Thursday Afternoon Goalies - Week 9

As I look at the most recent rankings, one thing really jumps out at me. The Predators are overworking Pekka Rinne, and as a result, his performance has started to slip. I really feel as though he's still an elite goalie, but now, he's returned to be a top-5 goalie and not far and away the best goalie in the league. That being said, let's look at the newest rankings....

Saturday Night Forwards - Week 8

This is the first week of comparing forwards. A couple of guys have made some really big jumps, Sidney Crosby hasn't cracked the top forwards rankings yet. However the top line of the Oilers have gone nuts and forced their way into the rankings. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle combined for 23 points this past week, although most of them came from the monster game against the Chicago Blackhawks.

Projecting Defensemen

With the first quarter of the season completed, a lot of defensemen are looking like they can put up some monster years. Below are the players listed in terms of Goals, Assists, and Points, and it includes previous years for comparision. As you will notice, the spreadsheet's not pretty, but it gets the job done.

Friday Evening Defensemen - Week 8

I typed up the rankings after I finished the goalie rankings, but I couldn't figure out what I wanted to put in this piece up top. I spent today experimenting with the goalie ranking a bit, anyways, here's some projection numbers I pulled out:

Jason Garrison - 31 goals (proj)
Erik Karlsson and Brian Campbell - 66 assists (proj)
Brian Campbell - 74 points (proj)
Theo Peckham - 172 PIMs (proj)
Dustin Byfuglien - 301 Shots on goal (proj)
Jason Garrison - 16 PPG (proj)
Brian Campbell - 43 PPA (proj)

Anyways... to the rankings...

Thursday Afternoon Goalies - Week 8

So, Happy Thanksgiving, I hope ya'll had a wonderful time. Anyways, I'm late with the rankings no thanks to Black Friday. Good new is though, that the FEDs are done, so that'll be up for sure tomrorow. Also, had to deal with the picks and thanksgiving stuff... long story short, we all got a turkey and sides. Going back to the goalies, you've got your main dish (generally the turkey), you sides (second-tier), the sides you hate (bottom-tier), throw some cider there (fourth-tier, unfortunately, there was no alcohol in my household), and finish off with the pie (third-tier) and "boom" you've got your meal. Putting that in terms of goalies...

Saturday Night Forwards - Week 7

Here's the first edition of Saturday Night Forwards. Here's the top 75 forwards.

1.   Thomas Vanek
2.   Phil Kessel
3.   James Neal
4.   Steven Stamkos
5.   Claude Giroux
6.   Marian Gaborik
7.   Tyler Seguin
8.   Daniel Sedin
9.   Joe Pavelski
10. Marian Hossa
11. Kris Versteeg
12. Joffrey Lupul
13. Patrick Kane
14. Jason Pominville
15. Jamie Benn
16. Patrick Sharp
17. Ryan Smyth
18. John Tavares
19. Anze Kopitar
20. Corey Perry
21. Teemu Selanne
22. Johan Franzen
23. Brad Marchand
24. Jonathan Toews
25. Max Pacioretty
26. Vincent Lecavalier
27. Nicklas Backstrom
28. Ryan Callahan
29. Loui Eriksson
30. Alex Ovechkin
31. Henrik Sedin
32. Ryane Clowe
33. Tomas Fleischmann
34. Tomas Plekanec
35. Patrick Marleau
36. Jaromir Jagr
37. Jeff Skinner
38. Jason Spezza
39. Milan Lucic
40. Milan Michalek
41. Patrik Elias
42. Evander Kane
43. Stephen Weiss
44. Craig Smith
45. Scott Hartnell
46. Radim Vrbata
47. David Clarkson
48. Milan Hejduk
49. James van Riemsdyk
50. Joe Thornton
51. Logan Couture
52. Patrice Bergeron
53. Alexander Steen
54. Ray Whitney
55. Evgeni Malkin
56. Mike Richards
57. Jordan Staal
58. Shane Doan
59. Martin St. Louis
60. Brandon Dubinsky
61. Zach Parise
62. Dustin Brown
63. Vaclav Prospal
64. Danny Briere
65. Simon Gagne
66. David Backes
67. Derek Roy
68. Patric Hornqvist
69. Brad Richards
70. Olli Jokinen
71. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
72. Dany Heatley
73. Rick Nash
74. Matt Duchene
75. Justin Williams

More to come next week, expect to see better players move in next week

Friday Evening Defensemen - Week 7

Here we are again, the first ranking of Defensmen for this hockey season. Although this was released on a Saturday, I'll try better to release it on Fridays in the coming weeks... anyways, here's the top 50 defensemen projected for the rest of the season.

