Friday, May 23, 2014

The 2014 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship Results (Part Five)

Welcome to the fifth post of a miniseries of posts I am going to make about the 2014 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship tournament. Most people don't realize that this tournament isn't just sixteen teams competing to win the gold medal. There are dozens of countries in various divisions competing to rise up the ladder of international ice hockey. In this, the 78th edition of the IIHF tournament, there are actually 46 teams trying to improve their international ranking and someday grab the gold medal.

Links for Part One, TwoThree, and Four are right here, where I painstakingly checked out Division III, Division II B, Division II A, and Division I B respectively.

Yesterday's post covered the triumph of Poland in Division I B. Congrats to the Poles for moving one step closer to joining the championship tournament. Next year, they'll compete in today's subject, Division I A, and attempt the leap into the top tier. While one team rises, one must fall, so Romania will sink into Division II A and attempt to move back up next year.

Speaking of Division I A, that would be our subject today. The second tier of the IIHF tournament ladder features six teams similarly to the preceding Division II, but there's more at stake than any other tournament. Winning in this tier means a shot at the gold medal in the IIHF World Championship tournament, the ultimate goal of the annual series of tournaments. Even more interesting is how two teams are promoted to the Top Division, while only one moves down. It's a tougher division to try to move up but plenty of the teams in the division now have bobbed up and down the bottom tiers in the last decade. The rising teams must compete against the likes of Canada, Russia, United States, Sweden, Finland, and all the other mainstays in the upper tier, which is quite the tall task. For this year, the Division I A tournament took place in Goyang, South Korea from April 20th to 26. Here are the final standings:

All charts courtesy of Wikipedia

Slovenia and Austria rise from the absolute dogfight that took place in this tier, while host South Korea were throttled in all five of their games and see demotion after being shut out of points. The difference-making games in this tier were Austria's overtime wins over Ukraine (3-2) and Hungary (5-4). Notable players in this tier's roster list were Austria's Michael Grabner (New York Islanders), Michael Raffl (Philadelphia Flyers), former Detroit Red Wing and the world's second most successful Slovenian player Jan Mursak, and his superior Anze Kopitar. Wait a minute...you must be asking yourself how Kopitar can be in two places at once. Great question! The NHLers I mentioned didn't actually play a single shift in the tournament. I can't say for sure what Grabner and Raffl were doing but Kopitar is a little busy winning playoff games in the NHL to play for his country. So this all begs the question.

Why the hell were these guys named to the team when there was no G-D way they were going to play?!?

Perhaps they thought the threat of Kopitar and Grabner was enough to have the other teams roll over. Looks like it all worked out anyway.

Here's the tournament's top scorers:


Good job, Thomas Koch, for winning the scoring race without scoring. Austria obviously dominated the scoring in this tournament, but kudos to seeing Kim Ki-sung of lowly South Korea get seven points in five brutal losses.

Here the top goaltenders:



Not exactly a goaltending duel in any of these games. Oh well, here's some actual footage via YouTube:





The Hungarian jerseys are awesome, and at one point a lot of Hungarians were reading this blog so here's a little something for them.

Tournament directorate named goaltender Yutaka Fukufuji of Japan (the first Japanese player to make the NHL), Austrian defenseman Dominique Heinrich, and forward Jan Muršak of Slovenia the best positional players. How does three points in five games get you the tournament's best forward? Maybe he killed every penalty or something. I don't know, I'm running out of steam for this tier.

Starting Monday I dig into the big tournament. You know, the one you all probably thought all these posts was about but I tricked you into reading five other posts first. See you then!

Thursday, May 22, 2014

The 2014 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship Results (Part Four)

Welcome to the fourth post of a miniseries of posts I am going to make about the 2014 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship tournament. Most people don't realize that this tournament isn't just sixteen teams competing to win the gold medal. There are dozens of countries in various divisions competing to rise up the ladder of international ice hockey. In this, the 78th edition of the IIHF tournament, there are actually 46 teams trying to improve their international ranking and someday grab the gold medal.

