Man, we’re sucking as far as predictions go.  Grier has been miserable at it lately (sorry man, you have) and I started out a nice string of them last night with a big goose egg.  Not that that the Sharks played great.  Again they had an embarrassing stretch where they let in two quick ones, including a shorty.  But they continued to press during the scoreless second and third periods, ending up with a healthy advantage on the shot counter (why do people say shot clock?  That’s basketball).

Cheech was again the magic man in the shootout, with a really nice little delay and fake, finishing with a deft backhand.  Too bad he couldn’t convert on an open chance in the third with about 6 minutes left.  Nabby came up big in the shootout, which was nice to see.   I think during the first year of so after the shootout was instituted, Nabby was the worse NHL goaltender in terms of shootout wins and save percentage.

But I want to digress for a while about the Norris trophy, something Jeremy asked about in our latest podcast, and about which there’s a comment thread over at the DOH site.  I want to move it over here so I can expand on my thoughts, and open it up more to comments.  To recap, Jeremy said Mark Streit of the Islanders should be the Norris winner this year, with Chara and Boyle being the other finalists, and grier brought up the point on the show that Streit isn’t near their leaders in short handed ice time.

I confirmed that at behindthenet.ca.  It’s a little tough with the Isles because they’ve had so many people in and out of the lineup, but with a fairly lenient games-played criterion, Streit is behind Martinek, Sutton, Gervais, and Witt in 4-on-5 TOI/60.  To me and grier at least, if you’re not a go-to guy shorthanded on your own team, you can’t be in the discussion about best defensemen in the league.  I’ll be charitable and say Streit and Mike Green are on the bubble in that category since there have been so many defensive injuries on their teams.  The guys I said would probably supplant Boyle as Norris finalists, Lidstrom/Rafalski, are 1st and 4th in SH TOI/60 respectively.  Dan Boyle is 3rd behind Blake and Vlasic.

Zdeno Chara, for his all-around play and obvious physical advantages (let’s be honest, being 6’9 makes you look more impressive in almost everything you do), and Mike Green, because of his awesome offensive numbers this year, will definitely be finalists.

Another defensive metric I like to use, especially for defensemen, is even-strength goals allowed per 60 minutes of ice time, or EVGA/60.  This adjusts for players like Chara and Lidstrom that are 6th and 15th in the NHL in ice time per game.  Likewise, you could do EVG/60, the offensive side of the same stat.   I’m getting into a lot of stats, I think it’s time for a chart (alphabetical order):

It certainly should be mentioned that EVGA/60 and EVG/60 are very influenced by the quality of the team, which means that Boyle, Chara, Lidstrom, and Rafalski have an advantage here, and Streit a clear disadvantage.  And I used SHTOI/60 Rank instead of raw time, because different teams have different schemes for shorthanded play- some teams really cycle through their players a lot, and some lean heavily on a few.

So do you agree with me?  Is Boyle going to be a Norris finalist or not?  Do you have finalists not on this list?