I've been giving this a lot of thought and I'm finally willing to give my unbiased thoughts on one of the most important new additions to the Avalanche:

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With 34% of the season complete, it felt like the opportune arbitrary time to take a narcissistic glance at how the Avalanche fair in the win/loss column compared to which of your beloved MHH writers pens the previews and recaps. Yes, this is a little self-serving, but every now and then you have to look in the mirror and tell yourself: "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!" - Even if you know it's a dastardly lie and that if you admit the truth your world will crumble down around you with glee as you're left to drown in the ashes of your failures.

Now, let's have some fun kids!

*too many writers on the recap. DDC & Derek covered the same recap. Both take the loss.

David Driscoll-Carignan: As expected, DDC is our Craig Anderson circa 2009-2010, carrying the majority of workload and starting hot. DDC's preview win percentage sits at an impressive .533, while his recap percentage is a solid .500. Obviously, he is more of a first period type of writer and fades if the games chug on past his Eastern Time Zone bed time. He also has turned into a bit of a preview-hog as he has taken 6 straight previews for MHH. But hey, it's all about the 'W', so who cares as long as he keeps winning.

Mike@MHH: Like Wayne Gretzky said," Mike misses 100 percent of the previews he doesn't write" - or something like that. Mike has recapped two Stars games and is 1-1 on the season. Why does Mike choose the Stars? Maybe because they're the closest team to his home state and he gets them on local TV and doesn't have to steal cable from the neighbors. Mike doesn't do previews. Allergies.

Sandie Gauthier: Sandie plays it safe. She has shunned previews and had only recapped one game before last night's implosion. What is that one game she choose to recap? The tilt against the league worst Islanders. Way to pad your stats Sandie. You fool no one! And after the loss last night, Sandie has fallen back to Earth and sits at 1-1. [edit: The Islanders aren't the "league worst", they just feel like they should be]

Cheryl Bradley: Another of MHH's heavy hitters, Cheryl began the season with a jaw dropping 3-0 start on both the recaps and previews, but has been unable to maintain the hot start. She has gone 0-4 in the 4 previews since her amazing debut, and has seemingly retired from recaps altogether while adopting the George Costanzian wisdom of going out on a high note.

A.J. Haefele: Also went out on a high note, previewing only the same sure-win Islanders game that Sandie recapped, to maintain a prefect record. A.J. avoids recaps altogether. I don't know, it's all sounds a bit Wolski to me....

Derek B: Derek hasn't logged many minutes on the preview, but his work on the recap has been admirable. His win percentage may only be .400, but his 7 starts show he is here to stay. So long as he works hard, he'll get himself out of that funk. In fact, he currently rides a 1 game win streak.

Brett Shumway: Wow. Just abysmal. I'm an inept 0-4 on previews and an ugly 1-5 on recaps. That's a combined win % of .111. But I had a strong outing on Sunday against the rival Red Wings and I feel like I'm turning the corner. Pray for me.

Americanario: Called up on a weekend to help with the recap while the MMH staff holidayed in the Poconos, Americanario took the loss against the Flames and was subsequently dropped back down to the comments section. His hard work and willingness to go into the corners of the Internet bode well for another call up.

[Edit: Chiavsfan actually did the recap of the Hawk's game the Avs won, but Cheryl posted the recap. So it's kind of like last night's game: Loungo gets credit for the win, but Schneider did most of the work....]

More observations after the jump...

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For our final sponsored post about enhancing the NHL experience, I'm envisioning a scenario where I replace Gary Bettman with someone infinitely more qualified: me. As your new NHL commissioner / benevolent overlord, I'm ready to make some changes to improve the game. Here are the 9 things I'd do to "fix" hockey.

1.       No more loser point. I don't love the shootout, but even I have to admit that it's exciting to watch. But you know what? The NBA slam dunk contest is kind of exciting too (or, it was the last time I watched it, probably sometime in the ‘90s). Just because it's exciting doesn't mean you want a game decided by one. It's gone. From now on, 4-on-4 sudden-death overtime is extended from 5 minutes to 20. That's right, I said 20. If you win, 2 points. Lose? Nothing. Zilch. Zip. Not even a home version of the game. If the game is still tied after 4 periods of hockey, it's a tie. End of story.

2.       Vary rink sizes. Wouldn't it be awesome to give some baseball-like character to each of the rinks? Different sized rinks would open up all sorts of different playing strategies. Smaller rinks would emphasize hitting, larger rinks would reward skill. Do you build your roster around your rink...or one that's balanced enough to play well anywhere?

3.       Divisional Playoffs. There is nothing duller than the "balanced" 1-8 playoff seeding used by the NHL today. Yawn. We're bringing back divisional playoff play. 4 divisions, 4 teams from each division make the playoffs, and the first two rounds feature all-divisional play (1vs4, 2vs3 in round 1, with the winners playing each other in round 2). Why? Because the only thing more exciting than playoff hockey is playoff hockey between two rival teams. The league got rid of divisional play because sometime the 5^th best team in one division was better than the 4^th best team in another division. To this I say: boo hoo. If you can't finish in the top 4 in your division, you can skip the postseason.

