A FEW CRAZY STATS TO PONDER FROM 2005/06

Some of these stats are from THN's Ultimate Pool Guide were really suprising, to me anyway.

• Alex Ovechkin- Finished 14th in the NHL with 172 hits. Brendan Morrow was 1st with 234. Gad, Ovechkin can do it all can't he?
• Only 40.8% of Joe Thornton's 125 points came on the powerplay. I thought that number would be higher.
• A happy Leafs thought: Kyle Wellwood was tied for 7th in the NHL with a 56.3% faceoff percentage. Who was the best faceoff player? Unsigned Yanic Perrault at 62.2%
• A suprising appearance in the Worst Faceoff category was Eric Staal, coming in at 42.6%, which was 11th worst.
  
• Rod Brind'amour spent more time on the ice per game than any player in the NHL last season. His average was 24:17. Brad Richards was 2nd with 22:45. A fair sized gap. I would have thought that Jaromir Jagr would have lead that category, but he was 4th with 22:04.
• Brind'amour was also first overall taking 43.8% of the Hurricane's faceoffs. Thornton was 2nd with 36.8%, another decent gap there.
• Think the Leafs relied heavily on McCabe and Kaberle last year? The two were 1st and 2nd respectively in ice time per game by defencemen. That may change this year. Canucks defencemen Mattias Ohlund and Sami Salo were 7th and 18th.
• Ruslan Salei had the worst shooting percentage in the NHL last season at 0.9% with 108 shots. Brent Sopel was second worst at 1.5% with 133 shots. Poor Soaps had his best numbers in Vancouver didn't he? Suprisingly, Jay Bouwmeester was 5th on the list at 2.6% with 189 shots. Which defenceman is going to hit the net consistently in Florida this year? Bryan Allen?
• Can you believe that Joe Sakic had 7 attempts in the shootout last year and didn't score once?
• Anson Carter was 3rd in the league in shooting percentage at 22.6% with 146 shots. Alex Tanguay was #1 at 23.2% with 125 shots. Ovechkin is much further down the list at 12.2% with 425 shots. And he still had 52 goals.
  
• Mark Recchi must have played like complete crap in Pittsburgh because he was a league-worst -36, and he managed to win the Cup in Carolina.
• Alex Auld played 67 games in place of Cloutier, and he had zero shutouts. Ed Belfour played 49 games with the same result. Why am I predicting Florida to make the playoffs again? Oh right, they'll both play better this year.
  
• Robert Esche played 40 games last season and did not allow any shorthanded goals against, the only goalie to do so that played more than about 20 games.
• The best 2 goalies in the shootout save percentage category? Thrasher Kari Lehtonen and Capitals backup Brent Johnson.