Links for Part One, Two, and Three are right here, where I painstakingly checked out Division III, Division II B, and Division II A respectively.

Yesterday's post described Division II A in all its glory. Congratulations to the Estonian national team for clobbering Division II A and moving up into Division I B for next year's tournament. I-B is the subject of today's post, as it is the third tier of the IIHF tournament. This year's iteration took place in beautiful Vilnius, Lithuania from April 20th to 26th and THANK GOD SOME NHLERS ARE IN THIS TOURNAMENT. All due respect to other leagues in Europe, I know nothing about their players unless they played at some point in North America. It's been a struggle reporting on these lower tiers but finally I have a chance to talk about players I am familiar with. Here are the tournament standings:

All standings are courtesy of Wikipedia.
Poland advances in to Division I A and moves one step closer to getting a chance to play in the top tier. Poland's win is all the more impressive because they were able to defeat a Lithuania team led by this man.

Image courtesy of Lisa Gansky via Wikipedia.

That's right, it's New Jersey Devils forward Danius Zubrus! He had a great tournament with 9 points in 5 games, but the Lithuanians fells short of rising to the top in a very competitive division. The top four teams finished within three points of each other and there were several one goal games that were key in setting up sight a tight contest. Great Britain had a great showing this year, winning a 4-2 contest against the eventual champion, Poland.

Here are the tournament's top scorers:


Zubrus and his linemates were the toast of the tournament. Shoutout to Colin Shields of Great Britain, who netted a hatrick against the Poles. Most impressive. I predict next tournament Great Britain pushes up the standings and contends to move up to Division I A.

Here are the tournament goaltenders:


Polish goaltender Przemyslaw Odrobny was arguably the MVP of the Division I B tournament, winning four games and only conceding four goals with a .955 save percentage. This division, more-so than the previous ones, was very tight series of contests that turned into goaltending duels. Those are some impressive stat lines for the goaltenders. The tournament directive selected Zubrus as top forward, Odrobny as goaltender, and Alan Letang from Canada...er, Croatia for defenseman. Letang had a cup of coffee in the NHL, playing in 14 games with only 2 PIM to show for it. He has been a mainstay in the German and Austrian leagues for the vast majority of his career.

Tomorrow we visit Division I A, the second highest tier on the IIHF tournament. Thanks for taking the time to check out these surveys of the tournaments, it's been a pleasure writing them. See you again tomorrow!

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

The 2014 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship Results (Part Three)

Welcome to the third of a miniseries of posts I am going to make about the 2014 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship tournament. Most people don't realize that this tournament isn't just sixteen teams competing to win the gold medal. There are dozens of countries in various divisions competing to rise up the ladder of international ice hockey. In this, the 78th edition of the IIHF tournament, there are actually 46 teams trying to improve their international ranking and someday grab the gold medal.

Click here and here for parts one and two, respectively, where we had a look at Division III and Division II B.

As I mentioned in Part Two of the mega-post, Division II is sliced into group A and B. Group A is the upper tier of the division, and represents the fourth tier of the IIHF tournament. This year's edition was hosted in beautiful Belgrade, Serbia, from April 9th to April 15th. Here are the standings:

All charts courtesy of Wikipedia.

Estonia dominated this division, going 5-0 and only giving up 8 goals in five games. They were last year's losing team in Division I B and sank into the lower tier. It's a recurring trend for relegated teams to bounce between divisions until they can improve just enough to hold on to a slot in the division. Host Serbia improved on its fifth place finish last year, finishing 3rd. Israel just misses holding on to a spot in the division, losing a 4-3 decision in overtime to Belgium as well as a 4-3 contest to Iceland in a shootout. The 16-3 thumping to Estonia didn't help matters, and now Israel will have to claw its way back up into a division group that had four teams finish within three points of one another.

