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I’ll say it again - if you aren’t following people on Twitter, you’re missing some fairly entertaining interactions.

Joffrey Lupul: “Hitting people in the head w/ ur shoulder is part of NHL hockey. We’re big boys. Discuss..”

Now, this is particularly funny, given that Lupul basically goes out of his way to avoid the risk of taking a hit. I’m convinced that he slows up when he’s going to be first to the puck but at the cost of taking a hit or at least that he did in Edmonton. The kind of game he plays - he’s not a puck carrier - means that he’s probably at less risk of actually taking a shot to the head than most forwards. Easy for him to declare that that should continue to be a risk, when he doesn’t actually run it.

Of course, when TSN’s Gino Reda chimed in, it got weird:

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Scoring Chances for NHL Game Number 20972

One of the reasons I’m not wild about Canadian politics is that I see it taking on an increasingly American bent in terms of law and order issues. Federally, the Conservatives don’t care about evidence based policy, the Liberals are terrified of being painted as soft on crime and the NDP is irrelevant. Mandatory minimum sentences are an example of an American policy that’s creeping into Canada. Radley Balko’s written a lot about civil forfeiture in the United States, which is a process by which the state can lay claim to assets that it believes are associated with crime. It’s rife with problems in the United States - in many states, the agency seizing the assets gets a cut of the return, which creates an incentive for agencies to run cases in order to try and gain control of the property. In many cases, the burden of proof that has to be met by the state is much lower than the burden the state has to discharge to prove that someone created a crime:

The 1984 law lowered the bar for civil forfeiture. To seize property, the government had only to show probable cause to believe that it was connected to drug activity, or the same standard cops use to obtain search warrants. The state was allowed to use hearsay evidence—meaning a federal agent could testify that a drug informant told him a car or home was used in a drug transaction—but property owners were barred from using hearsay, and couldn’t even cross-examine some of the government’s witnesses. Informants, while being protected from scrutiny, were incentivized monetarily: According to the law, snitches could receive as much as one-quarter of the bounty, up to $50,000 per case.

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Scoring Chances for NHL Game Number 20954

As some friends and I watched Chris Pronger skate around the ice with his gold medal, we talked about how his life has basically been a morality play with no moral. If Dickens were to re-write “A Christmas Carol”, setting it at Christmas of 2005 with Chris Pronger in the role of Ebeneezer Scrooge, what would he have seen when the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come visited him in an attempt to convince him not to demand a trade from the Oilers and give quote after quote that reveals him to be something of a self-involved jerk? A trip to the Stanley Cup finals in 2006, a Stanley Cup championship in 2007, a $35MM contract from the Philadelphia Flyers in 2009 and a gold medal in 2010? It lacks a bit of the emotional punch that comes from a vision of your own untended grave.

I kicked this around with Cosh, who referenced Unforgiven and suggested that everyone gets it in the end and that we’ve all got it coming. This came to mind when I saw that Lubomir Visnovsky, Denis Grebeshkov and Steve Staios had been traded while Ethan Moreau, who was widely thought to be leaving and seemed pretty eager to go, is stuck in Edmonton until at least the summer. Moreau’s been giving off a “none of this is my fault” vibe for about two years now, which is unseemly when it comes from the captain, particularly when he, in his own way, is at fault for a lot of what’s gone on here.

If the Oilers are going to suck - and they are - why should Moreau be set free to enjoy the delights of playing games that matter after November? If we’re stuck following this horror show, Moreau should have to ride it to the bottom. To go from “For some teams it might be a bonus because they can get me for next year, too,” and checking the depth charts of contenders to see where you might fit in to the stark realization that your employer was desperate to get rid of you and couldn’t find a taker, let alone a buyer…well, that’s got to be a kick in the ego.

If it leads to a period of introspection, followed by a humbled Moreau who starts worrying about things like his predilection for obscene offensive zone penalties and asks first what more he can do for his team…well, it might have a happy ending for all involved, with Moreau rehabilitating his reputation with the fans in Edmonton before being dealt to a contender for the obligatory second round pick. If not, at least he’s going to be forced to endure the Oilers with the rest of us.

