Hello again, 'nucks fans. This being the post-season and all, we Alberta-based hockey buffs have to cast our eyes further afield to get our hockey fix.

As we did during last year's Stanley Cup Finals, we at the Edmonton Journal's Cult of Hockey (David Staples, Jonathan Willis and myself) have decided to follow one playoff series per round in detail, with the Vancouver Canucks being the default choice as the only survivor from the weak Northwest Division to even get invited to the dance.

We'll be analyzing the Canucks as we normally do the Oilers, tracking scoring chances at both ends of the ice and assigning credit or blame as the case may be for those Canucks deemed involved/responsible in the sequence. These individual scoring chances, dubbed Neilson Numbers in honour of former Canucks bench boss Roger Neilson who invented a similar system back in the '70s, will be summarized for each game of the series.

It's an interesting experiment for us to try our methods on teams that are, you know, good at hockey. (We've only been working on the method for the last five or six years, after all!)

We'll follow the Canucks as long as they're alive in the playoffs, which based on last night's game against the Los Angeles Kings, might not be long. Likely just a bad game, but Game 1 Neilson Numbers corroborate what most eyes saw - the visitors were deserving winners.

Davidson in a puck battle

It's easy to like Brandon Davidson's story. Not surprisingly he was passed over in his first draft, given he'd played with the Lethbridge Y's Men Titans in the Alberta Midget Hockey League. Not that there haven't been a lot of mighty fine hockey players pass through the AMHL, but usually the ones who are still there at 17 are not high in the priorities of scouts. Two things worth noting - with a late-August '91 birthday, Davidson was one of the youngest players eligible for that draft; more importantly, his earlier development was slowed somewhat due to simple fact that hockey is expensive for divorced parents with three hockey-playing sons. As with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins missing his entire 12-year-old season in somewhat similar circumstances, sometimes life gets in the way.

Davidson proceeded to surprise a whole lot of people the following season, when he walked on to Regina Pats camp with just 7 games of AJHL experience under his belt, and not only made the team but went on to lead the Jordan Eberle / Colten Teubert -led squad in plus/minus. That can of course be a deceptive stat, especially without context, but +15 on a -32 team is impressive no matter how you cut it. Stu MacGregor and crew were sufficiently impressed to spend a sixth round pick on Davidson in his 19-year-old draft season, that pick having been the sweetener of the Visnovsky-for-Whitney trade.

With Eberle and Teubert graduating to pro, the Pats cratered in 2010-11, but Davidson had another encouraging season, increasing his offensive output while retaining a respectable -5 on a horrid -96 club. The horridness didn't seem to be happening on Brandon's watch, and a year ago he made his debut on C&B's Top 25 Under 25.

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To say there were low expectations when the Edmonton Oilers selected Martin Gernat in last year's Entry Draft would be to suggest there were expectations at all. Hoping for a miracle? Always. But actual expectations of an NHL-calibre player being plucked from such a depth? Unlikely.

"Who's he?" was the question most were scrambling to answer when the off-the-board selection was announced. Immediately, comparisons were cast to Martin Marincin, a highly-touted second rounder from one year previously, with whom Gernat shares a common given name (Martin), heritage (Slovak), towering height (6'5), and musculature (none).

Gernat was also destined to follow Marincin's path in another important way, as he declared his interest to come to North America and thus became a "player of interest" for the CHL's import draft, held the week after the NHL's Entry Draft. While Gernat didn't quite have the chops to go #1 overall in that draft, as Marincin had (to Prince George) one year previous, it quickly became clear that the Oilers had plans for him. Their junior affiliate, the Edmonton Oil Kings, traded up in that import draft, clearing out Marek Hrbas to the Kamloops Blazers for the privilege. It was a very goal-specific deal: not only did Edmonton move up a few spots to improve their odds, they opened up a spot for both another import and another defenceman on their roster. Local observers immediately speculated that the Oil Kings had targeted Gernat, a prediction that played out soon thereafter. Gernat joined Kristians Pelss, another Oilers late-round selection from a hockey nation with a weak development record, as the Oil Kings' two eligible imports. It's a clever strategy that enables the organization to take full advantage of its WHL connections.

