Tag hockey

The 2024-25 season for the Coachella Valley Firebirds ended on May 9th with a 2-0 loss to the Abbotsford Canucks. Overall, that series saw the Firebirds score

• one goal in Game 1
• one goal in Game 2
• five goals in Game 3
• no goals in Game 4

This isn't surprising given exactly how young the Firebirds were this season, but it was disappointing.

Coach Laxdal talked a lot about how young the team was and how on any given night we would have anywhere from seven to nine rookies that were in the starting lineup. And in a team of 24, that's a pretty big portion of guys out there who are very young.

That being said the disappointment is palpable the this is the earliest that the Firebirds have ever exited the postseason. Granted this is only their third year but we are typically used to seeing hockey for another seven weeks. When put into that perspective, it is really disappointing.

Still, I think there were some really bright spots from this year, including Leyton Roed, Jani Nyman, Nikke Kokko, Ryan Winterton, and Ty Nelson.

At the start of the season, I did indicate to a friend of mine (who also has season tickets) that I had pretty low expectations for the Firebirds and may have even indicated I wasn't sure that they would make the playoffs. The Pacific Division has 10 teams and 7 of them make the playoffs. I may have been a bit too pesimisitic in that analysis.

During the first round the Firebirds swept the Wrangerls 2-0. This is great, but they did manage to blow a 3-0 lead in game 1. The were able to win that game, but it took two plus Overtime periods (it ended a few minutes into the third OT).

Game two of that series did see the Firebirds win 2-0 with Nikke Kokko getting his first professional AHL shutout, which was great . But it's also a bummer that it took until the 74th game of the season for him to get his first shutout of the season. ¹

In six games, the Firebirds were 3-3. They scored four goals, two goals, one goal, five goals, one goal, and no goals. They were 0-17 on the power play, and they gave up two, count them two, 3 goal leads.

Needless to say, this was just a hard set of games to watch. The season was hard to watch as a fan. The Firebirds would find ways to lose games. In previous seasons these were the games that they would find some way to win!

There was an article in the Desert Sun that spoke about how proud Coach Laxdal was of the players and how much effort that they gave. And I agree, they did give a lot of effort and he spoke about how young they are.

And again, they are young, and missed their captain Max McCormick for basically two thirds of the season. But they did have some veteran players out there Mitchell Stephens, Brandon Biro, Cale Fleury and Gustav Olofsson. Unfortunately it was just too much to try and overcome.

One of the things that Coach Laxdal also commented on was exactly how much younger next year's team might be. And so while I am again very excited about watching hockey in six months, which is just so long away. I am lowering my expectations for the 25-26 season even lower than they were this year. I'm really hoping we make the playoffs, but won't be surprised if we don't.

And that's going to be okay ... because even bad hockey is still hockey. And I love hockey, and even when they lose, I love watching the Firebirds.

1. During the regular season, there was exactly one shutout by Victor Ostman ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Wed 21 May 2025

I went out of town to watch the Firebirds play today and it was a great time. The 2+ hour trip down was mostly uneventful, but we did have to avoid some traffic going through some backroads that none of us had ever taken before. I think one of the best things about going out of town to a city is being able to park my car at the hotel and then NEVER have to drive it again until we leave.

The arena was close enough that we were able to use a combination of public transit and walking, which made the whole experience just so nice.

I have to say that the Pechanga Arena is a really nice place to watch a hockey game.

Something that I've noticed is that Acrisure is really cold when compared to other arenas¹. I've been to two other arenas and in both of them I felt over dressed and was a bit warm.

Anyway, the game was much closer than it needed to be, but the Firebirds were victorious 6-5 and ended a 7-game win streak for the Gulls.

All in all a very nice way to spend an evening.

1. Toyota Arena in Ontario, Pechange Arena in San Diego ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Fri 28 February 2025

Over the last 2 seasons the Coachella Valley Firebirds were 15-1 against the San Jose Barracuda. The one loss over those 2 seasons was a 5-3 loss at home that was a bit closer than then score showed. Coming into this season I really didn't have any reason to think anything other than we'd be on the same trajectory of beating the Cuda more often than not.

