#and that even beats finding stuff i wrote. like. Actually Legitimately Ten Years Ago

[rindomness]

i think the thing that makes me most powerful as an artist is the fact that i have kept copies in some form or another of almost everything i have made since i started and thus whenever the imposter syndrome is hitting i can look at the literal piles of sketchbooks and notebooks and binders i keep the physical copies of my work in and go oh yeah. ive been working at this for like ten years. and then it just goes away.

anyway i absolutely recommend this as a strategy no matter how cringey it might seem keeping visual evidence of skill progression is an incredible tool against imposter syndrome. voice in your head can't tell you you're faking your skills if you can pull out a literal record of your skill growth against it

[duhragonball]

State of the Damn Wienerfic

I’ve finally finished the “thousand years ago” section of my OC’s backstory, which is a big relief to me.    The first 141 chapters of Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan were intended to develop the title character as a protagonist in her own right, and not just a guest star or supporting player to the main cast, like Tapion in “Wrath of the Dragon”.   I was always worried that I’d meet some untimely end before I finished, and no one would know how things turned out for her.  

From 142 onward, I’m flashing forward to the events of Dragon Ball:Xenoverse.    It’s not going to be a total adaptation of the game’s story mode, but I did like the notion that if I ever reached this point, the fic has a tenative ending, and a curious reader could run Xenoverse 1 on Steam and get a general idea of what happens next.   But I’m still alive, so I guess I’ll go ahead and write my version.  

It’s still surreal to me that I’ve reached this milestone.   I’ve thought about it for so long and now it’s here.   I wrote the bulk of #142 last November, and some other material that still needs to be organized, and my goal for this year’s NanoWriMo is to plow forward.   A lot of things will be different, and I think one of them is that I feel like I can be more open about the creative process.   So if you want to see how the sausage is made, click the read more.    If you’d rather see how crayons are made, watch this video below.   

There’s a Sesame Street version of this, but those are all orange crayons, and I like yellow better.    Also I like the way Mr. Rogers says “crayons”.

All right, now that those weird crayon people are distracted, let’s talk about Luffa.

I came up with the idea around 2004, I think.   DBZ was done airing in the U.S., and I wanted to write some sort of fanfic about it, but I was having trouble coming up with ideas.    I felt like the main story had wrapped up very well with Z, and GT only seemed to prove that you can’t top the original story.    So I started thinking about the lore, and that led me to the Legendary Super Saiyan that Vegeta spoke of in DBZ Episode 66.  

There were a few things that bugged me about the DBZ fandom at the time.    Mostly I was just reading the GameFaqs boards to find any hot scoops about upcoming DBZ games, and no one really knew much of anything, so the board was mostly guys shooting idle speculation back and forth.   Occasionally someone would bring up the fact that we never saw any female Super Saiyans, which led some to suspect that such a thing must be impossible.    The one explanation that stuck in my craw was that “women can’t get angry enough”.    Usually, misogynists are always saying women are too emotional to do anything else, so by that logic, you’d think it would be much easier for Saiyan women.    They’d just flip out whenever a stray laser bolt fries their hair, like Daphne Zuniga in “Spaceballs.”

The other thing that bugged me was the Broly-worship in some circles.   One way or another, Broly hype reached American fans well before the Funimation dub of Movie 8.   I remember the official promotions from Funimation acknowledging that fans kind of already knew who the guy was.    For a few years before 2003, I think Broly became this mythical figure, like your friend whose uncle works for Nintendo, or “Q” telling 4-chan all about how everyone you don’t like is going to get arrested soon.     I’m pretty sure this is why you can still find Broly fanart where he’s beating up Galactus, Kid Buu, and Superman, to name a few.    I think a lot of fanboys got it in their head that Broly could kick anybody’s ass, which is weird because he can’t even win in his own movies.   

I think even the official stuff played into this idea, since Broly would often be used as a special bonus boss in a lot of video games, so you beat Kid Buu and then hold on, now you have to fight Broly.   So it’s not hard to get the vibe that he’s the real final boss of everything.    I’m curious how the 2018 version of Broly will affect the perception of the character, but it’s probably too soon to tell.   In the mid-2000′s, though, it felt like a lot of people believed that Broly was a more legitimate Super Saiyan than Goku or the others, by virtue of being green and irrationally violent.  

So this was on my mind when I thought about what to do with the Super Saiyan from 1000 years ago.    I felt like there were people who wanted to believe that this character was a lot more like Broly than Goku, which is dumb, because the whole point of Super Saiyan Goku was that he was taking on the same role as the last guy.   And, for my money, the moral of Goku going Super Saiyan was that he was the only Saiyan of his generation who understood the same thing all the old Super Saiyans did.   Something about his upbringing on Earth helped him reach that level.    All the other Saiyans were too contaminated by their own culture of ruthless dickery.  

And so I thought that it would really flip the script if I wrote a story about that Legendary Super Saiyan and made him very different from the fanboy perception of Broly.    And I’d make him a her, just to twist the knife.  Not only is this not Broly, but she’s one of those women Super Saiyans everyone thinks can’t happen.  I doubt anyone from GameFaqs in 2007 would even notice my fic, but I’d like to think they’d be pissed about what I’ve done. 

I tried writing some of this down in 2006, but I didn’t get very far, mostly because I was intimidated by the scope of the idea.   I didn’t think I could do a long story, but I wasn’t sure a short story could get the idea across.   So I just didn’t do it at all, and kept thinking about it from time to time.    I wanted to make Luffa as a custom character in a video game, if they ever made a game with CAC features.   Ultimate Tenkaichi had it, but you could only make a Saiyan man... which just reinforced my motivations for doing this kind of a story.   

Finally, Dragon Ball Xenoverse debuted a more robust CAC feature in 2015, and I could design the character properly.   I didn’t have much in the way of ideas, so I just sort of let the gameplay take me where it would.   The game is set in the future, and Trunks just wishes for an ally, so who’s to say that this ally couldn’t have come from the past?    You do a lot of grinding in the game, and there’s a lot of exposition, and that gave me time to think about what what Luffa had been doing right before she got to this place.   And slowly, I started to iron out what I wanted to write.   

Her costume was just a convenience, really.    I went with short hair because the long hair doesn’t “float” when you go Super Saiyan in the game.    I wanted some sort of old-school looking armor, but everything in the game was based on costumes from the show, and the “Saiyan” armor in DBZ was Frieza’s thing.   It wouldn’t have existed a thousand years earlier.    I might have gone for something like Cabba’s outfit in Dragon Ball Super, but that wouldn’t be available until a few years later.   So that left me with a choice between a baggy martial arts dogi or the skin tight Pilot Suit.    The Pilot Suit is kind of... distracting, since it’s just a skin, and the developers make you stare at the character’s ass the whole time.    On the other hand, a baggy dogi kind of made her look like Cell Games Gohan.   So I went with baggy pants and fitted shirts.  

The black and yellow color scheme was mostly so I wouldn’t confuse my character from the others appearing on the screen during fights. That ruled out purple, orange, and blue, since the Z-Fighters wear those.   I resisted yellow, because that’s my favorite color, but later I realized black and yellow is perfect, because that’s the color scheme of the giant ape in Vegeta’s flashback.   

Playing the game helped motivate me to actually sit down and write the story, because I finally had a fleshed out character that I could see and do things with.    And making her fight DBZ characters got me to consider how she would react to those concepts.   Would she respect Vegeta’s royal bloodline, or would she be unimpressed like Goku?    How would she feel about Frieza’s destruction of their home planet?   Would she even recognize it as her home planet?   How does she feel about the fact that no one remembers anything about her?   

