The 2012 NHL Entry Draft: Recap
Jonathan Willis
June 23 2012 05:16PM
The 2012 NHL Entry Draft featured a ton of action, and we had people on the ground from across the Nation Network. With the draft behind us, now's a good time to summarize the collected work done by our writers.
The Five Top-Ranked Players Left At The 2012 NHL Draft
Jonathan Willis
June 23 2012 07:51AM
The first round of this year’s draft saw some surprising selections. At the very top, Nail Yakupov went first overall as the Oilers opted for the consensus best player, but there were reaches and slides sprinkled throughout. Filip Forsberg, ranked 2nd on the consensus list, fell to 11; Teuvo Teravainen was pegged as a top-10 talent and he slid to 18th.
Based on the consensus list, who are the five best players available in Round 2?
NHLnumbers Podcast: Jacob Trouba, Gabe Desjardins and Dirk Hoag
NHLnumbers Podcast
June 21 2012 10:14AM
In the latest installment of the NHLNumbers podcast, we start with a roundtable on the Stanley Cup Finals before getting to our three very important and higly informative guests (...seriously. Sorry if sounded sarcastic).
Our first VIP is probable first rounder Jacob Trouba, who was kind enough to take time out from helping out with national junior team goalie camp to talk to us about the US National Team Development Program, his skills and his plans after he goes in the first round of the draft this week.
Next we were joined by none other than Gabe Desjardins of Behind the Net fame. Our last guest was Dirk Hoag of the fine Nashville Predators blog On the Forecheck.
Sample Sizes, Results-Based Analysis, and Eric Nystrom
Josh L.
June 20 2012 01:40PM
Source: Wikipedia Commons
Sample size issues have been known to cause crazy amounts of unwarranted hysteria. The 2011/12 season of Eric Nystrom should be Exhibit A in the coming years whenever a player comes out throwing bulls eyes to start a season out of nowhere.
There is usually a reason the career bottom six player with ten goals by Thanksgiving startles you. In your mind you know it shouldn't happen, but it has. Yet, you look up again and said player is getting more ice time, playing against increasingly more difficult competition, and given more defensive responsibility. All of this after said player was given away by one of the worst teams in hockey to help the team you follow get above the cap floor after the New York Rangers ditched Sean Avery (which, I realize, makes very little sense). Fans had to attempt to reconcile what they saw on the ice with what they intuitively knew about the player.
This is the story of how Eric Nystrom confused an entire fan base for several months while proving how fickle small sample sizes and the results-based analysis springing from them can be.
Zone Entries: Introduction to a unique tracking project
Eric T.
June 20 2012 11:03AM
About the project
For the last year, Geoff Detweiler has been tracking the Flyers' zone entries and I have been writing about them for Broad Street Hockey. This article will be the first in a series in which I hope to introduce a new audience to the work and inspire a few readers to try tracking other teams.