1.   Zdeno Chara
2.   Sheldon Souray
3.   Shea Weber
4.   Erik Karlsson
5.   Dustin Byfuglien
6.   Nicklas Lidstrom
7.   Dan Boyle
8.   Kris Letang
9.   Kyle Quincey
10. Alexander Edler
11. Ryan Suter
12. Dion Phaneuf
13. Marc-Andre Bergeron
14. Jason Garrison
15. Brian Campbell
16. Dennis Wideman
17. P.K. Subban
18. Kevin Shattenkirk
19. Mark Streit
20. Dmitry Kulikov
21. Keith Yandle
22. Sami Salo
23. Jack Johnson
24. Ian White
25. John-Michael Liles
26. Duncan Keith
27. Sergei Gonchar
28. Niklas Kronwall
29. Dan Hamhuis
30. John Carlson
31. Mark Giordano
32. Grant Clitsome
33. Brent Burns
34. Christian Ehrhoff
35. Johnny Boychuk
36. Alex Pietrangelo
37. Kimmo Timonen
38. Yannick Weber
39. Ryan McDonagh
40. Matt Carle
41. Chris Progner
42. Joe Corvo
43. Kevin Bieksa
44. Dan Girardi
45. Marc-Edouard Vlasic
46. Ryan Wilson
47. Jay Harrison
48. Nick Leddy
49. Steve Montador
50. Shane O'Brien

These are the initial rankings, but expect the bottom 8 to be consistently changing as players go up and down, I don't expect much change on top unless some injured players come back and play well. Expect the Forward Rankings to be out in a couple of hours!

Thursday Afternoon Goalies - Week 7

A quick heads-up, I recently started working a day job and that has really cut into my hours for the website, add on top of that I have some school work to take care of and things really start piling up. Anyways, I wasn't able to do the picks the last couple of weeks unfortunately, but I will this week. Anyways, here's your TAGs, I've also inserted comments on why they are ranked where they are.

1.   Pekka Rinne
2.   Kari Lehtonen
3.   Mike Smith (a true sleeper, he has performed phenomenal for a very underrated Phoenix team)
4.   Jonathan Quick
5.   Henrik Lundqvist
6.   Jimmy Howard
7.   Marc-Andre Fleury (looks like he might not even play 60 games this season)
8.   Tomas Vokoun (may be on the best team in hockey, but the team is not performing)
9.   Nikolai Khabibulin (still might be ranked too high)
10. Miikka Kiprusoff
11. Carey Price
12. Tim Thomas (Rask is taking too many games, Thomas won't even hit 60 GP this season)
13. Niklas Backstrom (Harding was on a nice run, but Backstrom is back to being #1)
14. Corey Crawford
15. Cam Ward
16. Jose Theodore
17. Jonas Hiller (Ducks might be overworking him)
18. Craig Anderson
19. Brian Elliott (the more games he plays, the higher he will be ranked)
20. Ondrej Pavelec
21. Ilya Bryzgalov (SV% and GAA have not been good)
22. Johan Hedberg (looks better than Brodeur)
23. Semyon Varlamov (hot start, but has performed terribly since)
24. Antti Niemi (started off the season injured, expect his ranking to climb)
25. Ryan Miller (poor start to the season, concussion, and Enroth is looking really good)

Just to give you an idea of how the rankings work, the main thing I really look at is how many games they are projected to play this season and then I look at all the other stuff, Wins, GAA, SV%, etc. So a guy that is projected to play 62 games who's stats are slightly worse than a guy who's projected to play 52 games. Why do I do this? Because goalies that play more games for you are better than goalies that don't play as much. I will compare two site's rankings to give you an idea.

ESPN's top 5 goalies according to their PRK
1. Nikolai Khabibulin
2. Brian Elliott
3. Jimmy Howard
4. Jonathan Quick
5. Marc-Andre Fleury

The problem should be very apparent, the only goalies up there that are worthy of a top 5 ranking are Quick and maybe Howard. Khabibulin's ranking is strictly based off his performance thus far this season which may or may not be a fluke. Elliott's ranking is a joke because he's a back-up in St. Louis, he hasn't even started half of his team's games. Fleury's ranking is debatable because while he has been a good goalie, the fact that ESPN has neglected both Rinne and Lehtonen should tell you how intelligent they are.

Yahoo! Rankings
1. Jimmy Howard
2. Nikolai Khabibulin
3. Jonathan Quick
4. Brian Elliott
5. Pekka Rinne

Again, the problem is with Khabibulin and Elliott being ranked too high. At least they inserted Rinne into the top 5, but Rinne will obviously be better than all those guys at the end of the season.