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We asked our Twitter followers the following question:
Off of the top of your head - which NHL player has had the worst linemates/partners over the last three years?
The answers were surprising:
Phil Kessel x 3, Max Pacioretty, Paul Stastny, Rick Nash, Jonathan Huberdeau, Linus Omark, Thomas Plekanec, Mikko Koivu, John Tavares, Ryan Smyth, Evander Kane and Radim Vrbata.
While Smyth was a decent nomination, I'm not sure those respondents get what bad linemates are. Two guys got the idea:
@CopperandBlue whoever played with Whitney.
— Robert Oakley (@rangerbob94) October 9, 2013
@CopperandBlue Whoever has been partnered by Cam Barker or Jack Johnson
— Bruce Peter (@saskhab) October 9, 2013
I'll nominate this guy, forced to spend time with both Ryan Whitney and Cam Barker, but also Theo Peckham, Steve Kampfer, Jason Strudwick, Jim Vandermeer, and a whole other cast:
| Partner | TOI | Partner | TOI | Partner | TOI | ||
| Ladislav Smid | 921.2 | Kurtis Foster | 62.4 | Jared Spurgeon | 27.0 | ||
| Theo Peckham | 560.1 | Marco Scandella | 59.3 | Taylor Chorney | 10.1 | ||
| Clayton Stoner | 506.8 | Jim Vandermeer | 58.9 | Shawn Belle | 4.8 | ||
| Ryan Whitney | 229.6 | Ryan Suter | 54.1 | Colten Teubert | 4.4 | ||
| Justin Falk | 185.9 | Cam Barker | 40.0 | Tyler Cuma | 2.1 | ||
| Andy Sutton | 88.5 | Nate Prosser | 38.4 | Chay Genoway | 1.1 | ||
| Steve Kampfer | 79.7 | Brett Clark | 35.7 | Kris Fredheim | 1.0 | ||
| Jason Strudwick | 72.4 | Corey Potter | 30.6 | Alex Plante | 1.0 | ||
| Jeff Petry | 66.3 | Jonas Brodin | 30.3 | Richard Petiot | 0.6 |
Anton Slepyshev Sighting
In other news, Anton Slepyshev finally broke through with his first goal in the KHL. (Autoplay warning)
(h/t) ChunkletsHockey
Hertl's Punishment?
Tomas Hertl is all of the rage right now for this:
I'm more interested in this, via shiftchart.com
That's the Sharks' shift chart from last night - the green highlight shows Hertl's last 11 minutes. He didn't play after the goal above. I hope that wasn't a form of punishment for "showing off", and if so, I hope Hertl does the same thing the next time out.
Edmonton leads the league!
Informally, Edmonton has the early league lead in own-goals at 4 in 3 games. The data comes from another Twitter survey and it obviously not a complete data set:
| Edmonton | 4 |
| Vancouver | 3 |
| Minnesota | 2 |
| Los Angeles | 1 |
| Long Island | 1 |
| New Jersey | 1 |
| Washington | 1 |
| Philadelphia | 1 |
| New York | 1 |
| Ottawa | 0 |
| Detroit | 0 |
| San Jose | 0 |