Cube Notes

+ The player pages were updated today. As part of the update, each player page now has a new sponsorship price. I created a formula where each page started at $7 and then I added to the price based on certain criteria such as years in the majors, awards won, whether they were active, their highest level reached and then I added the last number of the phone number of the first person they kissed, their social insurance number divided by 300 and then I took their weight, multiplied by Pi and...well, you get the idea.

Remember, sponsoring pages in bulk entitles you to at least a 10% discount, depending on how many pages you sponsor. There are currently close to 1500 pages sponsored on The Baseball Cube. Don't be left out

+ The NHL Trade Deadline has come and gone and my 4th place (in the conference) Canadiens traded away one of their #1 goalies, Cristobal Huet. The deadline comes complete with an 8-hour broadcast on TSN. I'm one who thinks deadline deals in hockey are overrated since they tinker with team chemistry and for every happy player on that team, there will be just as many unhappy because it means their best friend just left or their ice time has been decreased. As much as we think that all these players only care about winning, I have to believe that most of them care about themselves playing well first and when that has been achieved, the success of the team. Call me a cynic.

+ For tomorrow's hockey update, historical hockey awards will start appearing on player profile pages. I've tried to find the major awards for all North American Leagues that I track (Minor, Junior, Pro) and if I miss any, please don't hesitate to let me know.

+ One of my favorite features at The Hockey Cube is Stats+. THC builds a Stats+ page for every NHL player/season since 2005-06 (so far). Its Hockey Splits mixed with the interesting and the unusual. For example, did you know that Dainius Zubrus has been in on 76 goals with Alexander Ovechkin? or that Saku Koivu has taken 42 hooking penalties in the last 3 years, 3 times more than any other penalty type.

Here are some of the goodies:

Win-Loss Record: A player's win-loss record when he is in the lineup. Gives you an idea on how much team success he has seen throughout his career and it also gives you an indication as to how important he might be to his team.

Home-Road Stats: Points and other stats on the road vs the comfort of home.

Stats by Month: Does he start off strong and then fade? Or does he get hot in January. Includes the current season and career to date.

Stats by Opponent: Another traditional split-type stat. All major stats broken down by opponent. Ovechkin loves playing the Thrashers.

Successful Linemates: A compiled list of the top ten linemates a player had during the season and career-to-date. In other words, who also received a point on a goal with this player. This year, Nicklas Backstrom has been on goals with Ovechkin 21 times. Over Ovie's career, Zubrus has been in on 76 goals with Zubrus. Chris Clark and Alexander Semin are far behind.

Shootout Attempts: A log of shootout attempts with opposition and even what # shooter the player was.

Penalty Shots: Same as above

Penalty Types: Ovechkin gets caught for high-sticking more than any other penalty but not by much. He has 10 high-sticking penalties over his career. Referees should be notified!

Fights: Includes fighting opponent and a link to the game. Its not quite HockeyFights.Com but it at least will provide you a complete list. Jared Boll has 18 of 'em.,

Note that all career-to-date data is dependent on available data in our database. At the current time, we only have 2.5 seasons of boxscore data. 2003-04 should be available in about 2 months.
So far Stats+ only tracks special stats for skaters but there are plans to create a goalie Stats+ in the future.

If you have any suggestions for this page, please don't hesitate to send them our way. tbc at thebaseballcube dot com

My Hockey Injury
+ Every Sunday afternoon between 2 and 4, I head downtown to play ball hockey with my goalie-friend. We use a whiffle ball with a rag stuffed in the middle. The ball is also wrapped in some tape. Getting the ball off the body doesn't usually hurt. But yesterday, that ball hit my body hard and it hurt worse than anything I had ever experienced playing ball hockey, or any other sport.

I play defense and I don't wear a jock. The other team has pressure in our zone and the ball is thrown back to the defenseman at the point (the point is about half-court. Under attack, the player circles back a little bit and finds himself with space. I am standing to the right of my goalie, 6 feet off the net. I am watching a winger to my right. The man at the point is small but he has a hard, straight slap shot. It is literally like a bullet. He has already put a red welt on my goalie friend's neck and he came within iniches of injuring a player on his own team earlier in the day, his face saved only by the buttend of this player's stick. His shots tend to rise and sometimes are out of control. But they are hard. He's faking passes and his teammates scramble to get open and suddnely, he must see a lane to the net. He takes 2 steps and instead of continuing along, he decides to shoot. He is about 30 feet from me so I don't think to cover the jewels. I assume the ball is going on net and that I will handle the rebound. Afterall, I am not between he and the net. The shot comes in straight and it comes in hard but its not on net. It seems to be on me. It happens in slow motion. My first reaction is to freeze and I'm not sure why. My body and brain fight over how to defend. The brain wants to run. The body wants to use hands. The debate never ends as time runs out. The ball has already hit my jewels dead on. I go down hard. Harder than I have ever gone down. If there were religious Christians on either team, they probably didn't appreciate the subsequent prose. I might have thrown some expletives towards Jesus in the aftermath. It was a blur. The words kinda just flowed out. I heard the collective oohs and aahs from around the gym admist, ironically, splatters of chuckling. I remembered the week before when a similar incident occured and Steve, the guy next to me on the bench said "I don't know why I always find that funny. But it just is."

