It's a Great Day for Hockey (NHL 12)

[Ichiroooooo]

Wacey Rabbit, do the roar.









I love you daddeh.

[goosedennis]

All-Star Game

They meet at last...

It's been 13 days since my last update. Let's run down and see what was going on in the world of Goose at the time:

October 28th - October 30th: Hockey tournament in Niagara Falls. We ended out blowing out almost every team except in the championship game, where I scored my first goal of the tourney... in OT.

Late November 1st - November 6th: After riding home for umpteen thousand hours, I log onto my laptop and see that my neighbors forgot to pay their internet bill. How irresponsible.

November 7th: Computer was ****ting the bed while I was trying to update

So basically, with not having an Internet connection for a week, I've been able to a) have a social live, b) continue being a mediocre hockey player, and c) play NHL 12. I'm up to the All-Star break, where this update takes place...

Super Mario has been Super Mario this entire time, but there is a new competitor. His name? Well, if you take Mario's number and flipped it upside down, you'd have his number. Yep, Wayne Gretzky is leading the NHL in points. He's scoring at an incredible 1.75 PPG pace, and will score nearly 150 points if he keeps this up. He has only been penalized enough times for 13 PIMS, so he'll most likely be a Lady Bing finalist at the end of the season. Enough of the Gretzky ****-sucking, let's get on to the Penguins. When Ray Shero brought Marian Hossa onto the team, he brought him on for one reason: to provide offense. So far, he has done just that and even more. In 42 games with the team, he has scored an entire 15 goals, and he has also assisted on 42 others, which brings his point total up to 57 - which is a 1.35 PPG pace. However, he has not helped the production of Sidney Crosby, who has a mere 45 points in the 46 games he has played so far this season. Maybe it's not a small amount in anybody's standards, but the Kid has different words. "It's frustrating. I mean, I'm trying as hard as I can out there, but nothing's going in for me. I have like 15 goals on the season, and 30 assists. Usually by this time, I would have 25 goals and 50 assists. Maybe not that much, but still, more than 45 points." He could be described in one word: snake-bitten. "It's sad to see myself," said head coach Dan Bylsma. "I'm not out on the ice with him, but he is sure as hell producing for the team, but he isn't getting his name on the scoresheet as often as he usually does. I don't want to demote him to the second line because, you know, he's Sidney Crosby, but if he keeps getting less than one point per game on a line with two other super stars, then that might just be what I have to do."

Another storyline from the past few months would be the key acquisitions of four players, three of whom came through the waiver wire. Jaromir Jagr, who was playing for the Florida Panthers, was dealt to the Penguins for their second round pick, third round pick, and fifth round pick, or, as any fan would put it, "a late second rounder and a bag of pucks." So far this year, he's been producing quite well on Geno's line, scoring 8 goals in his past 16 games and helping on 6 others. The other new linemate for Evgeni Malkin also came from a southern US team, this time through the waiver wire. Petr Sykora, previously of the Dallas Stars, was shot through (the heart) the waiver wire when he was not living up to expectations. He had 2 goals and 2 helpers in 22 games (deuces wild), and had also been a healthy scratch for a few previous games. He has been the third ex-Penguin added via either trade or waivers this season, showing that Ray Shero has an ex-Pen fetish. He's probably most famous for diving feet-first in front of a shot in Game 6 of the '09 SCF, something very few people remember outside of the Penguins locker room today, but it was important to the Penguins' 3rd Stanley Cup victory. All Crosby and Malkin demand is sacrifice. Hell, that's all the Bylsma demands, and Sykora is chalked full of it. A more low-name player was also added through waivers a few weeks earlier, but was put in the press box because Bylsma and Shero had forgotten about him. Patrick Dwyer was waived by the Carolina Hurricanes after he had ZERO points through the first fourteen games of the season, and the Penguins, being the scrapheap kings they are, decided to claim him. He never played a game for a few weeks, mainly because Bylsma wanted him to get acclimated to the system, and when he started his first game, he was the role player everybody wanted him to be. Although he may not be the most productive player on the roster, he still knows his place as a checking-line forward and is thankful to the organization for giving him a chance to play in the best league in the world. Finally, the miserable excuse for a hockey player that is Jared Staal was claimed off waivers the same day Dwyer was. He sucks. That is all.
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Penguins powerplay: 18.1% (15th in NHL)
Penguins' penalty kill: 82.1% (14th in NHL)
Goals against per game: 2.52 (6th in NHL)
Goals for per game: 3.12 (5th in NHL)
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I can't figure out/am too lazy to crop this spreadsheet, so here you go, an unnecessarily large image:


click it to enlarge...twss
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2012-13 NHL All-Star Game Rosters
Pos	East Starters	Pos	West Starters
LW	Alex Ovechkin	LW	Daniel Sedin
C	Mario Lemieux	C	Pavel Datsyuk
RW	Marian Gaborik	RW	Bobby Ryan
D	Victor Hedman	D	Brent Seabrook
D	Zdeno Chara	D	Ray Bourque
G	Ryan Miller	G	Evgeni Nabokov
Pos	East Reserves	Pos	West Reserves
LW	Zach Parise	LW	Patrick Sharp
C	Wayne Gretzky (suck it, Wayne)	C	Steve Yzerman
RW	Marian Hossa	RW	Rick Nash
D	Dion Phaneuf	D	Brad Stuart
D	Christian Ehrhoff	D	Jay Bouwmeester
LW	Mike Cammalleri	LW	Sergei Kostitsyn
C	Steven Stamkos	C	Ryan Getzlaf
RW	Jakub Voracek	RW	Martin Havlat
D	Brian Campbell	D	Kevin Shattenkirk
D	Erik Karlsson	D	Cam Barker
LW	Michael Grabner	LW	Mike Ribeiro
C	Eric Staal	C	Mikko Koivu
RW	Bryan Little	RW	Radim Vrbata
G	Cam Ward	G	Steve Mason

[goosedennis]

Well, I finished the regular season. The next two updates will be the deadline update and the end-of-year update. Playoffs will be game-by-game.

[bthomp05]

Can't wait.

[goosedennis]

I would really like to kill this dynasty off with a creative headline, and to be honest I had one in the bags when I started my first dynasty here, Chilling at the CONSOL Energy Center, but due to the Lokomoiv Yaroslavl tragedy two months ago, I do not think it will be appropriate. However, I do think that an explanation post is necessary. When I started this on the last day of September, I truly had fun playing it and updating. However, as the game (and the Legends) progressed, it became less and less fun because it wasn't authentic whatsoever. It sure as hell is fun having an all-elite top line, but at the expense of only having 4/12 forwards left from when you started the dynasty? Hell no. It's great having Duncan Keith on your team, but at the expense of having 3/7 defensemen left from when you started it? I would really like to thank everybody (AKA the two people) who followed this ****ty dynasty, and those two people are: bthomp05, with 4 posts, and Ichirooooooo with 6 posts.

I really think that this dynasty attempt really helped me see how to enjoy running a dynasty.