10 Reasons to Care About the NHL This Season - Maxim
The 2008-2009 NHL season is just around the corner, and Maxim (yuck) has a guide to why you should care about the new year of hockey. They should have replaced "New Third Jerseys" with "New Chance to Win your Fantasy Hockey League."
Sports Club Stats - Your Team's Chances of Making the Playoffs
Sports Club Stats calculates your team's statistical chances of making the playoffs by running simulations of all the remaining games left in the season. Sports Club Stats has statistical analysis for the NHL's Eastern and Western Conferences, the NBA Playoffs, NFL Playoffs, NASCAR Sprint Race for the Chase, European Football, and MLB.
I'm currently working on my other website Fantasy Hockey Pool Stats .ca, and developing predictions in a spreadsheet for how each hockey team and player will do in the 2008 NHL Playoffs, and Sports Club Stats is going to be helpful with that.
Floobster - Rob Davison scores from nearly 200ft on Vesa Toskala (video)
As the 2008 NHL Playoffs approach, everyone's paying a little more attention to the end of the hockey regular season.
Last night, the New York Islanders' Rob Davison scored an almost unbelievable shorthanded goal against the Toronto Maple Leafs, that nearly went the length of the ice. You've really got to see it to believe it. Why is it "almost" unbelievable? Because was playing against the Leafs...
Golf Leafs Golf! Thanks to Digg for the link.
Forbes Special Report: The Business of Hockey
NHL '94.com
Longtime fans of hockey videogames recognize that Electronic Arts' NHL 94 was the best hockey game of all time. There were all the fights, one-timers, screens, monster hits, the players' and teams' real names, not to mention some of the all time great players, like Mario and Wayne.
Now you can play NHL 94 hockey on your own computer or online in leagues against others.
This is why they created the internets!
Wikipedia: Unusual articles
Someone has taken the time to compile a massive list of the weird and wonderful articles on Wikipedia.
Such as what?
For starters, how about:
| Traditions and anecdotes associated with the Stanley Cup | An ice hockey trophy with a long history of abuse, superstition, and tests of buoyancy. |
| Snail racing | Ready, steady, slow! |
| Squirrel fishing | A sport of skill and patience. |
| Teddy bear toss | A Christmas tradition in minor league hockey. |
| Bovine bingo | A different way to play bingo. |
| Bummer and Lazarus | Two stray dogs that roamed the streets of San Francisco, California, in the early 1860s and were exempted from local ordinances. |
| Chicken hypnotism | Have you ever wanted to hypnotize a chicken? If not, why not? |
| Chicken sexer | A person who has been specially trained to determine the sex of chicken hatchlings. |
| Gef the talking mongoose | A poltergeist-like creature which claimed to have been an 80-year-old Indian mongoose, alleged to have haunted a Manx cottage during the 1930s. |
| Jackalope | A cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope. |
| Jersey Devil | A mythological creature said to inhabit the New Jersey Pine Barrens. |
| Emerald Cockroach Wasp | A wasp that can ride a cockroach and drive it, too. |
| Exploding head syndrome | Some people hear a massive explosion that wakes them up after being asleep for an hour or two. |
| Fatal hilarity | Is there really anything so funny you can die of laughter? |
| Female hysteria | A once-common diagnosis of a range of symptoms in women, cured through masturbation to orgasm. |
| Can't sleep, clown will eat me | A stock phrase that's become a popular joke-explanation for insomnia. |
| Cartoon physics | An explanation of the laws of physics as they have come to be (mis)represented in cartoons. |
| Cuteness in Japanese culture | It's not just Hello Kitty |
| Gimli Glider | Due to an input error, a Boeing 767 plane runs out of fuel mid-flight and becomes a glider. |
| Guided rat | Implanted electrodes let researchers "steer the animal over an obstacle course, making it twist, turn and even jump on demand." |
| David Hahn | A 17-year old known as the Radioactive Boy Scout, he irradiated his back yard attempting to build a nuclear breeder reactor from spare parts. |
Vancouver Sun - Raise a Reader
In yet another sign that it's hockey time in Vancouver, Henrik Sedin wasHockey Pool Links and Resources - Fantasy Hockey Pool Stats .ca
Free Online Hockey Pools
They've dropped the puck!!
It's the first day of the NHL's 2007-2008 Regular Season, as the mighty Stanley Cup champion Anaheim Ducks take on the Los Angeles Kings in London, England, and it's not to late to start a fantasy hockey pool. My hockey pool draft happens tonight, and I've been in pools where the picks weren't made until a week into the season, so there's still time.
For many Canadians, the start of the hockey season means that it's hockey pool time.
For many Americans, it's fantasy hockey time. Why the difference? I'm not sure.
The Free Online Hockey Pools link has a list of free fantasy leagues to try out your hockey predictions with total strangers. There are also templates for free bracket- or category-style fantasy hockey pools, which are the easiest type of leagues to host because you don't need everyone together in the same room.
