Nitzy's Hockey Den

A few of the stats that jump out as we reach the quarter pole of the NHL season. With 20 assists in 23 games, Ottawa defenceman Erik Karlsson is currently on pace for 71 assists. Only nine other defenders have collected that many helpers in an NHL season. Bobby Orr and Paul Coffey 6 times each. Ray Bourque, Brian Leetch 3 times each. Denis Potvin, Al MacInnis, Gary Suter, Sergei Zubov and Phil Housley once each. Leetch was the last to do it in 1995/96. New Washington Capital coach Dale Hunter is also the franchise's all-time leader with 72 Playoff points. Perhas surprisingly Mike Ridley sits second with 60 ahead of Peter Bondra's 56 points. Alex Ovechkin sits 7th with 50 points in 37 career playoff games. Not surprising is the fact that Hunter also leads the Caps in career playoff PIM's with 372 in 100 games. After four games this season, Sidney Crosby was only only 3 points behind Eric Staal and Jarome Iginla who have each played over 20 games. Crosby and Alex Ovechkin ha...

As of November 27, 2001, rookie Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is tied for 10th in NHL scoring as an 18 year-old. Is this a rarity? Umm...yes, the only other teenage rookies to finish in the NHL top ten scoring was Wayne Gretzky and Sidney Crosby (yes, I consider Gretzky's 79/80 NHL season as a rookie year). Two guys did it. Not Mario Lemieux, not Dale Hawerchuk, not Bryan Trottier. Gretzky of course tied Marcel Dionne for first in scoring as an 18 year old and Crosby was 6th in his 18 year old rookie year. In his rookie year of 84/85, Lemieux (at 19 years old) amassed 100 points good for 16th place in the high-flying 1980's. Similarly, in Hawerchuk's rookie year of 81/82 his 103 points was good for "only" 12th spot in scoring. Not bad for an 18 year old. In 1975/76, 19 year old Bryan Trottier scored 95 points and finished 12th as well. Other teenage rookies who've placed fairly well in the scoring race were: Gaye Stewart, 1942/43, 19 years old, 47 pts finished in 16th ...

"Toronto Maple Leafs will be shorthanded for their game here at the Forum tonight against the Canadiens, bringing only 11 players instead of the customary 14. 'If Tommy Gorman has any players available around Montreal for use tomorrow night on a lend-lease basis we'll take 'em', Frank Selke was quoted." Dec 14, 1944 was the night and the Leafs would play with less skaters than my beer-league team usually does. Sure times were different back in the wartime era NHL as teams usually only dressed 14 skaters, far less than today...but 11 skaters, that's a tough one. Leaf coach Hap Day would have two forward lines to work with, one of Ted Kennedy, Bob Davidson and Tom O'Neill and the other of Mel Hill, Nick Metz and Lorne Carr. Absent for the Montreal game were 19 year-old scoring star Gus Bodnar who was ill, Sweeney Schriner who was out with long-term injury, and Wally Stanowski who was in the process of returning from military duty. Youngsters, Ross Johnst...

Vancouver Canuck goalie Cory Schneider has had some tough luck so far this season. Despite a 2.24 GAA and a Save Pct of .920 he only has a won/loss record of 4-4. The main reason for this is the almost criminal lack of support by his offense. In games started by Schneider the Canucks have scored an average of only 1.63 goals per game. Two of his losses have been by shutout. On the other end of the spectrum is Maple Leafs tender, Jonas Gustavsson. In games which he was the goalie of record he has a GAA of 3.14 and Save Pct. of .896. His record by the way is 6 wins, 4 losses. The Leafs have scored an average of 4.11 goals per game in his starts. This is almost two and a half times the support that the Canucks have given Schneider. The contrast in the support of each goalie's teammate is also amazing. Roberto Luongo has a GAA almost a full goal higher than Schneider yet his record is 7-5-1 because Vancouver scores 3.96 goals per game for him. On the other hand, Toronto's Ben Scri...

Feb. 16, 1961-The Canadian Press "The league's two top scorers - Frank Mahovlich of the Leafs and Bernie (Boom Boom) Geoffirion of the Canadiens - failed to get any points. Mahovlich, leading the race with 69 points, was well shadowed by Dickie Moore and had only a couple of good scoring chances. Geoffrion, who has 68 points, was in close several times but couldn't get a clear shot on goal." This day would be the last time for over 50 years that a Toronto Maple Leaf led the NHL in scoring more than 20 games into a season, until today. After 20 games of the current campaign, Leaf Phil Kessel has 27 points, one more than Flyer Claude Giroux. Granted, it's only a quarter of the way through the season, but that is as late as a Leaf has led the league in half a century. On that same day in 1961, Feb 16, Bernie Geoffrion would explode for 5 points in a 9-1 win over Boston. The Big 'M' responded with 4 points in two games that weekend but 'Boom-Boom' kep...

