Hockey Rambling

  Every year, some players don’t perform to expectations. It’s just the nature of sport; sometimes players will exceed their talent levels, and some will underperform them. It’s not a straight shot for everyone with regards to explanations, though. It’s not as if we can just point to a number and exclaim that is the [...]

The NHL is heading for a return…at some point. They seem to think June is a remote possibility, with each month that follows having increased odds as the likely date. Myself, I think August or possibly September. Regardless, even a return in mid-June is going to see a crap-load of players coming back to play [...]

Some news to begin: A second unnamed Colorado Avalanche player has tested positive for COVID-19. For more, see the statement from the team’s website. Hoping for all the best. Taylor Hall and the Arizona Coyotes have been discussing a new contract during the pause (NHL.com). * Yesterday I discussed the primary assists per goal leaders [...]

Hello, I hope you’re doing well and laying low at this time. A special shout out to all the health-care workers working the frontlines of this pandemic, plus anyone else who is working extra hard during this time. The Anaheim Ducks have signed 2019 first-round pick Trevor Zegras to a three-year, entry-level contract. Now that [...]

I just wanted to take some to highlight some articles I’ve enjoyed from our Dobber writers over the last couple weeks. Sometimes it’s not easy to draw attention away from everything that’s going on so maybe there are some things our readers have missed. Here are a few from the last 10 days or so. [...]

In Tuesday’s Ramblings, we discussed players who outscored their expected goals rates by the most significant margin in 2019-20. The reason for that is just to figure out who might be overheating and who is not. As mentioned a couple times in those Ramblings, just because a player outscores their expected goals does not mean [...]

Quarantine Update: I’m not going to mince words here, things are getting done around my place. With all these newfound hours in the day without sport or socializing or basically anything, my wife has been finding projects everywhere. It's been a nice distraction. I have also been eating my weight in peanut butter pretzels. So [...]

When discussing which players have been good or not, be it for fantasy hockey or in the real world, quite often “good” is a proxy for “lucky”. At the same time, some players are good enough to keep getting “lucky” year after year; I don’t think it’d shock people if Nikita Kucherov or Connor McDavid [...]

There hasn’t been much news this week, but there are a few items worth mentioning. According to the team, a second unnamed Ottawa Senators player has tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus. There have been more players experiencing symptoms, and the team is awaiting further results from testing. All the best to the Senators during [...]

In yesterday’s Ramblings, I ran a report on Frozen Tools on players who had scored at least 15 goals, then downloaded it to Excel to add a column that would allow me to determine the players who had highest number of goals per assist. I called this Cy Young award winners because of how the [...]