The Puck Stops Here
World Hockey Championships: Preliminary Round
by PuckStopsHere on 05/16/12 at 02:15 PM ET
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The World Hockey Championship tournament is underway in Finland and Sweden. One preliminary group (Group H) played its games in Helsinki, Finland and the other group (Group S) played its games in Stockholm, Sweden. Both groups consist of eight teams. The top four in each group move on to the next round.
The World Hockey Championships are a poorly named tournament. How can you have a world championship if some of the best players in the game are not available because they are in the Stanley Cup playoffs? Nevertheless it is an interesting tournament as we see players playing in situations where they are no usually played. This gives us a better view of the hockey players in the tournament.
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Future Hall Of Famer Sergei Fedorov Retires
by PuckStopsHere on 05/15/12 at 03:06 PM ET
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I like to keep track of the players in hockey who i think should make the Hall of Fame regardless of what they do in the rest of their careers. When these players retire I like to write a career retrospective. Today I am writing about Sergei Fedorov who announced this weekend that he would retire to become the GM of CSKA Moscow in the KHL.
Fedorov was born on December 13th, 1969 in Pskov, USSR, which is in the western part of the former Soviet Union. He first became known to hockey scouts when he debuted in the Soviet Elite League at the age of 16 and 17 with Dynamo Minsk, in what is today Belarus. A young Fedorov scored six goals and seven points in only fifteen games played.
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Tags: Columbus+Blue+Jackets, Detroit+Red+Wings, Sergei+Fedorov, Washington+Capitals,
AHL Playoffs Second Round
by PuckStopsHere on 05/14/12 at 12:16 PM ET
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The second round of the AHL playoffs has completed. Look back at the first round here. This is a summary of the results:
Norfolk defeat Connecticut four games to two Norfolk is the minor league affiliate of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Connecticut belongs to the New York Rangers. The Norfolk offence was led by Alexandre Picard, Alex Killorn and Trevor Smith. Jaroslav Janus took over for Dustin Tokarski to close out the series in goal. Connecticut was led by Marek Hrivak and Casey Wellman. Tim Erixon led their defence. Cameron Talbot had a strong series in goal in the losing effort.
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Third Round Playoff Predictions
by PuckStopsHere on 05/13/12 at 10:42 PM ET
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I am back from a weekend offline and am posting my semifinal playoff predictions before I find today’s game on my PVR. So far I went 2-2 in my second round predictions and struggled to go 2-6 in the unpredictable first round. Thus this season I am now guaranteed to have more series predicted wrong than correctly no matter how the remaining series go.
Here are my predictions for the third round:
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How Did Holmgren Do?
by PuckStopsHere on 05/10/12 at 12:38 PM ET
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The team that made the biggest wholesale changes last summer was probably the Philadelphia Flyers. They traded Mike Richards and Jeff Carter in order to make salary cap room to acquire Ilya Bryzgalov, who was supposed to solve their goaltending problems. Initially, I didn’t think the moves were very smart. Now that the season has ended for the Flyers, we can better assess how successful the moves were.
In 2010/11, before these moves were made, the Flyers finished with 106 points. They were first in the Atlantic Division and one point back of the East Conference lead. In the playoffs they made it to the second round. This season the Flyers had 103 points (a dropoff of three points) and this put them in fifth seed. They again made the second round of the playoffs before their elimination.
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Tags: Brayden+Schenn, Ilya+Bryzgalov, Jeff+Carter, Mike+Richards, Paul+Holmgren, Philadelphia+Flyers,
Phoenix Conspiracy Theory
by PuckStopsHere on 05/09/12 at 06:15 PM ET
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We have seen enough numbers since the Phoenix Coyotes bankruptcy three years ago to know that hockey in Phoenix (at least in Glendale, Arizona where Jobing.com Arena the Coyotes home) is a money loser. The only way that one can make money is if somebody else pays for the losses. In the recent term somebody else has been the city of Glendale itself. They have put up $25 million a year for the past two years to cover the team’s losses. Obviously that is unsustainable. No city can afford that and it isn’t in any city’s best interests.
That makes it surprising that a potential sale to keep the Coyotes in Phoenix exists. Former San Jose Sharks CEO Greg Jamison leads an unnamed group of buyers who would buy the team in Glendale with the city paying large facilities management fees to the Jamison group.
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Tags: Greg+Jamison, Phoenix+Coyotes,
Giroux Suspended
by PuckStopsHere on 05/08/12 at 01:20 PM ET
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The NHL has a problem when it comes to suspensions in the playoffs. While they are willing to throw the book at fringe players, they do not want to suspend star players. The problem first appeared this year when they failed to suspend Shea Weber for his slamming of Henrik Zetterberg’s head into the boards as time ran out in a first round game. This became an issue again when Claude Giroux, the NHL’s top scorer in the playoffs and my pick for playoff MVP at this point, hit Dainius Zubrus’s head with his shoulder in the second period of game four of their quarterfinal series.
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Tags: Claude+Giroux, Philadelphia+Flyers,
A Potentially Significant Signing
by PuckStopsHere on 05/07/12 at 12:43 PM ET
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Hockey pundits are always on the lookout for the best player who is not in the NHL. For most of the last few years the consensus choice for this honor was Alexander Radulov. Now that he is back in the NHL (at least temporarily), these pundits have been looking for another player to give this honor. One candidate that many chose was Roman Cervenka. He is a 26 year old Czech forward who was last playing in the KHL. He was a member of the 2010 Czech Olympic team. He has appeared in the two KHL All Star Games that occurred when he was in the league. In 2011 he was the top goal scorer in the league.
Last week he signed a one year entry level contract with the Calgary Flames. This deal has been incorrectly reported as being worth $3.775 million but Cervenka will not earn anywhere near that amount.
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Tags: Calgary+Flames, Roman+Cervenka,
The Nashville Suspensions
by PuckStopsHere on 05/06/12 at 01:36 PM ET
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After losing games one and two in their series against Phoenix, the Nashville Predators shocked the hockey world by suspending two of their best offensive players Alexander Radulov and Andrei Kostitsyn for breaking team rules by staying out late before game two. Nashville was in a situation where there was no win. It is not going to help the team if some of their top players are out of the lineup for a big playoff game and it doesn’t help the team if their players are not doing what is best for the team.
It isn’t that uncommon historically for players to break curfews and team rules before big games. It may not be any good for a team but there is no good solution for a team.
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Tags: Alexander+Radulov, Andrei+Kostitsyn, Nashville+Predators,
Best Team Of The Playoffs So Far
by PuckStopsHere on 05/05/12 at 02:32 PM ET
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We are over three weeks into the Stanley Cup playoffs and we see that it has been a different world from the regular season. Many of the top seeds fell in the first round. Many of the teams that have been successful so far in the playoffs were not the most successful in the regular season. One team has clearly stood out above the rest of the pack and they are the Los Angeles Kings.
Los Angeles has won seven of their eight games to date. Their only loss came against the two-time Presidents Trophy winning Vancouver Canucks. They have outscored their opposition by a total score of 24-13. They have played some outstanding games in the last little while. This isn’t the same Kings team that took eighth seed in the West Conference.
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Tags: Los+Angeles+Kings,
About The Puck Stops Here
The Puck Stops Here was founded during the 2004/05 lockout as a place to rant about hockey. The original site contains over 1000 posts, some of which were also published on FoxSports.com.
Who am I?
A diehard hockey fan.
Why am I blogging?
I want to.
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