NHL Lockout Survival Kits

In an effort to help NHL fans survive the lockout, we here at DGS have decided to build NHL-Lockout Survival Kits to help each fan base through the lockout. Just find your team's line and see what you need and how to use it.

Pacific Division:

:Los Angeles Kings:

Items Needed-Stanley Cup poster, List of bars in LA, Flyers 2006 roster sheet
What to Do-Party with Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, laugh at Bobby Clarke for thinking Robert Esche was all he needed in goal

:Anaheim Ducks:

Items Needed- a laptop, a credit card
What to Do- subscribe to TeemuTV, watch Teemu...we know it's the only reason you follow this team.

:Phoenix Coyotes:

Items Needed-Lists of homes, jobs and living costs for the following cities: Quebec City (also requires French-English dictionary), Saskatoon, Seattle, Hamilton, Kansas City
What to Do-Sorry, this is an NHL fans survival kit, not an NHL team

:Dallas Stars:

Items Needed-laptop, YouTube link to Brett Hull's goal
What to Do-what you've been doing since 1999, rubbing it in Buffalo's face

:San Jose Sharks:

Items Needed-A room with locked windows, a ton of lottery tickets and an empty wallet/bank account
What to Do-Accept a new reality of no money, no doors and no windows and frequent draft lotteries



Northwest Division

:Vancouver Canucks:

Items Needed-Construction Equipment
What to Do-Just rebuild your city without rioting, okay? Please, pretty please.

:Calgary Flames:

Items Needed-Season Tickets, a sense of self loathing
What to Do-Relax, the lockout will allow the Flames to undo mistakes like Matt Stajan and letting Kipper and Iggy age

:Edmonton Oilers:

Items Needed-Shovels, pitchforks and a mob mentality
What to Do-Your team is being relocated to Seattle, build yourself an arena in Edmonton to keep them.

:Colorado Avalanche:

Items Needed-Denver Broncos tickets, Peyton Manning jersey
What to Do-Look, I'm not sure what to do either, but at least the Broncos sent crap away and acquired an over the hill future hall of fame player.

:Minnesota Wild:

Items Needed-Glitter Berries, the inability to shame
What to Do-Not blame your team for this lockout despite the fact that they basically caused it.




Central Division

:Detroit Red Wings:

Items Needed-A midnight train going anywhere
What to Do-Because seriously, no Lidstrom, no Suter, no Weber and an idiot owner who calls players cattle...just get out of there now.

:Columbus Blue Jackets:

Items Needed-A sense of relief
What to Do-Be thankful the Jackets aren't in last place. Yet.

:St Louis Blues:

Items Needed-A sense of reality, Jaroslav Halak, a giant landfill for every calculator in St. Louis
What to Do-Wait patiently for the end the lockout and make sure not to watch any of Brian Elliot's implosions in other cities.

:Chicago Blackhawks:

Items Needed-Breathalyzer, Camera
What to Do-Play a new game called "guess the over/under on Patrick Kane's BAC at any given time" or "snap a picture of Jon Toews showing human emotion" also feel free to make a joke at the expense of Leighton's 5 hole.

:Nashville Predators:

Items Needed-Your checkbook, debit card, and all banking information
What to Do-Send it David Poile, he needs to pay Weber somehow.


Southeast Division

:Washington Capitals:

Items Needed-A time machine
What to Do-Ask yourself, "what did I do in before 2005?" then do that.

:Winnipeg Jets:

Items Needed-Nothing
What to Do-It's not like you didn't go 15 years or so without a team....

:Tampa Bay Lightning:

Items Needed-A subscription to www.DontTradeVinny.com
What to Do-Get Matt to start writing again, apparently he's locked out from blogging. His twitter handle is @DontTradeVinny.

:Florida Panthers:

Items Needed-Not applicable as Panthers fans do not exist.
What to Do- Not applicable as Panthers fans do not exist.

:Carolina Hurricanes:

Items Needed-A list of every Hurricanes fan ever. As provided by me, which is easy since there's like 4 of you and one of you is my girlfriend.
What to Do- make these people laugh
SilentShadow36 This is Kaitlin, my girlfriend...I got her covered...no worries
WardoSaysNo Warning NSFW
Nikki Something food related...I think
Caniac Mum She's a mom and she likes the 'Canes.


