexi Zhamnov) but one of the biggest errors, in my opinion, is one that you rarely hear much about; namely, letting Brian Rolston walk away to Minnesota. I mean, here’s a guy that the Wild signed to a 3-year deal worth about $9 million. So he only costs you around $3 mil/year. He kills penalties. He plays the point on the power play. He can play center. He can play wing. And this was all well-known even before he left. When you factor in the changes to the game that open the ice up for a good skater like Rolston the impact he makes is even more profound. Just look at the numbers he’s putting up for the Wild this year. 55 games. 23 goals. 34 assists. 57 points. Why you wouldn’t fight harder to keep a guy like him around is beyond me.
-I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Jose Theodore has been beyond atrocious for the Canadiens lately. At one point he was pulled in 3 out of 4 starts because he was giving up 6-7 goals a game. The Habs fans have been all over him. Trade rumors are constantly swirling around. And as a Bruins fan I’d just like to ask…where the hell was all this nonsense when Montreal was upsetting the Bruins in the playoffs in two of the last 4 years?
-This is the kind of sentence (which I came across while surfing Canadian hockey blogs) that could only be written in a Canadian hockey blog…
“I hate to put the entire season down to one game, but it really doesn't get much bigger than tonight's Sharks game vs Calgary.”
It doesn’t? Could’ve fooled me.
-Finally, my Beanpot predictions. As I’m writing this column on Monday morning (before the first-round games) but it won’t hit the streets until Wednesday this risks being woefully outdated by the time you read it. But then, you can’t go around Boston calling yourself the Puck Talk Guy without weighing in with some kind of opinion on the Beanpot. So here goes.
In the first game I like Boston College over Northeastern by a 5-2 score. I think the Hounds will keep it close early but BC ultimately pulls away in the 3rd. In the nightcap, I’ve got to go with BU over Harvard. I’ll call 3-2 in that one. I want to pull the trigger on a Crimson upset but I just can’t get myself to pick against the Terriers in the Beanpot. It’s like picking against Tiger Woods at Augusta. You just can’t do it. So that leaves another BC-BU final and here I’m going to ignore my own advice and pick BC to win it 3-1. I think the upset at Conte Forum last week will be fresh in BC’s mind and that, coupled with Schneider’s brilliance in net, will be enough to deliver the title to Coach York and the Eagles. Who says Barstool Sports is anti-Superfans?
Questions? Comments? Please send feedback to Michael James at feedback@barstoolsports.com