EFHL Season in Review Newsletter

Happy tax day everyone. Another EFHL season is over and another wad of cash is in Rick's pockets. Rick let up a little this season, only winning two periods, allowing four other guys to win periods.

In the final newsletter of the season, I will take one last look at the highlights and lowlights for each team along with some other boring stats and information.

Elite Cup: Beaver Slappers 99 - Ice Dogs 69
I actually outscored Rick in the last week by three points, but this was over early in the second week. Palffy was the leading score in the finals with 9 goals and 4 assists for 22 points. There is really nothing else to say here that hasn’t been said already.

Here's a look at the all-important money summary.

Team reviews

Tortured Souls Chris had a pretty darn good year, but only wins $20 to show for it. He missed out his chance to play Rick in the finals, and with a few moves left, possibly could have manuveured enough to beat Rick. Rick only outscored Chris by 6 points in the last three weeks.

Lemieux, Bondra, and Modano were relatively consistent and injury free all season. Chris made up for drafting blunders Linden and Daze by replacing them early with Alfredsson and Amonte, who were the top two scoring free agents. Amonte probably won’t be but should be runner up for the NHL MVP behind Hasek. Without him the Hawks would have been awful. On defense, Chris’ squad was near the bottom of the league. Suter was a huge disappointment. After finishing fourth in EFHL scoring last season, he managed just 7 goals and 21 assists this season. His assist in the last Hawks game of the season was his first point in what had to be well over a month.

Cougars Tom (thanks to Darrin) had a strong core of forwards in Jagr, Shanahan, and Francis. Maybe Darrin should have managed the day-to-day operations as well. Looking back, Tom probably didn’t react fast enough to replace Verbeek and Kozlov and to improve a defense that ended up worst in the league when there still decent guys available.

Free Radicals Things started out pretty well for Brett, despite the fact that he missed his top forward (Lindros) and top defenseman (Bourque) for awhile early in the season. Koivu and Arnott were awesome early and it was scary to think of the potential of this team when everybody became healthy. But around the time that Lindros and Bouque came back, Arnott became horrible and later got hurt, and later Koivu hurt his knee and missed two months.

All of this added up to a third place points finish for Brett, but he missed the playoffs, finishing one game out of fourth behind the Ice Dogs.

Ice Dogs What an awful season. I’ve rambled on enough about my crappy team so I’ll spare you now. My forwards were the second worst in the league. My defense showed signs of life in the last month of the season but still ended up fifth, led by Duchesne, who was the highest scoring free agent defenseman and whose goal last Saturday capped an incredible run to get the Senators into the playoffs.

12 Monkeys Tony’s forwards were the worst in the league, 40 points below mine. His defenseman were first, 41 points ahead of Rich and 89 ahead of Brett. Overall, he was fifth in points. Leclair was the third leading EFHL scorer and accounted for 27% of Tony’s forwards’ points. Like Tom, Tony may have waited too long to replace some guys. Unlike Tom, Tony did make a number of moves and did help himself, but missed the boat on the guys that could have really made a difference. On defense, Ozolinsh, Lidstrom, and Hatcher were 2-3-4 in EFHL scoring. Desjardins was eighth.

Beaver Slappers Rick cleaned up again. If you take a look at his draft, you can see why. Of the seven forwards he drafted, six scored 100 EFHL points. This includes Gretzky and Yashin, who were traded to Rich (Yashin was traded back), and Gilmour, who was drafted as Rick’s reserve. Rick has now won 7 of the 12 periods in the two years of the league.

Plaindrifters Rich finished fourth in points but missed the playoffs. His forwards were sixth in the league, however they were second in assists and last in goals. Oates, Weight, and Zhamnov were mainly responsible for this. Rich’s defensemen were strong, finishing second, led by Leetch (until he was traded) and Zubov.

Fargon Iceholes Rob and his two moves finished last in the standings and sixth in points. He finished the last period 12 points behind Rick. He could have made it a real battle and probably would have won by replacing Kovalev, who was hurt months ago, and Housley, who missed over a week. Rob had a superb core of forwards, with Kariya, Tkachuk, and Sundin finishing among the top nine scorers. With a minimum of additional effort, Rob could have easily battled at least Chris in points and maybe have challenged for a playoff spot.

Next, let’s take a quick look at how I fared in my predictions back in late January.

Only two teams did better than I though and four did a lot worse than I thought. I guess I didn’t take into consideration the lower scoring games at the end of the season, as teams get ready for the playoffs.

Next, let’s take a look at this season vs. last season. Here is a look at the teams that were in the league both years.

Needless to say, scoring was way down this season. Last season the nine teams averaged 919 points. This season the average was 841 points. Only six fewer players totaled more than 100 points this season vs. last season (31 vs. 25). However, those players averaged 136 points last season, led by Lemieux and Jagr with over 200 points. This season those players averaged 124 points.

Finally, in case you didn’t get them Saturday, the playoff league rosters are here and the stats will be updated periodically.

And that’s about it for this season. Only 4½ months until next season’s draft. There sure isn’t much of an off-season in hockey. In the meantime, let me know if you have any suggestions, complaints, or whatever about this league. I’ll save Rick an e-mail now and say no, it is not possible to have the stats posted at the instant the buzzer goes off ending the last game on Monday night. Have a good summer. I’ll be touch sometime this summer with information on the draft and any possible changes to the league.

Other EFHL info:

Standings and total points

Player statistics by team:

Player scoring rankings
Schedule
Rules

EFHL Home Page

Grant's home page