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Editor's Note: On Thursday, December 1st, Mike Grier announced his retirement from the NHL after a career that spanned 14 seasons. Grier was one of the lynchpins to the Oilers "little teams that could" of the late 90's and early aughts. We could not hope to describe Grier's time in Edmonton and his impact on the Oilers any better than Bruce McCurdy did in this September, 2010 article on his favorite post-dynasty Oiler.

It's tough to identify a single favourite Oiler from the post-dynasty days, a period that now stretches two decades into the past and indefinitely on to the future like an open prairie road. Like Lisa, I have lots of favourite Oilers. But I have no problem whatsoever in identifying my favourite trade from that period, so I'll use that as the springboard.

It was a complicated transaction, a kind of reverse sign-and-trade. Fortunately there was a willing sucker out there to do the signing, in the person of Mike Keenan, GM of the Blues. Keenan had a hankering for a hard-rock winger and decided that the man he wanted was Shayne Corson of all people. Corson - who I will say flat out is my least favourite Oiler ever - had worn out his welcome in the River City. He had "led" the club to three out-of-playoff finishes since being acquired from Montreal for Vincent Damphousse, and had disgraced the Oil drop through his off-ice actions, especially a widely reported fistfight with teammate and former protege Jason Arnott over the awarding of an assist of all things. This during a playoff "race" which was once again doomed to end in failure. That last incident resulted in Head Coach George Brunet losing his job and Corson himself being stripped of the "C" and clearly being placed on the "let him go when his contract is up" list.

Up stepped Mike Keenan to do the signing, despite the compensation of the day which was two first-round picks. I was happy enough with the exchange, but then Keenan came up with a sweetheart offer to get his picks back: he'd give up his own contract headache in star goaltender Curtis Joseph and throw in a developing hardrock winger of his own in Mike Grier. Tee hee.

At the time I called it a "three-for-zero" trade: we got Cujo, we got Grier, we got rid of Corson. Three desirable outcomes. It could hardly have worked out better as both Joseph and Grier more than fulfilled their promise, while Corson went on to soil the bed of a few other teams, notably Toronto where he quit on his teammates right in the middle of a playoff series. But I digress, other than to point out the obvious bias that I was likely to see Mike Grier in a very positive light compared to the void he would be stepping into.

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The Oilers hot start to the season is officially over. So are those of Nikolai Khabibulin, Tom Gilbert, and Ladislav Smid, whose stellar play had lifted Edmonton to a stunning, unsustainable defensive record for the season's first fourteen games.

Three games later that's all changed. The Oilers limp home from a six-game road trip having suffered consecutive three-goal losses to three of the NHL's truly elite teams, Boston, Detroit and now Chicago. They were by far the second best squad on the ice in all three encounters, having been issued a stark reminder of how far they need to go to become contenders.

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Magnus Pääjärvi came into the world on an important date in the history of manned spaceflight. He was born on April 12, 1991, the 30th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first flight, and the 10th anniversary of the first launch of the space shuttle. Maybe that explains the rockets in his skates.

Put those skates under a 6'3, 200 pound frame and you have an imposing prospect. For Magnus Pääjärvi, the sky is the limit.

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I'm not an auto racing fan, but three times in the last few weeks I've happened to have the TV tuned in at the denouement of some pretty amazing races. First it was J.R. Hildebrand shockingly hitting the wall as he came out of Turn 800 at the Brickyard, handing the Indianapolis 500 to a shocked but grateful Dan Wheldon. Later that day Dale Earnhardt Jr., desperate to end a 104-race NASCAR losing streak, ran out of gas 599½ miles into the Coca-Cola 600, allowing Kevin Harvick to cruise past him with the finish line in sight to take the checkered flag.  Then last weekend at the Canadian Grand Prix, Sebastian Vettel proved it can happen to the best of them as the F-1 points leader stunningly spun out in the final lap, handing that race to Jenson Button. Vettel had led pretty much from wire to wire but couldn't get it done when pressured at the end.

