Somebody at this Brantford Garden Centre has a brand new Leaf fan in the family (Click image for larger version).

I was rushing home from the office with a hot meal for a sickly Spouse (I cook only the best take out dishes), late for an appointment at the bank to clean up the latest of my absurd little financial disasters.

It was Tuesday night.  The Leafs were set to face off at 7:30 (ed. showing my age here) 7:00 that night against the Capitals, needing to claim all the points left on the table, and further needing the Sabres to go oh-fer, in order to have a shot at the playoffs.  On April 5th, with three games left on the schedule, the Leafs were – for a change – playing a game that mattered.

I was excited, I was tired, I was harried.  I was charging along possessed by that momentous urgency that develops, seemingly of its own accord, out of the need to get too many things done in too short a period of time.  In addition to my pending nutritional errand and the dollars and cents issues, my mind was idly grappling with any number of a series of problems I’ve been trying to solve in this enormous and rapidly approaching assignment at work.

As I sped along Park Rd. north of Brantford, having relegated tasks concerning the operation of a motor vehicle to the hypothalmus, I was jolted from my near automatic state by a glimpse – just out of the corner of my otherwise occupied eye, mind you – of the sign pictured at left.

The car charged further north along the road, and I found myself glancing in the rear view mirror trying to make sense of the incomplete image of the letters left in my mind.

“I’m sure,” I told myself, “that the sign contained a message addressed to Brian Burke.”  And I was pretty sure that part of the message was something to the effect that our “prayers have been answered.”  I had to fight the urge to turn the car around and go back for a second look.  “I am a grown up person,” I told myself, “late for a meeting and with a starving and sick wife at home.”   This last bit, staring at myself sternly in the rear-view mirror, as I very determinedly did not slow down.   Willing myself to let maturity prevail over juvenile excitement and curiosity.

I am as shocked as you are to report that my car did not slow down that night;  I really wasn’t sure I had that in me.

The following morning, however, it was amazing how easy it was to talk myself into the naturalness, the reasonableness – no, the necessity of taking a slightly adjusted path to work.  One that took me past the sign, with my cell phone camera armed and ready.

Of course, most anyone who’s reading this is well aware by now that the jerkstore Tampa Bay Lightning were unable to conquer the Sabres that night and the Maple Leaf playoff dream died with about two minutes remaining in the Leafs/Caps 3rd period.  The game was tied, the issue between those two teams not yet sorted, but the conclusion of another season foregone and unhappy.  Still, with the play of James Reimer leading the way, there is much to be hopeful about among Leafs fans.  It is possible to believe that the team may have turned a very important corner since the All-Star break.

We’re not in the playoffs again this year, but I am happy that this team has instilled in me a sort of hope and excitement that feels youthful.  My love for the team has been re-invigorated over the last two and a half months.  There is a freshness for me about the idea of being a Leafs fan again; I’d say I’m not alone, judging by the sign pictured above.

Questions Will Become Answers: Tim Brent Edition ('shop lifted from a comment by loserdomi on PPP)

Who the fuck is Tim Brent?  It’s a question that has circulated in the Barilkosphere – sometimes semi-seriously, mostly in jest – since some time after he signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs organization as a free agent on July 6, 2009.

Now, there’s “Ilya Kovalchuk free agency”, and then there’s “Tim Brent free agency.”  This past summer’s production of Waiting for Kovalchuk, for example, featured (in the pre-circumvention ruling days, anyway) daily updates from multiple media sources about the complete absence of any development relating to Kovalchuk’s status.  To give you an idea of the level of media interest in Burke’s signing of Tim Brent, a Google News archive search shows that the Toronto Star has exactly one reference to Brent’s career with the Maple Leafs in 2009;  it’s an almost parenthetical reference to the fact that Brent had signed a one-year deal with the Leafs, wedged into the body of an article that is 100% about something else – the signing of Francois Beauchemin.

The Barilkosphere’s own beloved meeting place, Pension Plan Puppets, had (on the front page*) but an offhand reference to the acquisition of Tim Brent:  again, an almost throwaway mention of Brent’s contract in a larger piece devoted to the signing of Rickard Wallin, for goodness sake.   Keep in mind that PPP is a site frequented almost exclusively by highly motivated Leaf fans;  the kind of place that generated weeks of discussion and heated debate over the signing of Brett Lebda this summer.  On the day AFTER Lebda signed, PPP Princess Karina was moved to put up a post reassuring PPP users that the apocalypse had not occurred and seeking to heal rifts of geologic size that seemed to be developing among the faithful on this most contentious issue.  It generated 310 comments.

There is a reason for the differential level of interest of course;  Ilya Kovalchuk had 338 goals in 621 NHL games when his marriage with the Devils was finally given the Blessing of Gary this past September.  Tim Brent, by contrast, had exactly one goal in 18 games (over 3 separate seasons) with Anaheim, Pittsburgh and Chicago.

Brent played with the Toronto Marlies of the AHL last season – when he was playing.  He tore a pectoral muscle taking a faceoff in the preseason, missed four months (though he was scheduled to miss six) then notched 13 goals and 15 assists in the 33 games he played.  As a reward for his dedicated efforts with the Leafs’ minor league affiliate, Brent was called up to the bigs for the final game of the 2010 NHL season, played against the Canadiens in Montreal.  He logged a little more than 13 minutes of ice time for the Leafs that night, was even on the plus/minus side, and counted three shots on goal.

