Twitter is blowing up tonight, and it's split asunder trying to analyze Brent Sutter's selection of snipers for the shootout versus the Minnesota Wild.

Apparently, people who watch a lot of games believe that the opening lineup of Matt Stajan, Lee Stempniak and Blair Jones were the wrong picks to decide a crucial game. And they're partially right.

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A long time ago, I wrote a huge essay-like dissertation for my old site on how I would rate GMs on the body of their work.  I used Darryl Sutter as my topic du jour.

While some of my conclusions look a bit off in hindsight, the section on talent acquisition still holds true in my mind.  Any good GM needs to be able to acquire talent in a variety of ways and having a "sense of value" is incredibly important.

Side note: if you read that old article, feel free to laugh at some of my conclusions. The premise was right, but my sense of success was a little skewed. Weird to think it was only 1.5 years ago.

However, in the cap era, sense of value essentially breaks into two main components. The first is opportunity cost and the second is the amount of risk. If you want a further explanation of opportunity cost, I rambled about it at Hockey Prospectus last week.

Why am I spewing random theory about how GMs operate? Because it's all incredibly pertinent to the Flames claiming Blake Comeau off waivers on Friday.

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Puck Battles is a semi-regular column exploring a few key issues around the NHL. Hopefully you don't agree with the opinion expressed by the author, that way we get to argue more. The only thing that can't be argued is Milan Lucic's dominance over the Sabres. He's in their kitchen.

I've got news for you. Blake Wheeler is about to "rediscover his work ethic", "play with heart" by driving to the net and of course get himself "in the zone". Do I know this because I've been talking to Pierre McGuire about his practice habits? Of course not. I just know that he's not a career 2.1% shooter, which is the rate he's currently converting his shots at.

Take a look at Wheeler's career goal, shot and shooting percentage numbers by season:

2008-09                81 GP    21 G       150 shots             14.0%

2009-10                82 GP    18 G       159 shots             11.3%

2010-11                81 GP    18 G       179 shots             10.1%

2011-12                21 GP    1 G         48 shots               2.1%

It would be concerning if his shot volume had dropped off significantly, but that is hardly the case. Each year Wheeler has increased his number of shots and each year his shooting percentage has dipped a little bit. This year, he's on pace for 180-190 shots.  In all likelihood, he'll convert 10-11% of his chances, and end up with 18-20 goals.

That said, with only 1 goal to his name at the moment, the running story is that he can't find his groove in coach Noel's system or doesn't fit that well with his linemates. The real reason is most likely puck luck, so get ready to see him start pumping the net full as the breaks start going his way.

The Best Article I Read This Week

I know a lot of people think that Sidney Crosby's big return on Monday night was a little overhyped given that he lit up an Islanders squad playing their 38^th string goaltender. However, JT Bourne of Backhand Shelf had a take on the situation that I thought was fantastic. Check it out here.

Best Idea that Hasn't Happened Yet

Well, it happened once last year, but I'd like to see it happen more often. Other teams should be calling the Jets endlessly about taking a "slumping" player like Wheeler off their hands. The Blackhawks picked up Frolik from Florida last year in much the same way, and got a bargain in the process.

Western Canadian Thought of the Week

Given the theme above, I think the Oilers should have been shopping Nikolai Khabibulin all over the league after his hot start. Much like it's counterpart in the German capital, the Bulin Wall has seen better days. This late-career performance (0.936 sv%) is fairly uncharacteristic for a goalie with a career save percentage of 0.908. I'd rather see the young Oilers pick up a defenseman in a trade for Khabibulin and give Devan Dubnyk a run at the starter's role.

Puck Battles is a semi-regular column exploring a few key issues around the NHL. Hopefully you don't agree with the opinion expressed by the author, that way we get to argue more. The only thing that can't be argued is Anze Kopitar's place as one of the best two-way forwards in the game. He's the "do a barrel roll" of hockey.

There was only one thing I could possibly talk about this week.  The Nashville Predators decided to ink their star goaltender, Pekka Rinne, to a 7-year, $49 million deal before he became an unrestricted free agent this summer.

