Cody Mcleod Lovefest Begins

I'll admit it. I thought putting Cody Mcleod in the lineup over Cody McCormick was a mistake. Mcleod was prone to bad penalties last season while yapping off at the most inopportune times. He just didn't seem in control of his emotions.

But he has proved me almost completely wrong this season. I say almost because McCormick has played like a beast as well, saving my bacon to a certain degree.

Today, the Forechecker - one of the premiere stats analysts around - has gathered together numbers on who is drawing the most penalties and in no surprise, Cody Mcleod finds himself near the top of the list.

He has drawn six penalties while only taking two himself, leaving him in 12th spot on the penalty +/- list.

The penalties he has drawn have been an equal weighting of retaliations by opposition and obstruction calls caused by Mcleod working hard and keeping his feed moving.

Keep it up, Cody. I'm loving the taste of my words.

Brendan Morrow finds himself at the bottom of the list and as I noted in my Stars-Avalanche recap, that is not how a captain should act.

I never thought I'd say this but Morrow could take a lesson from Mcleod on getting his emotions under control.

Scott Hannan: Faceoff Whiz?

It looks like we were all wrong on why the Avs signed Scott Hannan to a 4-year, $18M deal. As it turns out, the man is a faceoff dynamo!

Last night while doing my recap on the Dallas game I was checking out the RTSS stats to see what other weirdness could be spotted in them*. It was then that I realized that Scott Hannan is has the best faceoff percentage on the team, going 1 for 1 for a 100% conversion rate.

If anyone can remember the instance where Scott Hannan took a faceoff, please enlighten me. The only way I could see it happening is if the Avs put 5 defensemen on the ice while protecting a lead to pioneer a new coaching strategy. Or maybe coach Q decided to try and sneak one by everybody and put Hannan out to center the top line once? "Hey, is that Hannan out there on the first line? No dude, it's Sakic, he's just so awesome he can shapeshift."

Or maybe, just maybe, the NHL is still having issues with the recording of statistics. Tapeleg has been railing against NHL.com stats for a while now, and rightfully so. In fact, while watching Vancouver vs. Edmonton the other day, Gord Miller remarked "Right now, NHL.com shows a 1-0 lead for Vancouver on a Naslund goal". This was while the game was deadlocked at 0-0. That's so sad you might say it's pathetic.

* In case you didn't read that post to the end, the Avalanche were credited with more takeaways than giveaways last night which is as false as false can be.