Spitballin’ (or Super Pass It To Bulis: All In, if you love adventurous acronymizing) is a feature that allows us to touch on a multitude of things really fast, because in the world of hockey, there are always lots of things to find and colour. Here are a few quick topics.
Laurence Gilman talks Bo Horvat on TSN 1040
Former Canucks assistant general manager Laurence Gilman made an appearance on TSN 1040 on Wednesday, taking questions from Canucks fans. He also talked extensively about Bo Horvat, revealing a few interesting nuggets of information.
One thing he said is that the Canucks knew they wanted Bo Horvat all along at the draft. “We knew were taking Horvat,” he said. “In fact, we were negotiating with teams that were higher than New Jersey.”
He did say that they didn’t have Horvat at the top of their draft list, specifically mentioning Aleksander Barkov, who has been outstanding for the Panthers, but it’s clear that they were far higher on Horvat that we even realized at the time. They anticipated him becoming a top two-way player.
“Our position on Bo at the time was that we felt he was going to be a player cut in the same mold as a Patrice Bergeron or a Jonathan Toews without the prolific offensive upside,” he said. “What I don’t think we anticipated was that he would be a 20-goal, 50-point player in his third professional season.”
“He’s ahead of the developmental curve that we saw at the time,” he added, “but he has been everything else that we anticipated he would be in terms of the two-way player that he is, the type of individual, high-character.”
Except that not all of that is true. They were expecting him to be a shutdown second-line centre, but it’s fascinating to see that the offence has come faster than expected, but the defensive side hasn’t at all. He’s not the two-way centre they anticipated. At least, not yet.
He also touched on Horvat’s ongoing contract negotiations: “If I’m representing him, it doesn’t start anywhere less than 5 (million).”
One other note: he suggests that he and Mike Gillis were too slow to make changes to their scouting department. “If I were to go back, I think we might have waited too long to put Eric Crawford in charge.”
Brock Boeser scores a weird one in Da Beauty League
As part of his off-season training, Brock Boeser is taking part in Da Beauty League, weekly scrimmages with other NHL and college players. Boeser scored two goals in his debut and added another this week.
It was an odd goal.
Don't see many goals like this! @BBoeser16 scores! @BICRazors now leads 3-1 @Canucks #SCtop10 @Buccigross @ESPNAssignDesk pic.twitter.com/npNXihhFIJ
— DaBeautyLeague (@DaBeautyLeague) August 2, 2017
Perhaps the goaltender wasn’t anticipating Boeser’s all-out effort in a fun summer league? It’s a pretty nifty diving play to poke the puck past the goaltender and one-hand it into the net, but that goalie has to be feeling just a little bit embarassed.
Data Rink and Hockey Analysis going dark
Two members of the hockey analytics community were hired by NHL teams this week, which means their sites, which were vital sources for anyone interested in advanced statistics, will be taken down, if they haven’t already.
Kevin Kan, who put together some gorgeous visualizations and a clean, useful site at datarink.com, has been hired by the Carolina Hurricanes. I had only recently discovered his work and his site, so it’s tough to see it going dark.
The bigger blow is the hiring of David Johnson by the Calgary Flames. His data site, stats.hockeyanalysis.com, was a site I visited and used almost daily.
The design of stats.hockeyanalysis.com was relatively bare bones, but it was stable, rarely crashed, and made it easy to quickly look up important statistics. Its best feature, and the one that I used most, was a simple and intuitive WOWY (With Or Without You) view that let you easily see how a player performed with and without different linemates.
Johnson had built a more modern interface for his database of statistics at puckalytics.com, which included a vital SuperWOWY feature that allowed you to see the statistics for any combination of players when they were on the ice. I used it regularly and will miss it a great deal.
There are still many analytics sites out there — puckiq.com and naturalstattrick.com are good places to start and I eagerly anticipate the return of corsica.hockey — but it’s always a bittersweet day when such useful sites go dark. It’s great to see people get hired by NHL teams, but it’s tough to see their work taken out of the public eye.
Elias Pettersson won’t be signing with the Canucks
Don’t be alarmed!
Rick Dhaliwal spoke to Elias Pettersson today and confirmed that he won’t be signing a contract with the Canucks this year:
Pettersson on not signing a contract : "I'm not ready for the NHL, a contract is not what I need at this point." #Canucks
— Rick Dhaliwal (@DhaliwalSports) August 3, 2017
It makes sense: there’s no need for Pettersson to sign an NHL contract when he’s at minimum a full year away from making the Canucks. Though it’s an extreme long-shot, not signing an NHL contract also makes him eligible for the 2018 Olympics. Like I said, a long-shot.
With Pettersson’s SHL season starting in mid-September, he has also decided to forego Canucks camp.
Pettersson says he will not attend main camp, "My season in Sweden starts Sept 19th, the decision was made not to attend #Canucks camp."
— Rick Dhaliwal (@DhaliwalSports) August 3, 2017
He also confirmed with Dhaliwal that he wasn’t “injured,” but just had some soreness in his hip. We could spend some time parsing the meaning of the word “injury” but for now just be relieved that Pettersson is fine.
Michael Del Zotto anticipates a leadership role
The 27-year-old Del Zotto spoke to Sportsnet after a training session about the upcoming season with the Canucks and the role he expects to play.
“People that know my personality,” he said, “know that I’m very energetic, and I like to talk, joke around, and have a good time.”
From all the interviews I’ve seen, Del Zotto seems like a fun person to talk to and will hopefully add some fun personality to the Canucks locker room and, perhaps, the videos they produce. I’m not going to lie: I miss how fun Kevin Bieksa and Keith Ballard were in interviews and videos. Hopefully Del Zotto can bring some of that back. He and Ben Hutton should get along nicely.