Rinne may be one of the best 5 goalies in the league and he's now about to get paid like it.  However, this contract is a gigantic mistake for a Predators team that has built their reputation on finding value in hidden talent and not making big contract mistakes.  The market for goaltenders is set more by the deals for Tomas Vokoun, Jimmy Howard and Antii Niemi than by the ludicrous deal the Flyers signed Ilya Bryzgalov to this summer.  Rinne will have the highest cap hit of any net jockey in the league next season, but is any goalie really worth it?

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With the city of Winnipeg gearing up for the return of the Jets, the crew here at Arctic Ice Hockey has spent the summer getting you familiarized with the roster of the new Jets squad as well as a variety of other topics surrounding the relocation from Atlanta.

While you may have been reading our content online, what went largely unnoticed is that the AIH team and several contributors from The Illegal Curve Radio Show have been crafting content for the first ever Winnipeg Jets Annual by Maple Street Press. The magazine was edited (and task-mastered) by our own Ben Wendorf (Bettman's Nightmare). He even managed to make MY sections look passable.

The magazine is now available for pre-order and will hit newsstands on September 13, 2011. The cost is $9.99 for the commemorative publication, and it runs without advertisements. If you like the content here and at Illegal Curve, you'll love what we've put together for the magazine. As an added bonus, now you can pass on some of your newfound knowledge to those that aren't interweb-savvy, like I'm going to do with my dad.

After the jump is the full table of contents, so you can see what kind of shenanigans we've been up to.

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On Friday, Andrew Walker from Fan960 had a blog post talking about his dissatisfaction with Bouwmeester.  The trigger point for his argument was the Shea Weber arbitration and realizing that Bouwmeester was the 4^th highest paid d-man in the NHL.

I have a real issue with arguments of this type because they rarely define the premise of the actual comparison.  Walker has stated that there are 20 defencemen that are hands-down "better" than J-Bo and he "WILL NOT take arguments on" when compared to Bouwmeester.  Walker also goes on in the comments to say that "I don't need metrics to tell me if Jack Johnson, Lidstrom, or Doughty are good or not.``  If Jack Johnson is part of your argument, I`d like to suggest that you start including metrics, because your eyes are failing you.

More after the jump...

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Puck Battles is a semi-regular column exploring a few key issues around the NHL. Hopefully you don't agree with the opinion expressed by the author, that way we get to argue more. The only thing that can't be argued is Cam Neely's place in the pantheon of power forwards. He's the Chuck Norris of hockey.

Unless you've been busy catching up on the Bachelorette to free up space on your PVR, you've seen the swarm of tweets, news stories and random opinions on the Islanders arena referendum. Nassau County citizens got the decision right and should be congratulated.

As a fan, the decision seems a little more frustrating. Other people get to decide whether your favourite team sticks around or leaves. To be honest, I feel terrible for hockey fans in Atlanta who saw their team leave and I feel just as gut-wrenched for Isles fans who see the writing on the wall for their own team.

more after the jump

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It's Friday, the long weekend is here, and the Flames have the best damn role players in the league according to Matthew Coller of Hockey Prospectus.  

The Flames role players had the best GVT of any team in the NHL last season, followed by Boston, Tampa Bay, Montreal and Detroit.  Babchuk, Moss and Jackman all did quite well in the minutes they were given last year.

Given Justin's excellent write-up of Kipper's struggles, I though it might be fun to see a few older articles from M&G discussing Kipper.

1.  In March, Hayley penned this post on whether it matters if Kipper is elite anymore.

2.  In our Rebuild Roundtable back in January, I advocated trading Kipper, and got skewered.  Good Times.

There's been a bit of talk around the web of Zherdev wanting to play for the Jets.  He'd be a decent bet for the Flames as well since he'd likely come cheap.

The Sabres are almost $4m over the Cap.  Brad Boyes would be a fun 1-year gamble if Hagman can be moved. If the get close to the deadline and can't make a deal, maybe he could be had for cheap.

Speaking of dumping salary, I wish Feaster could have beat Lucky Lou to the punch as the Devils dumped Brian Rolston's nasty cap hit on the Isles.

