Summer posting: Blackhawks A-Z

It’s summer, and, even though I didn’t really make any posts during the season (focused too much on video games and stuff), it’s time for my yearly tradition of ripping off stuff other sites do but for the Blackhawks and doing my own thing, because I’m too lazy to come up with ideas.

This time it’s Puck Daddy’s A to Z series, with something starting (or related to, or something) with each letter in the alphabet from the team. It should be obvious which team I’m doing, but some of the letters are just plain hard. So I’ll put in honorable mentions as necessary.

Who's the scariest seed in the NHL?

So this NHL season is winding down to a close, and the playoffs are coming for 16 special teams. Each of the top 3 teams in the divisions are seeded 1-3, with 2 playing 3 and 1 playing one of the two Wild Cards from the conference (the leader with the most points plays the worse WC team and vice versa). Of course, there's a difference between an 82 game marathon and a 7 game sprint, so let's take a look at which teams in each seed look most dangerous right now.

All data is accurate before games played March 19, 2015. All photos are from NHL.com unless stated otherwise

HOLY TOLEDO!

Recently in February I took a trip to Toledo Ohio, for various reasons (including the city’s gaming convention, BASHCon, which I’ll cover on my gaming related channel).  I also had the opportunity to take in a Toledo Walleye game, which was my first ECHL game, meaning all I need now is a SPHL game and I’m set for American hockey leagues, other than the really minor junior ones.

A Guide for the Rebuilding Teams in the NHL

I have advice, as a Hawks fan, to impart on your teams for getting a great rebuild done.

Advanced Metrics Explained, or, Fancystats 101

Lately throughout the NHL people have been using “advanced statistics”, or as I like to call them, fancystats, to better quantify a player’s quality, or a team’s quality.  Some “old school” blowhards like to disregard them because they feel people who swear by them “don’t watch the game” (seriously you’ll see a variant of that phrase in countless message boards and said countless times by former players and the like).  I personally feel that they’re usually a pretty good predictor of a team’s chances to win, and they only enhance my viewing of a game. Unfortunately, some of the phrases can be pretty daunting, so here I made a glossary of various advanced statistics that you might see come up in a discussion, with simpler explanations than I usually see for them. Enjoy.