By that point – April 2010 – the meme was well established among Barilkosphere regulars:  “Who the fuck is Tim Brent?” had become the stock comedic response whenever his name was mentioned.  As far as I can tell, it all began with the Puck Prospectus preseason forecast about the 2009-2010 Leafs’ likely finishing position.  The article projected the Leafs to finish 29th.  Still evidently in complete denial as to the abject crapitude that was Vesa Toskala, many of us – myself included – mocked the forecast (which, it must be acknowledged, turned out to be correct) and derided the methods used to reach the conclusion.  Chemmy pointed out – fairly, I might add – that the author of that forecast seemed to assume that Tim Brent would be playing for the Leafs last season**.  Anyone who had been following the Leafs through the preseason last year knew that this wasn’t going to be the case, and thus, in relation to the Puck Prospectus projection, the question was rightly asked: “Who the fuck is Tim Brent?”  The question was also answered:

I’ll answer that question for you since I’m a Leafs blogger: Tim Brent is not someone who will be playing for Toronto on opening night and never was.  (Chemmy)

A meme was born.  Who the fuck is Tim Brent?

Much to the amusement of the PPP faithful, for example, there was a game in early March against the Flyers where John Mitchell and Fredrik Sjostrom had been injured, leading to the call-up of Brent and Jay Rosehill from the Marlies.  At last, it appeared that the question would be answered.  In the end,  though, John Mitchell was healthy enough to play, leaving only one spot for the Marlies call-ups.  The spot in the lineup went to Rosehill.  There is very little reference on the web to this turn of events, which must have been a monumental disappointment for Brent;  all I could find after a few minutes’ digging was PPP user LeafBoy’s comment that “Brent didn’t get called up after all.”  The mystery lived on.  Who the fuck is Tim Brent?

By the time this past summer rolled around, Brent’s 13 minutes of ice time in Montreal looked for all the world like they would be the sum total of his Leafs career.  When he re-signed with the Leafs on July 5,  2010, his hometown newspaper noticed.  Elsewhere, the news spread considerably less rapidly; aside from a mention by PPP Princess SkinnyFish in the comments to another post, with a link to the Capgeek.com tweet about the contract, both of which came two days later, Brent’s re-up with the Leafs seems to have gone almost entirely unnoticed.   After all, who the fuck is Tim Brent?

When September rolled around, as camp progressed, the narrative from the MSM was all about Nazem Kadri.  Anxious to sell newspapers or generate pagehits, many MSM columnists were only too happy to generate a controversy about whether Kadri – at 19 years of age, with one regular season game and a few days of his second NHL training camp under his belt – should be seen as a complete bust as a prospect.  When the dust cleared, and the opening night lineups were announced, Tim Brent – who the fuck is Tim Brent? – was the starting 3rd line centre for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Well, on opening night against the Montreal Canadiens, Tim Brent scored the first goal of the Toronto Maple Leafs 2010-2011 season.  This past Saturday night, he scored again, this time unassisted, in the course of a 5-1 romp over the Senators.    Two goals in two games, and a whole new set of jokes are of course de rigeur for Leafs fans:  “Tim Brent is on pace for an 82 goal season/will win the Rocket Richard trophy in a walk, etc.”  Along the way, the meme has – as is the way of these things on the Interwebs – gone meta and is now a joke that refers to itself.  Continuing the fiction, the Memefather himself – Chemmy – wrote:

I had never heard of Tim Brent before Thursday but I think in time I could come to remember his name. Tim Brent is a legend. Tim Brent is handsome. Tim Brent is a Toronto Maple Leaf.

Commenters on the post picked up on this, and have been referring to Brent as The Legend ever since.  It’s all been in good fun, and it’s stuff  like this that keeps me coming back to the PPP community;  a creative group of folks who are as passionate as I am about my team.  Before anyone gets their tongue clucking at Leafs fans planning a parade (damn, that one NEVER gets old) or anointing Brent as the NHL superstar of the next decade on the basis of the past two games, let’s have a bit of a reality check.  The feigned complete ignorance of Tim Brent really was feigned;  similarly, no one truly believes that Tim Brent will be challenging Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin for the NHL limelight.

But if any of you doubt the reality of Tim Brent’s prodigious powers, consider the evidence of the following miracle that Tim Brent has performed:  Tim Brent caused a former Habs fan to face up to the enormity of his prior crimes against humanity, and to become one of us.

Here is how I know that this happened.  One of my fishing buddies knows Tim Brent.  My friend – let’s call him “Dewey” (not his real name) – has some peripheral involvement in the professional hockey world because of the industry in which he works.  Dewey is from Preston, a small community that has been subsumed in the larger city of Cambridge.  Dewey has known Tim Brent for about twenty years.  Dewey used to be a Habs fan.

“Used to be a Habs fan”;  bit of an understatement, that.  Again, because of the industry he works in, Dewey runs across a lot of sports memorabilia and collectibles.  His basement was full of the stuff, much of it Habs-themed.  I have a very distinct memory of a particular hat that he wore quite a bit when we were fishing, with the accursed CH logo.  We traded jibes back and forth, in the way that fans do.   Then, a few years ago, something happened to make Dewey reject the Habs.  I can’t remember what the exact incident was; maybe he just stopped drinking and sobered up.