Finally, Kent Wilson coins another stellar analogy to explain Corsi to the uninitiated.  I love the lottery ticket method. 

According to Mike Colligan of Forbes, the Flames may be adopting more advanced statistical techniques in their player evaluation with the hiring of Chris Snow.  Apparently this won't get in the way of trading draft picks for goons though.

The trade for PL3 (Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond) seems a bit shady, but the signing of Max Reinhart appears to be a nice step in the right direction.

Corey Pronman took a look at the Flames top prospects at Hockey Prospectus.

This is a fantastic post by Scott Reynolds at Copper n' Blue summarizing the Flames off-season so far.

On a non-Flames front, I really like George E. Ays post on what Brandon Dubinsky's contract should be worth.

Feel free to kick off your reading enjoyment with all kinds of ridiculous jokes about the title.  Quite a smattering of articles from around the web today, since Flames news has been pretty quiet.

Oh yeah, happy Stampede, you figure out what the hell is going on in this picture.

Kent Wilson has been busy as usual with a look at Dany Heatley's decline. I love this type of analysis. It shows that everything isn't what it seems on the surface, with Havlat being a much better ES player at the moment, while Heatley has largely morphed into a PP specialist.

On the other end, Bryan Reynolds of Hockey Wilderness looks at where Heatley would have ranked on the Wild based on his counting stats last year. I'm not a big fan of this type of analysis as it fails to take context into account.  The Sharks were a much higher scoring team (2.96 g/gm) than the Wild (2.48 g/gm) and had a much better goal differential as well (+0.42/gm vs -0.30/gm). It also doesn't take into account the competition faced or the zone starts. It can represent an interesting first look, but ultimately can be deceiving.  

He also provided the inspiration for today's HC title, with speculation at Flames Nation that Washington could be a potential trade partner for the Flames. I love the idea and the Caps definitely need to make a move to get under the cap.  That said, they're glue-sniffing crazy if they trade Semin (talent wise) for less than he's worth.  The big issue will be whether they can accommodate top cap hits for him, Backstrom and Ovechkin, which is unlikely. Washington has really painted themselves into a corner and teams will know they don't have a lot of leverage unless they're willing to stash salaries in the minors.

Over at Arctic Ice Hockey, Gabe had some harsh criticism for the Florida Panthers moves and definitely felt the heat of some trolling for his opinion.  I added my own view on the Panthers moves (a little more wait-&-see-ish) at Hockey Prospectus here.

And easily my favorite story of the week is whether Mike Commodore will take #64 with the Red Wings and become Commodore 64!  Puck Daddy has started a charity drive getting people to pledge $64 to Commodore's charity of choice if he takes the number. I love stuff like this.

After Ben's fantastic "Who We Be" series, the next logical step is to review a few free agent targets that can address some of those needs.  These are a few players I think could fill those holes.  The salary listed is what they made last year.

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Yesterday melted my hockey brain.  When I first saw that Reggie was on the block, I scrambled to read what I could about potential prospects coming the other way.

Luke Adam had a good year in the AHL (more than a point per game), but Hockey's Future ranks him as a potential 2nd line forward in the NHL.  However, I'd much rather see Zach Kassian in the deal.  Don't count on that one though.

However, if the Flames also get Buffalo's first round pick, 16th overall, they have the ability to work all kinds of movement up the draft board to get the guys they want.  I personally would love to see Rocco Grimaldi in a Flames uniform.  It might be reasonable to grab him at 16th, while packaging the 13th with 1 or 2 2nd's to jump into the top 7 picks to grab a guy like Ryan Strome.

As for the Flyers, there is just no way to properly explain the day they had.  If you'd like to see my take on their moves (shameless plug alert), stop by Hockey Prospectus.

By the way, just think about the amount of shots a line with Rick Nash and Jeff Carter could generate on net.  Come to think of it, they better find a passer to play on that line.

There are a lot of ways to describe hockey players.  You'll hear characters like Don Cherry and others refer to guys with guts, heart, leadership and a variety of cliché terms.  While these terms sound great, they are incredibly difficult to measure and even more difficult to define with respect to their impact on a hockey game.  If you're new to my writing, don't expect to see a boatload of canned phrases and old-school hockey beliefs.

