I'm A Nerd: Settlers of Catan

(picture courtesy of fanpop.com)

Settlers of Catan is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber in 1995. The game has sold over 15 million copies worldwide and has even been called "The board game of our time". The game also had expansions: Seafarers, Cities & Knights, and Traders & Barbarians. These give the game a new dynamic and also increases the size of the board to allow 5-6 people at a time.

Essentially the board is made up of different tiles of land with numbers on each tile. You can then place a settlemen in between the tiles (so that your settlement usually touches 3 tiles at once). This could mean that is touches one tile with a 6, one tile with a 12 and one tile with a 4. Thus, whenever one of these numbers is rolled you get a resource that corresponds to that tile. You then use these resources to expland your settlemens and beat your opponents to new areas of the board.

As of July 2010 it is also available on the playstation network as well as xbox live.

Batweek: Surfing

This is pretty much how all battles should be decided. I would have loved to see this in the Dark Knight.

"True, Robin. It was noble of that animal to hurl himself into the path of that final torpedo. He gave his life for ours." - Batman.

Music Recommendation: Dragonette

The Canadian electropop group doesn't quite makeup up for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but the Toronto band is certainly making its hometown more bareable. Their debut album "Galore" was released in 2007 and featured singles "I Get Around" and "Take It Like a Man" amongst others. Although "Galore" was a great album their second album "Fixin To Thrill" had a lot more success featuring singles ""Fixin to Thrill", "Pick Up the Phone" and a collaboration with Martin Solveig for "Boys & Girls". This of course lead Dragonette's lead singer, Martina Sorbara, to her smash single "Hello". She also worked with Kaskade to release "Fire In Your New Shoes".

Batweek: Holy Blogging Batman!

I just thought I would do a quick update on my blog and the direction that it seems to be taking! So after having a someone decent response to my "weekly" theme, I thought I would continue the trend by having Batweek! Every single day I will be bringing up something cool that has happened with the original 1966 Batman featuring Adam West. Hopefully these clips give some insight as to why people are actaully batman fans and not just fans of the "Why so serious" batman.

I would also like to point out that I am now already up to 80 blog posts in just under a month of blogging. Lets look forward to another month of blogging! But now I must go..

"Let's go, but, inconspicuously... through the window" - Batman

Music Recommendation: Lenka

Lenka Kripac is an Australian indie pop singer that is best known for her single "The Show" as seen above. Her "Lenka" debut album is self titled and recived a lot of success thus far. Her melodic choruses and easy-flowing lyrics make all of her songs easy to sing along to. Her album is very solid and features others songs such as "Trouble Is a Friend" and "Don't Let Me Fall". She is releasing another album this april titled "Two" that features her new single "Heart Skips A Beat".

Music Recommendation: Laura Marling

Laura Beatrice Marling is a Contemporary folk artist from Eversley in Hampshire, England. She has had a great response from both her debut album "Alas, I Cannot Swim" and her second album "I Speak Because I Can". In fact, "I Speak Because I Can" has backup vocals from Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons. She also has an album that she is just finalizing that should be released sometime this year.

Playoffs Payoff

It seems that every year scouts use the playoffs as a tool of measuring which prospects are ahead of others. You hear "if this guy has a good playoffs" arguments all the time. Yet, should these increases in offensive production warrant considerable attention? Does a player just get hot and fade after the playoffs, or is a players true character revealed when everything is on the line? For our answers lets look no further then last years race between Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin.

During the 2010 Taylor Hall was scoring at a rate of 40 goals and 66 assists for 106 points in just 57 games played to put Hall at 1.86 points/game. What really makes things interesting is that his playoff production sat at pretty much the exact same offensive output. During the playoffs Taylor put up 17 goals and 18 assists for 35 points in just 20 games. This translate to 1.84 points per game. Tyler Seguin on the other hand had the same 106 points in 63 games. His 1.68 points/game ratio was only slightly behind halls but he did manage to score 48 goals. Heading into the playoffs however, Seguin was "shutdown" with only 5 goals and 5 assists for 10 points in 9 games. At the end Seguins 1.11 P/G was much lower then Taylor Halls 1.84 P/G and was ultimately a deciding factor come draft day.



In addition to the two top selections in 2010, the current frontrunner for the Calder, Jeffrey Skinner saw his draft stock soar with playoff success. Although Skinners 50 goal regular season saw him scoring at a 1.4 P/G ratio, he turned things up in the playoffs considerably. Skinner saw playoff success that amounted to 20 goals and 13 assists for 33 points in just 20 playoff games. He raised his points/game ratio to 1.65 despite playing tougher competition night in and night out. To put this in perspective he was ranked 15th by iss before the playoffs started yet was drafted 7th overall by the Carolina Hurricanes.