I was wrong.

Coming into tonight's game the Firebirds were 0-4-0-2 against the Cuda with 2 of those loses by only 1 goal ... the hardest being the Teddy Bear Toss in San Jose where the Cuda won 1-0. It was brutal to watch.

Coming into tonight's game I didn't have super high expectations. I texted a friend of mine

OK, in the previous 2 seasons the Firebirds are 15-1 against the Cuda. This year, they're 0-4-0-2. and 4 of those losses are 1 by 1 goal. What's even wilder is that 5 of Stezka's losses are against the Cuda. I think we'll be getting Grubauer today since Stezka is up with Seattle. I'm still a little unsettled about playing them, but maybe this time it will be different?

He replied

It will be different, let's get it!

He was correct. The Firebirds finally got a W against the Cuda ... although the 5-3 score was closer than I would have liked it to be ... and there were plenty of chances for the Cuda to tie it up in the last 90 seconds. But finally, the first win.

For the 2024-25 season we're now 1-4-0-2.

Hopefully we can keep up the winning ways!

Posted by ryan on Sun 23 February 2025

Work has been a bit hectic recently which has really cut into some of my open source(ish) community participation, at least the "in person" ones. I've not been able to attend a DSF Office hour, or had a chance to do my writing session, or go to Jeff's Office Hours for a few weeks.

Today was looking like I would miss Jeff's Office Hours again, but I realized that if I could go, even for 30 minutes, I should.

I didn't realize before hand how worth it the experience would be. I was only there for about 30 minutes, but it was such a great experience to see some people I hadn't seen in some while, and to talk a bit about hockey and Python and just generally listen to my friend banter about various things.

These types of community are so necessary and so rejuvenating for me. I need to remember this. Work will be hectic for the foreseeable future ... as with everything, there's too much to do, and not enough time to do it in.

I will most likely forget this again, until I remember it, but hopefully I can work hard to stay engaged in the ways that are helpful and needed for me.

Posted by ryan on Fri 21 February 2025

I have an idea for a lightning talk for a conference that involves the use of datasette, git scrapping, and my love of the AHL. Specifically this project that I've been poking at for more than 2 years which uses git scraping to populate data into a sqlite database which is then served up by datasette on a server I run.

It's a silly little thing, but it lets me do some pretty cool things, like comparing how my beloved Coachella Valley Firebirds are doing year over year.

It also lets me see their point totals by day for a specific number of historic years¹ to do some other neat comparisons.

I've also been trying to work at getting a Django app integrated into it so I can make new tables and populate them with information about franchises, and teams to get a better sense of the history of a franchise and how it relates to any team.

For example, the current Calgary Wranglers were the previous Stockton Heat. And if you go back far enough they were the Maine Mariners who were the first expansion team to win the Calder Cup back in 1978-79.

Being able to easily trace the history of a franchise, through its various incarnations, with data seems like a pretty cool thing, at least to a data nerd like me.

I have BIG plans for this, but right now it's just a small, hobby project.

1. There are three parameters, years back, team name, and season name. See here for an example ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Mon 17 February 2025

Since the All-Star break the Firebirds entered what is arguably their softest part of their schedule with games against San Diego, Henderson, San Diego again, Bakersfield, and Tucson. These 4 teams are in the bottom of the Pacific division and in San Diego's case they are 20+ points behind the Firebirds.

I'm not sure what the hell is going on, but in their first game in San Diego they won in Over time in what should have been a blow out, in their second game in Henderson they lost by 1 goal.

In their first home game post All Star break they again played San Diego and lost 5-3 (the last goal being an empty netter so 🤷🏼) but they also gave up 2 goals in less than 40 seconds in the second period. That ended up really being the different.