Here are the tournament's top scorers:



And the top goaltenders:



Directorate selected all-stars were Estonia's Robert Rooba for forward, Iceland's Ingvar Thor Jönsson for defenseman, and Serbia's Arsenije Ranković for goaltender. Yes, that guy's middle name is Thor. Iceland's players always have the best names. Remember Gunnar Stahl from D2: The Mighty Ducks?

This tournament finally featured players that were possible to find in European leagues across the continent. Rooba's an SM-liiga player for the Espoo Blues, and this season had four points in 36 games. Eliezer Sherbatov is an Israeli hockey player who had notable time with The Montreal Junior Hockey Club from 2009 to 2011, later with with the Baie-Comeau Drakkar. He's currently trying out for teams in France. Oren Eizenman is an Israeli-Canadian centre who had two brothers who played hockey as well, but he most recently played in the Asia League with the Nippon Paper Cranes before playing for Israel last year and this year in the IIHF tournament. He had a cup of coffee in the AHL with the Syracuse Crunch and Connecticut Whale in 2010-11, but never got a whiff of the NHL. The year before hit pit stop in the AHL he scored 19 points in 15 games with the Stockton Thunder of the ECHL. If you like weird random facts about hockey players, Oren's father, Brett, helped to found the Israel Baseball League. Hey, I thought it was cool.

Next up for this mega-series is Division I A and finally we see some NHLers in the lower tiers of the tournament. Stay tuned for the inevitable Dainius Zubrus love-fest. Go Lithuania!

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

The 2014 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship Results (Part Two)

Welcome to the second of a miniseries of posts I am going to make about the 2014 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship tournament. Most people don't realize that this tournament isn't just sixteen teams competing to win the gold medal. There are dozens of countries in various divisions competing to rise up the ladder of international ice hockey. In this, the 78th edition of the IIHF tournament, there are actually 46 teams trying to improve their international ranking and someday grab the gold medal.

In yesterdays' post I had a look at the tournament's sixth tier and the triumph of Bulgaria. The Bulgarians will compete next year in the 79th annual tournament in today's subject, Division II B. The fourth tier of the IIHF, Division II, is actually split into two sections, A and B. As one could guess, section B is the lower tier and section A is the higher tier.

The Division B tournament was hosted by Spain, a team recently relegated from Division II A, and took place from April 5th to April 11th. It features six teams. Here are the standings:

All graphs and charts courtesy of Wikipedia.


As you can see, the results are somewhat similar to Division III. There's is a massive discrepancy between the top three teams and the bottom three, and it becomes a dogfight to inch out a victory to avoid being relegated. Host Spain dominated every game it played and once again gets promoted back into Division A, while Turkey pays the price of losing a 4-2 game to South Africa and gets relegated to Division III. The majority of the teams in this division are (relative) newcomers to international ice hockey, with Spain being the exception. Not to criticize the success of Spain but one would think a 92 year old hockey system would be able to generate a competitive enough program to avoid being dropped into a low tier. They were as close as Division I A in 2011, but were torched in that tournament and were relegated again two years later in 2013.

Here are the top scorers for the tournament:


And the top goaltenders:


The top honours according to the tournament directorate went to Oriol Boronat for forward, Juan José Palacín for defenseman, and Ander Alcaine for goaltender; all three men hail from Spain. It's interesting to note Andrew Cox of New Zealand scored nine goals in five games for the Kiwis...could he be the Crosby of the land down under? New Zealand has had its own misfortune in the IIHF tournaments, bouncing between being ranked 32nd to 37th in the last five years, going as low as 41st in 2008. A quick glance at their roster shows their team is quite young, so a reversal of poor performances could be in order as the team competes more in the B division tournaments.

Tomorrow, a look at Division II A. It's still pretty difficult to find good information on the players participating, but Division A has a couple of European teams that have professionals who play in some domestic leagues, so here's hoping these reports get more interesting...

