Quick Strikes: NHL hockey is back!

After more than a week off, the NHL finally resumed their playoffs. The St. Louis Blues (the only franchise to appear in multiple Stanley Cup Finals without a win) headed to Boston to take on Bruins team that hasn’t lost since April 30th in Game One of the finals. Most of the hockey world seems to be rooting for the Blues (or against the Bruins) so expect Boston to sweep yet another round.

The Lightning:

Lightning fans cheering for Corey Perry? It could have happened. Geo re-imagines the 2003 draft [Raw Charge]

Until this past season, and removing his rookie season, {Corey Perry} averaged over 60 points per season during his career. He has been an impact player and would have given the Lightning another high end right winger to go with Martin St. Louis... if he stayed in Tampa and flourished

Remembering some better playoff days:

Jordan Binnington continued a recent trend that Andrei Vasilevskiy is part of:

The Prospects:

Connor Ingram discovers the downside of using facial recognition technology:

The schedule is set for the AHL Calder Cup Finals. Crunch alumni Alex Gallant and Tye McGinn suit up for the Chicago Wolves. Former Lightning prospect Dustin Tokarski was sensational for the Checkers in his one start against the Toronto Marlies in their previous round as he stopped 40 of 41 shots.

The Game:

After a month of Sundays, the Stanley Cup Finals are finally under way. Much to the pleasure of 95% of hockey fans in the world the St. Louis Blues jumped to a 2-0 lead in Game One. The Bruins, haters of joy, stormed back with four straight goals to take the victory [Stanley Cup of Chowder]

The period only got saltier as time wound down. Torey Krug and David Perron had a spontaneous wrestling match behind the play. David Pastrnak and Jake DeBrusk were dishing hits. Krejci and Johansson started making St. Louis look like they were standing still with some of their dirty dangles. As St. Louis fought to get the game even again, scrums regularly had post-whistle activity. A conversation between Krug and Pat Maroon ended with a couple shin-pad checks.

Torey Krug could have played the puck. He elected to initiate just a little bit of contact with Rob Thomas:

The NHL commissioner (and Hall of Famer) Gary Bettman talked all things video review, work stoppages, and women’s hockey: [Sportsnet]

“What I thought was it would be good if I kept my head from exploding,” Bettman said of his reaction to that goal. “I was unhappy. We all were. If you ask the officials on the ice, they weren’t happy. If you asked [director of officiating] Stephen Walkom, he was unhappy. If you asked Colie Campbell and hockey operations, they were unhappy.”

Speaking of women’s hockey, The Ice Garden chats with Kaleigh Fratkin in regards to her decision to return to the NWHL and her thought on the #ForTheGame movement: [The Ice Garden]

In my opinion, we should be leveraging the league that we have and [approaching] the sponsors that support our male counterparts and then turning to the NHL to say, ‘Hey, these sponsors are now supporting us because they want to get behind the women’s movement.’ That way we can activate the NHL. Rather than kyboshing the NWHL and have the NHL start things from the ground up.

“He has a high hockey IQ.” It’s something you often hear about Lightning prospects. DrDangles13 over at Winging it Motown has a great breakdown of some of the technology that may be available to scouts in regards to measuring that trait in future NHL stars [WIIM]

While the task of devising methods to evaluate the complex types of problem-solving a hockey player has to engage in can be daunting, I believe the tools we have at our disposal present us with a great opportunity to begin advancing the application of the methods and insights of the field of cognitive science to talent assessment in hockey.