GAMESPEAK FEDERATED HOCKEY LEAGUE NEWSLETTER

Transcription

1 January 26, 2014 Vol. 4, No. 2 Join the Living FHL Experience and follow us on FHL TV! Welcome to the January 2014 Edition of Gamespeak. FHL All Star Rosters are announced (P.1). The APC! Hockey Fans have spoken. Congratulations to those teams that have players on the All Star Teams. This issue will also discuss the FHL 4 th Annual Winter Classic (P.3); FHL Player of the Month (P.5); FHL New Lottery System (P.6); FHL Team Statistics (P.9); and From the Commissioner s Office (P.11)! Enjoy! FHL All Star Teams National Conference 1 st Team: LW Tomas Vanek (QND) C Jonathan Toews (QND) RW Martin St. Louis (ICH) D P.K. Subban (QND) D Shea Webber (QND) G Sergei Bobrovsky (CAZ) Republic Conference 1 st Team LW Chris Kunitz (CLB) C Steven Stamkos (NYD) RW Patrick Kane (BOW) D Kris Letang (EXI) D Cody Franson (RYS) G Jonas Hiller (NYD) 1

2 FHL All Star Teams National Conference 2nd Team Republic Conference 2nd Team LW Henrik Zetterberg (QND) LW Daniel Sedin (KCI) C Eric Staal (QND) C Henrik Sedin (MCA) RW P.A. Parenteau (ICH) RW Jiri Tlusty (BOW) D Victor Hedman (ICH) D Jason Garrison (NYD) D Dion Phaneuf (QND) D Matt Carle (MCA) G Niklas Backstrom (CAB) G Antti Niemi (MCA) National Conference 3rd Team Republic Conference 3rd Team LW Alexander Ovechkin (JOC) LW Patrik Elias (CLB) C Nazem Kadri (CAZ) C Sam Gagner (FLE) RW Blake Wheeler (JOC) RW Phil Kessel (NYD) D Kevin Shattenkirk (ICH) D Dustin Byfuglien (CIS) D Niklas Kronwall (COJ) D Dennis Wedeman (CLB) G Tuukka Rask (JOC) G Craig Anderson (CLB The FHL would like to extend hearty congratulations to all the FHL Manager/Coaches who have a player on the FHL All Star Teams! Please note that FHL All Star players are based on Star Points Awarded after each game. As in every balloting there are several good players who are left off. Please feel to post to the FHL Yahoo User s Group or FHL Facebook if you think one of your players deserves to be on the FHL All Star Team but was left off! Notable players not included in this year s rosters: Jon Tavares (KCI) 19 goals and 12 assists, Sidney Crosby (CAZ) 9 goals and 20 assists, Duncan Keith (GCB), Marian Hossa (COJ), Jaromir Jagr (KCI) 21 goals and 14 assists for 35 points, and Andrew Ladd (EXI) 16 goals and 16 assists for 32 points, and Mark Letestu (MGC) 17 goals and 16 assists.. Johnny Francoeur s Quebec Nordiques had the most FHL All Stars with 5 first team, and 3 second team FHL All Stars. Cliff Dolgins NY Dolphins was second with 2 first team, 1 second team, and 1 third team FHL All Stars. The expansion team Rye Seahawks had a surprise qualifier on FHL first team All Stars in Cody Franson (defense). 2