My goal for the first 141 chapters was to build a world and a backstory that would set up the answers to those questions.  The villains in that part of the story are all misogynists of one stripe or another.   They view women as tools to be exploited, or as enemies to be eliminated, or as distractions to be ignored.    They see Luffa doing her thing and they all say “She can’t do that,” and then she does it harder.   

Now that I think about it, I suppose the appeal to the character, and the thing that frustrates her so much, is that she’s just trying to be herself, but all these buttholes in the universe are outraged by it, and yet they just can’t stop her.   They want her to die, or go away, or become something else, something they can accept, but she just refuses to do that, and she’s got the raw power to tell them all where they can shove it.   This whole thing is my ham-fisted attempt to write a feminist allegory with Saiyans in it, and I’ll never be good enough to get it exactly right, but you know, it’s not as hard as I thought it would be.    Along the way, some LBGT stuff started to get into the mix, and I thought “Well, I’m really in the deep end of the pool now.”    I’m sorry if I got anything wrong, but I think I did okay.   I’m not breaking any records, but I managed to avoid drowning, right?  

Anyway, that’s why the Saiyans hate her guts, because all the Saiyans in DBZ resented Goku as being weak and worthless.    Even when Goku surpassed Vegeta, Vegeta still thought he lacked the killer instinct to be a “““true”“““ Super Saiyan.    Luffa’s got plenty of killer instinct, but the Saiyans hate her out of jealousy and fear.    Vegeta accused Trunks of lying about being a Saiyan, because his hair wasn’t the right color.  I wanted to make a whole population of Saiyans who would quibble over those kinds of details.    “The stone the builders have rejected has become the capstone.”   

This is also why I made the Saiyan King the main villain, because I wanted to echo Goku’s conflict with Vegeta, and King Vegeta’s conflict with Paragus and Broly.    If there’s a Super Saiyan every thousand years, then what happens to the second strongest Saiyan whenever that day comes?    Does he stand aside like John the Baptist, or does he refuse to accept the changing times?  

The purpose of all of this was to explain why Vegeta remembers the legend of the Super Saiyan, but nothing about the person.   Why doesn’t he know Luffa’s name, or what color her pants were?   Because his ancestors hated her, and suppressed the parts of her story that they didn’t like.    Even as Vegeta recalls what little he knows, he thinks “I never actually believed it.”

Okay, but Luffa had friends, right?   Wouldn’t they have left a record for future generations?    Well maybe, but how long would it take to fade into obscurity?   And Luffa’s kind of a private person.    Everyone in her inner circle avoided the spotlight.   There’s a move about her, but it’s filled with wild inaccuracies.   Eyewitnesses to her battles can only describe a glowing blur.     Close-up footage just shows an irritable Saiyan woman with a strange dyejob.   Most civilians find regular Saiyans to be pretty extraordinary as they are.   A Super Saiyan doesn’t seem that much more impressive.  

What you wind up with is this legacy of battles that were fought and won by a single, mighty warrior, but no one can agree on what that warrior was exactly.   At some point, enough time passes where the Saiyans are willing to reclaim the legend.   “Yeah, that guy had to be a Saiyan.      Who else could do all those things?”   But the things she stood for and learned along the way, that’s all lost.    

I just didn’t think it’d take me 647,471 words to explain all of that.  But now I can finally write the part with all the popular characters in it.   Right now, my big problem is that I have to slap together a few more OC’s and I need to figure out just what the hell Towa’s deal is.   The Dragon Ball Wiki attempts to explain whatever happens in those Dragon Ball Heroes games, but it doesn’t seem like they wrote any of it to fit a coherent narrative.    I’d like to use as much official Demon Realm lore as possible, if only because that’s what Towa and Demigra’s fans would be familiar with, but I’m not sure how this is going to look.   I mean, they’re gonna get an ass-whoopin’, I know that part, but I’d like to flesh out their characters before the beating starts. 

Anyway, I got my work cut out for me.  But at least the soundtrack will be epic.

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Wes McCauley. The only referee on the planet who should ever be allowed near a microphone was at it again. I'd get in there if I were you, Nate.

The second star: Patrick Eaves. D'aawwww.

The first star: The Golden Knights Twitter… again. Good lord, rest of the NHL, how many times are we going to do this?

Guys, come on. This is like when Troy Crowder showed up in 1990 and started speedbagging everyone. Sure, you can understand catching the first few opponents off guard, but by now the scouting report is out. These folks are not playing. Stay down, NHL teams.

(Side note: Can we start wagering now on which thin-skinned owner will be the first to complain to the league about his team getting roasted on Twitter by the Knights? This feels like a Eugene Melnyk thing, but I'm open to other suggestions.)

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The NHL is using the preseason to crack down on two types of fouls: face-off violations and slashing. That's resulted in a ton of penalties being called, disrupting any sort of flow to the games and confusing fans and players alike. The outrage: Knock it off, NHL—we didn't wait all summer for hockey to come back just so we could watch you call a bunch of nitpicky penalties all night. Is it justified: For the face-off violations, sure. Those have been annoying, and seem like a weird thing for the league to be focusing on. NHL fans love to complain—some of us have entire podcasts for it—but I've never heard any paying customer argue that face-offs were a problem. I wrote a little bit about the face-off crackdown earlier this week, and my basic message was that we shouldn't panic yet because it will probably be short-lived. But if we get to November and we still have linesmen calling three or four of these things a game, we'll have a problem.

So yeah, the face-off thing is dicey. The slashing, though? Not remotely. It's about time the league took a stand on this one.

Two guys cheating on a face-off might turn the draw into a scrum, but it doesn't really hurt anyone. Cracking a guy across the hands with your stick? Yeah, that can do some damage. And there's no reason for it. Reaching out and slashing someone who beat you for position isn't a legitimate defensive tactic, no matter what guys like Jon Cooper say. There's no skill involved. And there's no entertainment value, either. At least a big open ice hit is fun to watch. Seeing a star player get hacked because he had the nerve to actually possess the puck doesn't help anyone.

Well, except for guys who are slow and out of position. Those are the guys who are apparently suffering here. OK…good. Let's phase those guys out. If they can't play defense without using their stick as a weapon, my guess is not too many of us will miss them. Let's swap in a few guys who can keep up with the play and aren't always a stick's length behind the better players.

For years, the NHL has been a league where simply having the puck on your stick meant you had to accept a few hacks across the wrist. It was the price of admission for actually trying to create some offense. It's been that way for so long that it's going to take some adjusting for players to stop reflexively swinging at anyone who skates by.

Will that be annoying for the first few weeks or months or however long it takes the players to figure this out? Definitely. Will penalty boxes occasionally look like this? Maybe. But it's a price worth paying to get this garbage out of the game, and to have it happen before Connor McDavid or Patrik Laine or whoever else gets their wrist broken. Complain all you want about the face-offs if the league actually sticks with it, but the slashing crackdown is long overdue.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Last week was the 30th anniversary of what many consider the greatest hockey game ever played: Team Canada vs. the Soviets in the deciding game of the 1987 Canada Cup, one that ended with Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux teaming up on their famous winner. The game was an incredible back-and-forth contest featuring an almost unimaginable amount of talent. I mean, just look at the starting lineups.

That's three Hockey Hall of Famers for the Soviets, plus two more guys who each had a strong cases of his own. And Canada has four guys who made it in on the first ballot, including two of the ten players in history who were such slam dunks that the customary waiting period was waived for them.

And then there's this week's obscure player: Doug Crossman.

