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By Mark D, May 21, 2011 9:49 pm

I consider myself a connoisseur of bad NHL trades. Especially with the time I have spent breaking down Milbury trades. Now in my opinion, nothing was worse then the Olli Jokinen/Roberto Luongo for Mark Parrish/Oleg Kvasha. Jokinen and Luongo both became All-Stars, while Parrish and Kvasha did almost nothing. But the standing notion is that the worst NHL trade in history is the Lindros trade to the Flyers for Forsberg  and a handful of prospects/picks. The common stance is that while the Avs became an elite team and won Multiple Cups, the Flyers only made the Stanley Cup Finals once and were swept by the Red Wings.

I think this is horribly slanting things against the Flyers. Lindros made them an elite team and had some great seasons. Unfortunately the failing of the Flyers was the always changing situation in Net. While the Sabres had Dominik Hasek, the Rangers had Richter, The Pens had Barasso, the Caps had Kolzig, the Panthers had Beezer, the Devils had Brodeur, the Leafs had Potvin and Joseph, and so on. While the east seemed to be overflowing with elite goalies, the Flyers were alone in not having a really great goalie. Now while Hextall was good, his time had passed. At the same time Snow, Boucher and the other Flyers goalies were good but not that good. It’s not surprising that in a period of time in which the league seemed to rely on clutch and grab and top goaltending, that the Flyers struggled.

But the Flyers still managed to make a good run of things. Meanwhile the Avs managed to fleece Patrick Roy, widely considered the best goalie in the league, who became the cornerstone of their runs to the Cup. One can only imagine what might have happened if Roy was playing for the Flyers instead of Snow for the season they made it to the Finals.

How do the two teams line up? It’s time for a breakdown of their standings from 92-93 to 99-00

92-93
Nordiques 47-27-10 104 .619 Lost in Round 1
Flyers 36-37-11 83 .494 out of playoffs

93-94
Nordiques 34-42-8 76 .452 Out of Playoffs
Flyers 35-39-10 80 .476 Out Of Playoffs

95
Nordiques 30-13-5 65 .677 Lost in Round 1
Flyers 28-16-4 60 .625 Lost in Round 3

95-96
Nordiques 47-25-10 104 .634 Won Cup
Flyers 45-24-13 107 .628 Lost in Round 2

96-97
Avalanche 49-24-9 107 .652 Lost in Round 3
Flyers 45-24-13 103 .628 Lost in Finals

97-98
Avalanche 39-26-17 95 .579 Lost in Round 1
Flyers 42-29-11 95 .579 Lost in Round 1

98-99
Avalanche 44-28-10 98 .598 Lost in Round 3
Flyers 37-26-19 94 .567 Lost in Round 1

99-00
Avalanche 42-28-11-1 96 .585 Lost in Round 3
Flyers 45-22-12-3 105 .640 Lost in Round 3

For much of Lindros’ time with the Flyers they were pretty much on an even footing with the Avs. But the goaltending struggles is obviously the difference here. For an Example, here’s Patrick Roy’s save percentages in the playoffs for the Avs: .921 .932 .906 .920 .928

In Comparison here’s Hextall’s playoff save percentages:
.904 .915 .892
Boucher’s:
.917
Snow’s
.892
Beezer:
.938

Look, if you put Roy on the Flyers, they are probably just as dominate as the Avs were. The thought that the Lindros to the Flyers trade is “One of the worst” in NHL History is overblown. Both teams joined the elite of their conference not too long after the trade. The rise of the Nordiques was long in coming as they were bad for years before. It ignores all their drafts (including the addition of Joe Sakic) and movements of their own to get better.  The Lindros deal in the end was basically Forseberg for Lindros. There were a lot of spare pieces, and the draft picks became Fiset and Baumgartner.

For a trade to be truly bad, it should dam near destroy one team and make another a powerhouse. Head to Head the Flyers matched the Avs/Nords almost every season. The difference was Roy in net. Had the Flyers ever had an answer to the struggles in net they probably would have won at least 1 Cup. There’s nothing in this trade that says if the Flyers don’t trade for Lindros they win the Cup instead. If anything they might have finished even worse then they did.

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By Mark D, April 13, 2011 8:00 pm

EA’s NHL 99, back when I used to buy the yearly release of the NHL series, suckered me in pretty well with this promise:

In NHL 99, Marc Crawford sat down with the development team and helped divide expansive checking ratings. Using this system, certain players will have an easier time moving the opposition to a certain side, while offensive forwards will be better neutral-ice checkers. Also, Marc Crawford guest stars in a brand new feature: Marc Crawford Coaching Drills. Here, you will be able to practice checking, passing, odd-man rushes, and other hockey fundamentals.

That’s right, the one, the only Marc Crawford sat down with the game developers for NHL 99 and made sure they got things right. At the time Crawford was the brightest star in the coaching galaxy. He had taken over the Nordiques in the strike shortened season and proceeded to lead them to not just a Stanley Cup, but being one of the elite teams of the era in the West. Although in retrospect some might point out that the team was absolutely stacked beyond belief and in Crawford’s 12 seasons since leading the Avs to back to back 100 point seasons he has only gotten beyond the first round once.

So it kinda sucked after a handful of games I had figured out the system. Which unsurprisingly has been the system in almost every NHL related game. First off, shooting is almost always useless. You will almost never score a goal with a slap shot unless the goalie is awful. Or if the CPU was desperately trying to make the game close. The other big thing is that it was never worth it to throw a check, the AI always dodged checks and took advantage. But every stick poke would knock pucks loose.

The AI was so bad that 3 days after I bought it I was able to defeat Team Canada with Team Italy on the hardest mode 5-2. That also included me out shooting Team canada 62-11 in a game that had 5 minute periods. The game was so awful that the only thing which was fun was playing the Olympics as Team Italy and winning them the gold. Otherwise since the NHL teams are so close (having almost all ratings between 70-90) that stickpoking, never checking and one timers was always the key to victory. I remember being disgusted just a week or two after buying it. The AI sucked and apparently having Marc Crawford (who wasn’t coaching at the time) didn’t help.

Thankfully it seems like places are less and less likely to bring in a big name to “help” develop a game. Madden hasn’t had anything to do with the Madden series in about 20 years now. Even his big addition was kind of idiotic. He complained that it wasn’t football without 11 players. Apparently he couldn’t wrap his big fat head around the idea that processors at the time couldn’t handle creating that many sprites. Personally I think some of the best football games are the ones that cut down the number of players on the field. I used to love the NFL Blitz games.

I always remember though reading through the manual and cursing at every image of Marc Crawford in it for fooling me into buying a crappy game. I was already uneasy about NHL 99, but I figured the brilliant Marc Crawford had to have helped fix some of the problems. In the end he probably just got a check, hung out and got treated like a superstar by the NHL 99 team and added almost nothing to the actual game.

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By admin, August 30, 2009 2:14 pm

In some bad news this week, Mike Sillinger retired. I hate it when health takes the game away from a player whose as good as he is.So how does Mike Sillinger compare to the rest of his 89 1st round draft mates?

Total Games
Sillinger = 1049
89 = 9504 (an average of 475.2)

Total Points
Sillinger = 548
89 = 4480 (an average of 224)

Total PIMs
Sillinger = 644
89 = 10310 (an average of 515.5)

Total Teams Played for
Sillinger = 12
89 = 25 (Including Jets, Whalers and Nordiques in that count)

Double the average points and double the average games played. He was the man. I also like how 20 guys only managed to play for 25 different teams while he racked up 12. Goodbye Mike Sillinger, enjoy retirement.