3 The FHL Winter Classic By Chad Pridemore (Assistant Commissioner and FHL Historian/Statistician) The McGregor Condors will start the New Year off with a trip to the Ohio State University football stadium to take on the Columbus Jaguars in the FHL Winter Classic. The city of Columbus has put a lot of planning into the event and it should be an exciting game and experience for the fans. The stadium capacity is 102,329 and the FHL reported a sellout crowd on New Year s Day. This should be the second largest crowd at an FHL game. Going into the start of the New Year, the Condors and Jaguars hold the 3 rd and 4 th spot in the West Central Division respectively. At the end of season, many fans remember the Jaguars squeezing into the playoffs after the Condors were unable to lock in one point in their final game of the season against the Winnipeg Saints. This gave the Jaguars the last spot in the playoffs and eventually won the Crystal Finals. The Jaguars will bring their first line of Marian Hossa, Tomas Kopecky, and Pavel Datsyuk to take on the Condors Ryan Getzlaf, Anze Kopitar, and Alexander Semin. The Condors have the advantage when it comes to goal scoring by the first line matchups. On defense, all eyes will be on the Jaguars Niklas Kronwall and the Condors Duncan Keith. In goal, Columbus will start Viktor Fasth against the Condors Pekka Rinne. The Jaguars appear to have a slight advantage on the goaltending side of the contest. Fasth is holding a 2.66 GAA in 25 games compared to an elevated 3.16 GAA in 34 games for Rinne. Gamespeak was able to catch up with Jaguars coach Ashlee Pridemore during the first round of practices on the outdoor rink. The Jaguars and Pridemore appeared to enjoy their time on the ice at OSU Stadium. We are looking forward to playing our first outdoor game in front of our home town fans. The league picked a perfect venue for this game because there is so much history to this stadium. I remember how it felt watching the Bandits play at Michigan Stadium in I m looking forward to a great game between my guys and McGregor. When asked if there was any animosity from Columbus edging out McGregor for the playoffs in 2011, Pridemore said she was not aware of any hostility over the end of that season. 3

4 Gamespeak spoke with Condors coach Jesse Cheng during a post practice team event at the Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown Columbus. The FHL Winter Classic is entering its fourth year of existence. Each year it has continued to increase the popularity of the FHL. We hope this year will be no different and presents two FHL teams that are no strangers to each other in the West Central Division. The inaugural Winter Classic was played at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan between the Detroit Bandits and the Montreal Canadiens. The Bandits won the game 6-3 with Andy McDonald scoring a breakaway goal in the first period creating a memorable moment for the Winter Classic. Here is a list of the past scores, venues, and weather conditions for the FHL Winter Classic Detroit 6 Montreal Michigan Stadium Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sunny and 28 Deg. F with light winds from the north Kansas City 5 Boston Fenway Park in Boston. Snow showers and 25 Deg. F with calm winds. It turned out to be an exciting---if unconventional--game! The visiting Ice Twisters came away with a hard fought victory in which seven of the eight goals scored came on the power play Cincinnati 5 Winnipeg Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati. Cloudy and 38 Deg. F with calm winds. This was the first Winter Classic game to be settled in overtime. Gamespeak predicts the McGregor Condors will win the game 4-3. The Jaguars are lacking consistent goaltending which will hurt them against the Condors offense. Pekka Rinne should hold the fort down enough to give the Condors a victory at the Horse Shoe. 4

5 FHL Player(s) of the Month By Chad Pridemore (Assistant Commissioner and FHL Historian/Statistician) The FHL has decided to begin announcing players of the month starting in For the month of December 2012, two players were picked to share the player of the month title. Martin St. Louis from the Indianapolis Checkers lead the league with 14 assists and a +/- of 7 in 12 games played. He came in second place in goal scoring with six goals and tied the lead with 20 points. St. Louis is currently 2 nd in the FHL scoring category with 56 points. He shares the first line as LW with RW P.A. Parenteau and C David Krejci. Patrick Kane brings some attention to the Boston Whalers as he recorded a league leading nine goals in 12 games for the month of December. He was able to mark 11 assists and share a point count of 20 with Martin St. Louis. Kane s +/- of -2 kept his number of votes down for top player of the month. Kane is right behind St. Louis in the points standings with 54 points. Patrick is a RW and spends his ice time with LW Jiri Tlusty and C Paul Stastny. 5