Crossman was a sixth-round pick by the Hawks in the legendary double cohort draft of 1979. Weirdly, he went within five picks of not one but two other Obscure Player alumni, Bill McCreary and Rick Knickle. He'd make his NHL debut the following season, and spent three seasons in Chicago before being traded to the Flyers for legendary tough guy Behn Wilson. He spent five more years in Philadelphia before being traded to L.A. in 1988, which would signal the start of a five-year stretch in which he was traded six times for everyone from Ray Ferraro to Basil McRae. He was also claimed on waivers once, and ended up closing out his career in 1994 having played for eight teams, only two of which kept him for more than 100 games.

Crossman was a decent defenseman who could play in both ends. He never topped 60 points, but he was a +20 or better for three straight years in the mid 80s, and early in his career was a bit of an ironman. He was never an All-Star nor did he receive so much as a single Norris vote, but he was pretty good.

So… how did he wind up lining up next to the Canadian dream team in 1987?

The easiest answer is that he was a Flyer at the time, and his coach was Mike Keenan, who also happened to be running Team Canada. He'd been solid in Philadelphia and was coming off a big playoff year, and Keenan trusted him, so he made the team. Hey, it wouldn't be Team Canada without a weird pick or two. Besides, it's not like Canada was all that deep on defense that year. While they had future Hall of Famers Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque, and Larry Murphy, they also had to lean on guys like James Patrick, Craig Hartsburg, and Normand Rochefort.

All of those guys had to play a role for Canada to win, but only Crossman got to hear his name announced as a starter in one of the most star-studded games ever played.

Be It Resolved

There's a new trend going around the league. Various teams are holding open tryouts to fill the role of emergency backup goalies. Fans can show up, strut their stuff, and earn the job of backup to the backup.

The concept is getting rave reviews, and seems destined to spread across the league fairly quickly. It seems like the perfect way to give fans a shot at actually appearing in an NHL game. Who wouldn't get behind that? The whole idea is, as one observer put it, "freaking awesome."

Like hell it is. Faithful readers, this cannot stand.

Look, I love me a good EBUG, just like any fan should. The emergency backup goalie is one of those fun hockey oddities, one with a long and proud history. Sure, they never actually play (almost), but it's the mere possibility that makes it work. May the hockey gods bless the valiant emergency backup.

But the key word here is emergency. It's the chaos of an unexpected injury followed by a mad scramble to find someone, anyone, who knows how to hold a goalie stick that makes it fun. The guys who win these tryouts are going to be available at every game. Even worse, they're going to be good. Not NHL good, sure, but good enough not to embarrass themselves. Where's the fun in that?

I want to see some terrified dude hyperventilating into a paper bag on the bench. I want ushers and parking-lot attendants and web producers. I want to see the owner's deadbeat nephew shoved out there against his will. I want to see more scenes like Roberto Luongo stealing an ambulance to make a dramatic return from the hospital, Stone Cold Steve Austin-style, so that the goalie coach doesn't have to go in:

If this tryout thing catches on, we lose all that. Every rink will just have some former junior star in the press box, munching popcorn and waiting to see if he's needed. So be it resolved that we need to nip this in the bud. The noble EBUG has suddenly become an endangered species, and we need to save him—even if he never gets the chance to save anything for us.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

A cynic might suggest that the entire preseason schedule is just a massive cash grab, in which teams force fans to buy tickets to watch has-beens, never-will-bes, and PTOs signed specifically to circumvent the veteran roster rules, all playing in games in which nothing ever happens. Well, that's not completely accurate. I mean, almost all of it is. But while it's true that nothing important ever happens in the preseason, that doesn't mean nothing interesting ever happens. One example—OK, the only example—came exactly four years ago today.

So it's September 22, 2013, and the Sabres are visiting the Maple Leafs in preseason action. The score is…well, honestly it doesn't matter. But things are about to get goofy, so let's settle in and enjoy the dumbest line brawl in recent NHL history.

We open with play-by-play legend Joe Bowen informing us that Buffalo's John Scott is unhappy about something. If you're looking for backstory, here's what happened just before our clip begins. Long story short, the Sabres thought their guy had been victimized in a mismatch. Scott's their enforcer, so it's his job to exact some payback.

Unfortunately, he's lined up next to Phil Kessel, and The Code clearly states that he's not allowed to pummel a squishy-soft skill player. But Scott can do the next best thing, which is try to make Kessel poop his pants on live television.

Scott politely gives Kessel a heads-up on what's about to happen, at which point Kessel whips around like he just got a whiff of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. I always thought Scott got a bit of a raw deal on all of this. You hear about how he "jumped" Kessel, but he never really did. Let's be honest, if Scott wanted to hurt Kessel, he absolutely could have. Instead, he basically gives him the "cat batting around a wounded mouse" treatment.

Kessel, of course, doesn't know this, so he immediately tries to break Scott's ankle with a golf swing slash. That's totally fine, by the way, as it's clearly self-defense. Then, after the cavalry arrives and Scott is fighting off two guys, Kessel circles back and hacks him again. That's, um, also self-defense? I would be a bad hockey lawyer.

None of the other Leafs player on the ice are fighters, so they basically gang-tackle Scott—who, it should be pointed out, is listed at 6'8" and 270 pounds. They do a pretty good job, too. Almost too good. Like, it seems like they may have an extra guy. Ah well, I'm sure that won't turn out to be important.

Meanwhile, Kessel pairs off with Brian Flynn for what will be only his second career NHL fight. And he…well, he kind of destroys him. Seriously. It's not quite Clark vs. Brooke, but by the end of it Flynn is leaking blood all over the ice. It will not shock you to learn that this remains Flynn's one and only NHL fight to this day. When Phil Kessel is splitting your face open like it's a jelly-filled donut, there's a good chance you're not very good at this.

Bowen does a reasonably good job on the call, although he's had better.

We get the now standard overhead view of the action, which reveals that all six Leafs seem to be handling business just fine. Wait a second, six? That seems high. Let's see if we can figure this out, now that all the fights are over and there's clearly nothing else that's going to happen.

Uh, did anyone notice anything odd in the lower right corner just there?

Huh, I could have sworn that looked like Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier heading out of his net for some strange reason. Ah well, I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe he's going to get a drink of water or something.

No, he's apparently going to fight Ryan Miller, who speaks for all of us when he reacts by doing this:

As per Canadian law, Bowen immediately references the Felix Potvin vs. Ron Hextall superfight, which we broke down here. That one was the greatest goalie fight of all time. But this one isn't too bad once Miller finally decides to try. It's so entertaining that the other players forget that it's not 1986 and you're not allowed to crowd around to watch a fight.

As that scrap ends, we see Kessel go over and get one more jab on Scott, who's tangled up with David Clarkson. Wait, was Clarkson on the ice when all this started? He and Kessel play the same position, so it wouldn't make sense unless… oh. Oh no.

"All five players…all six players on the ice, including the goaltenders…" Keep counting, Joe.

After several replays, it's only in the final seconds of our clip that Bowen and friends put two and two together. Or more specifically, they put six and one together, and realize that Clarkson jumped on the ice during the brawl, even though the situation was already under control and he really had nothing to do once he arrived. That means that a player the Leafs have just paid a fortune to get has earned himself an automatic ten-game suspension before his first season even starts. Or, as Toronto fans now know it, "the high point of the David Clarkson era."

The epilogue here is that Kessel was suspended for three games, Clarkson never recovered, and Leaf fans loved Bernier right up until he started doing stuff like this. And to this day, Brian Flynn is afraid to go near a hot-dog cart.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Wes McCauley. The only referee on the planet who should ever be allowed near a microphone was at it again. I’d get in there if I were you, Nate.

