Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Arab Cup of Hockey

Yes, believe it. It is currently taking place this week in the United Arab Emirates, between UAE, Kuwait, Algeria & Morocco. I'm rooting for Algeria (my other half is Algerian, that's why).

The scores so far (partly from National Teams of Ice Hockey and partly from various forum(s) posts of someone involved directly):

June 16, 2008

  • Kuwait vs. Algeria - 8 to 2

  • UAE vs. Morocco - 9 to 0


June 17, 2008

  • Morocco vs. Kuwait - 3 to 6

  • Algeria vs. UAE - 2 to 6


Note: The rosters for Morocco and Algeria are filled with Moroccan or Algerian expats who lived & played in France or Canada (with the exception for a French guy who lived in Morocco for a very long time with his family). The rosters for UAE and Kuwait includes a whole line filled with players from Belarus & Czech Republic. Not very fair, don't you think? Money buys nationality, I guess.

Links:

Friday, June 13, 2008

“I want to make speech longer but my English short.”

-Pavel Datsyuk (with nods to Bethany's Hockey Rants for posting the quote)

Updates since last posting (I apologize but things have gotten crazy here):

  • Detroit won the Stanley Cup: BOOOOOOOO!!! HISSS!!! (obviously I am not a Detroit fan)

  • Dominik Hasek (G-DET) is retiring (now I have to find another good goalie for my fantasy team)

  • Patrick Kane won the Calder Trophy!!! YES!!! He was so awesome to watch last season. I'm so happy for him (Other NHL trophy winners listed here and of course Ovechkin is carrying around a lot of metal)

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

The many suits of Don Cherry

Love him or hate him, there are just no words to describe Don Cherry's clothing style:

Don Cherry's Fashion Statements

Battle of the Goalies

I think it was Don Cherry who said (or at least re-iterated) that great teams have great goalies. This year's Stanley Cup finals are no exceptions. It is the battle of the goalies: Chris Osgood for Detroit and Marc-Andre Fleury for Pittsburgh.

Game 6 starts tonight, and so far it's Detroit ahead 3 games to 2. Here is a numerical comparison between Osgood & Fleury so far in this final series:

  • Chris Osgood: 3 wins, 2 of them shut-outs. 112 saves against 120 shots, so the save average is 93.3%.

  • Marc-Andre Fleury: 2 wins. 178 saves against 192 shots, making the save average 92.7%


So, as you can see, despite Osgood's 2 shut-outs, the save average are close to each other.

Osgood has been good to me on my fantasy teams when Hasek was benched for various reasons this past season. But in this final series, I have much greater respect for Fleury, and it's not because he's a Quebecois goalie (I do like French goalies a lot, like Patrick Roy when I was much younger & Pascal Leclaire currently). Fleury, I think in this series, is a better goalie than Osgood. He has been bombarded by the Detroit offense and have made countless great saves. A team's best defense is their goalie, and since Pittsburgh's defense is not as strong as Detroit, Fleury has pretty much kept the team's chances alive. And quite frankly, Detroit's defense pretty much makes Osgood's job easier.

Though I'm not a Pittsburgh fan, I am definitely not a Detroit fan (though I have had their players on my fantasy team and they had been good to me). With that I must say:

Go Penguins!