Last summer (July 16th, 2009, to be precise) I got an email from him that read as follows:

I’ve known Tim and his family since he was a little kid…He is a great kid, character guy.  He isn’t tiny but has never been able to bulk up, so injuries have been a problem.  I think he could easily catch on as 3rd or 4th line center somewhere, but he hasn’t been in the right place at the right time yet.  He told me last summer that he wanted to try and fulfill his NHL dream for one more season but the $$ he was being offered from Russia would lead him there this season if that NHL thing didn’t work out.  I was suprised to hear he has signed with the Leafs and his dad will be thrilled.  It will make cheering for the Leafs easy if he can make the team.

It’s the second last sentence that catches my attention when I re-read this email now.  I think what it says – what it means – is that Tim Brent was being offered a lot more money to play in Russia in the summer of 2009, but that he chose to pursue his NHL dream for one more year.  It means that in April of 2010, after enduring a season either on the shelf with an injury or once again toiling away in the minors for (relatively) little money, when Tim Brent got that thirteen minutes of big league ice time, it left enough of a taste in his mouth to continue to want to succeed in the world’s most important pro league.  It left him wanting to succeed as a Maple Leaf.

Dewey wrote me again October 1st of this year.  Stories were rampant in the press that the Leafs would be starting the year with the the 26-year old Brent as their 3rd line centre.  Dewey said he was not ready yet to commit to it 100%, but that he was “on the verge of becoming a Leafs fan.”

I wrote back with some words of encouragement for him – some tips on how to be a Leafs fan:

Try not to mention the Stanley Cup.  Ever.  It makes people pouty around here;

Try not to mention Kerry Fraser, or Game 6 of the Western Conference finals in 1993.  Ever.  It makes people pouty around here;

If you find yourself crying for days on end, that probably means it’s April.  Don’t worry, the playoffs will be over soon.  So long as your definition of “soon” includes “two months”;

Dare to hope.  Hope to dare.  Never speak aloud of good things that you believe possibly maybe someday in a vague dinosaurish way  might happen, lest you irreversibly jinx them; and

GO LEAFS GO!

I also sent Dewey a copy of The Maple Leafs Song.  He wrote back and chastised me for not finding a rhyme for “Tim Brent.” In due time, Tim Brent made the team.

After opening night, Dewey wrote me again, indicating that his record as a “Leaf fan” was now 1-0;  he asked me what mine was.  I drank heavily and wrote a mostly tersely worded response, inquiring whether the transformation was official.  Dewey wrote me back:

Although I have yet to sign anything, I am prepared to.  I wasn’t sure until last night because I grew up as a Canadiens fan, but I had absolutely no mixed feelings about cheering for the Leafs for the first time against my “old” team.  I missed the first period because of a family birthday thing.  My phone began to ring right after Tim scored. First [name omitted] then [name omitted]. Weird…Leaf fans calling me.  Once I tuned in I found myself analyzing the game with comments to [name of significant other omitted] (who couldn’t give a flying #$%@*) such as, “I know it’s only the first game of the season but they look so much more confident in front of Giggy than they ever did in front of Testicular” (SP?).

Also watching someone who I have known for 20 years opening the season playing with HIS team, his DADS team and both of his GRANDAD”S team was pretty special.  He will never be a star, but I hope he is finally in the right spot at the right time.  This is a good kid who is well grounded, well mannered and has a good work ethic.  I see plenty of AAA primadonna hockey players whose parents are living through their future superstar and Tim and his family were none of that.  He is definitely the kinda person you want to see suceed.  The first time I saw him this summer I asked him how it felt to play the last game of the year with the Leafs and he talked more about how much it meant to his dad.  He was kind of in contract limbo at that point and was so happy the next time he stopped in because it was going to be announced the next day that he had resigned.

AND…….. he loves to fish!!

You can guess which portions of that email caught my attention:  first, that being a Leafs fan seems to very much run in Tim Brent’s family, and second that when he was asked about that first game – the 13 minutes of ice time in one game at the end of a difficult season – “he talked more about how much it meant to his dad.”

Is it a little dusty in the room where you’re reading this?  ‘Cause it is in the room where I’m writing it, I can tell you that.

So that’s who the fuck Tim Brent really is.  A guy whose determination to succeed turned a Habs fan into a Son of Smythe.

We talk a lot at Pension Plan Puppets about advanced statistics.  We talk about things that we can measure, things that we can prove with evidence.  Any conversation about the relative merits of this player over that one that drifts toward a discussion of “intangibles”, things like “character”, or “leadership in the dressing room” and so on, is likely to provoke a bit of a heated response from someone because we the fans have few facts upon which to judge our heroes in this regard.  No doubt some players are simply more committed to being a professional and winning hockey games than others, but it is generally impossible for us as outsiders to express an informed opinion on such things, and information about the relationships between the players and their real personalities is tightly controlled and unlikely to emerge in the carefully scripted and cliched sound bites that we get from them during intermission interviews on Hockey Night in Canada.

