Stats

The Free Agency period is almost upon us in the NHL and one area seems to be more in focus this offseason: goal scoring. It is very difficult to determine what kind of return a club gets on its financial investment in a hockey player. There are many factors to take into account when looking at the worth and value of NHL players—other than goal scoring.

This article will do none of that. We are only talking about goals, goals, and goals. Got it? Good.

With the passing of this year’s NHL season, many are already missing hockey at its finest.

In fact, this year more people are missing it than ever before.

It was a record-setting year for the National Hockey League, not only did the business sales and events skyrocket, but the TV ratings also bloomed in a country where hockey usually takes a backseat to baseball and football.

And maybe it still does, however, its numbers this year shed light on healthy growth of the hockey audience in the area.

After two games of this year’s Stanley Cup Finals, everyone had already thought this series was over. Those people were sadly mistaken. After the Chicago Blackhawks won the first two games in the series many people were already counting Philadelphia out. A mistake I’m sure they will never make again. 

Game Threehree was a big game; Chicago could have taken a strangle hold on the series with a 3-0 lead. Philadelphia needed to prevent that and keep their Stanley Cup dreams alive. 

We’ve just hit my favorite part of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the conference finals.  We’re down to only four deserving teams and it’s now possible to watch every game left without ending up in a divorce. 

The real question, as always, is who will win.  Here is my Eastern Conference prediction, and I’ll try to post my preview for the West in the next 24 hours.

Montreal vs Philadelphia

If the 2010 NHL playoffs have proven anything thus far, it’s that you never know which player is going to step up for his team.

The first round and beginning of the second round have provided fans with surprise after surprise, as a new player seems to improve his game on a nightly basis.

Where there's extra time, there's a good time to be had.

So far this post-season, the original 16 combatants of the 2010 Stanley Cup Playoffs have waged war into an extra period 12 times through 42 games.

Twelve times may seem staggering, but it's not the record. But it is close.

The record for the most overtime games in Round One of the playoffs came back in 1992-93, when teams played overtime 14 times through 44 games.

It’s been almost one month since the NHL trade deadline.

The 2010 deadline day, back on March 3, featured the most trades and players moved in NHL history. However, the day was definitely one of the more boring trade deadlines in recent memory due to a lack of big names.

Despite the deficiency of major players being shipped around, a number of teams have benefited from their deadline deals.

This article was inspired by the great work done for college basketball on the website www.bracketscience.com If you have never been on this site, I highly recommend you do so, just for fun of course.

The Frank J Selke trophy was instituted to reward Bob Gainey for the unsung role he played on the 1970s Montreal Canadiens Stanley Cup winning teams. The trophy is awarded annually to the forward who demonstrates the most skill in the defensive portion of the game. Gainey who won the award the first four years it was given out, was a speedy checker who was key in shutting down the opposition’s leading scorer.