Drunks Digest

Across the Pond

With nearly one half of the season in the books, the Euro Division looks promisingly competitive with the Kings breaking into the perennial Jack Daniels leaders from the East, the Vipers and Battalion. A bit below the Kings are the steady Galaxy, and below that, the Icebats and Vikings hang on the edge of the post-season at spots 7 and 8 respectively.

The big surprise of this week is not that GM to Watch of last week, Aleksi Hamalainen, was not around much to be observed, but that his Nighthawks have jumped last years Euro sweetheart, the Piranhas, in the standings. Joining the Piranhas in a downward slide are the lowly and lowlier Blaze, which isn’t all that surprising given how little the Blaze GM is around. This would be a decent excuse, but fellow Euro GMs for the Vikings and Nighthawks have revealed that Mill presence isn’t necessarily equal to playoff presence. We’ll see, or perhaps not see, how these GMs contribute to the revitalized league and guide their teams in the second half of the season.

The Piranhas struggle continues to perplex folks in the DWSHL. The Piranhas are excellent against the rest of the Jack Daniels Conference with a 9-6-1 conference record, better than any Euro club. However, the Zurich squad doesn’t seem to be finding its new home all that hat-hangable as their heart, and wins haven’t been in Zurich with a miserable 5-6-1 record. This record isn’t the worst home record in the Euro, but it certainly represents a place the Piranhas can start to turn it around, which, I still believe they can do given the relative weakness of the bottom half of the Jack Daniels.

One bright spot for the Piranhas, Freddy Braithwaite remains the best Euro backstop, but that bright spot may be dulling as both Felix Potvin of Antwerp and Hanover’s Marc Denis have appeared on the leader board, though Potvin’s played almost as many minutes as Brathwaite and Denis combined. But GAAs and Save percentages mean little when they don’t result in wins, which makes Stockholm’s Olaf Kolzig the new big wall in Europe with the second best record in the league. A bit of goaltending ignominy, Hanover’s Jason Bacashihua leads the league in Golae PIMs with 12. Nice work, Hanover!

Patric Kjellberg’s output has slowly decreased, dropping him off the scoring leader board leaving Pavel Bure all alone, but the Vikings’ Todd Bertuzzi might be climbing up the charts having just ripped off an 11 game point scoring streak. The Kings’ John Madden leads the league in PP Goals and the Vikes’ Michael Handzus leads the league in shorties. Meanwhile, the future of the Euro looks bright as Helsinki’s Henrik Zetterburg is third in scoring for rookies.

Having run through the good stats and standings, we move on to the joy of observation:

Player to Watch: This week we like Jose Theodore from the Hanover Galaxy. He’ll have to pick it up if he wants to fight off a boom from Denis (though not a serious threat) and if the Galaxy want to get back on top of the Euro.

GM to Watch: This week, we’re going to pick a GM that’ll actually be around to watch. Darnell Theres of the Piranhas has already mentioned a possible Mark Recchi trade, and the shuffle he makes in Zurich will determine what direction the once proud franchise sees itself heading in the second half of the season.

Team to watch: The Nighthawks. Can the keep jumping Euro teams on their way to the playoffs?

For the (cheese-eating) Euro division, I’m across the pond.