Click here for Part One.

Monday, May 19, 2014

The 2014 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship Results (Part One)

Welcome to the first of a miniseries of posts I am going to make about the 2014 IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship tournament. Most people don't realize that this tournament isn't just sixteen teams competing to win the gold medal. Not true. There are dozens of countries in various divisions competing to rise up the ladder of international ice hockey. In this, the 78th edition of the IIHF tournament, there are actually 46 teams trying to improve their international ranking and someday grab the gold medal. It's fascinating to me to see countries you never would have expected to even have an ice hockey team battling in all of the divisions, desperate to climb the ladder and topple the hockey giants like Sweden, Canada, and Russia.

Today I'm going to look at the sixth tier of the tournament, known as "Division III". This tournament took place in Luxembourg from April 6th to April 12th, and featured six teams. Here are the standings:

All graphs and charts for this series are courtesy of Wikipedia. Their graphs are so neat.


As you can see, the tournament has a lot of relatively new programs competing against European countries who have long been participating in the lower tiers of the IIHF. This was Hong Kong's first participation in the tournament since 1987, which led to its first taste of competition against European countries. UAE's team is brand hammer new, with its first international game taking place in 2007. North Korea's team is also only 30 years old. Luxembourg's is only 22 years old.

At first glance, this seems like an unbalanced edition of the tournament, with nearly 12 goals scored a game and the three top teams vying for the chance to be promoted to the next division. Most of the teams' rosters are the country's best teams throwing on a national jersey. Bulgaria's roster being mainly CSKA Sofia, North Korea's a hodgepodge of Pyongyang Choldo and Taesongsan, Luxembourg being Tornado Luxembourg, and Georgia's being Mimino Bakuriani. It's quite the contrast to upper tiers of the IIHF where the best players come from numerous talent pools but often only the upper echelons of domestic leagues.

Here's a list of the top scorers:


And the top goaltenders:


Top honours went to Alexei Yotov, Clement Waltener, and Ho King Chi King for top forward, defenseman, and goaltender respectively. Bulgaria gets promoted up to the fifth tier of the IIHF, Division II B. The rest will have to wait until next year's competition to earn its way out of the IIHF's basement.

Next up, Division II B in this series of posts all about the IIHF mega-tournament. Hopefully as we rise the ladder it will be easier to find information on some of these players...

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Where do the Red Wings go from here?



The season's over, folks.

It was a tough pill to swallow, but the Detroit Red Wings were eliminated by the Boston Bruins in five games. The series wasn't very close, if we're being honest with ourselves. Yes, the scores were pretty close, but the Red Wings struggled to find their offense and couldn't beat Tukka Rask for more than two goals in a game. I am not interested in performing a postmortem on the season, the injuries, the disappointments, or the playoffs. There's tonnes of great bloggers out there who can do that better than I can.

Today I'm asking the hard question of where the Red Wings go from here.

Earlier in the week Ryan Lambert of Puck Daddy wrote a pretty good piece that was critical of the Red Wings and whatnot. Lambert gets a crazy amount of attention from Red Wing fans, as though he is telling them they are bad people for choosing the Red Wings, but he's on point about one thing: the Detroit Red Wings are going to look differently after this season.

You can go over here to look at the roster before July 1st and free agency begins. To keep things moving, here's a list of UFAs come July 1st, along with their cap hits I've bolded the players most likely/definite to be re-signed, and the possibilities are italicized.