So it was with the 2011 Vancouver Canucks. Convincingly the NHL's best team through the regular season, the 'nucks never trailed a series at any point in the post-season, but were unable to complete the final lap without incident to bring home the big prize. Instead, VanCity (pick one or more) ran out of gas / spun out / hit the wall just when it seemed things were finally under control. They led the Boston Bruins 2-0, then 3-2 in the Finals, but were unable to deliver the coup de grace despite two opportunities to do so, the second on their own ice. Vancouver never gave themselves much of a chance, allowing the first four goals in all four of their losses. As I'm sure many Canucks supporters are asking themselves, what in the @#$%^& happened?

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The Moon is blood red as I write this, in a total eclipse, lit only by refraction of all the sunsets and sunrises ringing Earth. It's a deep central eclipse, its totality fully 100 minutes in duration, but with a visibility zone half a world away. Alas, just a few hours too early. 

It will be a bright and still very much full moon that will preside over the streets of Vancouver later this evening, as fans congregate to celebrate or mourn as the case may be. (Of course the game itself may well be over before moonrise, given the weird combination of hockey still being played near summer solstice and a 5 o'clock local start time, on a week night no less.)  

Never mind those latter facts, they're minor details, let's just pick the ones that fit the narrative (see: ^^ headline ^^). The superstitious folk and true believers with their eyes on the skies (see: ^^ picture ^^) might note that conjunction of events and say "anything can happen"; whereas those of us dispassionate scientific types who have been watching this particular series from afar with the certain knowledge that the phase of the Moon has fuckall to do with it might conclude "anything can happen". Cuz this series has been loony tunes from the get-go.

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After a disastrous showing during a two-game visit to Beantown, the Vancouver Canucks appeared a whole lot more comfortable on home ice in Game Five. The Jennings Trophy winners put on a textbook display of defensive hockey, shutting the Bruins down and out, 1-0.

At the Edmonton Journal blog The Cult of Hockey, we have been tracking scoring chances for the two squads. In Game Five the Canucks limited Boston to just 13 opportunities, the lowest such total for either team in the series to date. Moreover, just two or three of these were "ten-bell" chances from the low slot as the Bruins were held to the outside for the most part. While Roberto Luongo played a solid game to post his second 1-0 whitewash of the series, it was a team shutout all the way as the Canucks played Alain Vigneault hockey to a T.

Besides counting team chances we (David Staples and myself) have been determining as best we can which individuals have been involved on those plays, both for and against. These include plus marks for attacking players who have handled the puck in the thrust, caused the turnover that created the chance, or perhaps screened the goalie or created traffic which increased the threat. On the defensive side we score minus marks for players who turn the puck over, miss an assignment, or are clearly beaten on the play. The resultant Individual Plus/Minus counts are known as Neilson Numbers in honour of Captain Video himself, Roger Neilson, who used a similar system decades ago.

Here are Neilson Numbers for Game Five along with more observations of the game. A summary review of individual performances in he first four games of the series is here. We will post links to Games Six and Seven (hehe) in due course.

Enjoy your weekend, 'Nucks fans. Monday is only a couple of centuries away. 

Sorry for the lateness of this entry, 'nucks fans, but here's something for those who would prefer to chew on some numbers than gnaw on their fingernails in the waning minutes to Game Five. The Neilson Numbers for Game Four are currently up at the Cult of Hockey, courtesy of my co-writer and blog founder David Staples.

The somewhat good news from a Canucks perspective is that the scoring chance battle has been much closer than on the scoreboard. Boston did have the advantage in Game Four, but just by a 17-13 margin. Both games were closer than the scoreboard indicated.  (But you knew that already!)