Northeast Division

:Toronto Maple Leafs:

Items Needed-A sense of reality
What to Do-Get Brian Burke fired already

:Montreal Canadiens:

Items Needed-QMJHL season ticket packages
What to Do-Watch the kids play...yes, they're kids, I know they're bigger than the Habs top line, but they're really kids. No, I'm not BS-ing you

:Ottawa Senators:

Items Needed-OHL season ticket packages
What to Do-Watch the kids play...yes, they're kids, I know they're not as dirty as Chris Neil

:Boston Bruins:

Items Needed-A Tim Thomas-Rational Thought Dictionary
What to Do-Actually, I think finding that item is impossible, so I don't need to think of another Tim Thomas joke.

:Buffalo Sabres:

Items Needed-Video of Brett Hull's 1999 goal
What to Do-Rationalize that the correct 1999 goal means a Sabres Stanley Cup win despite the fact that even if the call was reversed the Sabres would STILL need to win BOTH games 6 and 7.




Atlantic Division

:New York Islanders:

Items Needed-Nothing
What to Do-Just stake out Barclays Center in Brooklyn so when tickets go on sale in 2015, you're ready.

:New York Rangers:

Items Needed-Happy thoughts
What to Do-Pray the cap rollback and salary rollback doesn't force the Rangers to trade Henrik Lundqvist to wherever the Coyotes end up for Mike Smith

:New Jersey Devils:

Items Needed-The ability to support 200lbs on your back
What to Do-Hope the fact that a 200lb man sitting on you during at event at Prudential Center doesn't break you.

Alternate Devils fan Kit: Ask @NonAmericanHero for television advice.

:Pittsburgh Penguins:

Items Needed-A time machine
What to Do-Just like Caps fans, it's time to do what you did before 2005.

:The Flyers:

Items Needed-Your hockey budget
What to Do-If you live in Philadelphia, support your ECHL affiliate up in Trenton, I'm up there for a ton of games so drop by and meet me...I sign autographs, they're totally worthless but hey...you read this post, right?

Daria Meets the NHL

As many of you know, I've recently become obsessed with the show Daria. It got me thinking, what if NHL players/personalities were actually Daria characters.



Daria Morgendorfer: the protagonist of the show, she's quick-witted, intelligent and loves to troll.

Here is Daria trolling her own sister...



Remind you of someone....Daria Morgendorfer is Chris Pronger.



Brittany: The clueless dumb blonde cheerleader stereotype. She has no redeeming social value or intelligence or talent....


Remind you of someone....Brittany is any goon...


Trent Lane: Jane's underachieving, lazy, older brother. He plays in a band called Mystik Spyral. He doesn't have a real job,


Sadly you can't embed the video: http://youtu.be/COBuDtR8Fis 
It's Trent accepting an alternate plan, of sitting around doing nothing because Jane and Daria won't trust him to actually do anything complicated despite Trent being the only "adult" in the situation...

As my girlfriend is a CaroLOLna Hurricanes fan, I know that Trent is.....TOMAS KABERLE!




Jane Lane: Jane is Daria's best friend. She also attempts to BE Daria a few times despite not being as smart. They're an inseparable pair.




Since Daria is Chris Pronger and Jane is trying to be her, Jane Lane is.... Matt Carle, Ryan Suter, Shea Weber, Andrej Meszaros, Andreas Lilja, Luke Schenn....oh dear god the Flyers defense is totally screwed.



Mr. DeMartino:  The angry, misanthropic, self loathing history teacher.

Sorry: again, lack of embedding... http://youtu.be/4Md0bGSrzlw

Angry, snarky when asked questions by those who are SUPPOSED to ask questions...oh my god it's John Tortorella.


Tiffany: Member of the fashion club, complete idiot.





Let's see, dumb quotes, dumb explanations that make no sense... Tiffany is every NHL referee ever.



Quinn Morgendorfer: Daria's sister. Fashion club member. User of boys.

Quinn is, quite simply, a puck bunny.




Jake Morgendorfer: Daria's dad. He has big dreams, but never quite reaches potential.


Here's Jake not moving the Pentagon...

Jake has big dreams, but never really materializes...just like the Lockout to Lockout Toronto Maple Leafs.


Helen Morgendorfer: Daria's mom. She's business driven but totally clueless as to her own family...




Wait a second, somewhat nuts, moody and withdrawn but dedicated to her craft...it's Mike Richards



Kevin Thompson: Brittany's boyfriend and the stereotypical football player.

He's an oil-typhoon...or as Gary Bettman prays, the next owner of the Coyotes.