Now, I am running (skipping/wallowing/crawling) to the gym door exit. I don't know why I am leaving. I think my instinct is to just be alone with this pain. I walk through the halls of the YMCA and the pain is still strong. In my head, I am already at Sports Experts buying a jock-strap. And 3 minutes later, I fold upwards and stand up straight and the pain seems to be gone. Its run its course. Everything seems A-1 again and I proudly strut back into the gym, ready for my next shift and I play the rest of the game at 100%, as if nothing happened, except for my tendency to turn to the side for every shot on net. We blow a 6 goal lead and I'm sure it has something to do with my now-wimpy defense.

I know it happens all the time in sports but until it happens to you, with that velocity attached to it, I don't think any guy can really understand that type of pain. But yesterday, I understood and from now on, every time I see a fellow player go down, I will grimace in understanding, shake my head in sympathy and then, of course, laugh.

+ In my version of heaven, the Montreal Canadiens play the Toronto Maple Leafs every night. For those of you who don't live on either end of Highway 401, you probably won't understand the significancs of a Habs/Leafs matchup and heck, I'm not even sure I understand if it is even a real rivalry.

The Habs (Canadiens nickname) are playing the Maple Leafs tonight at the Bell Centre in Montreal. The Make-Believes or the Laffs are near the bottom of the standings. The Habs are near the top. The rivalry is likely geographical. After all, the Habs and Leafs have not played a playoff series since 1979. They weren't even in the same conference for many of the last 30 years. It was only recently during realignment in 1998 that the Leafs and Habs played in the same conference and for most seasons, the teams were never elite teams at the same time and so the natural rivalry that evolves over multiple playoff series never happened.

And wouldn't the Ottawa Senators and Canadiens be better natural rivals? They are only 90 minutes apart by car. But the Senators have only been around since 1993 and there hasn't been a single playoff series between the teams. And now, they are 1 point apart in the standings near the top so it just might be on the radar screen.

But back to the Leafs. The Montreal/Toronto rivalry extends beyond sports but through hockey, it is the most natural extension of expression of the rivalry between the two cities. Montreal and Toronto are the two biggest cities in Canada but Toronto is quite far ahead due mostly to a large migration of Montrealers to Toronto over the last 30 years. Most media eminates from Toronto and so through the media, there is a natural slant towards all things "Toronto" and this is especially true in sports where the national telecasts start with Toronto. In fact, this playful hate towards the "Center of Canada" is shared throughout the country.

They play each other 8 times a year, 4 in each city and the atmosphere is electric every time. Its a European soccer atmosphere with chanting and cheers and that palpable buzz without the violence. The games are almost always on Saturday Night's so Hockey Night in Canada can broadcast to the largest hockey audience. Hockey Night in Canada is Canada's version of Monday Night Football except your team is always playing.

This particular rivalry is purely for the fans. Unlike the Red Sox/Yankees where the rivalry does extend to the field, the Maple Leafs/Canadiens rivalry is all about the fans. Its all about hockey in general, how we consider it to be our national game and how having our two biggest cities playing is everything it is to be Canadian. And who knows if the Maple Leafs think of Montreal as a rivalry the way the Montreal fans view Toronto. Is there such thing as a one-sided rivalry?

Its just too bad that the teams haven't had a playoff series together since the late 1970s. 1993 was the closest when the Habs made it to the finals while the Leafs lost in the Semis to Gretzky's Kings. The Habs would eventually win the cup and the two teams wouldn't come close to crossing paths again.

So tonight I will be sitting in front of my television, a little bit more excited than normal when watching a hockey game and it will be against a team that has 16 points less and is 14th in the conference of 15th (The Habs have the 2nd best record). But its a tradition that has been around for almost 100 years in this city and anyone who knows anything about Montreal will know that "The City is Hockey".

+ There was no Super Bowl for me yesterday. There wasn't even Super Bad. Yes, I'm a 34-year old male sports fan and I watched The Nanny Diaries with my wife. How can I face the sports world this morning. How can I call myself a man. And worse, it was my idea!

My wife actually suggested that we watch the big game but I suggested instead that we watch one of the two aforementioned movies that we rented. Nanny Diaries is a really bad movie, but with the help of Yahoo's gametracker, I was able to follow the game on my laptop while I watched Scarlett Johansson sleepwalk through a predictable movie and when it came to the last two minutes of the game, we watched the Giants ruin the Patriots perfect record. And really, what more was there to see? I'm not a die-hard football fan and we don't get the American blockbuster commercials up here in Canada anyways so why should I feel like I have to watch? My normal football season involves watching the first x # of week where x is equal to the number of weeks that I am in my Survivor football pool and x is generally less than 6.

+ More layoffs at work this week. This time, its going to be entire departments instead of individuals. Cross your fingers for me.

+ We're going back to Disney World this spring. We figure its the kids last chance to go during off-peak season since they will be starting school soon. Yeah, as if its for the kids. Disney has hundreds of themed restaurants and at least 15 awesome resorts to explore. Not to mention the 4 theme parks, 2 water parks and downtown disney. My wife and I are big kids and Disney World has quickly become our vacation spot of choice.

Though I love to travel I am a terrible traveller. When I get excited about something, I get way too excited and I can become a nervous wreck on travel day so we're looking for ways to mitigate that risk. I'm not afraid of planes, I'm not afraid of cars and I'm not afraid of hotels or airports. There's just something about travel day that my body cannot handle. Good thing I'm not a pro athlete. If anyone has any interesting ways to reduce travel-day anxiety, please send them my way before April!

+ Still working on a number of TBC and THC projects that should be released within the next few weeks. Even though sometimes it looks like we're taking it easy here, trust me, we're not. There are always 3-4 projects in the pipeline.