David has also summarized scoring chance and error totals from Games 1-4 in this post, which I believe will also be featured in the print edition of the Edmonton Journal tomorrow, where David has a weekly advanced stats piece.

I'll be scoring Game Five myself this evening and will try to have it posted fairly early tomorrow for those following along.

Anybody's guess what I'll be writing about. This series hangs on a kinfe edge, regardless of the cumulative score. Tense times, I'm sure.

Rick Pracey, Director of Amateur Scouting, Colorado Avalanche: The top player in the west is Hopkins. Donny, with all your years of experience, talk to us about Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

Don Paarup, Avs Scout: Right now there's as much interest in him among all of the scouts as there was in, say, Dany Heatley when he was playing Tier II out there. This kid offensively sees the ice as well as anybody I've seen in twenty years. His puck reaction, his creativity and his mechanics are just outstanding. As far as I'm concerned I haven't seen a kid like this for many years, as far as offence is concerned.

Pracey: Is there anybody in this room that thinks Nugent-Hopkins' offence won't translate?

Room: [Dead silence. Even the crickets shut the hell up.]

Pracey: I take it that's "no". [laughter in the the room]

-- Transcript from pre-draft meeting of Avalanche scouting staff, as shown in the video Colorado Avalanche Entry Draft Special 

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That's not exactly a "stop the presses" type headline, I realize, as I suspect most Canuck fans would have identified these two guys as under-achievers (anti-achievers?) in last night's stinker. Simply put, both the Canucks defensive corps and the Canucks powerplay had disastrous outings in Game Three, and the two point men were major factors in the meltdowns of both units.

At the Edmonton Journal's blog the Cult of Hockey, we have been doing a detailed analysis of each game in the Stanley Cup Finals, offering advanced scoring summaries (including errors by the scored-upon team) and assigning individual responsibility for scoring chances both for and against (Neilson Numbers). These analyses shine the spotlight of blame on Alexander Edler and Christian Ehrhoff in particular, although with the exception of Sami Salo the entire Canucks defensive group including Roberto Luongo had a rough night. Up front so did the Sedin brothers as well as Ryan Kesler. It was just a bad night for the Canucks all the way around.

The good news for 'nucks fans is that Vancouver played enough bad hockey last night to lose an entire series, but just dropped a single game. The Canucks have now been outscored 55-56 in the playoffs, but are somehow not only in the Stanley Cup Finals but leading the series, with 14 wins and 7 losses overall. Better to win the close ones and lose the blowouts than the other way around, eh.

For those into forensic statistics of what went wrong in Game Three, read more here on Neilson Numbers.  

Hello from Edmonton, where the snow didn't melt until after hockey season was over. (Our season, that is. Damn snow's finally gone now.)

Your Vancouver Canucks are still going strong and appear to be two games away from taking it all. Fun times for Canucks fans, no doubt. I'm not one, but I do remember the excitement of winning that first Cup. What a rush!

In the Stanley Cup Finals, the eyes of the hockey world - lovers and haters alike - are on your team. At the Cult of Hockey, the Edmonton Journal's hockey blog, we're using a tool we've utilized throughout the season to analyze Oiler games, to break down the performance of the two finalists. This involves identifying scoring chances and assigning credit or blame as the case may be, just to those individuals directly involved in creating the chance or who were responsible for the defensive breakdown.

These Individual Scoring Chances, the pet project of our blog's founder David Staples, have recently been rechristened Neilson Numbers in honour of the Hockey Hall of Fame coach Roger Neilson. The man whose lone trip to the Stanley Cup Finals was as (interim!) coach of the Canucks back in 1982, reportedly used similar methodology for analyzing the performance of his own teams. So it seems appropriate that we use a variation of Coach Neilson's methods to critique the 2011 Canucks:

Game One

Game Two

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Today news has come down from our sister city that the Calgary Flames have re-signed pending UFA Curtis Glencross to a four-year, $10.2 MM contract. According to this report in the Calgary Sun, the winger is thought to have taken a big "hometown discount" to stay in his home province:

"He gave up a lot," said his mom, Robin Glencross, from their Red Deer home. "But the kids will know their grandparents and aunts and uncles."