Sometimes though, in the process of trying to ensure we aren’t justifying our opinions by reference to “intangibles”, we forget that character matters.   Brian Burke has mentioned many times – most recently in his discussions with Paul Hunter of the Star – that he looks for players with good character.  Dave Poulin has also observed that this is a big part of Burke’s process (see Vinay Menon’s September 21 article in the Star for Poulin’s quote).    Talent is important.  As Leafs fans, we know all too well that bad players give you bad teams.  But character does matter;  anyone who has played hockey will tell you that when a team comes together, when the players on the bench are prepared to skate through a wall for one another, that’s when the magic happens;  that’s when a team performs above its talent level;  in a league where there’s any kind of competitive parity, that’s where a team wins championships.  The character of the individual players is the single most important factor in that bonding process.

In Kevin McGran’s article in The Star the other day, he quoted a retired scout by the name of Jack Ferguson:

He’s probably got more character than ability,” Ferguson says. “In this day and age, character is almost as important as playing ability.”

Ferguson happens to be the guy who urged the St. Mike’s Majors to draft Brent some years ago.  Reading McGran’s article, it’s clear that Ferguson thinks Brent has something by way of determination or desire that many other players do not.

None of the above is meant to suggest that Tim Brent is an untalented clod who was able to tip the puck in net past Carey Price because he respects his family, loves the Maple Leafs and is an all-around-good-guy who would very much like to score a goal.   Clearly, it takes talent to play in the NHL.  Tim Brent is proficient at playing hockey.

Nevertheless, in order to score goals in the NHL, you have to make it on to the ice, and it would seem that the answer to the question, “Who the fuck is Tim Brent?” goes a long way to explaining how Tim Brent found himself being given the opportunity to do so this past Thursday evening while wearing #37 for the Blue and White.

——-

*There was also a fanshot linking users to an article announcing the signing.

**To be fair to the Iain Fyffe, the author of the article, there is also a passage in the forecast that doubts Brent’s inclusion on the team, based on Burke’s proclivity for players exhibiting pugnacity, belligerence, testosterone and truculence.

Office Wendel Oversees My Productivity at Work. Imagine how little I'd get done if he weren't threre threatening to punch my blood out?

Wendel (well, actually my framed autographed picture of him – that is, the one I keep in my office, not the one I keep at home) wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving.

Know what goes great with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy? Four points in the “W” column, my friends. All of them earned against either dirty, dirty Habs or ridiculous Senator types. Enjoy your celebratory repast, my Canadian friends; and don’t worry, McMericans, your (wrongly scheduled) Thanksgiving and its attendant turkey will come soon enough.

From scanning the Interwebs earlier today, there seems to be a lot of angst out there about the opening ceremonies before last night’s game.  Whatever, I zoomed over most of the malarkey before the game.  Was happy to see the 48th Highlanders still a part of opening night tradition, and I stopped fast forwarding (that’s a verb, right?) when I got to the part with the water from all the ponds being collected and used to make the Leafs’ ice.

Say what you will; yes, it’s corny and cheesy, but I liked it.  I liked that the whole ice surface got turned into water by the lighting effect.  I liked it (among other reasons) because Spouse pointed out that water douses fire, and the Habs do that thing where Brian Gionta a much larger child skates around with the torch before a game, then touches it down at centre ice and sets the ice “aflame”.  Water douses fire, as sure as paper beats rock.  Eat it, Habs.

Thoughts about the game:  Gunnarsson was bad.  Schenn looked shaky at times, as did Beauchemin in the early going (though I thought Francois turned it around later in the game, with one notable exception I’ll talk about in a minute).  Komisarek was awful.  Kaberle was excellent, showing on a couple of smooth solo forays up the ice the apparently effortless way he can dart somehow calmly up ice past all (or at least most) defenders in a flash.  Terrific.  Phaneuf had a solid first game as Captain, I thought.

At forward, there was less that was remarkable.  Nice to see Tim Brent notch a goal to start this season;  it would be nice if that were some sort of omen about this mostly under-talented team adopting a lunchpail mentality and chipping in with a concerted effort to score by committee as and where it becomes necessary.  Kessel looked very good and sincerely happy to be back playing games that count.  Versteeg had some nice moments on the Power Play.  Kulemin played a solid two-way game and continues to get better.  Nice goal from Clark MacArthur; more worrisome was the somewhat underwhelming performance down the middle from Bozak and Grabovski, though neither made enormous glaring mistakes of any consequence.

More than anything, the story of that game was the steadiness of J.S. Giguere.  The Leafs were up to their old tricks, taking a late penalty and then brutally brain-cramping in the closing minute of the game.  Our defensive coverage for the final eighty or ninety seconds of that game looked as though it was planned as an homage to everybody’s carnival favourite,  the Tilt-a-Whirl, with Leaf players orbiting one another, spinning and lurching around unevenly and generally making one feel nauseous.  Francois Beauchemin in particular looked bad during this final sequence, weakly attempting to clear the puck at one point on a backhand to the right point that instead made the shallow carom off the boards and failed to clear the zone, setting the scene for one final frenetic scramble in front of Jiggy and a game-saving stop that mercifully prevented yet another Habs OT game.  That stop – it had a reassuring and cathartic quality to it, as Bruce Arthur noted in his column today.  Begone, ghost of Vesa Toskala.

