Scoresheet Breakdown...Literally

Sometimes it's hard to remember that it's preseason for everyone, not just the players.

Case in point: three different people have told me about weird issues with the scoresheets tonight and I saw a few myself. Mike Vogel makes mention of it in his postgame notebook on the website. And it's not just little stuff - looking at the so-called "Super Stats" sheet you have to wonder what some of the game officials were smoking...and why they weren't sharing.

- We'll start at the top. I may have blacked out for a minute or two, but didn't Niitymaki play the whole game? I'm fairly certain he did, but the scoresheet shows Boucher coming in for 24 minutes. That's after Niitymaki put in 59:53 of work, of course.

- On the Flyers' roster alone they show two #3's, two #25's (including scratch Derian Hatcher), two #36's (including scratch Scottie Upshall), two #63's, and two #33's (Boucher and Biron, who was a scratch).

- Oh, but it gets freakier. Despite being scratched, Rory Fitzpatrick managed to pick up a goal and an assist, finishing +3, although he did lose the only faceoff he took...yeah, usually you need to be in the faceoff circle. It helps. Meanwhile Derian Hatcher wasn't on the ice and still ended the night -3. (Hmm...they must have filled this in before the scratches were announced.) Even goaltender Brian Boucher scored a goal and an assist, had two missed shots, a hit, a giveaway and a takeaway. Big night for Brian.

- In fact if you do the math the Flyers ended up with 12 goals. On 19 shots. Olie's save percentage isn't looking so good.

- Things are a little smoother on the Caps side, although players that weren't dressed continued to rack up the points. Oddly enough Jakub Klepis had a goal and an assist with 24:33 of ice time, which looks eerily similar to Tomas Fleischmann's numbers for the evening. Did I say similar? I meant identical. I know that they're both Czech, but come on.

- Incidentally those exact numbers were also attributed to Chris Bourque, who was sent down to Hershey today, as well as 6 of the Flyers.

So here's my question...does anyone proofread these at all?? I may not have the extensive hockey background and depth of knowledge that some of the brainiacs in the league office have, but I know that you can't have two players wearing the same number, nor can you have players who aren't playing registering goals or assists. Goalies don't get credited for missed shots or takeaways. And when the final score is 7-5 you can't have more than 12 players TOTAL scoring a goal.

This is kind of basic stuff - 1+1=2, red and blue make purple, and goals scored by one team cannot be greater than the total score of the game. Period. I just hope these numbers aren't used in any sort of record-keeping...