Carrying The Mail

A brief look at the old guys in the NHL. I have cut and pasted Desjardin's 5v5 data into Excel, then scraped the player ages from the NHLPA site, and simply queried one against the other*. Very simple stuff here.

Even-strength ice time per game, by age:





Quality of opposition by age, using Desjardin's QUALCOMP and a variant of his TOICOMP numbers. These two metrics are completely independent of each other.





* Some player's names are listed differently on the NHLPA site than they are at Desjardin's site (e.g. - Zach Stortini vs Zachery Stortini). The NHLPA also lists players who are still officially under contract but have yet to play a game this season due to injury or other reasons (e.g. - Sullivan, Zhamnov, Rathje). So because I did not manually correct any player names, 36 players from the NHLPA's list of 680 skaters did not find matches in Desjardin's list, and were omitted from these charts. The data has been smoothed out here (+/- 1 year) in an effort to numb the effect of strong and weak draft classes.

Illusions: The Adventures of an Oiler Messiah

Upon reading today's big news item, I have jumped to a few conclusions awfully quickly. As a young person without much experience trying to read between the lines of media reports, I thought it would be wise to run my assumptions by the blogosphere before committing them to belief.

1) The sale of the Edmonton Oilers by the EIG to Rexall Sports is inevitable.

2) There is a distinct possibility that the sale has already been made, at least in principle.

When I read the article as linked, I see the EIG's current complaints as little more than minor quibbles. I see the "rejection" as temporary. Most importantly I see a conscious effort made by the writer in the interest of the EIG to help ensure they get sent off as white knights when their time does indeed come.

Am I being any more cynical than I should be? Because as far as I'm concerned the deal is done and today's piece, turning point though it may appear, is another step towards ensuring everything happens according to the best optics for all parties.