To be honest, I believe that a player's heart, work ethic, leadership and "locker room presence" actually exist, but they just don't outweigh talent.  On top of that, we have a variety of ways to measure and gauge talent, but heart is a judgement call.

So why am I rambling on about all this crap?  If we're going to debate and argue the finer points of Winnipeg's team, we need to use facts and I plan to provide plenty of them.  Almost all of them come from BehindTheNet.ca, which was founded and is run by our own Gabriel Desjardins (known as Hawerchuk around here).

So to kick it all off, let's consider what captain Andrew Ladd is worth to the team, both for his on-ice value and financially against the salary cap.

More after the jump.....

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Great, the playoffs are done and Vancouver can now move past make out pictures during acts of idiocy.  Then again, maybe they don't want to move past it, because they'll have to figure out what the hell they could possibly change about their team in the off-season.  

Speaking of moving on, Flames Nation has a list of Flames RFAs and UFAs to make decisions on.

Ben Wendorf talks about Boston's storybook ending to the playoffs.

Corey Pronman talks about Gabriel Landeskog's poor fit as a Top 5 pick.  On the other hand, hopefully he'll be around as a sure-thing....oh.....I don't know...........around the 13th pick.

Finally, I'm really enjoying the response of people using social media to identify many of the rioters  from last night.  So much for anonymity while committing idiotic public violence.

Throughout the summer, I plan on posting a series of articles called the "Questions for Feaster".  Basically, the idea behind the series is they are the same questions I'd be asking myself if I was the Flames GM.

The first question Jay Feaster has to address, other than "how the %&*$ did we not sign Erixon?", is whether or not he can improve on the franchise's dismal draft record.

Take a scroll through the team's draft history, and it becomes apparent that this was never a strong competency for the organization.

Looking at the Flames picks from 1993 to 2008 gives us a view of the selections that should be making up the current team.  I chose 2008 since those players should all be 21 by now and capable of cracking an NHL lineup if they're going to be impact players in the league.  A more conservative view would be to wait 5 years to judge a draft, but in my opinion 3 years is enough to know if we've at least got a top prospect or not.  I then decided on 1993 just to give us a full 15 years worth of history, knowing that those players would be 35 or 36 and hitting the twilight of their career.

Unfortunately, you're not going to like the results.

More after the jump.....

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There's been a lot of pretty cool work done on passing-related analysis lately.  

First, Ben Wendorf at Behind The Net had a look at the value of second assists for defensemen.

Neil Greenberg mentioned another article on twitter, this one from the Stat DNA blog, showing the improved probability of scoring when passes were completed from one zone of a soccer field to another.

Finally, if you haven't been reading Eric T's series on Zone Entries at Broad Street Hockey, this article is a good one to start with.

Soccer seems to be really driving a lot of statistics in this manner, especially if you look at items like the Guardian's chalkboards, shown here analyzed by Michael Cox of Zonal Marking.  I would love to see tools like this developed for hockey, it can provide a ton of insight on zone control, attack patterns, and success from different angles of attack.

While there hasn't been much news on the Flames, there has been plenty of other hockey-related stories to follow.  From stats to draft prep, there is a ton to keep your puck-related cravings at bay.

• Brian Cazeneuve had an interesting article at SI about the increasing focus on puck possession in the game today.  For some reason though, he neglects to mention that possession-statistics do exist and have been rigorously validated.
• Kent Wilson had a response to the SI piece over at The Score with this post on the importance of possession-stats like Corsi, while questioning whether or not the GM's interviewed were being a little coy in their responses.
• Speaking of possession and scoring chances, I found this post at Copper n Blue to on the scoring chances in Game 5 of the Sharks-Nucks series to be eye-opening.  There is still not always a perfect correlation between shooting and scoring chances on a game-by-game basis.
• Finally, if you're really eager to get your pre-draft prep done, head over to Hockey Prospectus and check out Corey Pronman's top 100 draft prospects list along with all the more detailed articles explaining his ranking.