One game, and one game only.  Two points under the W column, and cue the chorus of clucking MSM journalists who take time out from their shrill blizzard of sage columns pedantically warning Leaf fans (unspecified, figurative, mostly non-existent outside of talk radio) not to obsess, despair and overreact about the future of Nazem Kadri, to write a shrill blizzard of sage columns pedantically warning Leaf fans (unspecified, figurative, mostly non-existent outside of talke radio) not to obsess, celebrate and overreact about a single win in an 82-game season.

Only one game, but I’m glad hockey is back.

I can’t believe I have spent as much time as I did over the last few days working on this thing.  With Furious G on the way in about eight weeks’ time now, and a busy early 2011 ahead of me work-wise, I have a feeling that the fooling-about time I’ve managed to scrape together over the past couple of evenings may well be the last opportunity I’ll have for a while to focus on ridiculous projects, but I hope everybody in the Barilkosphere enjoys it. If nothing else, have sympathy for the brave men of The Execrables – my PPP Phantasy Puck Team sacrificed their season in the name of this little project. I just couldn’t drag myself away from the production process long enough to pay any attention at all to the fantasy draft, and the autodrafter ended up selecting such luminaries for me as “Marc Savard and his head full of Jell-O”.

Anyway, it all started when I was fooling around, rhyming “Caputi” with “Verbeauty” (the nickname some folks at Pension Plan Puppets have for Kris Versteeg).   Before too long, I ended up going Adam Sandler on the Leafs’ lineup.

Enjoy, I hope it gives you a laugh or two.

Here are the lyrics, in case anyone is interested:

THE TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS SONG

Toronto is the centre of the world
Maybe not, but it’s where the Leaf flag gets unfurled
Our teams have missed the playoffs for many, many years
But this group of Leaf players is tops with the Barilkosphere.

‘Cause we’ve got filthy Phil Kessel, he’s Tyler Bozak’s wing
Kulie and Grabbo just keep on attacking
Monster and Jiggy will prove your offence lacking
While Colton Orr and Komisarek will give you a shellacking
Colby Armstrong has a job cause Matt Stajan was sent packing
Let’s hope we’ll all be cheering wins instead of Prozac-ing

We might not still be playing, when May turns into June
But that’s okay we’ll draft our way to the top
(Wait, what?) Too soon!

Tomas Kaberle makes cross-ice pass like you won’t believe
Still some folks dream of draft picks that we might receive
But I say to keep him, he’s talented and handsome
He better be – he’s passing to John Mitchell and Christian Hanson!
Francois Beauchemin, Luca Caputi
Nobody dangles like Kadri and Verbeauty!
Dion Phaneuf will do his Captain’s duty
And ladies tell me that Luke Schenn looks good in a suit-y
Mueller, Blacker and Aulie all seem like good recruitys
Ian White’s moustache is gone now but we’ve got Mike Brown’s fu manchu-ty

It might not be so bad, now that Toskala’s gone
Forget about the last few years, and help me sing this song:

I like Gunnarson’s acuity, hope Sjostrom stays here too-ity
Jeff Finger’s large annuity makes him a Marlie in perpetuity.
Let there be no ambiguity, show the Leafs that you are true-ity
Habs fans have no clue-ity, and Sens fans are sniffing glue-ity
Support your Toronto Maple Leafs, with all your ingenuity
Engage in promiscuity, if you can find someone who’ll do it-y
Just be sure there’s continuity, in your support for white and blue-ity.

Put on your white and blue
Make some noise and ballyhoo
Even if you speak Urdu
And haven’t watched hockey hitherto
Plan to use a big kazoo
Just be sure you follow through
Bang a chair with a wooden shoe
Make some noise for the white and blue
And
Go
Leafs
Go!

In search of a clean slate for the X's and O's

For Leafs fans, the upcoming season will be an important one. Though it is (once again) extremely unlikely that the Leafs could win the big silver beer stein on offer at the end of the postseason tournament, fans of the team will be watching very closely for signs that any of the existing questions about the team might be answered. We’ll dig through the statistics like the oracles of old pawed through goat entrails, looking for evidence that augers well for a brighter future ahead. It is pretty safe to assume that Brian Burke and his staff will be engaging in a similar process.

Many of those questions concern individual players: what, for example, can we realistically expect from players like Jonas Gustavsson, Luke Schenn, Tyler Bozak and Nikolai Kulemin, all of whom are approaching their likely peak athletic potential in the next few years.   Other questions concern more collective issues:  what improvement can we expect from the Leafs’ power-play and penalty killing units?

All of those questions merit discussion, but they all relate to issues about the players; with Ron Wilson entering his third season as Maple Leafs head coach, and keeping in mind that last season in particular represented a disappointing step backwards, it’s safe to say that questions must also remain about the suitability of the current staff for the task ahead.

One of the things I like most about the hockey blogosphere is the very strong tendency to attempt to quantify, measure and make concrete and expressible these sorts of issues.  When we speak of “issues” and “questions” about the coaching staff, the reality is that there must be some set of performance metrics against which it is reasonable measure the observed outcome of this season, in an effort to dispassionately judge whether the coaches are making a discernible difference in the team’s play (and whether that difference represents an improvement).