 

With a $2.55-million salary-cap hit per season, Glencross can be considered a bargain if he continues to progress the way he has since joining the Flames as an unrestricted free agent July 2, 2008.

Ah yes, July 2, 2008. That was the day after the last time Glencross went from "pending UFA" to "UFA" as his temporary team, the Edmonton Oilers, failed to do due diligence and allowed a real NHLer to walk down the QE2 for the first of what are now two bargain contracts. The Oilers failed to sign the guy in the ~twelve-week post season window when many organizations like, say, Calgary, deal with such matters, allowed their negotiation window to lapse, and - while Daryl Katz and Kevin Lowe chased a whale named Hossa - enabled a solid player to go to an arch-rival. For what turned out to be a "home town discount". 

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Editor's Note: This story was originally published on June 10th, but given that tonight is Rod's last game in the booth, it seems very appropriate to re-publish it now.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Rod's Retirement Roast, virtual edition. My name is Bruce, and I'll be your master of ceremonies for this event.

Oiler fans were saddened recently to hear of the impending retirement of the Voice of the Oilers, Rod Phillips. The man who called over 3,500 (three thousand five hundred!) Oilers' games has put in a full career and then some over the past 37 years, but we'll be sorry to see him go.

Having heard the rumours, I tuned into the final minutes of Rod's last broadcast in Anaheim as the sorry 2009-10 season wound to a close; if this was the end it was with a whimper, not a bang. Thankfully, we will have a handful more opportunities to hear Rod call a game in the 2010-11 season, as the club has arranged a farewell tour of sorts. A series of ten games called Rod's Classics will be featured, in which Phillips will call select games involving historic rivals of the mighty Oil, and take the chance to introduce what we all fervently hope is the team's next generation of stars. The hockey club has dropped many a PR ball over the years, but from this couch it appears they are doing things right in sending off their Hall of Fame play-by-play guy with the goldenest of parachutes.

No doubt Rod will be eating more than his share of rubber chicken in the coming months as his announcing days wind down, as everybody from former boys on the bus to assistant radio producers to stick boys to pancake eaters will all take their chance to say farewell. Today however, the chicken is virtual; the speakers are not people with any particular access, instead they are "ordinary" fans who have spent many a night over the past nearly four decades listening to Rod's voice provide the interface with their favourite team.

There are times when many voices can speak more eloquently than one. On this occasion I have invited four speakers from beyond the Oilogosphere to take the floor and have their say. Folks who listened to Rod here in Edmonton, in his home community of Calmar and all the way out on Vancouver Island. Later we will have an open mic in the comments section for any and all who wish to share an anecdote or memory of the man with the golden voice.

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Another season, another train wreck.

For the first time in the four-decade history of the franchise, fans of the Edmonton Oilers face being out of the playoffs for a fifth consecutive year. For the second time in that "storied" history - and for the second season in a fricken row - Oiler fans are looking down the barrel of a DFL finish. Six points out of second-last place, unlikely to even get six points total in the ten games that remain, let alone make up six on anybody, given how the Injured Reserve crew could whip the squad that is actually taking to the ice for the copper and blue these days.

So why watch? Here are ten reasons:

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Oilers fans of the '80s had little reason to lament the proverbial "one that got away", because there were so few who did. The survivor of the World Hockey Association had entered the NHL with a single "protected" skater: the 18-year-old Wayne Gretzky. Not a bad asset to be building a team around, and soon enough the team was built through some Glen Sather wheeler-dealering, a remarkable run at the draft, the trade route, and the open market (Randy Gregg and Charlie Huddy were both UFAs, signed for "free" in the manner of Taylor Fedun yesterday, and both won five Stanley Cups in this city. But I digress ... and I'm not even out of the first paragraph yet!)

