AHL- Apolyton Hockey League 07/08: VII Da da da, da da daa, da da da, da daa da daa

[Asher]

I'm all for Lidstrom winning the Norris, and he's outstanding, but Cox is an idiot for many reasons in that article.

Not the least of which was the Wings were 0-6-1 before Lidstrom's injury, and Cox paints his absence as the reason the team was losing.

the fact the Devils began this season with 10 road games and survived to understand that not only is the all-world goalie still at the top of his game, he is that team.

Huh? His sv% after 10 games was .877.

After years of watching Lidstrom's quiet brilliance all but ignored despite the success of the Wings

Really, is that what all those ****ing Norris trophies indicate? Is that why on every Wings telecast they hammer the point that Lidstrom is the best defenseman in the league?

All three are gut feels, really. Jonathan Toews of Chicago gets the nod for best freshman despite having fewer points than Patrick Kane or Nicklas Backstrom just because Toews, well, just looks like the better player to these eyes.

Huh? Kane is obviously the better player. Cox is notorious for not watching non-Leafs games, and it's obvious.

[snoopy369]

Kane and Toews are different players, i'm not sure I'd say one is better than the other. Toews has a bit more 'leadership' than Kane does, at least to the extent that is apparent in the interviews, and from the games i've seen is a better PKer while Kane is better on PP. I think their stats would be very similar in terms of points if Toews hadn't been injured (Toews has more G and Kane more A, which is sort of backwards for C vs RW but whatever).

Kane also played on a different line than Toews - Toews played with the underperforming Ruutu and the overperforming Patrick Sharp, while Kane played with Havlat and Williams (and Lang when Havlat went down, iirc) for the middle of the season; the latter line is the better scoring line. (They now play together with Sharp from what I've seen, although there is somewhat more shuffling going on; the other line is Lang/Williams/Ladd.)

[Kontiki]

One of the things that bugs me with MVP, and not just in hockey, is what it actually means. Is it the best player, or the most valuable player? Because that gives you very different results. I'd be fine with the former, but then I'd change the name to Most Outstanding Player or somesuch to avoid confusion, and if it's going to be the latter, you probably need to expand your search a bit.

For a true MVP, I'd put the finalists at Luongo, Iginla, Ovechkin, Brodeur and (until recently, anyway) Alfredsson, though I'm generally not a fan of giving goalies MVP awards since they're often the most valuable to their teams and already have the Vezina.

For best player, I'd be hard pressed to give it to anyone but Ovechkin.

[snoopy369]

It's a combination, in my opinion. Both 'most valuable to the team' and 'best player'. Imagine, for example, a team that consists of (the fourth line of Atlanta, Florida, Edmonton, and LA Kings) plus (Jaromir Jagr from 2003). He scores 60 goals, has 85 points, and the next guy on the team scores 8 goals and 28 points (mostly from being on the ice with Jagr). Team goes 10-50-22. Clearly Jagr is more valuable to that team than anyone else is to theirs; but can you give Jagr the MVP? Probably not, because you have players with closer to 100 points and much higher +/-, on winning teams.

Conversely, you have a team of all-stars, Ovechkin/St Louis/Crosby/Pronger/Lidstrom and Brodeur in net. Crosby has 120 points (50/70), Ovechkin has 110 (60/50), St Louis 100 (35/65), Lidstorm has 60 assists and a +80, Pronger 25 goals and a +75. Team wins 70 games (70-5-7). Then you have the #2 team, with Thornton and Iginla teaming with some mediocre talent. Thornton has 30/70 and Iginla has 60/40; the rest of the team is middle of the pack scoring a total of 150 more goals, and the team goes 50-20-12.

Who gets the vote now? I could make a pretty solid argument that Iginla is more valuable to his team than anyone else there; he scored a huge pertentage of the goals of his team, and at the same time was up there statistically, not so far off of Ovechkin even though he played with much weaker players.