The Hockey Pool Links and Resources has a list of the best places on the net to keep track of hockey statistics, injuries, rumors, news, player salaries, the season schedule and scores.
There are also team-by-team previews for the 2007-2008 NHL season. He shoots, he SCORES!!!
Liveability: Where the grass is greener - Economist.com
The statistics are in for the annual Economist ranking of the World's Most Livable Cities. Vancouver scores the top spot this year, and Australian cities do very well too. The article has the list of the Top 10 Best Cities, as well as the Worst 10 Cities. Now if we could only get our hockey team to perform like the best in the world.
Today's Link source: Digg
Vancouver Canucks - Canucks Re-Sign Forward Trevor Linden
The NHL's Vancouver Canucks' annual dilemma about their heart and soul comes to an end.
The Canucks re-signed their most popular player today to a one year contract. At 37 years old, he might not have the best stats for your fantasy hockey pool, but he's an excellent supporting player.
Go Canucks! Go!
Sports Illustrated writers' "Best Game I've Ever Seen"
Sports Illustrated pulls off a great concept by asking all their writers to write about the "Best Game I've Ever Seen".
There are lots of entries, and a huge range of sports are covered. Of course, since there are sports writers at all of the major sporting events, all the most recent Greatest Sports Events are covered, like the 1987 Canada Cup hockey tournament, Buster Douglas over Mike Tyson in 1990, Tiger's first title in 1996, one of Michael Jordan's most famous playoff victories and Flutie's Hail Mary victory in 1984. For me, it's often the more obscure sports that make for the most interesting reads, such as Italy's Palio horse race, an Olympic tennis match in Athens, Olympic heavyweight boxing trials, 1995 cross-town rivalry in college hockey, and an NCAA college wrestling tournament.
The concept works, as the writers pour out their passion onto the page, and explain what makes the most famous, and not so famous, sports events so important to their lives and their careers.
Today's Link source: Linkjockey Tumblr
2007 NHL Draft
It's one of the biggest days of the year for hockey!
Friday June 21 is the first day of the 2007 NHL Draft in Columbus, Ohio. Rounds Two through Seven will take place on Saturday. One of the projected first picks is Kyle Turris, who played for the Burnaby Express of the BCHL this year.
There are mock drafts and in-depth profiles of the prospects from the NHL, TSN, ESPN, as well as online sources like Hockey’s future magazine, The Fourth Period and the Vancouver Canucks. Many sites promise to have updates as the hockey draft unfolds, and there is a live video stream from the NHL site.
Today's Link source: Linkjockey
How to Mash Up RSS Feeds with Yahoo Pipes - MacLife
About a month ago, Linkjockey published a story about Yahoo! Pipes. The link that day explained the Pipes really well, but today's link will hold your hand through the steps of creating your own RSS feed mashup with Pipes. The tutorial takes you through the steps.
It IS really easy to use the Pipes, and get start remixing content from the web.
My goal was to create an uber-RSS feed for sports teams. It would be an aggregation of news stories from around the world. As a proof of concept, I figured that I could pick the two hockey teams battling for the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup: the Ottawa Senators and the Anaheim Ducks. See the examples on the sidebar, or click the links below for full feeds.
Ottawa Senators RSS news feed
Anaheim Ducks RSS news feed
This could have a lot of value for drafting picks in hockey pools. Let me know what you think!
Today's Link source: MacLife magazine
officepools.com
The 2006-2007 NHL regular season is over, and the 2007 Stanley Cup playoffs are about to begin. My beloved Vancouver Canucks had a great year with the league's MVP (whether they accept it of not), Roberto Luongo, and won the Northwest Division.
My friends and I are getting organized for the playoffs by entering a playoff hockey pool. We've tried a few websites for managing the pools, but officepools.com is clearly the best that we've tried. It's well-designed, and officepools.com does the calculations every night. For once on Linkjockey, the link isn't free, but officepools.com does offer a free demo. They also offer the most stats and give you fantastic value for your $20.
The playoffs start on Wednesday. Go Canucks! Go!
Hopefully, my beloved Vancouver Canucks will make a fantastic deal, and finally make a run at the Stanley Cup.
NHL.com - Radio
As the NHL prepares for the All-Star game today in Dallas, today's link lets you listen to every single NHL game live.
No matter where you live in the world, you can listen to your favourite team play every game over the internet. As so many sports leagues try to increase their "revenue stream" by gouging their fans for every penny they can get, it's uplifting that the NHL is doing something so right. The NHL is using this technology to make it easy and free to be a fan.
Through the miracle of Windows Media Player (also for Mac), every game's play-by-play is streamed live over the internet, using the same feed from each team's radio broadcast crew. If you're listening to a Montreal Canadiens game, you can even listen in French!