The second star: Patrick Eaves. D’aawwww.

The first star: The Golden Knights Twitter… again. Good lord, rest of the NHL, how many times are we going to do this?

Guys, come on. This is like when Troy Crowder showed up in 1990 and started speedbagging everyone. Sure, you can understand catching the first few opponents off guard, but by now the scouting report is out. These folks are not playing. Stay down, NHL teams.

(Side note: Can we start wagering now on which thin-skinned owner will be the first to complain to the league about his team getting roasted on Twitter by the Knights? This feels like a Eugene Melnyk thing, but I’m open to other suggestions.)

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The NHL is using the preseason to crack down on two types of fouls: face-off violations and slashing. That’s resulted in a ton of penalties being called, disrupting any sort of flow to the games and confusing fans and players alike.

The outrage: Knock it off, NHL—we didn’t wait all summer for hockey to come back just so we could watch you call a bunch of nitpicky penalties all night.

Is it justified: For the face-off violations, sure. Those have been annoying, and seem like a weird thing for the league to be focusing on. NHL fans love to complain—some of us have entire podcasts for it—but I’ve never heard any paying customer argue that face-offs were a problem. I wrote a little bit about the face-off crackdown earlier this week, and my basic message was that we shouldn’t panic yet because it will probably be short-lived. But if we get to November and we still have linesmen calling three or four of these things a game, we’ll have a problem.

So yeah, the face-off thing is dicey. The slashing, though? Not remotely. It’s about time the league took a stand on this one.

Two guys cheating on a face-off might turn the draw into a scrum, but it doesn’t really hurt anyone. Cracking a guy across the hands with your stick? Yeah, that can do some damage. And there’s no reason for it. Reaching out and slashing someone who beat you for position isn’t a legitimate defensive tactic, no matter what guys like Jon Cooper say. There’s no skill involved. And there’s no entertainment value, either. At least a big open ice hit is fun to watch. Seeing a star player get hacked because he had the nerve to actually possess the puck doesn’t help anyone.

Well, except for guys who are slow and out of position. Those are the guys who are apparently suffering here. OK…good. Let’s phase those guys out. If they can’t play defense without using their stick as a weapon, my guess is not too many of us will miss them. Let’s swap in a few guys who can keep up with the play and aren’t always a stick’s length behind the better players.

For years, the NHL has been a league where simply having the puck on your stick meant you had to accept a few hacks across the wrist. It was the price of admission for actually trying to create some offense. It’s been that way for so long that it’s going to take some adjusting for players to stop reflexively swinging at anyone who skates by.

Will that be annoying for the first few weeks or months or however long it takes the players to figure this out? Definitely. Will penalty boxes occasionally look like this? Maybe. But it’s a price worth paying to get this garbage out of the game, and to have it happen before Connor McDavid or Patrik Laine or whoever else gets their wrist broken. Complain all you want about the face-offs if the league actually sticks with it, but the slashing crackdown is long overdue.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Last week was the 30th anniversary of what many consider the greatest hockey game ever played: Team Canada vs. the Soviets in the deciding game of the 1987 Canada Cup, one that ended with Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux teaming up on their famous winner. The game was an incredible back-and-forth contest featuring an almost unimaginable amount of talent. I mean, just look at the starting lineups.

That’s three Hockey Hall of Famers for the Soviets, plus two more guys who each had a strong cases of his own. And Canada has four guys who made it in on the first ballot, including two of the ten players in history who were such slam dunks that the customary waiting period was waived for them.

And then there’s this week’s obscure player: Doug Crossman.

Crossman was a sixth-round pick by the Hawks in the legendary double cohort draft of 1979. Weirdly, he went within five picks of not one but two other Obscure Player alumni, Bill McCreary and Rick Knickle. He’d make his NHL debut the following season, and spent three seasons in Chicago before being traded to the Flyers for legendary tough guy Behn Wilson. He spent five more years in Philadelphia before being traded to L.A. in 1988, which would signal the start of a five-year stretch in which he was traded six times for everyone from Ray Ferraro to Basil McRae. He was also claimed on waivers once, and ended up closing out his career in 1994 having played for eight teams, only two of which kept him for more than 100 games.

Crossman was a decent defenseman who could play in both ends. He never topped 60 points, but he was a +20 or better for three straight years in the mid 80s, and early in his career was a bit of an ironman. He was never an All-Star nor did he receive so much as a single Norris vote, but he was pretty good.

So… how did he wind up lining up next to the Canadian dream team in 1987?

The easiest answer is that he was a Flyer at the time, and his coach was Mike Keenan, who also happened to be running Team Canada. He’d been solid in Philadelphia and was coming off a big playoff year, and Keenan trusted him, so he made the team. Hey, it wouldn’t be Team Canada without a weird pick or two. Besides, it’s not like Canada was all that deep on defense that year. While they had future Hall of Famers Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque, and Larry Murphy, they also had to lean on guys like James Patrick, Craig Hartsburg, and Normand Rochefort.

All of those guys had to play a role for Canada to win, but only Crossman got to hear his name announced as a starter in one of the most star-studded games ever played.

Be It Resolved

There’s a new trend going around the league. Various teams are holding open tryouts to fill the role of emergency backup goalies. Fans can show up, strut their stuff, and earn the job of backup to the backup.

The concept is getting rave reviews, and seems destined to spread across the league fairly quickly. It seems like the perfect way to give fans a shot at actually appearing in an NHL game. Who wouldn’t get behind that? The whole idea is, as one observer put it, “freaking awesome.”

Like hell it is. Faithful readers, this cannot stand.

Look, I love me a good EBUG, just like any fan should. The emergency backup goalie is one of those fun hockey oddities, one with a long and proud history. Sure, they never actually play (almost), but it’s the mere possibility that makes it work. May the hockey gods bless the valiant emergency backup.

But the key word here is emergency. It’s the chaos of an unexpected injury followed by a mad scramble to find someone, anyone, who knows how to hold a goalie stick that makes it fun. The guys who win these tryouts are going to be available at every game. Even worse, they’re going to be good. Not NHL good, sure, but good enough not to embarrass themselves. Where’s the fun in that?

I want to see some terrified dude hyperventilating into a paper bag on the bench. I want ushers and parking-lot attendants and web producers. I want to see the owner’s deadbeat nephew shoved out there against his will. I want to see more scenes like Roberto Luongo stealing an ambulance to make a dramatic return from the hospital, Stone Cold Steve Austin-style, so that the goalie coach doesn’t have to go in:

If this tryout thing catches on, we lose all that. Every rink will just have some former junior star in the press box, munching popcorn and waiting to see if he’s needed. So be it resolved that we need to nip this in the bud. The noble EBUG has suddenly become an endangered species, and we need to save him—even if he never gets the chance to save anything for us.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

A cynic might suggest that the entire preseason schedule is just a massive cash grab, in which teams force fans to buy tickets to watch has-beens, never-will-bes, and PTOs signed specifically to circumvent the veteran roster rules, all playing in games in which nothing ever happens. Well, that’s not completely accurate. I mean, almost all of it is. But while it’s true that nothing important ever happens in the preseason, that doesn’t mean nothing interesting ever happens. One example—OK, the only example—came exactly four years ago today.

So it’s September 22, 2013, and the Sabres are visiting the Maple Leafs in preseason action. The score is…well, honestly it doesn’t matter. But things are about to get goofy, so let’s settle in and enjoy the dumbest line brawl in recent NHL history.