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Just a quick bit on the Vesa Toskala deal, which is taken apart by Jean Lefebvre here. I’m hard pressed to find any way in which this deal makes any sense from a business perspective.

Curtis McElhinney costs $110,880 for the rest of the season. Vesa Toskala costs $829,800. McElhinney is to be paid $570,000 for next season. If the Flames decided to do the most expensive thing possible with him - bury him in the minors - their total cost would be $680,800. If they bought him out, the total price drops to $490,800, with a cap hit of $190,000 or so in 2010-11 and 2011-12.

So basically, Calgary spent at least $150,000 to install Vesa Toskala rather than McElhinney behind Mikka Kiprusoff. The consensus amongst Flames followers seems to be that Toskala will play two games from here to the end of the season, both as part of back-to-backs.

You can actually reason through this and conclude that the upgrade isn’t worth it. The Flames allow an average of 29 shots per night. If Toskala’s a .900 goaltender (.897 since the lockout, with horrific results in Toronto during the past few seasons), you’d expect him to allow 5.8 goals in those games. If McElhinney is an .885 goalie (below his career average), you’d expect him to allow 6.7 goals in those games. So call it a one goal difference between the two of them - personally, I don’t think that Toskala, as presently constituted, is any better than McElhinney, but I’ll extend Sutter every benefit of the doubt.

One goal is a third of an expected point. The difference between these players is so vanishingly small that I can’t imagine how it possibly makes $150,000 worth of sense to make this move. I don’t know if Darryl Sutter ever has to account for himself to the Flames’ owners but I’d be interested to hear his explanation for the move. It’s simply bizarreand not even the worst move he made yesterday.

Scoring Chances for NHL Game Number 20938

Look, I don’t like putting the boots to Steve Tambellini over small stuff. There has been, however, a growing sense that he’s utterly clueless when it comes to negotiations. See, for example, the Khabibulin deal. The following sequence of events blows my mind:

March 1, 2010 - Edmonton trades Denis Grebeshkov to Nashville for a second round draft pick
March 2, 2010 - Nashville puts Ryan Jones on waivers
March 3, 2010 - Edmonton claims Ryan Jones off waivers

Dan Tencer is now reporting that the Oilers have had interest in Jones for some time. Here’s what I don’t get. The return on Grebeshkov has been crticized in some corners as being light. I don’t have strong feelings either way on this question, although I’ve come around to agreeing that it was a curious time to make the deal. What I don’t understand, if the Oilers had some interest in Jones, is why they didn’t get him as part of the Grebeshkov deal. If I’m reading the CBA correctly, the waiver price for Ryan Jones was $67,500.00.

There would seem to be two possibilities. First, they didn’t ask for Jones. This seems to be the most likely to me. It doesn’t reflect well on Tambellini if true. Second, Nashville really needed the $67,500.00 that they’d get if they waived Jones and this was a way for the Oilers and Predators to circumvent the bar in the CBA against sending money to a team. I’ve got no problems with this - I’m firmly of the view that if it’s not expressly forbidden by the CBA, it’s ok - but that’s an interesting story in and of itself. Hope someone picks up on this.

Scoring Chances for NHL Game Number 20931

Scott Reynolds gives me an opportunity to post something I’ve been meaning to post:

The Oiler record for worst +/- in a single season is now a shared record. Joffrey Lupul’s -29 in 2006-07 has been equaled by Shawn Horcoff this season. I daresay it’s about to be passed. More bleeding has taken place with Horcoff on the ice than any other Oiler ever. I’m not about to put all of the responsibility on Horcoff (context, percentages, Jacques-effect and on and on) but it says something about this team.

I wanted to dig into the underlying stuff a little bit with Horcoff. As we all know, his territorial numbers are not good this year. There’s a blog that’s sprung up devoted to slagging one of Horcoff’s defenders. Hard times.

As you can see, every number is worse than last year.

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