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At Chicken Swedes we are crazy about sports. That includes e-sports. We do some occasional gaming and are currently testing some graphic cards from Nvidia. We noticed many users are asking about the difference between the GT and GTX versions of Nvidias GeForce-series. We have benchmarked one 730 GT and one 750 GTX on the same system and noticed some great differences in how the two cards performed.

The system

Intel Core i7-4770s cpu @ 3,1 Ghz
6gb RAM
SSD hd
Windows 7 home premium 64-bit

Card 1: Nvidia Geforce GT 730 (ASUS)

Bus: PCI Express 2.0
Video memory: 1gb DDR 3
Engine clock: ~900 MHz

Card 2: Nvidia Geforce GTX 750 (EVGA)

Bus: PCI Express 3.0
Video memory: 1gb DDR 5
Engine clock: ~1200 MHz

The benchmark

Since we experienced slow gaming, even in lower resolutions on Card 1, we were curious of how the 300 extra MHz of card two would improve the experience. For benchmarking we used 3DMark Basic Edition, “Skydiver” test. The results pretty much say it all: With Card 1, the GT 730 we got a score of ~4000 which position us closer to an Office PC (~2000) than to a gaming Laptop (~10000). With Card 2, the GTX 750, we got a score of ~13000! That’s a huge difference considering the GTX is not a expensive graphics card. While not reaching up near High End Gaming PC:s (~23000) we can safely say that all new games run flawless on our system with the GTX 750 at medium settings.

The X really stands for extra in this case!

To celebrate our move to a new domain with a new profile, Chicken Swedes latest sports profile is one of the men who wiped away the title “Chicken Swedes” from the NHL: defenseman Börje Salming. This was a time before swedes like Peter Forsberg and Daniel Alfredsson was a common sight in North American hockey.

Youth

Börje Salming was born in Kiruna in northern Sweden 1951. His father was of Sami origin and his mother Swedish. When Börje was 5 years old his father died in a mining accident. He grew up with his older brother, Stig Salming, and started playing hockey just like him. Stig was a hard-hitting defenseman, playing for many years in the Swedish top league and national team. This probably had an influence on Börjes later success in the National Hockey League.

Early career

Salming first played for his home-town team Kiruna AIF in Swedish division 2 1967-1970. Then he took the step up to the highest division and played with Brynäs 1970-1973. Brynäs won the league 1971 and 1973 with Salming in the squad. 1973 he was signed by the Toronto Maple Leafs as a free agent together with an other swede, Inge Hammarström. This was in a time when Europeans wasn’t common in the brutal National Hockey League. As Salming stated in an interview later:

It was tough because they really tried to kill you.

This was probably the reason his biography is called “Blood, sweat and hockey”.

The Toronto years

The debut in Toronto was at the beginning of the 1973-74 season against Buffalo Sabres. In the opening night the Swedish ambassaduer dropped the first ceremonial puck at the face-off. This was the start of the European invasion the to NHL. Salming scored 39 points in his first season. He would play in Toronto for 16 years, his last season was 1988-89. Before he came back to Sweden he did one season for the Detroit Red Wings 1989-90. During the years in Toronto he played 1099 games for the club and became a crowd’s favourite with the nickname “The King”. He is the highest scoring defenseman in the club’s history and the overall leader in assists. In 1986 he got another, more odd record: Stitches. 200 stitches at once after getting a skate in the face during a game against Detroit. He made the NHL’s first all-star team in 1977 and the second all-star team in 1975, 76, 78, 79, 80.

Back in Sweden

Back in his native country Salming played for the Stockholm-based club AIK for three seasons before retiring 1993, 42 years old.

The National team

Salming was a common sight in the Swedish national team Tre Kronor. In the World Championships he won one silver medal 1973 (and also made the All-star team) and one bronze in 1972. In the 1976 Canada Cup in Toronto he got standing ovations for a long time before a game against the USA.

Aftermath

In 1996 Börje Salming became the first Swedish player elected into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Ten years later his jersey with number 21 got raised in the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. He also became a member of the IIHF Hall of Fame in 1998. Since his retirement he has his own brand of sporting goods, underwear and floorball sticks.

In 1976 a Swedish five-year old kid named Mats Sundin watched the Canada Cup together with his father. He saw a countryman being cheered at in an other country, forever imprinting him with the idea of a sport independent of nations. This was the start of another great moment in the Toronto Maple Leaf’s history.

www.chickenswedes.com is the new version of www.bonus-finder.com. All content and links from our old site is now redirected here. With this new domain our aim is a bigger focus on sports and odds, but with a Swedish profile. Be sure to follow us regurarly to get the latest news from the best football- and hockeytournaments, the latest odds and bonuses and so on. Welcome aboard!

The site was moved to the new domain with help of the plugin Duplicator and this excellent guide.

Why do we love hockey? Maybe because its unpredictable nature. It is a sport in constant change in a world we experience as determined and unchangeable. Hockey live its own life. Compared with the conservative Football hockey evolve as a sport. It’s a survivor. Hybrid icing is an example of that.

Hybrid-icing

Previously there were two variants of icing :

1. No-touch icing. One team shoots the puck from their ow half and it ends up behind the opponent’s extended goal line: Automatic icing. Problems: Boring and many unnecessary breaks in the play.