On the other side of things, Taylor Hall's teammate Cam Fowler didn't have the greatest post season despite winning the memorial cup. Fowler showed off his skills by posting 55 points in 55 points with the Spitfires in the regular season with a +38 rating. His play in the playoffs however consisted of 3 goals and 11 assists for 14 points in 19 games. His 0.74 P/G was much lower then his 1.00 P/G in the regular season. With his drop in play, Fowler saw his draft ranking fall all the way to 12th overall by the Anaheim Ducks. Yet, he is now in the NHL and has made a name for himself with 37 points in 71 regular season games.

So what is this years crop looking like? Well here is a quick rundown of how the top ten ranked players are currently doing in the playoffs (or at least the possible top ten). I put in Mark McNeill right now but it could easily turn into Tyler Biggs, Joel Armia, Mika Zibanejad, Nicklas Jensen, Nathan Beaulieu, etc. I have then compared this to the regular season production. If this wasn't the case then Adam Larsson would rank last on both lists.

Playoffs:
1. Jonathan Huberdeau (QMJHL): 4GP 5G 7A 12P 3.00P/G
2. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (WHL): 4GP 4G 5A 9P 2.25P/G
3. Sean Couturier (QMJHL): 4GP 3G 5A 8P 2.00P/G
4. Gabriel Landeskog (OHL): 4GP 5G 2A 7P 1.75P/G
5. Dougie Hamilton (OHL): 4GP 1G 5A 6P 1.50P/G
6. Ryan Murphy (OHL): 4GP 1G 5A 6P 1.50P/G
7. Mark McNeill (WHL): 4GP 2G 3A 5P 1.25P/G
8. Ryan Strome (OHL): 4GP 1G 2A 3P 0.75P/G
9. Duncan Siemens (WHL): 4GP 0G 1A 1P 0.25P/G
10. Adam Larsson (SEL): 12GP 0G 3A 3P 0.25P/G

Regular Season:
1. Ryan Strome (OHL): 65GP 33G 73A 106P 1.63P/G
2. Sean Couturier (QMJHL): 58GP 36G 60A 96P 1.65 P/G
3. Jonathan Huberdeau (QMJHL): 67GP 43G 62A 105P 1.56 P/G
4. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (WHL): 69GP 31G 75A 106P 1.54 P/G
5. Ryan Murphy (OHL): 63GP 26G 53A 79P 1.26 P/G
6. Gabriel Landeskog (OHL): 53GP 36G 30A 66P 1.25 P/G
7. Mark McNeill (WHL): 70GP 32GP 49A 81P 1.16 P/G
8. Dougie Hamilton (OHL): 67GP 12G 46A 58P 0.87P/G
9. Duncan Siemens (WHL): 72GP 5G 38A 43P 0.60P/G
10. Adam Larsson (SEL): 37GP 1G 8A 9P 0.24P/G

Risers and Fallers:

1. Jonathan Huberdeau +1.44 P/G
2. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins +0.71P/G
3. Dougie Hamilton +0.63 P/G
4. Gabriel Landeskog +0.50 P/G
5. Sean Couturier +0.35
6. Ryan Murphy +0.26 P/G
7. Mark McNeill +0.09P/G
8. Adam Larsson +0.01P/G
9. Duncan Siemens -0.35P/G
10. Ryan Strome -0.88P/G



Its pretty obvious that right now the biggest riser is Jonathan Huberdeau by a large margin. Even though RNH has been the talk of the town in the WHL and is second in leauge scoring in the playoffs, Huberdeau has been unbelieveable thus far. You could argue that the 16th placed team in the WHL is stronger then the QMJHL (which I wouldn't be surprised at all) but you can't discredit his playoff statistics regardless. As far as fallers go I wouldn't be surprised if Ryan Strome falls off the map a bit while Siemens doesn't even make the top 10 if their play continues this way. If playoffs are indeed a major contributing factor, then I could see RNH be taken ahead of Landeskog, Couturier and Larsson. It would also be true that Huberdeau is taken ahead of Strome, Murphy and Hamilton.

As far as picks outside the top ten go, the biggest surprises would included Shane McColgan who is leading the WHL in playoff scoring with 3 goals and 7 assists for 10 points in 4 games played despite just falling shy of a point per game pace in the regular season. In addition the QMJHL has a couple surprises with Zack Phillips scoring at 3.00 P/G and Phillip Danault producing at 2.00 P/G despite having considerably lower totals in the regular season. If these three players continue to be playoff monsters you would have to think that their draft rankings will be much higher then they currently are.

At the end of the day the playoffs have affected players draft statuses, but it is not always warranted. Too many times have players not made the playoffs or had "meh" playoffs only to catch fire afterwards. As much as the playoffs can help you raise your draft stock, a poor playoff shouldn't hurt a players draft stock. A player may not help his cause in the draft, but it shouldn't hinder it either. This just goes to show that as much as scouts like to use the playoffs as tool when determining who should be drafted,

(pictures courtesy of life.com, ontariohockeyleague.com and stationnation.blogspot.com)