Statistical analysis isn’t my strong suit, and I don’t pretend to have the facility with numbers that many other hockey bloggers have ably demonstrated, but I thought I’d try my hand at attempting to cobble together an answer to this last question.  What types of numbers should we look for when attempting to grade Messrs. Wilson, Hunter and Acton at the end of this season.  Please accept this analysis for what I hope it is:  a starting point for the discussion, and a jumping off point for others with the statistical chops that are absent from my toolkit.  Criticisms, comments and refinements are welcome – put ‘em in the comments below!

I wish I could figure out a way to embed the tables I compiled directly into this post, but two hours of futzing about with Google, Google docs, WordPress, Excel and Numbers have failed to surrender any such secrets, assuming they exist.  Unfortunately, therefore, I have to just insert a link to the table I compiled.  All data are sourced from hockey-reference. com.

I thought the most logical place to start in assessing the performance of the coaches would be year over year changes in goals for and goals against.  I compiled the goals for and goals against data for all 30 teams in each season since the lockout, calculated the percentage change in each from the previous year.  I then tried to normalize the percentage change data by calculating the average change each year and the standard deviation of the data.  I then selected out those results that lie between one and two standard deviations away from the mean (classified as “moderately exceptional”), and those results that lie two standard deviations or more away from the mean (classified as “significant”).

Link to Google docs spreadsheet re: YOY data: change in GF and GA

Assuming that the year-to-year changes are normally distributed, if I remember my statistics class correctly, the results that are interesting are those that fall more than one or two standard deviations from the mean. Those are the results I mentioned above, with the moderate desirable increments marked in light green, the significant desirable increments marked in dark green, the moderate undesirable increments marked in pink, and the significant undesirable increments marked in red.

If I’m reading all of the data correctly, it would appear that the standard deviation of the Goals Against data is typically between about 9 and 12 per cent.  Thus, an increase or decrease of anything less than 9 to 12 per cent, statistically speaking, represents the mushy random middle, results in the 68% of data that cluster around the mean in a normal distribution.  If I am applying the theory correctly, it would be unwise to come to any conclusion that the team’s performance had either improved or deteriorated based on data of this nature.  To make that sort of judgement, I would suggest that to even make a weak judgment about significant differences in performance, we would need to observe an increment (or reduction) of between 9-12% and 18 to 24% (these would be the results between one and two standard deviations from the mean).  Variances of more than 18 to 24% from last year’s data could confidently be said to represent a clear indication of differential performance.

Two thoughts come to my mind: first, it’s important to keep in mind the (perhaps obvious) but important point that increases or decreases in a team’s goals for or goals against are not solely attributable to coaching.  In fact, it’s probably a live question whether coaching can be said to have a demonstrable effect upon the results at all.  Certainly, the old saw is that “you can’t teach scoring,” though it is generally believed that coaches and their systems can and do have a more pronounced effect upon the defensive side of the game (and, by extension, the goals against ledger).    If anyone has any thoughts on how to examine the evidence in that regard, I’d love to hear about it.

Second, the numbers involved are fairly large. I think the data seem to be telling us that wide variances in the numbers may be expected from year to year for purely random (or at least statistically uninformative) reasons.

If that last conclusion is correct, unless there is an enormous change in the Leafs goals against totals this year (more than +/- 20%, which in practice would translate into about a 54 goal change either way), it seems that we ought not to make any judgements about the performance of the coaching staff based upon these numbers.

Thoughts?

Unfortunately, the game wasn’t on LeafsTV – hey, what are the chances that anyone who is willingly extorted by MLSE pays for this service would be interested in actual hockey being played by actual Leaf prospects – so I had to wait instead for the tape-delayed feed being shown on mapleleafs.com.

Actual Video Footage of Jared Cowen Skating

I don’t want to say that the online feed was difficult to watch, but let’s just say that what the video quality lacked in “herky”, it made up for in spades with “jerky”.  The video player in my browser was delivering about six frames per second;  as I tweeted earlier this evening, it occurred to me that this must be what the world looks like for Matt Carkner after he fights Colton Orr.  Anyway, I quickly found myself longing for something slightly easier on the eyes, like for example an epileptic seizure.  At one point, I thought the video feed had died completely, as the image on my screen didn’t appear to move at all for an extended period of  time.  The confusion was cleared up, however, when I realized that the camera was just showing the Senators’ Jared Cowen playing defence.

On the plus side, spending time watching the game using this feed allowed me to appreciate more fully the superior visual technologies available in today’s modern era: things like “flip-book animation”, for example.

I don’t know if anybody else was experiencing the difficulties with this feed that I was, but I sort of assumed that the Maple Leafs’ video servers were crumbling under pressure with so many people watching, just like Maple Leaf goaltenders have been doing since the lockout.  I don’t suppose it’s fair for me to wonder aloud whether fault should be found with the Leafs’ IT folks;  after all, after several consecutive years of hearing that the team is “building for the future”, who could have possibly known that many Leaf fans might have some interest in seeing what the prospects look like?  It’s planning and foresight like this that gave us the Andrew Raycroft/Vesa Toskala era, folks.

In any event, at some point I saw Jerry D’Amigo with his arms in the air, so I assume he scored a goal.  Either that, or he was trying to scare away a bear.  I don’t know, it was a little difficult to follow the narrative.  Are there many bears in the vicinity of the John Labatt Centre in London?