Well, stop standing on my neck, the post is over. ALRIGHT! *turns on Pigskin Channel*

Flyers Goaltending Fun

Honestly, I'm sorry I don't update as often as I should here...but hopefully there's a few of you who keep coming back and hoping for new content.

I was on Hockey-Reference earlier to look up one thing, and I got bored and ended up looking up another...and I found something interesting...

The Flyers goalie carousel wasn't a problem.

Yes, the Flyers have had a revolving door of goalies post lockout and pre-Bryz with 11 goaltenders playing a game per hockey reference.

But, I learned something as well...

I took the numbers of the clear cut starting goalies on the list which was, for this experiment, defined as anyone with 42 or more games played, so Biron's 1 to Niity's 6, and took the combined Save % of these goalies which is .908


So then I added up the games played of those goalies and got 328, so I did another search another on hockey reference and found a list of goalies who played in the same or more games with an equal or greater SV% and I got this list...

12 Goalies would be an improvement over the Flyers situation in the same sample size. Just twelve. And guess what, the Flyers current starting goaltender is Ilya Bryzgalov and he posted a .915SV% over the same time period which ranks him nicely between Ryan Miller and Martin Brodeur with ~80 fewer games played over the same time period.



What I gathered from this piece is quite simple- the Flyers goaltending situation should regress based on math going forward, Bryz's bad season was a fluke and he's going to get better.

The Diary of Evgeni Malkin

I score lots of goal

I win nice trophy!

I have hot girlfriend

I got owned by a 19 year old rookie...

Building the 2012-13 Flyers

So, like I did a couple weeks ago, where I built the "perfect" team, let's have a look what I would do to the Flyers in 2012-13.

Luckily: Cap Geek had the answer


CAPGEEK.COM CAP CALCULATOR

FORWARDS
Scott Hartnell ($4.200m) / Claude Giroux ($3.750m) / Jakub Voracek ($3.250m)
Wayne Simmonds ($1.750m) / Brayden Schenn ($3.110m) / Daniel Briere ($6.500m)
Matt Read ($0.900m) / Sean Couturier ($1.375m) / Zach Parise ($6.250m)
Zac Rinaldo ($0.544m) / Maxime Talbot ($1.750m) / Tom Sestito ($0.650m)
Eric Wellwood ($0.580m)

DEFENSEMEN
Kimmo Timonen ($6.333m) / Braydon Coburn ($4.500m)
Ryan Suter ($5.500m) / Shea Weber ($6.500m)
Erik Gustafsson ($0.900m) / Matt Carle ($4.500m)
Andreas Lilja ($0.737m)

GOALTENDERS
Sergei Bobrovsky ($1.750m) / Josh Harding ($2.000m)

CAPGEEK.COM TOTALS (follow @capgeek on Twitter)
(these totals are compiled using the bonus cushion)
SALARY CAP: $68,000,000; CAP PAYROLL: $67,330,277; BONUSES: $3,555,000
CAP SPACE (22-man roster): $4,224,723

So, how did I get here?

1: 68M cap comes from a story ESPN's LeBrun put on twitter in December, cool?

2: Amnesty Buyout: Ilya Bryzgalov. Bye Bryz! Why you heff to be bad?

3: Sign Zach Parise-8 year deal 6.25 cap hit.

4. Trade JvR+Mesz+2 firsts+rights to Bourdon+Niko Hovinen for RFA rights to Shea Weber aand UFA rights to Ryan Suter. Does NSH actually do that deal? maybe, if Suter claims to not want to resign, he might, and JvR is worth losing for gaining the best D-pair in hockey. Sign each to 6 year deals with the cap hits listed. Don't forget, Nashville has pay Pekka Rinne the moon starting next season.

5: Pronger is on LTIR. Let's circumvent the cap for 6 more years using LTIR.

6: Resign Matt Carle, 6 years at 4.5M. Front load the contract hope it works out. Carle's worth about 5.5-6.5 on the open market...he NEEDS to take a home town discount.

7: Sign Josh Harding for 2M, if he and Bob are healthy, they are 2 solid up and coming goalies in the league. Best part is, if not, both have movable contracts to get a veteran rental come trade deadline.

8: See what happens

Just How Would I Build a Team

One of the things I've recently been asked about a lot is just how I'd build a team. And usually I explain it in the terms that I know, but today, I've started really getting into the idea of actually building a team, as in, going out, and putting the players together who embody the attributes that I'd put into my team. So with that, here we go, the DGS guide to building a perfect NHL 23-man roster that is cap-compliant.