That means 3 games into their 5 game 'soft' patch and they're 1-2. They play Bakersfield tomorrow night and I sure hope they find a way to get back into their winning ways because this has been some pretty shitty hockey to watch. The Firebirds are 2-3 against the Condors this season and have yet to beat the Condors at home this season.

To quote Han Solo, "I have a bad feeling about this"

Posted by ryan on Sat 15 February 2025

Just a few days ago I finished up watching Shoresy for the second time. This is one of my all time favorite, gut busting shows. I love how honest, and earnest, the main character Shoresy is. The show is well acted, well written, and an all around good time.

Honestly, there are scenes that I've seen several times on YouTube clips, and in the show, that make me almost fall over laughing.

And I want to be clear. When I say watching Shoresy for the second time, I mean all three seasons of Shoresy for the second time.

Now, why would I do this?

Honestly, with all of the awful things going on right now, I need a respite. I need to be able to crawl into a place where hockey is a central character, where multilingualism is encouraged, and where there's a character that will just tell you how it is.

Shoresy isn't for everyone. Some will find it offensive for the same reasons I find it endearing. And I think that's OK.

But if you're finding yourself in a need to retreat from the world, for just a little while, Shoresy can give that to you. At least it did for me.

Can't wait for Season 4 to come out.

Posted by ryan on Thu 06 February 2025

The AHL All Star Challenge was tonight and it was some of the most fun I've had at Acrisure since it opened in late 2022. Most All Star style competitions are pretty unserious, and can be, in my opinion, kind of boring as well. I mean, I LOVE baseball, but watching the All Star game is not for me. And don't get me started on the Home Run Derby. Snooze fest for me.

The AHL All Star completion though was something else! A Skills day yesterday, but then the actual challenge today. Representatives from each division play in a 3-on-3 style, in 2 5-minute periods. If tied at the end, the tie is broken with a shootout. The top two teams with the most wins face each other in the Championship game.

The Championship game is a little different in that it's a 6 minute single period game. Again, if there is a tie at the end you have a shootout.

This means that you get to watch 7 'mini' games in about 2 1/2 hours. It's pretty intense.

The Firebirds were the host team this year, but we only had one All Star, Cale Fleury. He was called up to the Kraken, so a replacement, Jani Nyman was made. Even though the Firebirds have a really good record (24-15-1-5), they only had 1 player on the All Star Game because the Pacific Division has 10 teams (read my thoughts on that here).

Anyway, the competition was pretty amazing tonight, and I'm really glad I got to go. I'm kind of hoping to be able to go next year when it's in Rockford.

Posted by ryan on Mon 03 February 2025

This is the fourth part of my How to Watch a Hockey Game Series. You can catch up on previous articles here

Game Outcomes

In many North American sports when reading the standings there are typically just Wins (W), and Losses (L).¹

Hockey is a bit different. When you look at the standings for Hockey you'll see 4 headers:

• W: Wins
• L: Losses
• OTL: Overtime Losses
• SOL: Shootout Losses

As discussed earlier in this series, if a game is tied at the end of regulation, a five-minute overtime period is played. If either team scores during this Overtime period then the winning team gets a Win, while the losing team gets an Overtime Loss (OTL).

If they're still tied then a Shootout is played. Once a winner is declared in the Shootout they get the Win, while the losing team gets a Shootout Loss.

Because of this, values are assigned to each type of outcome:

This might best be shown with a concrete example.

A Concrete Example

Let's say that the Coachella Valley Firebirds have played 39 games so far. They have won 21 games and lost 13 games. They've also played in 5 games that went into overtime and lost. Their overtime losses are one (1) in the Overtime period and 4 in Shootouts. Their record would look like this:

Coachella Valley Firebirds: 21-13-1-4

Points Calculation:

• Wins: 21 × 2 = 42 points
• OTL: 1 × 1 = 1 point
• SOL: 4 × 1 = 4 points

Total: 42 + 1 + 4 = 47 points

The Firebirds play in the Pacific Division of the Western Conference, and the standings might look like this:

Legend: - GP: Games Played - W: Wins - L: Losses - OTL: Overtime Losses - SOL: Shootout Losses - PTS: Points - PCT: Points Percentage

Winning Percent

There are 2 things to look at in the standings: (1) Total Points, and (2) Winning Percent.

