Chestham

I thought this was pretty neat. Someone has put all NHL player birth places on a google map, where you can view them by country, state or province. Birth places in United States Birth places in New York Massachusetts seems to lead the U.S states.

I like your second point, it may well be the most convincing argument listed in this thread. What's interesting is that the ratio has been constantly lower during the playoffs, which kinda validates your point since goals during playoffs tend to be "dirtier", less pretty and so on (apart from Oveckin highlights I guess). Does anyone know if there are less penalty calls in playoffs than during regular season? Overall, I feel that assists are often awarded to players that don't deserve them. I sure has hell hope that the assists/goal ratio doesn't continue climbing, its getting pathetic when the average Joe in the stands can't see the reason why second assists was awarded.

I ran across an article that analyses the average number of assists awarded for each goal scored. Analysis is done for all seasons between 1917-18 and 2007-08. It looks like the number of assists per goal has been gradually creeping up since the beginning of 1980s and has not depended on the high scoring vs. low scoring eras we have experienced since then. Do you think that officiating has become more relaxed and assists are awarded more easily than before, which would result in inflated the player stats? I don

The way Crosby acts and behaves, I experience such great Schadenfreude whenever he is on the losing side.

Rafalski easily, I like his style of play and I think he would be a huge assets on the PP.

Hope they don't touch the existing system. Intensity will be lost if you have only 8 skaters on the ice. I can't believe Shanny is supporting this idea.