In the end, I have no insight to bestow upon you.  Instead, I give you a photo of the most wicked awesome baby booties ever manufactured – these were given to Spouse and I by a co-worker the other day:

Furious G's tootsies are gonna be covered in style.

Little known fact: the Montreal Canadiens ordered several sets of these in their team colours for Gionta, Gomez and Cammalleri.  Anyway, Furious G is going to have the coolest shoes on the block.

Six Words of Truth

By now, I should probably have a whole category dedicated to “posts in which I apologize for being a lazy dilettante who wanders off from time to time, transfixed by something shiny”.

I don’t want to say I haven’t posted in a while, but there have been two – two! – Slug is Doug podcast episodes released since my last post.

I can explain away a week or two in August – kind of – because my MacBook was in the shop getting a flaw on the display screen fixed.  The other computers in our house were in places that were far too hot (no A/C in the house yet, long story, maybe I’ll tell you that one some other time) to even contemplate spending time in.

More than that, though, the summer has been a busy one.  Work, yes, and some work-related travel for both Spouse and I, but also some play;  a trip to Sudbury, a fishing trip, some writing projects (more on that in a moment), some music projects, a lot of yard-related chores (and yet the place is still a mess), a number of visits from family and friends (including the Second Sort Of Annual Founders’ Day Celebration)-  and lots of getting ready for an addition to our family.  That last bit, I think, explains a lot about why I’ve found it difficult to write extensively here for some time.

Portrait of the Blogger as a Chastened Man, Now With 34% More Reformative Zeal

I have talked about it on Twitter a little, but here’s the skinny:  Spouse and I are expecting to be joined by Even More Junior Than Junior (EMJTJ), our first child, in about two and a half months’ time.  In this space, I’ve tried to strike a certain balance concerning personal matters;  I tend to include them in my writing because – for better or for worse – I think that I just write better when I bring the personal context into things.  I know, though, that Spouse is a more private person than I am, and I have tried to respect her clearly articulated (and reasonable) wishes not to have the minutiae of her life publicly documented across the Interwebs for time immemorial.  Similar concerns would apply for EMJTJ;  I have no doubt I’ll be documenting my soon to be sleep-deprived travels through the poop- and vomit-rich land of fatherhood, but I don’t want to make a public spectacle out of my son.   That will be something he can do on his own, no doubt in a licensed establishment, on some evening in the distant future.

Obviously, a lot of our energies have been focussed on the pregnancy over the last few months.  As we slowly get our home and our lives ready for the changes that are about to come, I think I have also been struggling with what, if anything, I ought to write here about the pregnancy.   As you can tell from the dearth of material hereabouts recently, I have obviously decided – I think mostly unconsciously – to edit that part of our lives out of the story that unfolds here.  There are reasons for my reluctance that go beyond the obvious privacy concerns. Neither Spouse nor I are what you would consider to be “youthful” first parents, so we’ve been a bit hesitant to allow ourselves to just enjoy the process, I suppose out of a sort of superstitious concern that we might be tempting fate to deal our child a host of medical problems to punish us for our hubris.  Writing it out makes explicit how silly that is, but I would be lying if I didn’t own up to using something like that thought process over the last few months.

Anyway, in general terms, all is well.  Spouse – and EMJTJ, so far as we know – are both healthy.  We have taken to referring to the little fellow as “Furious G”, thinking that it would do him well to get an early start on some street cred.  Since he is currently unable to knock over a liquor store, bust either a rhyme or a move and has no posse, we figured a hip hop name would be a good place to start.

The 2010-2011 Maple Street Press Maple Leafs Annual

Aside from producing a human life, or at least a nascent one, during my digital estrangement from you, I have been doing some writing.  Much of this writing has happened at work and for work purposes.  It is boring and technical and awful and confidential, so I’ll tell you nothing about it.  The only reason I mention it is because that too partly explains why I haven’t been using my leisure time to write more and post it here.  In addition to the work writing, though, I also spent some time writing an article for the Maple Street Press 2010-2011 Maple Leafs Annual, which is available now in Chapters Indigo stores across Canada, as well as on many other newsstands in the Greater Toronto Area.   You can also order a copy online from Maple Street Press (just click the last link).

My article is an update on the rebuild of the Toronto Maple Leafs, exploring further the ideas I developed in last year’s edition of the Annual.  It’s called “Full Speed Ahead” and I am once again genuinely interested in hearing what people have to say about it.   Please drop me a note in the Comments below if you’ve read it (or last year’s article, for that matter).

When I finished the article about a month and a half ago, I got in touch with Alec Brownscombe (the editor of the publication) and asked him to send me certain information so that I could help him promote the thing.  As busy as he was, he did send along the info I asked for – and it sat in my inbox waiting to be developed into a blog post.  While I was distracted, the magazine was made available for pre-order online in August, and I promised myself that I’d have something up the day before it was scheduled to appear on shelves in stores.  That day came and went too, lost amid the excitement of the arrival of my newest niece Clara.  Now here we are, half way through September and I am re-calibrating my target for “before the opening of NHL training camps.”

I hope to have a little something for you tomorrow on what’s in the Annual.  Until then – I missed you.  I’ll try to keep in touch.

