Hot pickup lines

A busy morning. After yesterday's slim pickings, we'll go with one from category A and a goodly bunch of those links from the B side:

First, what's the line du jour in the NHL (And I don't mean, "two minutes for hooking")? That's the question Spencer, that hard-workin', hard-livin', puck-lovin' kid tries to answer with some numbers he crunched just for you.

This will result in much envy here in the CoHU. Sure, the Leafs have this warming trio going right now in Allison, Ponikarovsky and Antropov, to go with their No. 1 line of Sundin, Steen and O'Neill. But no one is writing anything down in ink. In the 416, the Leafs don't have lines so much as they go out on a date. If it's good, they make plans to go out again few nights later. And so on, and so on, until the inevitable meeting in the drawing room with grumpy poppa Pat, when he asks them about their intentions and they run out of the room screaming.

Okay, enough tenuous digressions.  Here they are, the NHL's top troikas with their stats through Sunday's games. No surprise who's on top, and thanks for this, S.W.:

Spezza-Heatley-Alfredsson: 95 pts, +58
Forsberg-Gagne-Knuble: 88 pts, +49
Savard-Kovalchuk-Hossa: 79 pts, -4
Demitra-Frolov-Conroy: 78 pts, +31
Jagr-Straka-Nylander: 78 pts, +3
Lecavalier-Modin-Prospal: 71 pts, +23
Thornton-Murray-Samsonov: 68 pts, -8
Hemsky-Horcoff-Smyth: 65 pts, +6
Staal-Cole-Stillman: 64 pts, +25
Datsyuk-Zetterberg-Holmstrom: 62 pts, +29
Naslund-Bertuzzi-Morrison: 61 pts, +16

Oh, and you wanted some Toronto equivalents:

COLIN MCCONNELLl/TORONTO STAR

Leafs at practice. How do they line up against the best?

Sundin-Steen-O'Neill: 41 pts, -6 (but Sundin's missed 9 games)
In 9 games since Sundin's back: 25 pts, E -- projected over 21 games is 58 pts, E

Ponikarovsky-Antropov-Allison: 37 pts, +6 (last 2 games since together: 10 pts, +3 -- projected over 21 games is 105 pts, +31 and absolutely ridiculous.)

Any surprises here (apart from somehow overlooking the Wellwood-Belak-Domi grouping)?

And on to a busy morning on the links:

Paul Hunter has a nice one looking at Crosby and Ovechkin as they hook up for the first time tonight in Pittsburgh:

One gets the impression that Crosby wouldn't be caught dead wearing the tie-dyed shirt, torn jeans and red running shoes that Ovechkin showed up in one day at the Caps' training facility. Besides, Lemieux would never let him out of the house dressed like that.

Hunter's pulling double duty too -- less than a week after his turn with the ballet, for pete's sake -- with a bit of news. Mario Lemieux says he may not want into the Olympics, if it means taking up a spot for someone like a Spezza, a Staal or (surprise) a Sidney Crosby:

"There's too many good young players now. To take a spot because of your name, that wouldn't be right for Team Canada or myself."

Hmmm. Are you listening, Stevie Y?

Frightening story last night, as Wings' Jiri Fischer had a seizure on the bench and his heart stopped beating, stunning the Joe Louis Arena crowd and putting Detroit in shock. Fischer was given CPR, an auto debrilllator was used and he was taken to the hospital, where last night he was reported to be alert and upbeat, and his condition was listed as stable:

"What happened basically is, Fisch was out on a shift, he came off, he was standing there with his teammates, or sitting on the bench, and he had a seizure," Babcock said. "He fell forward and then ended up on his side. Right away, as soon as we got aware of what was going on, we got it stopped."

In Leafs world, Jeff O'Neill missed a skating-only conditioning session yesterday to undergo tests on his shoulder.

And Neil Stevens at CP, one of the finest people you'd ever want to meet in this business, writes of a new book that'll no doubt show up on the upcoming JABS Christmas book thread, A Season of Loss, A Lifetime of Forgiveness: The Dan Snyder and Dany Heatley Story.

Comments

[Jlo]

That story about the Leafs and their conditioning is a bit suspect. As far as I know, you can't build conditioning with one workout every couple of weeks. You need to be constantly working it. Probably playing games keeps them in shape, but if a team really wanted to have top conditioning, they would be working out all summer, building up to being able to run for an hour, three to four times a week, and probably do some 60 second intervals on the track to simulate a game--in addition to all of their weight training and core work. Conditioning is a long-term project, not something you can throw in during a break in the schedule, and you certainly don't want to tire the guys out before 7 in 11--if anything, they should be getting extra days off now. Recovery is the most underrated aspect of training.

Probably the "experts" know what they are doing, and the media is just picking up on a story they don't fully understand, but that looks good: "Hey the Leafs are in shape, good for them, let's do a story on that."

[Tom Byrne]

i went to my first game in 2003; this was vacation time, flight, hotel and game tickets in Montreal. What if they had cancelled the game!! How can i book again after this decision?

[cy]

J-lo, if I remember correctly from training camp, what they're doing is setting conditioning bench marks, then measuring the players at intervals through the season to see whether they're meeting those benchmarks. Most of these guys, too, are supposed to be on conditioning programmes 24/7 -- what I think the story may not have made clear is that, in this post- lockout season, a larger than usual number of players reported wayyyy out of shape and the teams paying them want to make damn sure they're getting value for money. i know exactly what you mean about recovery being more important -- that ESPN piece about the morning skate last week brought up the issue of whether going out and skating on the day of game is really a good thing. I've wondered the same thing.
As for your point, Tom, I wouldn't worry too much about changing travel plans. It was a pretty unique situation -- shocking and much scarier than usual, in that it appeared to happen without warning, and wasn't the result of some play on the ice. But having said all that I wonder, too, why the game was postponed. Every report today suggests that Fischer was alert, out of danger and in stable condition quite soon after. Of course the players were concerned, and who wasn't, but once the word came back from hospital -- it wasn't that long after -- shouldn't it have been game-on?

[Michelle]

It seems to me the game was cancelled when both teams, players and management alike, made it clear they no longer wanted to finish the game. Watching the replays, the Red Wing players appeared quite concerned about their team mate and likely would have had a difficult time focussing on the game. Since Jiri's heart actually stopped, I would expect there was still a fair amount of concern by all who witnessed the incident for his recovery.