Nitzy's Hockey Den

Which town or city has produced the greatest collection of players ever? I decided to figure out which city has the greatest All-Star team of players hailing from it's boundries . I was unforgiving on borderlines and birthplaces, the player had to be born in the specific city. What follows is, in my opinion, the worldwide cities that produced the greatest all-time squad using career stats. Any current players' stats are accurate up until the end of Nov./08. There really can be no argument , the city of Montreal has produced the greatest collection of players of all-time. This squad has no room for forwards Mike Bossy, Nels Stewart, Henri Richard and Rod Gilbert or a plethora of goalies including Bernie Parent, Gump Worsely and Lorne Chabot . Ottawa places a strong second without finding room for, Aurel Joliat , King Clancy and Clint Benedict in net. Toronto leaves Rick Middleton and Bill Durnan on the sidelines. Sault Ste Marie finishes a perhaps surprising sixth place on...

I ordered these VHS tapes of the '87 Canada Cup back in the early '90's from an ad in the Hockey News. I think they cost something like 60 bucks back then which was alot for a young punk like me. The three tapes had each of the final three games in their entirety and were well worth the money. Watching these games back as they happened with my friends as bunch of 15 and 16 year old morons is still one of my favourite pre-adult memories. Anyway, I wanted to apply my player rating system used earlier (for 1972 and 1976 series) to the '87 version of Team Canada. I finally found the game boxscores and away I went. Below is a refresher on how the ratings points are awarded an estimated value to each goal scored in the tournament. Next is the Team Canada leaders. No suprise that Gretzky and Lemieux dominate, they were in on a majority of goals and most of the important ones. Perhaps a slight suprise is Larry Murphy, currently sporting a giant head and bad hair as an analyst ...

I recently picked up this gem, an original game program from the 1930/31 season. It was from a game in late December 1930, the last season that the Leafs played in The Mutual Street Arena before moving a few blocks north to Maple Leaf Gardens. This rink, also called the Arena Gardens was built in 1912 and stood until 1989. At the time it was built, it was the largest indoor arena in Canada and held 7,500 spectators for hockey. The rink lent it's name to the Toronto Arena hockey club which played the first two seasons of the NHL before changing their name to The St.Patricks and ultimately the Leafs. The squad this season featured many future Hall of Famers such as Charlie Conacher, Joe Primeau, King Clancy, Hap Day, Red Horner and Ace Bailey. The cover of the programme features a terrific drawing of the Leafs battling the Montreal Maroons. Pictured watching the action in the first row are each of the other teams in the NHL among them the Philadelphia Quakers, Detroit Falcons and Ot...

The 1980's. Not a great decade for goalies, probably the worst ever. Any other decade you can pretty much pick one or two goalies who dominated, 70's Dryden and Parent, 60's Bower and Hall, 50's Sawchuk and Plante...you get the picture. The 80's however provide at least five guys who can make an argument for goale of the decade. Here are the leaders in Wins, Goals Against Average and Win Percentage for the decade. As I did not have half season stats, I used full seasons from 1979/80 through 1989/90. Perhaps not suprisingly, Mike Liut leads in wins as he was one of the few who was a regular for the entire decade. His 3.50 GAA was a respectable twelfth overall, he was however only 18 games over .500 for the decade and under .500 for the playoffs. Pete Peeters is a similar case to Liut, as his raw numbers look terrific. Second in wins and average as well as fifth in win percentage. In fact, on these numbers alone he rates as one of the top five goalies of t...

I was talking hockey with a pal at work the other day, and for fun I asked him to name each of the players that has scored 70 goals in an NHL season. He, being a good hockey fan easily named all eight guys right down to Mogilny, Selanne and the often overlooked, Bernie Nicholls. Yes, Nicholls tallied 70 goals on the nose during the 1988-89 season no doubt aided by his new teammate the Great One. After naming all these players, I thought aloud that Nicholls, I believed never scored even 50 goals in any other season. Indeed, his next highest output was 46 in 84-85. This difference of 24 goals between his best and second best goal scoring years had to be one of the largest ever…off I went to check. It turns out that Nicholls is merely tied for the fifth highest differential from best to second best seasons. The chart that follows shows all the players with at least a twenty goal difference. There you have it, Scott Bjugstad is the biggest One-Hit Wonder in NHL ...