We open with play-by-play legend Joe Bowen informing us that Buffalo’s John Scott is unhappy about something. If you’re looking for backstory, here’s what happened just before our clip begins. Long story short, the Sabres thought their guy had been victimized in a mismatch. Scott’s their enforcer, so it’s his job to exact some payback.

Unfortunately, he’s lined up next to Phil Kessel, and The Code clearly states that he’s not allowed to pummel a squishy-soft skill player. But Scott can do the next best thing, which is try to make Kessel poop his pants on live television.

Scott politely gives Kessel a heads-up on what’s about to happen, at which point Kessel whips around like he just got a whiff of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. I always thought Scott got a bit of a raw deal on all of this. You hear about how he “jumped” Kessel, but he never really did. Let’s be honest, if Scott wanted to hurt Kessel, he absolutely could have. Instead, he basically gives him the “cat batting around a wounded mouse” treatment.

Kessel, of course, doesn’t know this, so he immediately tries to break Scott’s ankle with a golf swing slash. That’s totally fine, by the way, as it’s clearly self-defense. Then, after the cavalry arrives and Scott is fighting off two guys, Kessel circles back and hacks him again. That’s, um, also self-defense? I would be a bad hockey lawyer.

None of the other Leafs player on the ice are fighters, so they basically gang-tackle Scott—who, it should be pointed out, is listed at 6’8″ and 270 pounds. They do a pretty good job, too. Almost too good. Like, it seems like they may have an extra guy. Ah well, I’m sure that won’t turn out to be important.

Meanwhile, Kessel pairs off with Brian Flynn for what will be only his second career NHL fight. And he…well, he kind of destroys him. Seriously. It’s not quite Clark vs. Brooke, but by the end of it Flynn is leaking blood all over the ice. It will not shock you to learn that this remains Flynn’s one and only NHL fight to this day. When Phil Kessel is splitting your face open like it’s a jelly-filled donut, there’s a good chance you’re not very good at this.

Bowen does a reasonably good job on the call, although he’s had better.

We get the now standard overhead view of the action, which reveals that all six Leafs seem to be handling business just fine. Wait a second, six? That seems high. Let’s see if we can figure this out, now that all the fights are over and there���s clearly nothing else that’s going to happen.

Uh, did anyone notice anything odd in the lower right corner just there?

Huh, I could have sworn that looked like Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier heading out of his net for some strange reason. Ah well, I’m sure it’s nothing. Maybe he’s going to get a drink of water or something.

No, he’s apparently going to fight Ryan Miller, who speaks for all of us when he reacts by doing this:

As per Canadian law, Bowen immediately references the Felix Potvin vs. Ron Hextall superfight, which we broke down here. That one was the greatest goalie fight of all time. But this one isn’t too bad once Miller finally decides to try. It’s so entertaining that the other players forget that it’s not 1986 and you’re not allowed to crowd around to watch a fight.

As that scrap ends, we see Kessel go over and get one more jab on Scott, who’s tangled up with David Clarkson. Wait, was Clarkson on the ice when all this started? He and Kessel play the same position, so it wouldn’t make sense unless… oh. Oh no.

“All five players…all six players on the ice, including the goaltenders…” Keep counting, Joe.

After several replays, it’s only in the final seconds of our clip that Bowen and friends put two and two together. Or more specifically, they put six and one together, and realize that Clarkson jumped on the ice during the brawl, even though the situation was already under control and he really had nothing to do once he arrived. That means that a player the Leafs have just paid a fortune to get has earned himself an automatic ten-game suspension before his first season even starts. Or, as Toronto fans now know it, “the high point of the David Clarkson era.”

The epilogue here is that Kessel was suspended for three games, Clarkson never recovered, and Leaf fans loved Bernier right up until he started doing stuff like this. And to this day, Brian Flynn is afraid to go near a hot-dog cart.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you’d like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Wes McCauley. The only referee on the planet who should ever be allowed near a microphone was at it again. I'd get in there if I were you, Nate.

The second star: Patrick Eaves. D'aawwww.

The first star: The Golden Knights Twitter… again. Good lord, rest of the NHL, how many times are we going to do this?

Guys, come on. This is like when Troy Crowder showed up in 1990 and started speedbagging everyone. Sure, you can understand catching the first few opponents off guard, but by now the scouting report is out. These folks are not playing. Stay down, NHL teams.

(Side note: Can we start wagering now on which thin-skinned owner will be the first to complain to the league about his team getting roasted on Twitter by the Knights? This feels like a Eugene Melnyk thing, but I'm open to other suggestions.)

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The NHL is using the preseason to crack down on two types of fouls: face-off violations and slashing. That's resulted in a ton of penalties being called, disrupting any sort of flow to the games and confusing fans and players alike. The outrage: Knock it off, NHL—we didn't wait all summer for hockey to come back just so we could watch you call a bunch of nitpicky penalties all night. Is it justified: For the face-off violations, sure. Those have been annoying, and seem like a weird thing for the league to be focusing on. NHL fans love to complain—some of us have entire podcasts for it—but I've never heard any paying customer argue that face-offs were a problem. I wrote a little bit about the face-off crackdown earlier this week, and my basic message was that we shouldn't panic yet because it will probably be short-lived. But if we get to November and we still have linesmen calling three or four of these things a game, we'll have a problem.

So yeah, the face-off thing is dicey. The slashing, though? Not remotely. It's about time the league took a stand on this one.

Two guys cheating on a face-off might turn the draw into a scrum, but it doesn't really hurt anyone. Cracking a guy across the hands with your stick? Yeah, that can do some damage. And there's no reason for it. Reaching out and slashing someone who beat you for position isn't a legitimate defensive tactic, no matter what guys like Jon Cooper say. There's no skill involved. And there's no entertainment value, either. At least a big open ice hit is fun to watch. Seeing a star player get hacked because he had the nerve to actually possess the puck doesn't help anyone.

Well, except for guys who are slow and out of position. Those are the guys who are apparently suffering here. OK…good. Let's phase those guys out. If they can't play defense without using their stick as a weapon, my guess is not too many of us will miss them. Let's swap in a few guys who can keep up with the play and aren't always a stick's length behind the better players.

For years, the NHL has been a league where simply having the puck on your stick meant you had to accept a few hacks across the wrist. It was the price of admission for actually trying to create some offense. It's been that way for so long that it's going to take some adjusting for players to stop reflexively swinging at anyone who skates by.

Will that be annoying for the first few weeks or months or however long it takes the players to figure this out? Definitely. Will penalty boxes occasionally look like this? Maybe. But it's a price worth paying to get this garbage out of the game, and to have it happen before Connor McDavid or Patrik Laine or whoever else gets their wrist broken. Complain all you want about the face-offs if the league actually sticks with it, but the slashing crackdown is long overdue.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Last week was the 30th anniversary of what many consider the greatest hockey game ever played: Team Canada vs. the Soviets in the deciding game of the 1987 Canada Cup, one that ended with Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux teaming up on their famous winner. The game was an incredible back-and-forth contest featuring an almost unimaginable amount of talent. I mean, just look at the starting lineups.

That's three Hockey Hall of Famers for the Soviets, plus two more guys who each had a strong cases of his own. And Canada has four guys who made it in on the first ballot, including two of the ten players in history who were such slam dunks that the customary waiting period was waived for them.

And then there's this week's obscure player: Doug Crossman.

Crossman was a sixth-round pick by the Hawks in the legendary double cohort draft of 1979. Weirdly, he went within five picks of not one but two other Obscure Player alumni, Bill McCreary and Rick Knickle. He'd make his NHL debut the following season, and spent three seasons in Chicago before being traded to the Flyers for legendary tough guy Behn Wilson. He spent five more years in Philadelphia before being traded to L.A. in 1988, which would signal the start of a five-year stretch in which he was traded six times for everyone from Ray Ferraro to Basil McRae. He was also claimed on waivers once, and ended up closing out his career in 1994 having played for eight teams, only two of which kept him for more than 100 games.

Crossman was a decent defenseman who could play in both ends. He never topped 60 points, but he was a +20 or better for three straight years in the mid 80s, and early in his career was a bit of an ironman. He was never an All-Star nor did he receive so much as a single Norris vote, but he was pretty good.

So… how did he wind up lining up next to the Canadian dream team in 1987?

The easiest answer is that he was a Flyer at the time, and his coach was Mike Keenan, who also happened to be running Team Canada. He'd been solid in Philadelphia and was coming off a big playoff year, and Keenan trusted him, so he made the team. Hey, it wouldn't be Team Canada without a weird pick or two. Besides, it's not like Canada was all that deep on defense that year. While they had future Hall of Famers Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque, and Larry Murphy, they also had to lean on guys like James Patrick, Craig Hartsburg, and Normand Rochefort.

All of those guys had to play a role for Canada to win, but only Crossman got to hear his name announced as a starter in one of the most star-studded games ever played.

Be It Resolved

There's a new trend going around the league. Various teams are holding open tryouts to fill the role of emergency backup goalies. Fans can show up, strut their stuff, and earn the job of backup to the backup.

The concept is getting rave reviews, and seems destined to spread across the league fairly quickly. It seems like the perfect way to give fans a shot at actually appearing in an NHL game. Who wouldn't get behind that? The whole idea is, as one observer put it, "freaking awesome."

Like hell it is. Faithful readers, this cannot stand.

Look, I love me a good EBUG, just like any fan should. The emergency backup goalie is one of those fun hockey oddities, one with a long and proud history. Sure, they never actually play (almost), but it's the mere possibility that makes it work. May the hockey gods bless the valiant emergency backup.

But the key word here is emergency. It's the chaos of an unexpected injury followed by a mad scramble to find someone, anyone, who knows how to hold a goalie stick that makes it fun. The guys who win these tryouts are going to be available at every game. Even worse, they're going to be good. Not NHL good, sure, but good enough not to embarrass themselves. Where's the fun in that?

I want to see some terrified dude hyperventilating into a paper bag on the bench. I want ushers and parking-lot attendants and web producers. I want to see the owner's deadbeat nephew shoved out there against his will. I want to see more scenes like Roberto Luongo stealing an ambulance to make a dramatic return from the hospital, Stone Cold Steve Austin-style, so that the goalie coach doesn't have to go in:

If this tryout thing catches on, we lose all that. Every rink will just have some former junior star in the press box, munching popcorn and waiting to see if he's needed. So be it resolved that we need to nip this in the bud. The noble EBUG has suddenly become an endangered species, and we need to save him—even if he never gets the chance to save anything for us.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

A cynic might suggest that the entire preseason schedule is just a massive cash grab, in which teams force fans to buy tickets to watch has-beens, never-will-bes, and PTOs signed specifically to circumvent the veteran roster rules, all playing in games in which nothing ever happens. Well, that's not completely accurate. I mean, almost all of it is. But while it's true that nothing important ever happens in the preseason, that doesn't mean nothing interesting ever happens. One example—OK, the only example—came exactly four years ago today.

So it's September 22, 2013, and the Sabres are visiting the Maple Leafs in preseason action. The score is…well, honestly it doesn't matter. But things are about to get goofy, so let's settle in and enjoy the dumbest line brawl in recent NHL history.

We open with play-by-play legend Joe Bowen informing us that Buffalo's John Scott is unhappy about something. If you're looking for backstory, here's what happened just before our clip begins. Long story short, the Sabres thought their guy had been victimized in a mismatch. Scott's their enforcer, so it's his job to exact some payback.

Unfortunately, he's lined up next to Phil Kessel, and The Code clearly states that he's not allowed to pummel a squishy-soft skill player. But Scott can do the next best thing, which is try to make Kessel poop his pants on live television.

Scott politely gives Kessel a heads-up on what's about to happen, at which point Kessel whips around like he just got a whiff of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. I always thought Scott got a bit of a raw deal on all of this. You hear about how he "jumped" Kessel, but he never really did. Let's be honest, if Scott wanted to hurt Kessel, he absolutely could have. Instead, he basically gives him the "cat batting around a wounded mouse" treatment.

Kessel, of course, doesn't know this, so he immediately tries to break Scott's ankle with a golf swing slash. That's totally fine, by the way, as it's clearly self-defense. Then, after the cavalry arrives and Scott is fighting off two guys, Kessel circles back and hacks him again. That's, um, also self-defense? I would be a bad hockey lawyer.

None of the other Leafs player on the ice are fighters, so they basically gang-tackle Scott—who, it should be pointed out, is listed at 6'8" and 270 pounds. They do a pretty good job, too. Almost too good. Like, it seems like they may have an extra guy. Ah well, I'm sure that won't turn out to be important.

Meanwhile, Kessel pairs off with Brian Flynn for what will be only his second career NHL fight. And he…well, he kind of destroys him. Seriously. It's not quite Clark vs. Brooke, but by the end of it Flynn is leaking blood all over the ice. It will not shock you to learn that this remains Flynn's one and only NHL fight to this day. When Phil Kessel is splitting your face open like it's a jelly-filled donut, there's a good chance you're not very good at this.

Bowen does a reasonably good job on the call, although he's had better.

We get the now standard overhead view of the action, which reveals that all six Leafs seem to be handling business just fine. Wait a second, six? That seems high. Let's see if we can figure this out, now that all the fights are over and there's clearly nothing else that's going to happen.

Uh, did anyone notice anything odd in the lower right corner just there?

Huh, I could have sworn that looked like Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier heading out of his net for some strange reason. Ah well, I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe he's going to get a drink of water or something.

No, he's apparently going to fight Ryan Miller, who speaks for all of us when he reacts by doing this:

As per Canadian law, Bowen immediately references the Felix Potvin vs. Ron Hextall superfight, which we broke down here. That one was the greatest goalie fight of all time. But this one isn't too bad once Miller finally decides to try. It's so entertaining that the other players forget that it's not 1986 and you're not allowed to crowd around to watch a fight.

As that scrap ends, we see Kessel go over and get one more jab on Scott, who's tangled up with David Clarkson. Wait, was Clarkson on the ice when all this started? He and Kessel play the same position, so it wouldn't make sense unless… oh. Oh no.

"All five players…all six players on the ice, including the goaltenders…" Keep counting, Joe.

After several replays, it's only in the final seconds of our clip that Bowen and friends put two and two together. Or more specifically, they put six and one together, and realize that Clarkson jumped on the ice during the brawl, even though the situation was already under control and he really had nothing to do once he arrived. That means that a player the Leafs have just paid a fortune to get has earned himself an automatic ten-game suspension before his first season even starts. Or, as Toronto fans now know it, "the high point of the David Clarkson era."

The epilogue here is that Kessel was suspended for three games, Clarkson never recovered, and Leaf fans loved Bernier right up until he started doing stuff like this. And to this day, Brian Flynn is afraid to go near a hot-dog cart.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Wes McCauley. The only referee on the planet who should ever be allowed near a microphone was at it again. I'd get in there if I were you, Nate.

The second star: Patrick Eaves. D'aawwww.

The first star: The Golden Knights Twitter… again. Good lord, rest of the NHL, how many times are we going to do this?

Guys, come on. This is like when Troy Crowder showed up in 1990 and started speedbagging everyone. Sure, you can understand catching the first few opponents off guard, but by now the scouting report is out. These folks are not playing. Stay down, NHL teams.

(Side note: Can we start wagering now on which thin-skinned owner will be the first to complain to the league about his team getting roasted on Twitter by the Knights? This feels like a Eugene Melnyk thing, but I'm open to other suggestions.)

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The NHL is using the preseason to crack down on two types of fouls: face-off violations and slashing. That's resulted in a ton of penalties being called, disrupting any sort of flow to the games and confusing fans and players alike. The outrage: Knock it off, NHL—we didn't wait all summer for hockey to come back just so we could watch you call a bunch of nitpicky penalties all night. Is it justified: For the face-off violations, sure. Those have been annoying, and seem like a weird thing for the league to be focusing on. NHL fans love to complain—some of us have entire podcasts for it—but I've never heard any paying customer argue that face-offs were a problem. I wrote a little bit about the face-off crackdown earlier this week, and my basic message was that we shouldn't panic yet because it will probably be short-lived. But if we get to November and we still have linesmen calling three or four of these things a game, we'll have a problem.

So yeah, the face-off thing is dicey. The slashing, though? Not remotely. It's about time the league took a stand on this one.

Two guys cheating on a face-off might turn the draw into a scrum, but it doesn't really hurt anyone. Cracking a guy across the hands with your stick? Yeah, that can do some damage. And there's no reason for it. Reaching out and slashing someone who beat you for position isn't a legitimate defensive tactic, no matter what guys like Jon Cooper say. There's no skill involved. And there's no entertainment value, either. At least a big open ice hit is fun to watch. Seeing a star player get hacked because he had the nerve to actually possess the puck doesn't help anyone.

Well, except for guys who are slow and out of position. Those are the guys who are apparently suffering here. OK…good. Let's phase those guys out. If they can't play defense without using their stick as a weapon, my guess is not too many of us will miss them. Let's swap in a few guys who can keep up with the play and aren't always a stick's length behind the better players.

For years, the NHL has been a league where simply having the puck on your stick meant you had to accept a few hacks across the wrist. It was the price of admission for actually trying to create some offense. It's been that way for so long that it's going to take some adjusting for players to stop reflexively swinging at anyone who skates by.

Will that be annoying for the first few weeks or months or however long it takes the players to figure this out? Definitely. Will penalty boxes occasionally look like this? Maybe. But it's a price worth paying to get this garbage out of the game, and to have it happen before Connor McDavid or Patrik Laine or whoever else gets their wrist broken. Complain all you want about the face-offs if the league actually sticks with it, but the slashing crackdown is long overdue.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Last week was the 30th anniversary of what many consider the greatest hockey game ever played: Team Canada vs. the Soviets in the deciding game of the 1987 Canada Cup, one that ended with Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux teaming up on their famous winner. The game was an incredible back-and-forth contest featuring an almost unimaginable amount of talent. I mean, just look at the starting lineups.

That's three Hockey Hall of Famers for the Soviets, plus two more guys who each had a strong cases of his own. And Canada has four guys who made it in on the first ballot, including two of the ten players in history who were such slam dunks that the customary waiting period was waived for them.

And then there's this week's obscure player: Doug Crossman.

Crossman was a sixth-round pick by the Hawks in the legendary double cohort draft of 1979. Weirdly, he went within five picks of not one but two other Obscure Player alumni, Bill McCreary and Rick Knickle. He'd make his NHL debut the following season, and spent three seasons in Chicago before being traded to the Flyers for legendary tough guy Behn Wilson. He spent five more years in Philadelphia before being traded to L.A. in 1988, which would signal the start of a five-year stretch in which he was traded six times for everyone from Ray Ferraro to Basil McRae. He was also claimed on waivers once, and ended up closing out his career in 1994 having played for eight teams, only two of which kept him for more than 100 games.

Crossman was a decent defenseman who could play in both ends. He never topped 60 points, but he was a +20 or better for three straight years in the mid 80s, and early in his career was a bit of an ironman. He was never an All-Star nor did he receive so much as a single Norris vote, but he was pretty good.

So… how did he wind up lining up next to the Canadian dream team in 1987?

The easiest answer is that he was a Flyer at the time, and his coach was Mike Keenan, who also happened to be running Team Canada. He'd been solid in Philadelphia and was coming off a big playoff year, and Keenan trusted him, so he made the team. Hey, it wouldn't be Team Canada without a weird pick or two. Besides, it's not like Canada was all that deep on defense that year. While they had future Hall of Famers Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque, and Larry Murphy, they also had to lean on guys like James Patrick, Craig Hartsburg, and Normand Rochefort.

All of those guys had to play a role for Canada to win, but only Crossman got to hear his name announced as a starter in one of the most star-studded games ever played.

Be It Resolved

There's a new trend going around the league. Various teams are holding open tryouts to fill the role of emergency backup goalies. Fans can show up, strut their stuff, and earn the job of backup to the backup.

The concept is getting rave reviews, and seems destined to spread across the league fairly quickly. It seems like the perfect way to give fans a shot at actually appearing in an NHL game. Who wouldn't get behind that? The whole idea is, as one observer put it, "freaking awesome."

Like hell it is. Faithful readers, this cannot stand.

Look, I love me a good EBUG, just like any fan should. The emergency backup goalie is one of those fun hockey oddities, one with a long and proud history. Sure, they never actually play (almost), but it's the mere possibility that makes it work. May the hockey gods bless the valiant emergency backup.

But the key word here is emergency. It's the chaos of an unexpected injury followed by a mad scramble to find someone, anyone, who knows how to hold a goalie stick that makes it fun. The guys who win these tryouts are going to be available at every game. Even worse, they're going to be good. Not NHL good, sure, but good enough not to embarrass themselves. Where's the fun in that?

I want to see some terrified dude hyperventilating into a paper bag on the bench. I want ushers and parking-lot attendants and web producers. I want to see the owner's deadbeat nephew shoved out there against his will. I want to see more scenes like Roberto Luongo stealing an ambulance to make a dramatic return from the hospital, Stone Cold Steve Austin-style, so that the goalie coach doesn't have to go in:

If this tryout thing catches on, we lose all that. Every rink will just have some former junior star in the press box, munching popcorn and waiting to see if he's needed. So be it resolved that we need to nip this in the bud. The noble EBUG has suddenly become an endangered species, and we need to save him—even if he never gets the chance to save anything for us.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

A cynic might suggest that the entire preseason schedule is just a massive cash grab, in which teams force fans to buy tickets to watch has-beens, never-will-bes, and PTOs signed specifically to circumvent the veteran roster rules, all playing in games in which nothing ever happens. Well, that's not completely accurate. I mean, almost all of it is. But while it's true that nothing important ever happens in the preseason, that doesn't mean nothing interesting ever happens. One example—OK, the only example—came exactly four years ago today.

So it's September 22, 2013, and the Sabres are visiting the Maple Leafs in preseason action. The score is…well, honestly it doesn't matter. But things are about to get goofy, so let's settle in and enjoy the dumbest line brawl in recent NHL history.

We open with play-by-play legend Joe Bowen informing us that Buffalo's John Scott is unhappy about something. If you're looking for backstory, here's what happened just before our clip begins. Long story short, the Sabres thought their guy had been victimized in a mismatch. Scott's their enforcer, so it's his job to exact some payback.

Unfortunately, he's lined up next to Phil Kessel, and The Code clearly states that he's not allowed to pummel a squishy-soft skill player. But Scott can do the next best thing, which is try to make Kessel poop his pants on live television.