(LW) Danny Cleary, $1.75m
(C) David Legwand, $4.5m
(RW) Daniel Alfredsson, $5.5m
(RW) Mikael Samuelsson, $3m
(RW) Todd Bertuzzi, $2.075m
(D) Kyle Quincey, $3.375m
(G) Jonas Gustavsson, $1.5m

And here are the RFAs that need to be signed or a decision needs to be made:

(LW) Riley Sheahan, $900,000
(LW) Andrej Nestrasil $597,500
(C) Landon Ferraro $870,000
(C) Cory Emmerton $533,333
(RW) Tomas Tatar $840,000
(RW) Mitchell Calahan $565,278
(RW) Trevor Parkes $554,167
(RW) Willie Coetzee $543,611
(D) Danny DeKeyser $1,350,000
(D) Gleason Fournier $890,833
(D) Max Nicastro $887,500
(D) Adam Almquist $694,167

In short, the Red Wings have a lot of options. They can either a) re-sign most of the team under the belief that the injuries were the reason why the team failed, b)sign some of the UFAs and RFAs hoping the majority of the team with small adjustments can improve on getting stomped in the first round, or c) clean house and pursue UFAs aggressively.

Helene St. James wrote a nice piece pondering what might happen next year, and she repeats Ken Holland's stance on Johan Franzen staying in Detroit. That's a whole other blog post but for now we'll stay on point. She mentions a few Grand Rapids Griffin stars like defensemen Ryan Sproul, Xaiver Ouellet, and goaltender Petr Mrazek. It's getting to be that time for the organization to accept that the Griffins have accomplished everything they can in their current iteration and graduation day is coming. The team is currently battling in the first round of the AHL Calder Cup playoffs (up 2-1 in a best-of-five vs. the Abbotsford Heat) with some of their graduates from this year returning to the team, but this is the last ride in a Griffins uniform for many of them.

It's safe to say players like Gustav Nyquist, Tomas Tatar, Riley Sheahan, and Joakim Andersson are with the Red Wings for good. Mike Babcock has already stated that the youngsters who propped up the team in March and April have earned jobs moving forward. Good news for these former Griffins. Bad news for the pending UFA forwards who want to re-sign. Of all of the UFAs, including defensemen and goaltenders, the only player who could be brought back without the cocking of one's eyebrow is Daniel Alfredsson. He's already stated if he plays another season, the logical choice is to remain in Detroit, especially since he's also said his family loved it there. CBC's Tim Warnsby pumped out this agenda-laden piece about how he was saying similar things about Ottawa before he split on the team. The revelation of persistent back injuries is a caution flag, but Alfredsson's production was impressive (49 points in 68 games) considering the lack of support at times. It seems most likely that Bertuzzi, Cleary, and Samuelsson will be moving on to other teams or retiring. Another Helene St. James piece states Cleary will wind up with a front office job within the organization. One imagines Samuelsson will be jettisoned into space. Kyle Quincey has been a lightning rod of criticism since he was traded back to the Red Wings, and his relatively poor season-long performance isn't worth a second showing. David Legwand may very well boomerang back to Nashville if a reasonable deal cannot be struck with the Red Wings, but it begs the question why a first/second line center would rejoin this team knowing that the team is in transition looking to inject youth into the lineup. Unless one of Darren Helm, Joakim Andersson, Stephen Weiss, and Luke Glendening are being dumped, Legwand has no spot in the lineup. Jonas Gustavsson may be the only other UFA sticking around, depending on whether the organization feels Petr Mrazek is ready for prime-time. Spoiler alert: he is definitely ready.

The Red Wings defense was woefully mismatched against the Bruins. Are Sproul and Ouellet the answer? One could argue the lack of Jonathan Ericsson was a major factor in the play of the defense, but just like Ken Holland said when he defended Johan Franzen, one player isn't the difference maker. So is the answer to Detroit's defensive flaws a total flush of the bowl? Obviously Kronwall, Ericsson, and Dekeyser are going to be returning, the latter of whom is going to see both a pay hike and a delicious long term contract that will satisfy both the player, the team, and the fans. There's a lot of questions as to whether Brendan Smith, Jakub Kindl, and Brian Lashoff are good enough to keep their jobs over younger, possibly better youngsters like Sproul and Ouellet. Quincey's departure leaves one space open, but there's also Adam Almquist in Grand Rapids to consider. Almquist had 53 points in 73 games as a defenseman, 49 of those being assists. Red Wings fans have been pining for a first-pass-out-of-the-zone defensive stud since Nick Lidstrom retired....

