October 06, 2007

For The Love of Sport: Like Sports Only Colder.: a brief look at the Boston Bruins and the new NHL season.

Just in case anyone missed my column last week all that I can say is that it turns out Oklahoma does not in fact have the best chance of going undefeated and punching a ticket to the BCS National Title game. For the record it doesn’t say column by Nostradamus. In my defense I would still contend that they are a very good football team but that is actually the same backhanded compliment that I paid to Texas. So in the interest of not making myself look like an idiot two weeks in a row this week I promise no predictions. Since the second full week of the NHL season happens to be a lighter one in the world of sports that gives me a chance to catch up with the Boston Bruins, who are like a lot of other NHL hockey teams only without the talented players. Perhaps I sound a bit cynical but that’s really for two reasons; first I can remember when the Bruins had guys like Andy Moog, Adam Oates and Cam Neely (forget guys like Bobby Orr) and second I am cynical. Angry Bruins fans can be reach me via email at kyrilmitch_76@yahoo.com but finish reading the article before you write ok. The fundamental problem with the NHL is that with very little national media coverage and limited television exposure the NHL is really becoming more of a regional game. If a fan wants to follow the game they need to either root, root, root for the home team or go to great lengths to try and follow other teams. Last night (admittedly while focusing most of my attention on the two baseball playoff games) I was actually watching the Penguins get beaten so badly that I kept waiting for PETA to show up and protest. The novel thing is that I was watching the game via a free yahoo feed in a two inch square on my computer. It almost gave me the feeling that I had as a kid when on a clear summer night I could pick up some faraway baseball game on the radio. The Bruins opened up the regular season with a four to one loss on the road against the Dallas Stars. One thing that I will say is a definite improvement for the Bruins going into the season is the addition of Manny Fernandez at goalie. Last year the Bruins relied heavily on Tim Thomas, also seeing time were four other guys that no one has ever heard of. Fernandez posted a record of 52-34 in 98 starts over the last two years with Minnesota and he has a career goals against average of 2.47. The Bruins as a team have only won 64 games combined over the last two seasons en route to back-to-back 13th place finishes in the Eastern Conference. Unfortunately, the problem for the B’s is that losing games three or four to one really isn’t any better than losing games five or six to one. I poke fun at Tim Thomas but he should prove to be a very serviceable backup to Fernandez giving the Bruins one less position to worry about. The addition of Fernandez should help in the long run but from thirteenth place the addition of Sonja Henie would probably help. Now that the Bruins have managed to shore up the goalie position they really only have two problems to worry about, offense and defense. They lack any sort of firepower to score consistently and the defense has trouble keeping people out of the zone. Just to illustrate the point the Bruins top three scorers last year had totals of 96, 70 and 45 points, and their leading goal scorer had just 28 goals. To me however, the big picture statistic in hockey is not the goals and assists that people often talk about, the Moneyball stat in hockey has to be the +/- ratio. The easiest way to explain +/- is to say the number of goals that your team scores when you are on the as it relates to the number of goals that your team allows while you are on the ice. That is where you separate the good teams from the bad. Ottawa, for example, had 10 players with a +10 or better rating en route to the Stanley Cup finals whereas the Bruins had no player over +10 and only two players who were + anything (Mark Stuart who in 15 games played was a +7 and Brandon Bochenski who in 31 games was a +3). Everyone else on the team was a 0 or worse including those three top scorers (Marc Savard, 22 goals, 74 assists, 96 points, -19; Patrice Bergeron 22g, 48a, 70p, -28; and Glen Murray 28g, 17a, 45p, -12). Hockey produces some of the best, and I must say the most die-hard, sports fans. Just yesterday I read two great articles on Sportsfilter and quite a bit of discussion suggesting the idea of implementing relegation in the NHL. I think that that is exactly the sort of radical spark that the NHL needs to bring the mainstream media back to their product, that and firing whoever is in charge of their Marketing Department. So the point of this article isn’t really that you should all go out and try to watch the Bruins get the piss kicked out of them. The point is that somewhere you have an NHL team or an AHL team for that matter. They might be great or they might be kind of lousy but they’re your team so get to know them. And remember, the NHL is a lot like the other sports you know only colder.

posted by kyrilmitch_76 to commentary at 01:15 PM - 0 comments