Here are the rules for how I did this:

1: I need to get 23 players on the roster, with a minimum of 12 forwards-6D-2 goalies
2: The 23 man roster MUST be cap compliant/all cap numbers will reflect the 2011-12 cap hits of players.
3: All players must be "reasonably healthy" so LTIR players like Pronger and Savard aren't eligible
4: I also needed to pick 4-6 "injury callups."
5: The team's goalies must be 1 ready starter, 1 true NHL backup and 1 waiver exempt callup

Make sense? Good, let's go.

First off, the basic philosophy of my team building is based on the idea of getting 1 true scoring line, 2 solid 2-way forward lines and 1 true checking line. The defense pairs are 1 impact pair, 1 shutdown pair and 1 pair of specialists (PP specialist, PK specialist).

We shall start with the goalies: (cap hit)

Starter: Pekka Rinne (4M)
Backup: Josh Harding (750K) -note: he has a day to day injury, not career ending like Pronger or Savard

Waiver exempt callup: Braden Holtby

Totals goalies spent: 4.75M

Defense:

Top Pair
Ryan Suter (3.5) and Matt Carle (3.437)

Shutdown Pair
Anton Volchenkov (4.25) and Zdeno Chara (6.916)

Specialist/Depth Pair

Sheldon Souray (1.65) and Braydon Coburn (3.2)

7th D: Cody Franson (800K)

Injury callups: Marc-Andre Bourdon, Ryan Ellis.

Total money spent on D: 23.753M


Forwards:
Top Line
Daniel Sedin (6.1) Henrik Sedin (6.1) Ryane Clowe 3.625

Do I need to say any more about this top line? the Sedin's doing Sedin things, with Clowe picking up the rebounds.

Total Cost: 15.825
for a top line, a bit pricey, but if they're sheltered properly, the Sedins will get their 100 points and Clowe's a better net front presence than Burrows, toss in PP time and he could get 70-75 points as well.

Second Line
Dustin Brown (3.175) Claude Giroux (3.75) Sean Couturier (1.375)

Total cost 8.3M

I love to talk about how Cooter needs to be free, he's got ~20 points being buried mostly on the 4th line, and he doesn't have a horrible contract...pure win. These guys would end in the 60-65 point range because the Sedins would take up more offensive time, but again, solid 2-way play. is the key.

Third Line
Matt Read (900K) Dave Bolland (3.375) Wayne Simmonds (1.75)

Total Cost: (6.025)

Simmonds and Read (wow, more Flyers forwards, they're a solid group, aren't they?) have high depth scoring (even if a bit unsustainable) and Bolland is criminally underrated in his PK/defensive center abilities.

Fourth line

Max Talbot (1.75) Eric Belanger (1.75) Greg Campbell (1.1)

Total Cost: 4.6M

3 solid defensive forwards (well, Talbot's more of a depth scorer, but Bolland-Campbell-Belanger-Talbot would be the 4 PK forwards)

13th forward/scratch: Brandon Prust  (800K)

Forward injury callups: Brayden Schenn (he's waiver excempt) and any goon of your choice that costs 750K or less.

If my math is correct, this team costs 64.053 in Cap Hits. which puts them right against the cap.

For leadership personnel,

Captain: Zdeno Chara-he's a Vet, he's won a Cup.
Alternates: Ryane Clowe and Ryan Suter. 2 more veterans who are young enough to understand the youth on the team and help out in that regard.

Honorable mentions: I really wanted to get Scott Hartnell (in Clowe's spot) or Manny Malholtra (4th line) on the team, but I couldn't fit them under the salary cap. Same with Defense-no Doughty or Weber.

Even then, I'm really up against the cap meaning that if injuries happen, the 7th D would slot into Coburn's spot and Coburn would fill in for the top 4. On the forwards, Prust would fill in for Talbot or Read and they would slot into wherever was needed. If LTI was used, you could see a callup. If a goalie gets hurt-you'd see Matt Read get sent to the AHL allowing Holtby to be recalled and Prust would play.

Yes, Geoff Detweiler, I fully expect you critique me for using LTI and waiver rules to loophole the cap.

Enjoy. What are your thoughts on "the perfect" roster.

I Trended On Twitter.