No doubt, some folks will be into the gnashing of teeth, given the Thrashers’ two goals in less than a minute in the second period.  No doubt, the Leafs fell apart for a bit for a few minutes there, and they paid for it when Atlanta cashed in a couple of markers.  Keep in mind, though, that this is the youngest team in the NHL.  They are bound to lose focus and composure from time to time this year, and it must be remembered that this will happen from time to time next year too.  The key thing for Leaf fans to watch when this happens – not “if”, but “when” – is how the team reacts.

A couple of nights ago, the Leafs got themselves down 2-0 to the Rangers after two periods and managed to come back and get a win in overtime.  Tonight, the comeback wasn’t complete, but the team bore down and got a couple of goals to tie it before surrendering the eventual winner on an Antropov tip in front of Gustavsson.   There was some inspired play from Bozak again tonight, his pass to Stalberg on Stalberg’s first goal was brilliant.  Stalberg himself showed some good determination to get to the net, though it was a bit alarming to see that his shot on that first goal was actually headed wide but bounced rather fortunately off the goaltender’s skate and in to the net.  Tonight was probably one of Christian Hanson’s better games as a Leaf.  There were also some terrific saves from Gustavsson – especially his save on Afinogenov with about two and a half minutes left in the second period, when Afinogenov was in alone on him just before the first Stalberg goal.

So yeah, another Tuesday night, another loss to a mediocre southeastern opponent, but I’ll say it again:  there is reason for hope.

Look what I found lying around yesterday…

March 25, 2010

Dear Valued Employee:

As a Toronto Maple Leaf player, you are invited to attend the annual Toronto Maple Leafs end-of-season banquet and awards ceremony.  This year, the banquet will be held on Saturday April 17th, 2010 at Jack Astor’s, unless of course we make the playoffs.  Ha ha, just kidding!  Seriously, though, the banquet is on the 17th at 7 p.m. sharp.

I’m not including a map to (or the address of) the specific Jack Astor’s restaurant we’re going to because it’s important that we keep the location of our team shindig confidential, to avoid having any unwanted guests.  In unrelated news, I’ve told Rickard Wallin (through a Swedish interpreter, he doesn’t read English) that we’ll be at Wendel Clark’s Classic Grille in Oakville.  He has been instructed to arrive early, demand to speak with the owner, and threaten him with trouble if we don’t enjoy our evening (which I have booked under the name “Fetisov”).  Don’t spoil the surprise for Ricky – remember how many stitches it took to close up the wound in Jason Blake’s face last year?  Oh, right, almost none of you were here for that.  Well trust me, it was good times.

The dinner menu at the actual, non-fake, banquet location includes: beef.  If you do not want to eat beef, or if you are a vegetarian or have other incorrect desires, let me just say that Edmonton gets pretty cold in the winter and – as incredible as it may sound – the Oilers are less likely than even us to win anything anytime soon. Jonas Gustavsson can have pickled herring, but only because he has a couple of doctor’s notes and I don’t like to get covered in exploding heart blood.  Remember, for this meal, the “Wellwood Rule” is in effect so portions will be limited to six servings of 48 oz. each.

After dinner of course, we’ll be handing out the end of season awards.  By tradition, your Master of Ceremonies will be the longest serving Leaf player, Tomas Kaberle.  As you know, also by tradition, the M.C. is ineligible to win any of the awards.  We offered to move Kabby out of that spot, but he insisted that he isn’t concerned about winning and wanted to stay (why does this sound familiar?);  in fact, he would like to MC both this year and next.  I can say that we’re prepared to meet him halfway on that one.

Awards to be presented this year include:

• the David Williams Memorial “Mister Congeniality” Plaque (2010 recipient: Colton Orr – has anybody else noticed no one has disagreed with Colton about anything since he dummied Matt Carkner?);

• the Wendel Clark “Most Valuable Player” Trophy (2010 recipient: Jeff Finger – shhh, don’t say anything, I’m talking trade with someone whose name rhymes with “Errol Flutter” and this MVP thing may get us Jarome Iginla and a pick); and

• the Gary Leeman “Best Teammate” Prize (2010 recipient: former Leaf Vesa Toskala, in honour of the unremitting dedication to his craft he displayed.  He doesn’t know it yet, but Vesa will be in attendance at the Banquet courtesy of a burlap sack, some duct tape and the trunk of Jay Rosehill’s car.  Please note that this award will be presented posthumously and as soon as possible:  bring your own blunt object.)

After the awards ceremony, though it’ll be tough to top that last award, we’ll be moving to the entertainment portion of the evening.  Right now, the plan is for Phil Kessel, Nikolai Kulemin and Tyler Bozak to come up with something to dazzle us all. The rest of us will have to hope that’s enough.  So it’s pretty much business as usual.

Since he ought to contribute something to the team this year, Garnet Exelby will be responsible for bringing the beer.  When he screws that up, we’ll just buy some from the bar.  Please note that in view of the numerous unfortunate incidents resulting in so much broken glass at the goaltenders’ table last year, players are asked not to toss bottles to one another at any time.

Remember that while in attendance at this function, you are representing Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment and the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Be pleasant and respectful to the wait staff, bartenders and busboys, especially Boyd Devereaux and Justin Pogge.

Stay as late as you like, and enjoy yourself.  Our next meeting as a team will be in Los Angeles on draft day.  Maybe we can go to the zoo or something, we’ll have plenty of time on our hands.

Yours truly,