Hence it is clearly complicated - and interesting to discuss - but most certainly not clear cut whether it's 'valuable to team' or 'best performer'. Many sports have a separate award for best scorer (Baseball has several awards like Silver Slugger, and football has the top QB awards, for example) and if Hockey doesn't have that, perhaps they should

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kontiki
For a true MVP, I'd put the finalists at Luongo, Iginla, Ovechkin, Brodeur and (until recently, anyway) Alfredsson, though I'm generally not a fan of giving goalies MVP awards since they're often the most valuable to their teams and already have the Vezina.

I'm most aligned with this. I'm of the opinion that goalies are pretty much exempt from MVP (If Kipper didn't win it with a 1.69 GAA [an nhl record] and .933sv%, why the hell should Brodeur and Luongo qualify this season).

The top two candidates are Ovechkin and Iginla, in my books. They are two remarkably similar players, and Ovechkin himself says Iginla is his favourite NHL player and one he took a lot of cues from.

Ovechkin is scoring more than Iginla this season, but Iginla is more valuable overall. Iginla's more multi-dimensional than Ovechkin is at this point -- his +/- is better, he's willing to drop the gloves to motivate the team (5 fights this year to 0), he's used on the penalty kill, he's captain, and he's more solid defensively.

Plus, Washington will be missing the playoffs, so even if he is the most valuable, he's not enough.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by snoopy369
It's a combination, in my opinion. Both 'most valuable to the team' and 'best player'. Imagine, for example, a team that consists of (the fourth line of Atlanta, Florida, Edmonton, and LA Kings) plus (Jaromir Jagr from 2003). He scores 60 goals, has 85 points, and the next guy on the team scores 8 goals and 28 points (mostly from being on the ice with Jagr). Team goes 10-50-22. Clearly Jagr is more valuable to that team than anyone else is to theirs; but can you give Jagr the MVP? Probably not, because you have players with closer to 100 points and much higher +/-, on winning teams.

I wouldn't even consider Jagr for MVP under that scenario. To me, the true most valuable player is the answer to this question: Which player if removed from their team and replaced with an average player in the same position, would cause their team to fall the hardest? That's why I picked the players I did as finalists. Calgary without Iginla might not make the playoffs; Vancouver without Luongo and New Jersey without Brodeur unquestionably do not make the playoffs (but there's the whole goalie thing again), Washington without Ovechkin isn't within sniffing distance of the playoffs, and Ottawa without Alfredsson is probably clinging to the final playoff spot in the East.

Conversely, Detroit without Lidstrom is still a playoff lock and still likely competing for the President's Trophy (albeit maybe not running away with it like they are now). Likewise, Pittsburgh without Malkin (and assuming Crosby isn't hurt) is still a solid playoff team.

[snoopy369]

If Jagr leaves that team, though, his team goes 0-82 (obviously even the 10-50-22 is extreme, but replace 60/85 with 8/15 and that team loses every game or nearly so... my point was, if you take a player on a bad team that is far and away better and more important than anyone else, because he's surrounded by a bunch of crap players, he's not MVP despite being more 'important' to his team, because he still didn't do as well as players on better teams.

I don't have a strong opinion on this year myself because I don't know the rest of the NHL that well; but from what's been described, Ovechkin probably should get it if they make the playoffs and possibly if they fall just short, and Iginla/Alfredsson/Lidstrom and possibly Malkin if not. Lidstrom gets a shot because his season was REALLY good, and he's probably the one reason his team was as good as it was most of the season (and I don't disagree that his lacking wasn't the sole reason they dropped a bunch of games, but it certainly was a factor). Malkin also had a pretty amazing season, and Pitt didd quite well with Crosby hurt, didn't they (I don't fully recall when crosby was out, so this may be incorrect).

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by snoopy369
If Jagr leaves that team, though, his team goes 0-82 (obviously even the 10-50-22 is extreme, but replace 60/85 with 8/15 and that team loses every game or nearly so... my point was, if you take a player on a bad team that is far and away better and more important than anyone else, because he's surrounded by a bunch of crap players, he's not MVP despite being more 'important' to his team, because he still didn't do as well as players on better teams.

