OTF Classic

It seems like everywhere you look in the NHL standings, there are close races as we head into the final quarter of the regular season. Four of the six divisions boast especially close dogfights for the lead, including the tightly packed Northwest which features a three-way logjam between Vancouver, Calgary, and Minnesota. When it comes to the President's Trophy for first overall, we have four teams (Buffalo, Nashville, Detroit and Anaheim) within a handful of points, and in the Eastern Conference, only eight points separate the 4th through 11th teams in the standings. With this breadth and ferocity of competition, consistency becomes essential to picking up those precious points on a night-in, night-out basis. And when it comes to offensive consistency, the requirement in today's whistle-happy NHL is having a productive power play. So which of the NHL's "designated hitters" are banging home the goals with the man advantage, and which ones are coming up short? Let...

There I was, idly clicking my way around the hockey blogosphere, when, like the Bat Signal cast against the cloudy skies of Gotham, I spied a call for help. At the end of a post covering the All-Star Game and how perhaps it might be improved, Ritch from American Hockey Fan had a question... Why not have the best Powerplay in the league face off against the best PK? Who would that be, I wonder? San Jose vs. Montreal, maybe? Perhaps the Forechecker will come to my aid again. Fear not, good netizen - I'm always in need of topical inspiration, so let's take a look... The NHL stat in this area merely covers percentage of opportunities converted. On that front, San Jose has the top power play (25.8%), and Vancouver the top penalty kill (88.4%). There, we have our answer, right? If we did, this would be an awfully short piece, that's for sure. A great source of special teams statistics can be found over at mc79hockey.com , where you can find a breakdown of teams on a 60-minute ba...