Western Conference all-stars announced

by James Mirtle on Jan 7, 2009 12:39 PM CST Comment 6 comments

Here's a look at the reserves the NHL named to the Western Conference all-star team at noon today. Compared to the team I picked this morning:

Notable differences on actual team: Mike Modano, Milan Hejduk, Dustin Brown, Keith Tkachuk, Jonathan Toews, Brian Campbell, Scott Niedermayer, Sheldon Souray, Dan Boyle, J-S Giguere, Roberto Luongo (who's likely to be injured anyway)

Notable omissions that were on my team: Patrick Marleau, Mikko Koivu, Henrik Zetterberg, Daniel Sedin, Marian Hossa, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Duncan Keith, Lubomir Visnovsky, Brian Rafalski, Nikolai Khabibuilin, Steve Mason

The league's in tough trying to get most of the teams represented, but for the most part, its team is decent. Marleau's the most glaring ommission, and it would have been nice to see Keith instead of Campbell.

My guess is one of my netminders takes Luongo's place in the near future.

The Eastern Conference reserves will be revealed tomorrow at noon.

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Marleau?

Notwithstanding the Keith v Campbell issue, I think Mikko Koivu deserves it more than Marleau, under the “Who’s not playing on Joe Thornton’s wing” tiebreaker.

by MattF on Jan 7, 2009 1:42 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

Marleau’s looked fantastic. I haven’t broken out the numbers, but could it be he’s helping Thornton as much as the other way around?

by James Mirtle on Jan 7, 2009 1:58 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

This link is for the Sharks EV goals/shots/etc. this year, where player #99 at the bottom is Thornton and Marleau on the ice at the same time. Subtract that from the #19 results to get Joe w/o Patrick. Subtract #99 from #12 to get Patrick w/o Joe.

Their shots totals are extremely similar. Main difference is the goals: Marleau is +11/-12 sans Thornton, Thornton is +8/-4 w/o Marleau.

That difference could be entirely luck. They definitely have much better numbers together than either does w/o the other, but the “apart” is a pretty small sample; they’ve played ~75% of their EVTOI together this season.

by MattF on Jan 7, 2009 2:40 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

also note: the totals at that link are missing one game (reasons unknown): the one where they got nuked 6-0 by DET. Marleau was -3 that game, Thornton was E.

by MattF on Jan 7, 2009 2:42 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs