#and everyone would shut up about neither canada nor mcdavid having a cup.

[sergeifyodorov]

I’m very curious about why Leafs-Oilers SCF would be “Good Hockey”! What would make it Good, and what would make it Good-er than other potential combos?

few reasons

the hockey

stanley cup final is between a good western team and a good eastern team. kind of obvious but that means there are only so many possible combinations of hockey that you can make, and not all of them are interesting to neutral observers!

ok ignoring my obvious leafsguy bias. if i want to watch a stanley cup final i want the two teams facing off to be not only good at hockey but also engagingly good at hockey -- i want excitement! i want goals! i want it to be fairly evenly matched but in a way that brings UP both teams' strengths and potentially also provides highlight-reel Fuckery. some teams, let's be honest, are straight up not fun to watch if they're not Your Guys, or sometimes they will bring other teams down to their level and be less fun. i do not hate the wild but they're nicknamed the mild for a reason, you know?

there are a few teams that are Good but not Fun (carolina) and many many teams that are Fun but not Good (sens). Goodness is fairly easy to quantify, but Funness is a little more nebulous. here is my proposition for the first few Fun Qualities:

at least two stars (super-type, not dallas-type. in roope and robo's case they Are both though), or at least two guys who stand a step above the rest in terms of quality. homoerotic devotion optional but strongly preferred

quality more stemming from Hijinks than Systems. in Systems hockey everyone kind of does the same thing. in Hijinks hockey we get sillay with it

really good and sexy offense. defense optional but strongly preferred

i would like it if they didn't try and kill people on the regular

patrick kane is not there

examples of teams that are Good And Also Fun (imho)

devils (this pisses me off because of how well whatever the fuck they did worked)(that whatever the fuck is tanking, getting lucky, and signing for the underlyings)

stars

oilers (this pisses me off for reasons i can neither name nor describe)

leafs

even if you count on this list not being comprehensive (it isn't), this does not leave us with a lot of options. this is my campaign for leafsoilers though so we forge onward

2. the narrative

i am weaving a web i am webweaving. it is about connor mcdavid. it is about the curse. (you know the one). it is about the fact that the greatest player of our generation was born just outside toronto, a leafs fan born and raised. it is about the fact that on the year another generational legend was set to be picked into the league, that wayne gretzky's original team won the lottery.

the leafs won their own lottery, too, of course. one year later. they missed out on connor by a year and instead took auston matthews, the ovi to connor's sid. the goalscorer to the playmaker. the ferocious competitor to the good humble perfect canadian boy. as sid and ovi were rivals back then, so must mcdavid and matthews be. every cup run either of the older pair had, one of them defeated the other. as above, so below.

3. god damn it, patrick roy

no canadian team has won a cup since patrick roy's montreal canadiens did in 1993. he got humiliated at the forum, cursed out the habs, and ended seventy years of dominance. the league, supplied as it is in significant portion by canadian fans and players, is really pressed about telling this to us at every opportunity. they would goddamn shut up about it as soon as it was canadian on canadian violence in the scf please god.