The Total Points we've already spoken about so let's review winning percent.

The winning percent is calculated as the Total Points the team has divided by the total possible points that they could have gotten. The total possible points are calculated as the Games Played x 2 (that is, what are the total number of points that they would have if they won every game they played).

That is

    Winning Percent = Total Points ÷ (Games Played × 2)

For example in the table above, we see that the PCT column for the Firebirds is 0.603. This is calculated by the Points (47) divided by GP x 2 (39 x 2 = 78), that is 47 / 78 = 0.603.

The winning percent allows ranking intra-season when teams haven't played the same number of games. After all games have been played, the rankings are determined by the total number of points a team has.²

Conclusion

You should now be able to parse the standings in a Hockey League and be able to tell how well (or poorly) your team is doing.

This is the end of my series (for now). If there are any other burning questions you have about hockey, reach out to me on Mastodon.

1. Football also has Ties (T) but they are exceedingly rare and are only ever displayed when the first Tie of the season occurs ↩︎
2. Depending on the league there are tiebreakers, but that's outside the scope of this article ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Mon 03 February 2025

In a previous post of this series I laid out some basic rules of hockey. In this post I'll hopefully provide some tips on what to watch during your first few hockey games.

What should I 'watch' though?

This is a tough question and depends on if you're watching on TV or in person.

On TV

If you're watching on TV you're limited by whatever the camera and director are showing you. Hopefully they're pretty good at what they do and they'll help to show you what is interesting. You'll also have the benefit of replays. ¹

Watching the action on TV will be your best bet. The commentators will do a reasonable job of explaining the play. For some of the best NHL broadcasts you'll want to watch a Canadian feed. This might not be an option depending on where you live, but in general, watching a Canadian feed of a Canadian team will be really helpful.

If, for whatever reason, you're watching an AHL game² the best broadcasts to watch, in my opinion, are the Lehigh Valley Phantoms called by Bob Rotruck and Cleveland Monsters called by Tony Brown. Each of these is a single broadcaster doing both the color commentary and the play-by-play ... and they honestly get so excited it's hard to NOT get excited with them.

In Person

For your first in person game, just try and follow the puck as best you can. If for whatever reason you can't do that, pick a spot on the ice to concentrate on, preferably near one of the goalies. Which one? The goalie of the team you're not rooting for is a good choice! Then you can just kind of watch the action there.

Keeping in mind the rules start by focusing on just one rule - either icing or offside - for an entire period. Once you feel comfortable recognizing that rule during gameplay, switch your attention to watching for the other rule in the next period. For example, if you spent the first period watching for icing, spend the next period looking for offside plays.

Hopefully after a full game you're able to see them when icing or offside happen. If not, it just means you'll need to come back and try again 😁.

What not to worry about

Hockey is a fast paced game. No, like really fast. Don't worry too much about anything other than watching for the puck, if you can, and trying to pick up icing and offside. You'll see other stoppages in play when a penalty is called. The refs will make hand gestures to indicate the call on the ice and someone will be sent to the box.

Don't worry about whether or not a fight will break out. They don't always, and if they do, each player will be assessed a major penalty and will spend 5+ minutes in the penalty box.

Don't worry too much about learning the positions. The goalie is an obvious one (that's the person with all of the pads, the bigger stick, and the giant, well painted mask in front of the net), but trying to distinguish between a defender and a center ... like just don't worry about it!

Conclusion

Hockey is an amazing sport to watch, whether in person or on TV. It can take a little bit of time to get used to the fast pace, but hopefully this series has given you some tips to enjoy it and understand what's going on.

1. and refreshments that are much less expensive! ↩︎
2. home of my beloved Coachella Valley Firebirds ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Fri 31 January 2025