4.       Realignment. Of course, #3 won't work with 6 divisions, so we're going to have to move some teams around. This could be an opportunity to bring in the "classic" division names here (Smyth, Patrick, Wales, Norris), but I don't feel a need to bring those back. Geographical names work just fine, thanks. We'll keep the East and West Conference. In the East, will have a Northeast Division (Montreal, Boston, Toronto, Ottawa, Buffalo, Detroit, Columbus) and an Atlantic Division (Carolina, Washington, NYI, NYR, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia). Out West we'll have a Pacific (Vancouver, LA, SJ, Anaheim, Phoenix, Calgary, Colorado and Edmonton) and a Central Division (Minnesota, Dallas, Nashville, St Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, Tampa and Florida). For the most part, existing rivalries remain intact. A few are restored (Toronto and Detroit) and there's potential for some new ones to form (Minnesota and Chicago). Oh, and yes, there are 14 teams in the East and 16 in the West. It's okay - life will go on.

5.       No Uniprons. Simple enough, yes?

6.       Organizational Salary Cap. I don't love the cap, but it seems like there's a couple of things that can be done to salvage it into what it was meant to do: level the playing field. One would be to extend the cap to all of an organization's players under contract. It would be a higher cap, of course, but your players in the minors count (and you'll need to have a minimum number under contract). No more stashing a veteran in the minors just for cap relief.

7.       5 Year Maximum Contract. The mega-long contracts we're seeing in the league are not just salary cap exploits. They also limit player movement. That won't work in my NHL. No contract over five years; we want to make sure these guys get onto the open market a couple of times to jazz up free agency a bit.

8.       No Gary Glitter. Don't like the song, don't like seeing mountains of music royalties going to a slug of a human being. So, his music is out. I don't care if they replace it with the Macarena or the Hokey Pokey. Glitter is a goner.

9.       Shorter Season. 82 games is too much.  Let's shave it down to 70 and cut 6 weeks off the marathon season to boot.

That's it. 9 "simple" things that I'd do if I was in charge. There's little chance of that happening, of course. But you never know...

As you may remember, MHH has completely sold its soul and is taking part in some sponsored posts with the theme "Enhance Your Experience". Last week, I recommended simplifying some of the more convoluted rules on the ice. This week, I'm stepping onto the soapbox to bang a drum about a topic that's near and dear to many of our hearts: Bring back the shift charts!

Don't remember shift charts? Shift charts were a report the NHL used to put out for each game showing a graphical representation of each player's ice time (example). Simple. Useful. Effective. For some reason, the NHL quietly stopped publishing these after the 2006-2007 season and that's a darn shame. Why did they get rid of them? I don't believe there's been any published explanation, but I wonder if it has to do with the fact that they changed the format for their TOI data at that time as well. Check out the 2006-2007 TOI report and compare it to one from 2007-2008. Could it be just a matter of not having the resources to update their shift chart generator?

Since the NHL still publishes their shift-by-shift statistical data, it's possible to to "roll your own" shift charts, like Vic Ferrari does at TimeOnIce.com. Those of you who remember me from my previous home know that I wrote a program to generate shift charts as well. But after one season, I ran into some technical difficulties and I haven't had the time to coax my limited technical know-how to fix the damn thing. Until then, I'll continue to plead with the NHL to bring the shift chart back. Please!

Around the SBN hockey blogs today, we're talking about ways to enhance the fan experience for the great game of hockey, eh. They range from the semi-serious (get rid of dopey fans) to the silly (giant bubble over the rink) to the painfully obvious (more beer!). Since I exhausted my humor well on Thursday with my dating game preview, I decided to play this one kind of straight (but don't worry - we've got two more of these to do).

What I'd love to see is to make the game just a little simpler. That doesn't mean dumbing it down, but there are some things that have never made a lot of sense to me.

Number one on the list is things that are legal or not legal depending on the situation. For example, you can move the puck to a teammate with your glove in your own zone; anywhere else on the ice, it's a stoppage in play. You can't close your glove around the puck anywhere on the ice (faceoff), but if you do it in your own crease, it's a penalty shot. Kicking a puck to a teammate is just fine...unless it goes into the other team's net, in which case it is not a goal. Of course, it does count if it goes in off your skate if you don't make a distinct kicking motion - angling your skate to deflect the puck in is legal. And then there's the high stick conundrum. You can knock down a shoulder high puck...but only to yourself or someone on the other team (who will sometimes stand around comically avoiding such a puck which is oh, so awesomely exciting); if one of your teammates is the next one to touch that puck, the play is over. And, boy, there really is nothing that enhances the hockey experience less than sitting around watching replay after replay to determine if a puck in the net was hit by a stick a millimeter above the crossbar or below the crossbar.

These little discrepancies are kind of annoying when watching from home (I've never really understood why a beautiful shoulder high deflection shouldn't be a goal, for example). But it's even worse when watching the game the way it's supposed to be watched: live and in person. How many times have you been sitting in the not-so-cheap nosebleeds and wondered why there was a whistle on the ice? You look around to the folks sitting near you and everyone has a clueless look. That's some fun, ain't it? But hey, you can't have those people passing pucks around with their gloves, can we?

Seriously, if I have to hear "distinct kicking motion" one more time while watching a hockey game, I may go crazy. Let's just make it a little easier. Decide if kicking, gloving and hitting a puck with a shoulder high stick are okay or not okay and just make it apply everywhere. Personally, I think it's so hard to score in this league that if you find a creta way to get it into the net you should be rewarded with a goal, not a 10-minute consultation session with the refs.

Oh, and while we're fixing things, this thing where the refs "explain" the results of a goal review? Nix it. Please. This works in the NFL. It does not work in the NHL where the explanation always boils down to one or two answers: goal or no goal. I have yet to witness a referee explanation that needed to be more in depth than that. Let's go back to the hand signals on this one, okay? It's more exciting that way anyway.