The goaltending situation is most intriguing. Jimmy Howard is the man in Detroit, like it or not. Jonas Gustavsson had a hot start to the season but settled down to numbers below Howard. Mrazek was very impressive in his showings with the big club, registering a .927 save percentage in nine showings and a 1.74 GAA. His record of 2-4 is more reflective of how few goals the Red Wings scored during his stay with the team, and it has to be mentioned that both wins were shutouts. Mrazek is ready to shoulder at least 15-20 games as a backup, and typically Jimmy Howard has shouldered at least 50-60 games a season, depending on his own injuries. This may be the ideal time to graduate Mrazek and leave Tom McCollum as the sole returning goaltender in Grand Rapids, with the idea that Saginaw Spirit's Jake Paterson joins the club on the long road to earning a job in Detroit eventually. Straight up, McCollum has no chance of suiting up in Detroit given how Howard, Mrazek, and even the most likely departing Gustavsson would be ranked before him. He's also not signed to Detroit currently and is an asset of the Griffins themselves. There's also Jared Coreau to consider, but he and Paterson will likely be the Mrazek/McCollum tandem of the future.

There's a lot of other possibilities in the realm of free agency. A quick use of the "Armchair GM" mode on Capgeek's website assuming a few signings leaves the team sporting 27 players. Keep in mind this isn't a lineup sheet, it's a list of players and their assumed cap hits.

FORWARDS

Henrik Zetterberg ($6.083m) / Pavel Datsyuk ($7.500m) / Justin Abdelkader ($1.800m)
Johan Franzen ($3.955m) / Stephen Weiss ($4.900m) / Tomas Jurco ($0.709m)
Drew Miller ($1.350m) / Darren Helm ($2.125m) / Tomas Tatar ($0.715m)
Gustav Nyquist ($0.950m) / Joakim Andersson ($0.733m) / Daniel Alfredsson ($5.500m)
 Riley Sheahan ($0.715m) / Luke Glendening ($0.628m) / Cory Emmerton ($0.605m) /

DEFENSEMEN

Niklas Kronwall ($4.750m) / Jonathan Ericsson ($4.250m)
Jakub Kindl ($2.400m) / Brendan Smith ($1.263m) 
Brian Lashoff ($0.725m) / Xavier Ouellet ($0.670m) 
Ryan Sproul ($0.620m) / Adam Almquist ($0.605m)
Danny DeKeyser ($0.874m)

GOALTENDERS
Jimmy Howard ($5.292m)
Petr Mrazek ($0.595m)
Jonas Gustavsson ($1.500m)

BUYOUTS

Carlo Colaiacovo ($0.000m)

BURIED

Jordin Tootoo ($0.975m)

(estimations for 2014-15)
SALARY CAP: $71,100,000
CAP PAYROLL: $62,786,170
BONUSES: $917,500
CAP SPACE (27-man roster): $8,313,830

Even with this illegal, bloated roaster there's over $8 million dollars in salary cap space. It stands to reason resigned players like DeKeyser, Sheahan, and Tatar are going to see pay raises. The Red Wings are also not going to field nine defensemen on opening day so in the end the team will probably have about $10 million in cap space and a full lineup potentially ready for puck drop in October. The big question is whether Ken Holland will dip into that number for a chance at free agency, or will he stick to his team for now and assume injuries will lead to some necessary trades and incoming behemoth sized salaries. At the very least, it needs to be said that the Red Wings should inquire about improving their defense. Whether that means saying adieu to Quincey and one or more of Lashoff/Smith/Kindl is completely unknown, but fielding the same team isn't going to improve the results, even assuming no one gets injured.

So the question is simple. Where do the Red Wings go from here? Leave a comment below and we'll get to the bottom of this.