Hockey Trade Rumors

The status of Jason Allison has been the subject of numerous submissions lately, I’ll outline a few of them for everyone. The pre-season schedule gets underway next weekend, I’ll point out a few of the more intresting locales for games. I’ll also throw out some more interesting stats from last year too.

4 recent submissions to HTR have all focused on disgruntled Bruin Jason Allison. “seifermike” commented a few weeks ago that the Boston Globe was reporting interest from 4 teams. Those teams were Washington, Detroit, Los Angeles and the New York Islanders. “beckyqoc” then reported in that the St. Louis Blues were set to announce a trade for Allison too. Their offer consisted of Corso, Van Ryn and Hill. In the past two days, both “bigbadbruins2″ and “hockeynut” have reported that the Anaheim Mighty Ducks may be willing to part with Oleg Tverdovsky. Whoever finally ends up with him, Allison will definitely make that team better.

Faceoff.com ran an article about Jason Allison recently which offered one reason why the player may not have been invited to the Olympic camp for Canada. Allison declined an invite to the World Championships last April, which the faceoff.com reporter speculates, may have not sat well with Gretzky and co.

We know that Colorado is having there camp in Europe. While there, they will play games against Djurgarden of Sweden in Stockholm. Later, the Aves will take on Jokerit in the Finnish capital of Helsinki.

San Jose and St. Louis will have a two game battle in Anchorage, Alaska on September 15/16. Also of interest, Columbus tackles Nashville in the hockey hotbed of Huntsville, Alabama on Friday the 21st.

And for those interesting stats…

It’s quite common that a team’s best defenceman will record the team’s “most time on ice” stat. For instance, Brian Leetch of the Rangers averaged a league high 29:21 of ice time per game last year. Of the top 30 on this list, 29 are defencemen. The lone forward? Pavel Bure of the Florida Panthers, he placed a remarkable 4th with 26:52! Another reason I think he should have one the Hart Trophy for “Most Valuable Player TO HIS TEAM” award. He means much more to the Panthers than Sakic does to the Aves.

A stat that shows how well the Devils play defensively as a team: 4 of the top 5 players on the +/- list are Devils. (Elias +45, Stevens +40, Sykora +36 and Rafalski +36). The top 8 players are either Devils or Aves.

On the other end of the spectrum, who would have expected great names like these to be at the bottom of the same list? Isbister -19, Amonte -22 and Lecavalier -26. I guess it doesn’t matter how good you are if you play for a bad team.

One way to tell that the Sedin twins might be for real afterall: they combined to score 7 points in the 4 playoff games against Colorado.

Has there been a better playoff series in the past 5 post seasons than Dallas VS Edmonton, every year? Seems to me the winner of that series deserves a better fate than to be swept in the next round.

With Team Canada already strong defensively, Gretzky says he is looking to add an offensive minded youngster from the camp. Calgary’s Derek Morris and Ottawa’s Wade Redden are there, but it has been Eric Brewer of the Oilers who has stood out the most so far.

Brendan Morrow had to restain himself from hammering Eric Lindros at practice yesterday. During a scrimmage, Lindros came through open ice with his head down and Morrow had to literally get out of the way so as not to take #88 out. Lindros and Primeau had 4 point performances in a 5-1 scrimmage on day 2 in Calgary.

Best wishes go out to Saku Koivu and his family, hopefully this story will end as well as Mario Lemieux’s, Roger Nielsen’s, John Cullen’s and referee Paul Stewart’s did. It can’t hurt to say a quick prayer for him.

And for those of you who are eagerly awaiting the “Uniform grades” article, the wait is almost over. I could have it posted later today.

Puckboy

puckboy@hockeytraderumors.com