The Capitals just haven't been nearly as good at controlling play the past two seasons as they were prior to that. There are myriad reasons why but, based on how dramatically Semin's Relative Corsi rate has improved, I think we can conclude that Semin isn't one of those reasons. He's still driving play at an elite rate 5v5 compared to his teammates (significantly better than he used to, in fact) but since the team as a whole has struggled, that hasn't translated into as many opportunities as Semin was once getting.

Semin’s scoring chance differential of plus-52 was more than double any other Capital player (Perreault was second at plus-24). With Semin on the ice, the Capitals generated 52 more scoring chances on net than their opposition did.

The concerns about Semin are familiar. "Soft", "bad teammate", "not a playoff performer" are cliché. With so much objective evidence in sports, critics must turn to intangible evidence to provide a logical reason to why they can't like a player.

Hunter Tremblay has signed an AHL deal with the St. John's IceCaps. Tremblay played four years in the CIS with the University of New Brunswick before joining the Oklahoma City Barons a year ago. He was a big part of the penalty kill and will no doubt be missed.

He is a dominant possession player, he creates offensively, he produces more regularly than Alex Ovechkin (his 4 year average for Pts/60 is higher than Ovechkin's despite facing stiffer Corsi REL QoC).

Fans in Edmonton are excited about the signing of Justin Schultz. Fans in Anaheim are understandably feeling a little bit differently. This article from Anaheim Calling is a great analytical look at how things went down from a Duck fan's perspective.

Suter and Parise both sign in Minnie, reportedly on 13 year contracts. Northwest Division, prepare to feel the pain. Canucks fans, so much for easy President's Trophies beating up on the weaker sisters in the NW.

Darren Dregger reports the Oilers had Wayne Gretzky and Paul Coffey speak to Justin Shultz as part of thier sales pitch to woo the young defender. Great move by the organization, even if it doesn't work out.

Kevin Montgomery appears to have signed with Lillehammer of the Norwegian League. Any thoughts on this from the folks in OKC?

Came across this gem of an article via Pop. Science today. Details how missile-tracking cameras are being used by a select few teams to collect a vast amount of data. One of the teams just happens to be the OKC Thunder (currently in NBA Finals). The article is definately worth a read, if only to imagine some of the potential be edits this technology could bring to hockey. Just imagine: perfect data in areas such as hits (no more home scorer bias), shot location, assists on scoring chances, etc. One can dream.