There's an odd story behind why the Oilers ultimately protected just one skater, while the other three WHA teams had the "luxury" of two before all underwent the painful process of having their drawers pulled down and being exposed for all manner of abuse by Old Weird Harold and his henchmen in the unseemly world of the NHL's ownership group. The league-sanctioned buggery that followed was the only Reverse expansion draft in history, in which the incoming "expansion" teams were stripped of many of their better players, "reclaimed" by NHL teams. WHA teams who had scouted, pursued, signed, and developed talent from relatively untapped goldmines such as the NCAA and Scandinavia, lost their rights to whatever NHL team might have drafted the guy, even years later. The newcomers were permitted four exceptions: two protected skaters, and two goalies. The convoluted rationale used to explain the bizarre 1:1 ratio between skaters and goalies can best be summed up thusly: "We don't want your damned goalies."

Turned out they wanted not only our skaters, but in the strange case of Bengt-Åke Gustafsson, our protected skaters.

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It's three strikes and you're still here for Nikolai Khabibulin, who today has been placed on injured reserve for the third time since Steve Tambellini rolled some very expensive dice on the Russian veteran the summer before last. The most recent affliction is being variously reported as an eye injury or an eye infection, two very different things which we will update as things become clearer. For now details are as fuzzy as Khabibulin's vision.

For now the Oilers have confirmed one part of the chain of events, namely that Martin Gerber has been recalled from OKC for tonight's game.

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Season opener, Rexall Place, October 10: Jordan Eberle, finally playing his first NHL game, takes Jim Vandermeer's wall pass in the neutral zone, bursts into the Calgary zone, puts an absolutely sick move on Ian White in which he toe-drags the puck under the sliding defender's stick while simultaneously (and blindly) jumping over it, retains sufficient balance, possession, and presence of mind to deke Miikka Kiprusoff to the backhand, and goes top cheese while crashing to the ice. It was a moment to remember for long-suffering Oiler fans, and for this one remains The Moment of another long, lousy, losing season. A perfect 10 on 10/10/10.

The cherry on top was that there was one second remaining in a Calgary powerplay at the time, making Eberle's spectacular effort officially a shorthanded goal. Immediately installed on the penalty killing unit, Jordan followed up with a second brilliant shortie against the Sharks a couple weeks later (pictured) and became a fixture on the PK. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the experiment was destined to end in failure when (some of) the percentages turned against Eberle, and hard.

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Linus Omark can score. Over the past 2½ years he has proven that in the three top professional leagues outside of the NHL, and has now earned his shot in the best league of all. 

Omark was a shot in the dark when the Oilers picked him in the fourth round of the 2007 Entry Draft. Already 20 years old and passed over in two previous drafts, Linus was a tiny guy (5'9, 168) whose offensive wizardry wasn't apparent in his stats, just 8-9-17 in 50 games with Lulea of the Swedish Elite League. Overaged, undersized, unimpressive stats - seemed like a real bad gamble as seen from the cheap seats here in Edmonton.

But his offensive game has continued to develop. Omark nearly doubled his point output the following season, posting 11-21-32, and very nearly redoubled it in 2008-09 when he led Lulea in scoring with 55 points in 53 games. For good measure Linus finished second on the club in goals (23), plus-minus (+18), and PiM (66), behind three different teammates. He finished fifth in SEL in both goals and assists, and third in points, just four behind scoring champion Per-Age Skroder.

In 2009-10, Omark moved on to Moscow Dynamo of the KHL, where his 36 points ranked third on the team, behind respected international snipers Mattias Weinhandl and Jiri Hudler (who isn't a bad comparable, come to think of it), while his 20 goals ranked second on the squad. Meanwhile his reputation as a YouTube sensation grew with some highlight-reel goals, especially a dazzling lob shot in a shootout which spoke to both amazing skill and cojones the size of pumpkins.

In 2010-11 Omark brought his skills to North America. As a scoring winger he could hardly have picked a worse time to try to break in with the Edmonton Oilers, who were bursting at the seams with rookie wingmen already - Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, fellow Swede Magnus Paajarvi. Rather predictably sent down to Oklahoma City at the end of camp, Omark made some intemperate if not entirely inaccurate comments about politics. Rather than sulk about it he proceeded to put up excellent numbers in OKC, posting 14-17-31, +7 in 28 games; while he has since been passed on the club's scoring list by the likes of gifted AHL sniper Alexandre Giroux, Omark's 1.11 points per game remains tops on the Barons. Linus grabbed headlines with a five-goal game, and put himself first in line when the inevitable injuries to skill wingers started happening on the big club.  

The call came in early December when Ales Hemsky went down with a groin injury. When Hemsky (briefly) returned to the line-up in late December Omark was shipped back down for a weekend, but his reprieve came when Jordan Eberle went down with an ankle sprain on New Year's Day.   

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Wayne Gretzky is all about numbers. Fifty is hardly a new number in his domain (in fact it's one of his more famous ones), but fifty years old is. Today he reaches that milestone, twelve years removed from his last game but still the biggest name in his sport.

I haven't seen much of Wayne those last dozen years since he hung up the blades - the two unforgettable days of the Heritage Classic, otherwise mostly-televised glimpses managing Team Canada, coaching the Coyotes, shilling product. I did, however, get many an eyeful of the Mozart of Hockey during the twelve years of his absolute peak as a player, from the afternoon he came to town as a pimple-faced 17-year-old wunderkind to the night he departed as hockey's all-time scoring champion. He was a hockey fan's wildest dream come true, especially a hockey fan with full season's tickets and a passion for both numbers and history.

Rather than write a new 99,000-word thesis on the Great One's impact on the hockey world, let me just link to a few previous accounts of those unforgettable days and years. Together these chapters weave a remarkable story.

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Olivier Roy: glass half empty, or three-quarters full? (Hey, this is about a goalie, don't expect advanced math!)

Roy recently rose to national prominence when he claimed the starting goaltender's job for Team Canada at the World Junior Hockey Championships. To the best of my knowledge he thus became the first Oiler draft to play a meaningful game between the pipes in that tourney - Devan Dubnyk made the team a few years back but never got off the bench. (The only other possibility is this mysterious guy the Oilers chose in the immortal 1990 draft named Invalid Pick who has something of an ambiguous history, but I don't think he made Team Canada in a starting role, let's put it that way. Besides, with a name like that I half-suspect he was Mexican.)

Anyway, the half-empty part of the equation is that Roy became a rare example of a goalie playing himself out of the starting role in the Tournament of Small Sample Sizes, and wound up being a bench-sitter himself when the games got serious. To assume such sorry status, the stopper's small sample suffered some serious shortcomings. Confidence was an issue: Roy appeared to be struggling with it on a personal level, he didn't seem to inspire it in his teammates, and for certain he didn't under the microscopes of a whole network of analysts and an anxious hockey-watching nation. Which begs leads to the key question, what the heck does Pierre McGuire know about goalies, anyway?  

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Intro:

I've decided to isolate on Edmonton Oiler prospect Anton Lander in this WJHC bronze medal game. Exactly matches my interest level in the game; I do want to watch it, but I need a reason to pay attention. Should be a good fit.

TSN coverage starts with replay of Lander firing a shootout effort against Russians off the very inside of the goalpost, a millimetre from a perfect shot and now that far removed from Ever achieving his dream of being the first Swede to captain a WJHC gold medallist in thirty years. Hockey can be cruel. The image of him sitting dejectedly on the ice as he tries to digest that reality is reminscent of Paul Coffey sitting in the open bench door at Nassau County Coliseum after losing the Stanley Cup Final in 1983. I respect that.

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