Monday Morning, Crazy Weekend

Another crazy weekend in the NHL. The Oilers are now 6-4-1, which looks pretty golden for a team that lost 5 games in a row. The Leafs beat the RANGERS?! Ya i know, that's what i thought. Five 3rd period goals gave the leafs the 5-2 victory over the rangers. Right now, as it hurts to say it, the Maple Leafs aren't looking too bad. The Oilers victory over the Hurricanes on Saturday afternoon was a big one, both for the 2 points and it morally helped a team that had lost 5 games in a row. That helped them the next day to overcome their scoring slump and beat the Flyers 5-4. Now my fellow blogger Smith posted a blog all about how Ales Hemsky is not as good as the likes of Marian Gaborik and Marian Hossa. He did it very convincingly, however, he left out some very important stats, one of the biggest is the fact that Marian Gaborik has never played a full 82 game season in his career, actually he has missed 59 games in the last 3 seasons alone. So who is injury prone now? Another fact he made, but didn't explain a little more, is the fact that, Hossa is 29, and Gaborik is 26. While Hesmky is only 25. Hemsky still has 4 more seasons to gain on Hossa! Another big fact about Gaborik is that last year was the first time in his career he has lead the Minnesota Wild in points since 2002-2003. Meanwhile Hemsky has lead the Oilers in points for the last 3 years since the lockout. That include the 06-07 season when he only played 64 games. Doesn't say tons for the Oilers, but he is their points leader, period. Anyways, i think i will accept for the time being, that Hossa is the better player of the three, but i will argue that Hemsky is a more consistent player then Gaborik, that makes him better.
So far after 149 games through the month of October the Goals/Game average was up to 5.9 , which is a slight increase of 3% on the 5.7 average of October 2007. So the Goalie Pads are working, but maybe they can cut them down a little more, id like to see an average of 6 or 7 goals a game. That would make every game fairly exciting, even if it is the New Jersey Devils and Minnesota Wild playing each other. Kevin Weekes starts his first game of the season tonight (he took over the last game after Brodeur went down with an elbow injury), this will only be Weekes' tenth start for the rangers in the last 3 seasons! Talk about riding the pine! Anyways, thats all for Monday, game to watch tonight....Chicago is at home to the Avalanche. Lots of good young talent on display.
Peace Out
-Sporer