The world can end now, I trended on twitter.

https://twitter.com/#!/TrendsmapCanada/status/169312504776884224


This is more unlikely than the following events:

• A Washington Capitals goalie stopping a shot from more than 50 feet away
• The San Jose Sharks making the Cup Finals
• Andreas Nodl scoring 40 goals
• Zac Rinaldo winning the Lady Byng
• Steve Mason posting a shutout
• Sergei Bobrovsky posting a shutout
• The Flyers winning consecutive shootouts
• Michael Leighton closing his legs
• Rick DiPietro playing 60 games in a season
• The Flyers not having a goalie controversy
• Marc-Andre Bergeron winning the Norris
• Daniel Sedin winning a Selke
• Scott Gomez winning the Rocket Richard
• Wade Redden playing another NHL game

• 
  

Caption Contest 17

Simple...what's Timmy saying...

Rejected All Star Skills Competition Ideas

Many people look forward to All Star weekend not just for the game itself, but also for the skills competition. What many people don't realize, is that due to time constraints several other events have been removed from the skills competition, luckily the DGS SuperSpies have found the list of events that were scrapped.


The Event: Bad Contract Roulette
How It Worked: A roulette wheel would be placed and each captain would try to stick his opponent with the contracts of terrible players like Ville Leino and Scott Gomez
Reason for Taking It Out: AHL players like Matt Walker and Wade Redden aren't allowed at the NHL All Star Game.


The Event: Dodge The Elbows
How It Worked: Players would skate around the ice dodging obstacles like Chris Pronger's left elbow and Matt Cooke's right forearm while attempting to handle the puck
Reason for Taking It Out: Matt Cooke seems to have cleaned up his act and Chris Pronger has gone the way of Marc Savard.


The Event: Diving Competition
How It Worked: All Stars would make like Summer Olympians and do a diving competition, complete with judges and everything
Reason for Taking It Out: Every single season, the Sedins would win.



The Event: Big Eats
How It Worked: A buffet would be laid out, and each team would see who could consume more food in the allotted team
Reason for Taking It Out: A small problem arose, Martin Brodeur is no longer an All Star goalie capable of challenging Tim Thomas.


The Event: ECHL Future Stars Game
How It Worked: A group of ECHL players would get to play giving hope to teams who employ Steve Mason and Brett Lebda that maybe some better players would arrive.
Reason for Taking It Out: Anchorage, Alaska; Elmira, New York; Trenton, NJ and Gwinnett Georgia are all considered better places to live than Columbus, Ohio.


Even though these events are gone, one still remains. During the actual All-Star Game we can watch players perform the 2 following events-

1: Play More Defense Than Mike Green

2: Loaf around the Neutral Zone more than Alex Kovalev

NHL Christmas Letters

It's 5 days before Christmas, and it seems that the DGS Super Spies have found letters to Santa from hockey players all over the world....we're re-printing some for you here.


From: Paul Holmgren


Dear Santa,

Can you give me a calculator? Everyone tells me I need to learn something called math.

Paul



From: The Florida Panthers

Dear Santa,

Can you make the league take us seriously? We're like in first place and all...

The Florida Panthers



From: Caps GM George McPhee

Dear Santa,

I'm trying to get to the conference finals for a change, but I also want to Fail For Nail. Can you help me with that?

GMGM


Rick Nash and Jarome Iginla oddly wrote the same thing

Dear Santa,

Can I finally play for an NHL team? Please!

Rick/Jarome




From Steve Mason:

Dear Santa,

I want a pony, a chance to play in the AHL and my talent back.

Stevie





From Dwayne Roloson

Dear Santa,

Get Teemu to share his Fountain with me again.

Rolie





From Peter Laviolette

Dear Santa,

I'm calling timeout and taking 30 seconds to make sure this letter is delivered perfectly.

Now, I want a goalie. A real goalie. A goalie who gives me consistent .925 SV%'s. I got Bryzgalov this summer instead. So I need to make sure this happens. Also; can you take out the 35+ provision in the CBA, we need to remove Pronger somehow. Thank you again for your cooperation.

Pete






The Buffalo Sabres

Dear Santa,

Can you bring us Ville Leino? Not this scrub who claims to be Ville but is not very good at hockey.


Pegs





From Roberto Luongo,

Dear Santa,

Last year, I asked that the Canucks find a way to succeed in spite of my choking. I didn't actually mean for you to find Cory Schneider.

Lou.






From Lou Lamoriello

Dear Santa,

Bah, humbug. Get through my trap, then dodge my jelly. Then find me a way to sign Zach Parise.

Lou



From Tim Thomas

Dear Santa,

Donuts. Lots of them.

Timmy