–Nichols writes an excellent season-in-review. It’s long and entertaining and worth reading in its entirety. A few things to point out: he reminds us of all the bad press Kyle Turris received for his holdout; he takes a realistic look at Chris Phillips‘ play (“no longer capable of playing top four minutes against the oppositions best forwards“); points out that only Erik Karlsson received negative feedback from journalists as a Norris Trophy candidate; comments that Chris Neil should not be on the powerplay; comes to the defence of Jason Spezza (he’s a little glib in suggesting Milan Michalek doesn’t generate offence); and finally, reminds us that the season can’t be replicated–there won’t be the same expectations going into next season.
-Speaking of Nichols, he says something unintentionally misleading in his article concerning the lack of negotiations with Matt Carkner. He writes, “In light of the knee injuries that limited Carks to 29 games this season“, which isn’t entirely accurate. Carkner missed 24 games due to injury; the other 24 he was a healthy scratch.
–Pat Cannone is excited to be re-signed, “I’m really happy, really excited. It was a great day a couple days ago. I’m really happy to be part of the organization still. It’s really nice, really comforting to know that you’re wanted for more than one year. I’m just really thrilled, and I just want to work hard this summer to have a good start to the season. My main focus is my skating, just to get a little quicker, get my first two steps going. Everything else will take care of itself if I focus on that this summer and keep improving my strength. I took two, three weeks off to give my body a rest. As I get started, I’m going five days a week. Closer to training camp, I’ll go six, but also give the body a rest sometimes and go four. It all depends on how the body feels throughout the whole process. But for now I’m donig off-ice five days a week, and I’ll be skating three times a week once the summer’s going. Hopefully I can do a lot more of the same, pick up where I left off at the end of the year. I need to be more of a leader, more of a well-rounded player and continue to work hard. That’s one thing I always saw throughout my college career, if you work hard, you set yourself up for success. With that mentality, everything should go well. I feel like for my rookie season, I was an older guy, and I tried to be a sponge, soak in everything from the vets we had. I think I did a great job with that. Being a leader at Miami only helped me for that first year pro. I’m not getting any younger, so the more I play, the wiser I feel like I’ll be. Credit the leadership we had in Binghamton this year — Corey Locke, Mark Parrish, Timmy Conboy— they really helped me throughtout my first season. Coach Kleinendorst was great to me. He was a big influence, and he taught be a lot of things. He was awesome. I wish him luck wherever he goes. That being said, whoever is your coach, you have to keep soldiering on and try to adapt and do the best you can. Obviously, we didn’t finish where we wanted. But everybody will be a year older, a year wiser, a year stronger. We still have a handful of guys that were members of the Calder Cup championship team. If we can put all the right pieces together, we’ll be just fine. We have a good core, some good rookies coming in. I think it will be a good year. Even the guys who came in late, like Chris Wideman and Cole Schneider, got a chance to get a feel for everything. Things could have gone better, but it’s great those guys got to come. Wideman‘s a great buddy of mine, so I’ll take him under my wing. I’m sure everything will run very smoothly.”
–Rory Boylen joins Stu Hackel and Greg Wyshynski in dismissing the criticism of shot-blocking in this year’s playoffs. He points out that the number of shots blocked is statistically no different than the last few years and “It seems, for the most part, the teams who score 5-on-5 (when real skill is on display) enjoy success.” There are two problems with this argument: 1) the five best 5-on-5 scoring teams are gone (only one of which made it to the second round) and only two of the top-sixteen are still around (Rangers and Coyotes)–a 50-50 success rate is not evidence for a trend; 2) the games themselves are dull. Defensive hockey isn’t inherently exciting, but this year has punished teams that try to push the tempo. Yes, there is more interference allowed in the post-season, but something else is going on and if it’s not shot-blocking I’d love to hear what these writers think it is. The top-ten scoring teams are playing golf right now, leaving us with the 11th, 13th, 17th, and 29th. Mediocrity is being rewarded and the answer isn’t great goaltending–that exists in every playoff year.
The International Scouting Service (ISS) has released their latest rankings and here’s the top-30 which features many changes (for the previous list go here; I’ve listed previous rankings in brackets where applicable):
1. Yakupov, Nail, LW 10/6/93 L 5.10.5 189 Sarnia OHL
2. Forsberg, Filip, RW 8/13/94 R 6.01 176 Leksands SweAl
3. Murray, Ryan, LD 9/27/93 L 6.00.5 201 Everett WHL (4)
4. Grigorenko, Mikhail, RW 5/16/94 L 6.03.25 200 Québec QMJHL (3)
5. Trouba, Jacob, RD 2/26/94 R 6.02 196 USA Under-18 NTDP
6. Dumba, Matt, RD 7/25/94 R 5.11.75 183 Red Deer WHL
7. Rielly, Morgan, LD 3/9/94 L 5.11.5 190 Moose Jaw WHL
8. Teuvo Teravainen, LW, 09/11/94, 5.11 161 Jokerit FinE
9. Ceci, Cody, RD 12/21/93 R 6.02.5 207 Ottawa OHL
10. Reinhart, Griffin, LD 1/24/94 L 6.03.75 207 Edmonton WHL
11. Gaunce, Brendan, C 3/25/94 L 6.02 215 Belleville OHL
12. Maatta, Olli, LD 8/22/94 L 6.01.5 202 London OHL (13)
13. Collberg, Sebastian, RW 2/23/94 R 5.11 Vastra SweJE (12)
14. Galchenyuk, Alexander, RW 2/12/94 L 6.00.5 198 Sarnia OHL
15. Kerdiles, Nicholas, C/L 1/11/94 L, 6.01.5 200 USA Under-18 NTDP (22)
16. Faksa, Radek, LW 1/9/94 L 6.03 202 Kitchener OHL (15)
17. Wilson, Thomas, RW 3/29/94 R 6.03.5 203 Plymouth OHL (27)
18. Finn, Matthew, LD 2/24/94 L 6.00.25 195 Guelph OHL (16)
19. Lindholm, Hampus, LD 1/20/94 L 6.02.5 196 Rogle SweJE (25)
20. Aberg, Pontus, LW 9/23/93 R 5.11 187 Djurgarden SweE (17)
21. Koekkoek, Slater, LD 2/18/94 L 6.02 184 Peterborough OHL (18)
22. Pouliot, Derrick, D 1/16/94 L 5.11.25 186 Portland WHL (19)
23. Laughton, Scott, C 5/30/94 L 6.00 177 Oshawa OHL (20)
24. Girgensons, Zemgus, F 1/5/94 L 6.01.25 201 Dubuque USHL (21)
25. Sissons, Colton, C/R 11/5/93 L 6.01 189 Kelowna WHL (23)
26. Skjei, Brady, LD 3/26/1994 L 6.03 203 USA Under-18 NTDP (24)
27. Dalton Thrower, D, 12/20/93 R 5.11.00 179 Saskatoon WHL (26)
28. Bystrom, Ludvig, LD 7/29/94 L 6.00.75 208 Modo SweE
29. Adam Pelech, LD 8/16/94 L 6.02 210 Erie OHL (NR)
30. Hertl, Tomas, LW 11/12/93 L 6.02 198 pounds Slavia CzeE (29)
Falling out of the top-thirty: Daniil Zharkov (30).
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[…] been released and these are their final rankings with changes marked in brackets (here are their previous rankings). ISS does not rank goaltenders and skaters together, but none of the goaltending prospects are […]