Podcast Ombudsman Report for Blueshirt Bandwidth Ep. 79

Welcome back to the Blueshirt Bandwidth Podcast Ombudsman Report. Each week, Charlie Vidal will listen to the latest episode of the podcast and correct the record on anything Joe and Eric (or, in this case, Chip) get wrong. If you aren't already, you can listen and subscribe to the podcast here.

Back-to-Back Hat Tricks

The New York Rangers recorded back-to-back hat tricks in recent games, with Gabe Perreault recording one against the Detroit Red Wings on April 4:

And Will Cuylle scoring three against the Washington Capitals the following night:

This was the first time that the Rangers scored hat tricks in consecutive games since Matt Puempel scored three power play goals against the Arizona Coyotes in Glendale on Dec. 29, 2016, and Chris Kreider scored three (with two on the power play) against the Colorado Avalanche in Denver two nights later, on New Year’s Eve.

Kevin Fiala Injury

Chip has made the point that the Los Angeles Kings probably would not have traded for Panarin if the Kevin Fiala injury had occurred before the trade was consummated. Fiala, of course, broke his left leg during the Winter Olympics and is out for the season.

Islanders Hire DeBoer

The image that Marc-Andre Fleury’s agent Alan Walsh tweeted during the 2020 playoff bubble was of Fleury being stabbed with a sword bearing DeBoer’s name:

Fleury quickly asked Walsh to delete the tweet, because having fun is illegal in the NHL.

The “Oettinger situation” that was referred to was DeBoer pulling Jake Oettinger seven minutes into an elimination game against the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference Final after Oettinger gave up goals on the first two shots that he faced. DeBoer then threw him under the bus saying, "It was partly to spark our team and wake them up. And partly knowing that status quo had not been working, and that's a pretty big sample size."

Patrick Roy Magic

It was asked whether “Patrick Roy could bring the magic from Colorado.” Prior to being hired by the Islanders, Roy’s only NHL coaching experience was three seasons with the Avalanche from 2013 to 2016.

The first season that he was at the helm, the Avalanche surprised many by winning the Central Division with 112 points. Digging into the statistics, the Avalanche’s apparent success was in large part a function of (stop me if you’ve heard this before) outstanding goaltending and puck luck. Despite being 26th (out of then 30 teams) in expected goals, the Avalanche finished with the league’s third highest point total thanks to the league’s third highest PDO, second highest shooting percentage, and second high goal differential over expectations. Additionally, Semyon Varlamov was the second best goalie in hockey on a GAR basis, trailing only prime Carey Price.

MoneyPuck Data on the Avs:

Evolving-Hockey data on Varlamov:

Islanders are Old and Dumb

Joe mentioned that the New York Islanders are old and made dumb trades at the deadline. The Islanders are the sixth oldest team in the NHL, younger than only the Colorado Avalanche, Vegas Golden Knights, Los Angeles Kings, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Minnesota Wild.

The dumb trades that the Islanders made included trading Jonathan Drouin, a first round pick (from Colorado) and a third round pick (from New Jersey) in this year’s draft for Brayden Schenn, who is 34 years old, signed for two more seasons at $6.5 million AAV, and probably not much better than Drouin:

Igor Goalie Fight

Eric brought up that Igor Shesterkin has a boxing coach during discussion of his fight with Jakob Markstrom:

Igor works out with Sergey Novikov, a professional boxer from Belarus who is based in Miami, in order to improve strength, conditioning, and coordination.

Eric mentioned that the angriest he ever saw Hank was when he flipped the net during play against Pittsburgh in March of 2016: