Sunday, February 25, 2007

The HNIC Mystery

So neither of us did a pre-game post yesterday... rather that pretending it was sheer laziness on my part, let's pretend that I was super-confident about the boys now that they're back at home. And there's this other weird effect that happens Saturday night, which I have absolute faith in.

Has anybody noticed their record on Hockey Night In Canada so far in 2007?

To date, they have been on the CBC seven times in 2007. Once and only once did they lose, in a shootout. in Buffalo. And even then, they still picked up a pity point. Admittedly, only two of those games were road games (one in Edmonton, and one in Buffalo). Though given that, and another win against Vancouver in GM Place, earlier in the season, that means 2/7 of our wins on the road take place during CBC broadcasts! Now, I know the games are not exactly distributed evenly such that 1/7 of the games in the regular season take place on each day of the week...

Weirder yet! If you look only at road games on Saturday, you'll see that we have won four times this season playing on the road Saturday nights. We're not playing half our games on the road Saturday nights, I know that much. So what gives? Why are Saturday nights so much better than any day of the week?

(Actually, I suspect it's the opposition. I neglected to mention the wins come against the Blues, Coyotes, Oilers, and Canucks, with the win vs. the Canucks taking place at an admittedly low point of their season. Oh well. Work with me here, and pretend there's some sort of meaningful trend.)

Makes you think...

So my impression of last night's game? I'm still not that impressed. I guess I've been too much of a Sutter convert to not cringe at all these 7-something scores we've been racking up lately. What's wrong with a boring, 1-0 shutdown result? I'd prefer a bit more emphasis on the defensive end, personally, since it looks like the offence packs up and goes home early on the road.

On the upside, we didn't get Drew, and I'm really happy we beat the Sharks. They've been a team that's had our number since pre-season really, and it's about damn time we showed them we can beat them, even if it is an ass-ugly win...

3 comments:

  1. Seven goals is nice. It's the 4 goals and 37 shots against that suck.

    I agree with you, the defensive end is still suspect. That soft Hamrlik play keeps me up at night. And Rhett Warrener could probably be beaten by Jason Allison to the outside right now.

    Calgary still needs to find a way to get the job done in their own end. Sigh. Last year we couldn't score goals. This year we can't prevent them.

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  2. I think we're starting to understand what Penguin and Sabres fans go through every game...

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  3. The sole aspect of our defense I find terrifying actually is our inability to clear the puck. I was terrified the other night that they couldn't even ice the damn thing, not once or twice, but several times, even when playing even-strengths.

    Like, what gives, guys?

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