6 Continued from P.5: The Boston Whalers make headlines again having Cory Schneider as the top goalie of the month for January. Schneider maintained a 1.79 GAA and.949 Save Pct. In seven games played. Schneider currently holds a 2.53 GAA and.927 Save Pct in 21 games played. He shares his time in net with Devan Dubnyk. FHL New Lottery System The FHL has instituted a new draft lottery system that will go in effect next season where there will be 4 teams in the draft lottery instead of 3 teams. The goals were to make the lottery system to more heavily favor the worst teams getting the better picks. It also expands the lottery to 4 teams to account for recent expansion in the FHL. The system works as follows. Consider that there are 4 teams (A, B, C, and D) with team A finishing in last place, B finishing second to last, C finishing third to last, and D with best record of all 4 last place teams. The probabilities breakdown for the #1, #2, #3, and #4 draft picks are listed in the table below: 6

7 Continued from P.6: The first table is the overall percentages. The chance of each team has for each spot in the top 4. Team A is improved slightly to 54% chance to get the #1 pick, but in part that is because they have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Whereas Team D has only a 6% chance at the #1 pick. In fact, Team D has a 62% chance of keeping the #4 pick, which means a 38% chance of improving because Team D has nothing to lose and everything to gain. The second table above is a layout of draft schedules. These are the 18 possible variations given the potential different combinations. Each schedule also has a percentage. You will note that schedule 1, which is the actual finishing order, has a 25% chance of being the result. It goes all the way down to schedules 17 & 18 which each have only a 1% chance. Team A (which is the team with the worst finishing record in the FHL) would prefer that draft schedules 1-6 be drawn so they could draft the #1 overall draft pick. Conversely Team D (lottery team with the best record) would prefer draft schedules be used. That means Team D gets to draft #1 overall pick. 7

8 The Table broke the schedules down into smaller blocks, no bigger than 5 at a time. At the same time, the only individual schedule chances are 17 & 18 which only have a 1% chance anyway. So schedules with a 2% chance are next to each other. This creates some randomness while keeping some grouping. Another way to think of this is you selecting a random # between 0-99 to select the draft schedule in the preceding table. The FHL will be using Massachusetts Lottery to select the random # between Special thanks goes to Kent Gray (FHL Capologist and FHL Special Operations) for his hard work to help revise the old lottery system and develop this new one. 8

9 FHL Team Statistics Hockey is probably the most team oriented sports there is. In Professional Baseball the key matchup is the pitcher and the batter. In Professional Basketball it seems more about 2 on 2 or 3 on 2 (i.e. one team s 2 super stars against the other team s 2 super stars) while everyone else stands around. In Professional Football there is a team element but there seems to be a lot of hot dog type players who stress their individual heroics over the team (ex. remember T.O.). However to have a successful hockey team you ve got to have everyone pulling the same way. Selfish individual show boats don t last too long in the world of professional hockey. That is why Gamespeak is happy to present you with the Team Statistics section. We hope you enjoy this presentation of statistics that celebrates the entire team! The Top Power Play Teams (Power Play % converted): 1. Quebec Nordiques 25.0% 2. Gatineau City Bulldogs 24.8% 3. New York Dolphins 24.2% 4. McGregor Condors 23.6% 5. California Zephyrs 22.1% 6. Indianapolis Checkers 21.7% 7. Kansas City Ice Twisters 21.0% 8. Montreal Canadiens 20.0% 9. Johnstown Chiefs 19.9% 10. Cincinnati Swords 19.0% Top Teams with most Shots on Goal Against per game (SA) 1. Rye Seahawks California Zephyrs Montreal Canadians Johnstown Chiefs Cincinnati Swords 32.7 The Top Penalty Killing Teams (Penalty Kill % stopped): 1. Cincinnati Swords 85.0% 2. Indianapolis Checkers 85.0% 3. Cleveland Barons 84.6% 4. California Zephyrs 84.4% 5. New York Dolphins 84.4% 6. Johnstown Chiefs 83.8% 7. Kansas City Ice Twisters 83.5% 8. Montreal Canadiens 83.0% 9. Rye Seahawks 82.5% 10. Detroit Bandits 81.8% Top Teams with most hits on opposing players per game: 1. Spokane Bombers Indianapolis Checkers LA Monarchs Johnstown Chiefs Rye Seahawks

