NHL's new scheduling

[Thorin]

The NHL has decided to change up the scheduling.  Teams now play 6 games against division rivals (down from , 4 games against non-divisional conference rivals (same as before, I think), and at least 1 game against all teams from the other conference plus 3 games against wildcard opponents.  And the wildcards for the Canadian teams will be other Canadian teams!

This should be an entertaining hockey year.  Now if only I could keep up with who is or isn't an Oiler...

[Melbosa]

This should be an entertaining hockey year.  Now if only I could keep up with who is or isn't an Oiler...

Yeah I hear ya here.  So new goalie on Friday eh... now just need to off Rollie... I mean off load Rollie... maybe Russia needs a new goalie in their league

Roster here btw: http://oilers.nhl.com/roster/roster.htm

[Thorin]

New goalie?  Oh, do you mean Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers?  He's been in the Edmonton farm team for a while now.  They pretty much had to sign him or lose him, didn't they?

An' yeah, I found the roster too, but are you gonna recognize Corazzini or Brule or Reddox without a listing?  10 (10!) of the 32 players on the roster are new!

[Mr. Analog]

I like the new scheduling structure. It will make it much more interesting than watching Edmonton play crummy expansion teams over and over all season long

[Thorin]

Roster here btw: http://oilers.nhl.com/roster/roster.htm

An' yeah, I found the roster too, but are you gonna recognize Corazzini or Brule or Reddox without a listing?  10 (10!) of the 32 players on the roster are new!

I was looking at the Team Statistics page here: http://oilers.nhl.com/team/app?page=Stats&service=page

5 out of 23 players on the active roster (of which 3 are listed on the Injured Reserve List, I think) are new: http://oilers.nhl.com/team/app?service=page&page=TeamPlayers&type=roster

[Mags]

Teams now play 6 games against division rivals (down from

now play 6 instead of .. that's way to abstract for me.. that the new math?

[Thorin]

Yeah, that's the auto-smilie-detector going off wrong.  It was supposed to be (down from 8 )

[Melbosa]

New goalie?  Oh, do you mean Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers?  He's been in the Edmonton farm team for a while now.  They pretty much had to sign him or lose him, didn't they?

Yeah signed 'em up Friday as backup for Garon I think.  My guess is Rollie is pretty much going to sit or be cut most season and we'll have a French connection for goalies.

As for recognizing the new players, not a clue man.  Only use the ##s on the back at first to learn who they are... then eventually I'll get their faces down.

Looking at the roster today... wow do we have some ugly peeps playin' for us.

[Mr. Analog]

New goalie?  Oh, do you mean Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers?  He's been in the Edmonton farm team for a while now.  They pretty much had to sign him or lose him, didn't they?

My guess is Rollie is pretty much going to sit or be cut most season and we'll have a French connection for goalies.

See I gotta disagree here because Lowe has proved that he will play Rollie but Lowe seems to like giving goalies long runs before swapping 'em. I think we'll see a lot of Roloson before December this year.

We saw him less on the ice (43 times) last season compared to 68 times the season before, but no playoffs this season either so...! His save percentage was still pretty good though .901 if Lowe ignores that he's dumber than I think he is (and that would make him pretty dumb).

[Thorin]

My opinion of Roloson was that he made up for his lesser athleticism by using his head more.  One of the things Roloson is really good at is being in the right place at the right time when there's players all over the place.  He frequently guessed the play correctly and slid over to block the shot that he knew was coming.

In comparison, Garon leaned more on his amazing ability to stretch into a pretzel and his lightning-quick glove (remember that glove save above his back when he was laying on his stomach?).

Both are good goalies, and both will benefit from better defense that forces the opposition to take worse shots.  If the D-men can make all the shots the goalies face easy to see, the goalies' save percentage will go up.  And ya gotta admit, there were quite a few mistakes in the defense last year.  Not that I'm blaming the D-men.  Hey, our veteran on the ice for most of the games was Staios, and then after that Gilbert and Smid, who were only on their second seasons in the NHL.  Oh sure, there was Pitkanen with four seasons, but he missed a lot of games.

That'll be the interesting part for me - what will our forwards be like with higher-caliber D-men backing them up?  Souray and Visnovsky look like a good combination, as long as neither of them gets hurt.  Grebeshkov and Gilbert worked very well together last year, and were really good at not getting penalties (Souray got more than Grebeshkov or Gilbert, even though they both played at least three times as many games as him).  Oh, and G&G also got solid bundle of points between 'em.  Smid and Staios are an odd combination, but they'll do well on the third D line, especially as Staios will be able to recover from Smid's mistakes and Smid will be able to power up for Staios to pass to him.

But it's still all a crapshoot.

[Melbosa]

Both are good goalies, and both will benefit from better defense that forces the opposition to take worse shots.  If the D-men can make all the shots the goalies face easy to see, the goalies' save percentage will go up.  And ya gotta admit, there were quite a few mistakes in the defense last year.  Not that I'm blaming the D-men.  Hey, our veteran on the ice for most of the games was Staios, and then after that Gilbert and Smid, who were only on their second seasons in the NHL.  Oh sure, there was Pitkanen with four seasons, but he missed a lot of games.

LOL You forgot greenie... right after Pitkanen, he was next vet... if you could call him that.