I understand your point, but I just don't see someone dominating a totally **** team to be MVP material, nor someone who gets 70%+ of their points as goals as being as valuable as their point total might suggest. If you're popping in 60 goals and your team only wins 10 games (presumably dead last in the league by a long, long way), clearly you're not scoring big goals or making your team particulary competetive.

[snoopy369]

I would put Andre Dawson, CHC, 1987 as a prime example of this; or several Expos, Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez, in the mid 1990s. Admittedly baseball is a very different game - but it is similar in that there are many players who affect any given game (as opposed to, say, basketball where one player can essentially win by himself), yet also each player's skill to some extent is quite relevant individualy (as opposed to american football, where the best WR in the league is worthless without a halfway decent QB, and the reverse). I don't know hockey well enough to have a good example, but it's certainly possible for one player to be that important to a lousy team. I generally still wouldn't give them the MVP - though Dawson did win it on a lousy Cubs team - but the fact that it is a team game is quite relevant.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kontiki
Looks like 100+ roster changes doesn't quite get you as far as smart drafting, eh Flubber?

Its all fun but in any given week anything can happen. This week my goalies let me down. Mine performed way below their season average and my opponent's did better. My scorers did ok although in retrospect you could say that Vinny lecavilier cost me the week with his minus 6 so perhaps it was bad drafting.


And I don't see anything wrong with my number of moves. Over 26 weeks its essentially picking up two guys at some point in the week and then dropping them for someone else. I did make a lot of moves on the last day in hopes of winning plus minus or a powerplay category and make no apology for that

[Asher]

Flubbs: Did you see the Minnie game? If so, did you notice the lines?

Lemaire had cycled Gaborik through every single Wild line.
Keenan responded by not playing Huselius at all and moving Vandermeer between forward and defense and also kept switching Nilson up from the 1st and 4th lines. It was just crazy.

Keenan seemed to have used Lombardi vs Gaborik in a shut-down kind of role. Guess he wanted to match their speeds up...usually Conroy is the shutdown forward.

[Ben Kenobi]

Iginla? Heck No.

Calgary was floundering with him earlier this season. Calgary revolves around Kiprusoff. When he got more consistant, Calgary started running up the standings.

Jagr, no. Jagr has had a poor year. If you look at the Rangers, again, it's the goaltending that's kept them in it, not Jagr.

My vote would go to Lidstrom (because Detroit has been terrible when he was out.)

Neidermayer for the Ducks.

Thornton for the Sharks.

From the east, it would be Alfredsson.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Iginla? Heck No.

Calgary was floundering with him earlier this season. Calgary revolves around Kiprusoff. When he got more consistant, Calgary started running up the standings.

Huhhh? Kipper was brutal til recently. Calgary had its best November ever on the back of Iginla.

Kipper hasn't been "good" (eg, better than most other goalies) until recently. Calgary's been in a playoff position virtually all season even with Kipper playing decidedly crap, and Iginla's the main reason.

Sorry Ben, you're out to lunch here.

My vote would go to Lidstrom (because Detroit has been terrible when he was out.)

And they were terrible before he was out also.

I don't know if you realized -- I'm very sure you didn't -- but Lidstrom was FAR from the only injury when they started their losing streak. They were 0-6-1 before Lidstrom's injury too, so you're going to have to try a LOT harder to convince me Lidstrom's absence is why they sucked for that period.

(Hint: At least 4-5 other top-minute Detroit players were injured also. The fact they iced an entire AHL defense corp for a bunch of games had to have made an impact, no?)

[Ben Kenobi]

Right. You don't see me pushing Luongo.

I think your selection is a bit biased Asher.

[Asher]

I'm far from the only person who thinks Iginla deserves a shot at the MVP. The problem with Iginla's nomination is a lot of the stuff that makes him MVP isn't the flashy stuff like points, and for most people out East or in Vancouver, all they look at is the point totals and their own team.