Just so we're clear, the Flames are only playing well because Darryl Sutter left. The locker room is a better place to be and everyone feels loved. That is the complete difference in the Flames. Sutter didn't understand personnel and he sure as hell didn't know how to manage the free agency system. Also, Charlie Sheen is a choir boy.

The storyline pendulum in Calgary has swung too far towards the anti-Sutter camp. I completely believe that Darryl Sutter was a grumpy guy who made the people around him just a little more unhappy than they wanted to be. I've worked with people like that. I honestly believe that when you remove a negative influence, the atmosphere in the workplace can improve. That said, hockey teams still need talent to win.

My point is, Darryl Sutter actually made some incredibly shrewd moves this summer, and the current version of the Flames are right in the thick of the playoff hunt because of those moves. We can argue about whether his vision of the franchise "going for it" was correct (I don't think it was), but with that goal in mind, the former Flames GM made some damn good acquisitions. He deserves major credit for the results we're seeing now. Not just regular credit, street cred.

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Like everyone else who keeps a stalker-like gaze on the Flames, I keep wondering what has changed from the "days of suck" to the current fiery winning streak. 

I can't really buy into the fact that Darryl Sutter's absence has raised the morale of every single employee in the organization.  Although from personal experience in the workplace, the departure of a constant "Debbie Downer" can definitely have some effect on the mood in the office.  It's especially important when the person is in a position of authority.  But in reality, the team still needs the talent to compete in the first place.

Kent Wilson did a great job of explaining how truly hot the Flames currently are in his latest article for The Score, while similarly questioning the idea of chemistry.

Back during the dark days of 2010, I kept looking at the Flames possession numbers and wondering how this team was losing.  Then I'd watch them play and have no faith in the talent, even though they seemed to be generating the kind of Corsi that could lead to wins.  I didn't have the cojones to make a prediction either.  Lesson learned.

Actual stats after the jump.

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I was perusing the stat site of Hockey Analysis and came across something pretty shocking.  Of all the forwards in the NHL who have played over 200 minutes, there were three Flames who ranked in the top-10 for Fenwick percentage.

Tim Jackman came in at third (60.0%), Mikael Backlund at fourth (59.9%) and David Moss at sixth (59.9%).  It was unsurprising that all three had zone starts higher than 56% and rather easy quality of competition measures, but it definitely sparked a train of thought for me.  As a sidenote, I rarely get a new train of thought, so please keep reading after the jump.

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As a way to measure which players in the NHL are carrying the heaviest loads and outperforming their competition, I created the Heavy Lifter Index on Hockey Prospectus.

The idea was largely inspired by some of Gabe's posts here at BTN and also by the work of Derek Zona over at Copper n' Blue.  My hope was to find some type of index that could show the relative rarity of a players situational stats and performance stats combined.

Part 1 - Explains the methodology

Part 2 - Refines my method and delves into HLI for forwards for the last 3 seasons

If you're interested in the topic, please give it a read.  Players like Mikko Koivu, Patrice Bergeron, Andrew Ladd and Brandon Dubinsky all show quite well in individual seasons while others like Martin Hanzal, Mike Richards and Alex Burrows showed very well across the 3 seasons total.  I'm sure you won't be surprised by the top player on the list.

Given the great statistical minds who read this blog, I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments section here or at HP.  Any insight into how to improve HLI or use it for further analysis would be great.

 
Today the Flames announced that they'll be sending Mikael Backlund down from the big club to Abbotsford of the AHL.  Backlund has been a healthy scratch since December 18^th.

With 4 goals and 4 assists in 32 games, Backlund hasn't exactly been lighting up the traditional NHL stat line, but has been +4 on the season.  Obviously Brent Sutter and interim GM Jay Feaster felt he wasn't bringing enough to the Flames squad and are backed up in that assertion by the Flames recent winning streak with Backlund in street clothes.

But as we all know here at M&G, the traditional stat line doesn't tell the whole story.  In fact, the Flames appear to be making a huge mistake by sending Backlund down to the Heat.  Not only are they wasting a year of his entry level contract, but he's actually holding his own as a third line player at an age when NHL forwards typically develop the fastest.  Denying him time in the NHL is likely hurting his development.

More after the jump.....

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