2. Touch icing. Same scenario as above except that if the attacking team get a hold of the puck, play continues. Problems: High risk of injury when the players race after the puck at high speed near the boards .

How to solve hockey what seems to be an incompatibility problem then? Well, you will create a third option which is a mixture of 1 & 2:

3. Hybrid icing : Same scenario as 1 & 2, but if the referee determines that the attacking team clearly will reach the puck first, there is no icing. Lower risk of injury and more enjoyable games. The teams can still use icing tactically in a form of dump and chase without too much chase. If it is impossible for the referee to decide what team will reach the puck first or if the defending team is thought to reach it then there will be icing.

The only possible downside to this rule is that referees sometime make wrong decisions. However, this applies to most other situations on the ice too.

Football vs hockey

Football has something to learn from hockey. Too few goals? Reduce the goalie’s pads and create bigger attacking zones by moving the blue-lines. Did the puck pass the blue-line? Ask the video referee! Not room for all the teams in Europe in the World Cup of Hockey 2016? Create a mixed team!

Despite all this math and these clear rules ice hockey is still always … unpredictable !

The final game in the Champions Hockey League were an all-swedish showdown. Played in Luleå between Luleå HF and Frölunda HC it was a battle between northern and southern Sweden. The guest from the south started the game best, scoring 0-1 after only 17 seconds of play. The home team didn’t manage to get their best game going and the first period ended 0-2 to the guests from Gothenburg. The second period was a scoreless tie, however Frölunda were closer to 0-3 than Luleå were to 1-2.

Four goals in the third period

In the third period however, the ice bears from the north woke up from the winter rest and let their fury out over the Indians from Frölunda. 1-2 came with the man advantage eight minutes into the third period. When Frölunda got a five-minute penalty after a stupid check to the head Luleå could score the equalizer 2-2 and take the lead with 3-2 with seven minutes left of the game. The nail in the coffin came from Kukan, shooting from his own end of the rink, hitting the middle of the goal. That made the final score 4-2 and Luleå HF European Champions 2014-15!

Luleås results in the CHL:

Group stage:

Hamburg Freezers 1-4 Luleå HF
Nottingham Panthers 1-10 Luleå HF
Luleå HF 6-o Hamburg Freezers
Luleå HF 9-1 Nottingham Panthers
Luleå HF 3-1 Lukko Rauma
Lukko Rauma 2-0 Luleå HF

Playoffs:

Luleå HF 2-4 Red Bull Salzburg
Red Bull Salzburg 5-7 Luleå HF

Lukko Rauma 2-5 Luleå HF
Luleå HF 2-1 Lukko Rauma

Skellefteå AIK 2-2 Luleå HF
Luleå HF 3-2 Skellefteå AIK

Luleå HF 4-2 Frölunda

The future for European Hockey-Clubs?

We hope that the Champions Hockey League will grow and be extended with teams from KHL next season. Maybe the winner could play the Stanley Cup-champions in a series of games? That would unite the hockey-sphere and create some interesting match-ups!

It’s time to focus on another sports profile and in this post we have chosen the swedish hockey player Daniel Alfredsson who just announced that his career is over. In Sweden  Alfredsson may not be recognized as a star such as Mats Sundin and Peter Forsberg, but if you ask anyone with an interest in hockey in Ottawa who they think is the greatest you’ll probably get a different answer than in Stockholm.

Daniel Alfredsson: A loyal leader

Between 1999-2013 Alfredsson was the team captain in Ottawa Senators. For a long time he played in a lethal lineup along with Dany Heatley and Jason Spezza. The biggest success of the Ottawa Senators was when they reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 2007 where they unfortunately lost in the final series against the Anaheim Mighty Ducks .

For those of us who follow the IIHF World Championship we remember Alfredsson as a loyal guy who always came home and played for the swedish national hockey team when Ottawa was eliminated from the NHL / Stanley Cup. This resulted in four World Championship medals : bronze in 1999 and 2001, silver in 1995 and 2004. Unfortunately, no World Championship gold medal. However, Alfredsson was a part of the swedish team in the Olympic Games in Torino who won the gold in 2006, which may be regarded as his greatest asset. In 2014 he got an Olympic silver medal after a curtailed Swedish team lost the final against Canada. In the World Championships 2012 Alfredsson were the captain of the national team.

Career summarized

Daniel Alfredsson was born in Gothenburg in 1972. During the NHL lockout 2004-2005 , he led Frölunda HC to a national championship for his home club. In the NHL-draft of 1994 , he was selected in the sixth round, 133rd player by Ottawa Senators. In 1995-1996 he made his first NHL season and was awarded the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year, just like Peter Forsberg during his first season. After various injuries and contractual problems things finally got better for Alfredsson who became captain of the Ottawa Senators in 1999. It was a title he would have until 2013 when he chose to go to Detroit for a chance to win the Stanley Cup.

However, there was no Stanley Cup for ” Alfie, ” which, like Mats Sundin, is going to be remembered primarily as a leader on the ice.

As a final gesture Daniel Alfredsson signed a contract for one game with Ottawa for a farewell in December 2014. Chicken Swedes will remember him mainly for his efforts in the Three Crowns Swedish national team. He was brilliant in the Olympics gold year 2006 and an excellent two-way player throughout his career.

More info: Daniel Alfredsson @ eliteprospects.com