With Hall of Fame week just finishing, talk turns to the next batch of Hockey Hall of Famers and to what makes a Hall of Famer? I had an idea to simply figure out what constituted a member of the Hall, statistically speaking. For now I only looked at players who were Forwards, and only at guys who played at least 400 career games. I figured if only looking at stats, it's not fair to include the early NHLer's who's careers often amounted to only 200 or so games. There are still 94 NHL Hall members that were mainly forwards who played at least 400 games. It's a nice wide array of eras from Joliat, Morenz, Nels Stewart and Syl Apps to all the stars of recent decades. These 94 players average careers work out to 946 Games and 883 points. Remember there's many different eras of hockey included in there, as well as a number of more defensively oriented forwards but I think it gives us a fair starting point for the average Hall of Famer. I then looked at all NHL players t...

OK, it's only been 4 games so far this season but Aaron Rome has 3 goals and 5 points. He had played 131 career games before this year and collected a grand total of 2 goals and 12 points. He set a career high last season with 5 points. Now, we obviously won't assume he continues at his new-found level of scoring, but even if he scores 25 or 30 points this year it will be a monumental turnaround in his point production. Just how rare would it be? Extremely. I tried to find other examples throughout NHL history that matched these parameters: First 130 games of their career with a point scoring rate of 0.10/Game or less, then they went on to have a season of at least 0.50 Pts/Game at some point in their career. I could pinpoint only two other guys that fit this description. Lyle Odelein began his lengthy career with Montreal in 1989/90 and in his first 2+ seasons he had 131 games with 1 goal and 12 points, very similar to Rome's numbers. In 1992/93 he 'exploded' for...

I was recently reading an old hockey magazine from the early 1970's and there was a nice article about Johnny 'Pieface' McKenzie. He had jumped to the new WHA as a 35 year old and in his opinion the league was not getting it's due respect. In the article he states of the upstart league, "Certainly we're not equal to the NHL, but don't forget they've been around a hundred years. If we keep robbing their players and signing juniors we'll be equal in four or five years". He continued saying "The New England Whalers would have held their own in the NH L over the whole year. I know they're better than four or five teams right now. In fact, our top four teams could have beaten the Flames or the Islanders." The question is, was he correct? The 1972/73 New England Whalers finished with 94 points in 78 games and beat third overall Cleveland 4 games to 1 in the semi-finals before beating second overall Winnipeg in the Final, also 4 games t...

It came out recently that Georges Laraque says in his new book that Wayne Gretzky was the "worst coach he ever played for". The question is should we care what Laraque thinks and if so, is his criticism valid? Gretzky's four year coaching record was 143-161-24 for a Winning Pct. of .473 and of course he never managed to get the Coyotes into the post season. In addition to Gretz, Laraque played for Ron Low, Kevin Lowe, Craig MacTavish, Michael Therrien, Guy Carbonneau, Bob Gainey and Jacques Martin. Of these guys, only Ron Low had a lower Winning Pct. than Wayner, but he made the playoffs three of the seven years and won two different playoff rounds. Gretzky ranks 91st in coaching victories and there have been exactly 100 coaches with at least 135 career wins. Out of these 100, Gretzky ranks 84th in Career Winning Pct. AND he is the only one of the 100 to have never made the playoffs. Even Doug Carpenter made the playoffs once (losing with Toronto 4 games to 1 in 1989/90)...

A 7-3-1 record to begin a season is definitely nice for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but it certainly is far too early to say that record guarantees an overall good season. Indeed, with 36 goals for and 35 allowed, the Leafs may very well come back to earth soon. Over their history, Toronto has in fact started with the exact same 7-3-1 record on four other occaisons. A look at how those seasons turned out: 1999/00 Led by Curtis Joseph in net, this year's 7-3-1 start featured 32 goals for and only 22 allowed. They sat first in the NHL. They would continue the hot start ending the calendar year at 23-9-4 and finished the season with 100 points, first place in the Northeast Division. Toronto would lose 4 games to 2 in the New Jersey Devils in the second round of the playoffs. 1988/89 This season's 7-3-1 start included 45 goals for and 32 against and placed them first overall in the NHL. They would win the 12th game before hitting the skids big time. From then until Boxing Day they sp...