PLAYOFF PREVIEW! part 2

So it's a couple of days late. Sue me.

Here's our preview for the Eastern Conference playoffs openning round! Today's extremely useless stat will be the shooting percentage of your top goal scorer! By looking at the shooting percentage of the top goal scorer on each team, I will magically predict who is going to win each series!

Let's look at the match-ups.

1. Buffalo Sabres (Thomas Vanek, 18.1%) vs. New York Islanders (Jason Blake, 13.1%). Not even the potential return of Ricky D is enough to save the Islanders in this series. Five percentage points higher is just as good as a sweep in my book, Sabres in four.

2. New Jersey (Zach Parise, 12.6%) vs. Tampa Bay (Vincent Lecavlier, 15.3%). Based on my extremely unscientific thought process, it looks like Tampa Bay will come back from their opening round loss and over take the Devils. Bolts in 6.

3. Atlanta Thrashers (Marian Hossa, 12.6%) vs. New York Rangers (Jaromir Jagr, 9.3%). 9.3%?!?!? How many millions of shots did he take? With Jagr playing like his old self (his self of 4 years ago, not his self of 12 years ago), it looks like Atlanta should be ok in the long haul of this series. Atlanta in 7.

4. Ottawa Senators (Dany Heatley, 16.1%) vs. Pittsburgh Penguins (Sidney Crosby, 14.4%). Secondary Sid doesn't have a terribly bad shooting percentage. Maybe he should shoot the puck more. Of course, I'm guessing if he did that, then his critics (people like me), would yell at him for shooting too much and not passing more. It's a hard knock life for Crosby. Senators in five.

Well, that's it for this round, it looks like some teams will wake up and come back, while other teams won't. Some teams of course, are just destined to be hated by me, but hey, I was pretty nice this time around.

I'm now off to offer congratulations to the Hershey Bears and their first division title in 13 years, not to mention clinching the best record in the AHL. LET'S GO BEARS! Oh yeah, and NHL stuff too. We've got games starting in a few hours!

Hot! and Not! Week of 1/28/07

It's time for a new feature! Wooooo!Several people have asked me about the prospect of doing a "power rankings" sort of feature. I thought, "That's been done to death, and the comedy potential is a little lacking." So I'll do a "Hot and Not!" feature. Those aren't trite and everywhere! Ok, so they are, but the comedy potential is a lot higher.

So without further Apu, I present to you "Hot and Not" for this past week in Hockey, a special all-star edition!

HOT!

1. Chuck Norris. Seen at the NHL All-Star game, my only lament is that the poor lass interviewing him was not the recipient of one of his infamous roundhouse kicks to the head.
2. Daniel Briere. His performance in the All-Star game let the whole world no that he's actually hot, and not just flaming. He racked up more points at the All-Star game than anyone that's actually ever won anything in their lives.
3. The Wreckers. I'll let you draw your own Martin Brodeur joke here.
4. Zach Parise. *Sigh* Isn't he dreamy ladies?
5. Edge. It would have been nice to see some of his patented moves on some of those guys out there. Maybe he could show the aforementioned Daniel Briere how to perform the spear.

NOT!

1. Sidney Crosby. Despite the fact that he was held pointless, XM radio decided that he should be awarded the MVP for the entire tournament. Wait a second, is he CRYING in that photo?!?!?!
2. The Old-Timer's game. I wanted to see the legends of the NHL take on the legends of Dallas hockey!
3. The Fastest Skater competition. Seriously folks, stopwatches? We can do better than that, can't we? And we can't afford to have three of them and take an average? Is the league in such financial dire straits that my youth swim league had a better timing system than the NHL?
4. Giorgia Fumanti. She fell on her rear end walking off, and that was only half as embarrassing as her performance of the anthem.
5. Penalties in the Young Star game. Again, which was sadder, the fact that they called one, or the fact that it wasn't even a penalty?

Well, that wraps up our first edition of "Hot! and Not!" be back here this afternoon for "Ask FS!"