10 Top Teams in PIM per game 1. Spokane Bombers Johnstown Chiefs Kansas City Ice Twisters New York Dolphins Quebec Nordiques Florida Everblades Detroit Bandits Montreal Canadian s McGregor Condors Indianapolis Checkers 9.6 Top Shoot Out Teams (SOW) 1. Gatineau City Bulldogs 5 2. Quebec Nordiques 4 3. California Zephyrs 3 4. New York Dolphins 3 5. Boston Whalers 3 6. Rye Seahawks 3 7. Spokane Bombers 2 8. Detroit Bandits 2 9. Montreal Canadians McGregor Condors Indianapolis Checkers 2 Top Fighting Teams in number of Total Fights 1. Spokane Bombers Johnstown Chiefs Quebec Nordiques New York Dolphins Florida Everblades Montreal Canadians Detroit Bandits Los Angeles Monarchs Cincinnati Swords Indianapolis Checkers Gatineau City Bulldogs Rye Seahawks McGregor Condors Kansas City Ice Twisters Boston Whalers 7 10

11 From the Commissioner s Office: FHL Living Experience: You ve seen FHL Facebook; FHL Webpage; and FHL Twitter lead the forefront charge of the FHL into the realm of Social Media. The FHL has taken this to a new level with the advent of FHL TV! Yes, you can watch live games being played. The debut of FHL TV will be this year s FHL Winter Classic. Please click on the link below to watch the FHL Winter Classic: nterclassic Well we ve finally made it to the mid-point of the 4 th FHL season and there are a few surprises. In the National Conference, the California Zephyrs led by Kent Grey have had an amazing resurrection. Just last season the Zephyrs resided in the basement of the West Division. However, through some shrewd drafting and trades over the last 2 seasons the Zephyrs are now not only leading the West Division, they are the currently in line to win the Commissioner s Trophy for the most team points in the FHL overall. Unfortunately no Commissioner s Trophy winner has ever won the Crystal. Each season the winner has gotten knocked out the playoffs in which 2 out of the 3 got knocked out the first round: Montreal Canadians in season 1 were up 2-0 in their round 1 match up against Kansas City but then dropped their next 4 to be eliminated from the post season. Season 2 the Kansas City Ice Twisters won the Trophy but then got knocked out in the first round by the then very hot Cincinnati Swords in 6 games. Finally season 3 the NY Dolphins won the trophy with 115 points seemed to break the curse by winning their first round matchup against Cincinnati Swords 4-1 but then lost to the eventual Crystal Champion Exton Igloos 4-2. So being in line to win the FHL Commissioner s Trophy may not be the best thing. Be that as it may, California has made an impressive run. Sidney Crosby this last block 3 (Dec.) had 4 goals and 10 assists for 14 points in 12 games played. Nazem Kadri had 5 goals and 9 assists also for 14 points in 12 games played. Meanwhile on in the Republic Conference on the other side of the continent the NY Dolphins led by Cliff Dolgins is surprisingly dominant in the East Division. Steven Stamkos leads the charge tallying in block 3 (Dec.) a whopping 9 goals and 6 assists in 12 games played. He also happens to lead the entire FHL is scoring with 30 goals, 29 assists, and 59 points. Yet another surprise is the Boston Whalers led by Doug Shirley being in 2 nd place in the East division ahead of the defending Crystal champion Exton Igloos in 3 rd place. Forward Patrick Kane was a co-winner of Player of the Month honors (Dec.) with lead leading 9 goals scored in Dec. and had 11 assists for 20 points. Doug has been carefully and patiently crafting his team with some shrewd drafting and trading and it finally appearing to bear some fruit. 11