Scott politely gives Kessel a heads-up on what's about to happen, at which point Kessel whips around like he just got a whiff of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. I always thought Scott got a bit of a raw deal on all of this. You hear about how he "jumped" Kessel, but he never really did. Let's be honest, if Scott wanted to hurt Kessel, he absolutely could have. Instead, he basically gives him the "cat batting around a wounded mouse" treatment.

Kessel, of course, doesn't know this, so he immediately tries to break Scott's ankle with a golf swing slash. That's totally fine, by the way, as it's clearly self-defense. Then, after the cavalry arrives and Scott is fighting off two guys, Kessel circles back and hacks him again. That's, um, also self-defense? I would be a bad hockey lawyer.

None of the other Leafs player on the ice are fighters, so they basically gang-tackle Scott—who, it should be pointed out, is listed at 6'8" and 270 pounds. They do a pretty good job, too. Almost too good. Like, it seems like they may have an extra guy. Ah well, I'm sure that won't turn out to be important.

Meanwhile, Kessel pairs off with Brian Flynn for what will be only his second career NHL fight. And he…well, he kind of destroys him. Seriously. It's not quite Clark vs. Brooke, but by the end of it Flynn is leaking blood all over the ice. It will not shock you to learn that this remains Flynn's one and only NHL fight to this day. When Phil Kessel is splitting your face open like it's a jelly-filled donut, there's a good chance you're not very good at this.

Bowen does a reasonably good job on the call, although he's had better.

We get the now standard overhead view of the action, which reveals that all six Leafs seem to be handling business just fine. Wait a second, six? That seems high. Let's see if we can figure this out, now that all the fights are over and there's clearly nothing else that's going to happen.

Uh, did anyone notice anything odd in the lower right corner just there?

Huh, I could have sworn that looked like Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier heading out of his net for some strange reason. Ah well, I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe he's going to get a drink of water or something.

No, he's apparently going to fight Ryan Miller, who speaks for all of us when he reacts by doing this:

As per Canadian law, Bowen immediately references the Felix Potvin vs. Ron Hextall superfight, which we broke down here. That one was the greatest goalie fight of all time. But this one isn't too bad once Miller finally decides to try. It's so entertaining that the other players forget that it's not 1986 and you're not allowed to crowd around to watch a fight.

As that scrap ends, we see Kessel go over and get one more jab on Scott, who's tangled up with David Clarkson. Wait, was Clarkson on the ice when all this started? He and Kessel play the same position, so it wouldn't make sense unless… oh. Oh no.

"All five players…all six players on the ice, including the goaltenders…" Keep counting, Joe.

After several replays, it's only in the final seconds of our clip that Bowen and friends put two and two together. Or more specifically, they put six and one together, and realize that Clarkson jumped on the ice during the brawl, even though the situation was already under control and he really had nothing to do once he arrived. That means that a player the Leafs have just paid a fortune to get has earned himself an automatic ten-game suspension before his first season even starts. Or, as Toronto fans now know it, "the high point of the David Clarkson era."

The epilogue here is that Kessel was suspended for three games, Clarkson never recovered, and Leaf fans loved Bernier right up until he started doing stuff like this. And to this day, Brian Flynn is afraid to go near a hot-dog cart.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Wes McCauley. The only referee on the planet who should ever be allowed near a microphone was at it again. I'd get in there if I were you, Nate.

The second star: Patrick Eaves. D'aawwww.

The first star: The Golden Knights Twitter… again. Good lord, rest of the NHL, how many times are we going to do this?

Guys, come on. This is like when Troy Crowder showed up in 1990 and started speedbagging everyone. Sure, you can understand catching the first few opponents off guard, but by now the scouting report is out. These folks are not playing. Stay down, NHL teams.

(Side note: Can we start wagering now on which thin-skinned owner will be the first to complain to the league about his team getting roasted on Twitter by the Knights? This feels like a Eugene Melnyk thing, but I'm open to other suggestions.)

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The NHL is using the preseason to crack down on two types of fouls: face-off violations and slashing. That's resulted in a ton of penalties being called, disrupting any sort of flow to the games and confusing fans and players alike. The outrage: Knock it off, NHL—we didn't wait all summer for hockey to come back just so we could watch you call a bunch of nitpicky penalties all night. Is it justified: For the face-off violations, sure. Those have been annoying, and seem like a weird thing for the league to be focusing on. NHL fans love to complain—some of us have entire podcasts for it—but I've never heard any paying customer argue that face-offs were a problem. I wrote a little bit about the face-off crackdown earlier this week, and my basic message was that we shouldn't panic yet because it will probably be short-lived. But if we get to November and we still have linesmen calling three or four of these things a game, we'll have a problem.

So yeah, the face-off thing is dicey. The slashing, though? Not remotely. It's about time the league took a stand on this one.

Two guys cheating on a face-off might turn the draw into a scrum, but it doesn't really hurt anyone. Cracking a guy across the hands with your stick? Yeah, that can do some damage. And there's no reason for it. Reaching out and slashing someone who beat you for position isn't a legitimate defensive tactic, no matter what guys like Jon Cooper say. There's no skill involved. And there's no entertainment value, either. At least a big open ice hit is fun to watch. Seeing a star player get hacked because he had the nerve to actually possess the puck doesn't help anyone.

Well, except for guys who are slow and out of position. Those are the guys who are apparently suffering here. OK…good. Let's phase those guys out. If they can't play defense without using their stick as a weapon, my guess is not too many of us will miss them. Let's swap in a few guys who can keep up with the play and aren't always a stick's length behind the better players.

For years, the NHL has been a league where simply having the puck on your stick meant you had to accept a few hacks across the wrist. It was the price of admission for actually trying to create some offense. It's been that way for so long that it's going to take some adjusting for players to stop reflexively swinging at anyone who skates by.

Will that be annoying for the first few weeks or months or however long it takes the players to figure this out? Definitely. Will penalty boxes occasionally look like this? Maybe. But it's a price worth paying to get this garbage out of the game, and to have it happen before Connor McDavid or Patrik Laine or whoever else gets their wrist broken. Complain all you want about the face-offs if the league actually sticks with it, but the slashing crackdown is long overdue.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Last week was the 30th anniversary of what many consider the greatest hockey game ever played: Team Canada vs. the Soviets in the deciding game of the 1987 Canada Cup, one that ended with Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux teaming up on their famous winner. The game was an incredible back-and-forth contest featuring an almost unimaginable amount of talent. I mean, just look at the starting lineups.

That's three Hockey Hall of Famers for the Soviets, plus two more guys who each had a strong cases of his own. And Canada has four guys who made it in on the first ballot, including two of the ten players in history who were such slam dunks that the customary waiting period was waived for them.

And then there's this week's obscure player: Doug Crossman.

Crossman was a sixth-round pick by the Hawks in the legendary double cohort draft of 1979. Weirdly, he went within five picks of not one but two other Obscure Player alumni, Bill McCreary and Rick Knickle. He'd make his NHL debut the following season, and spent three seasons in Chicago before being traded to the Flyers for legendary tough guy Behn Wilson. He spent five more years in Philadelphia before being traded to L.A. in 1988, which would signal the start of a five-year stretch in which he was traded six times for everyone from Ray Ferraro to Basil McRae. He was also claimed on waivers once, and ended up closing out his career in 1994 having played for eight teams, only two of which kept him for more than 100 games.

Crossman was a decent defenseman who could play in both ends. He never topped 60 points, but he was a +20 or better for three straight years in the mid 80s, and early in his career was a bit of an ironman. He was never an All-Star nor did he receive so much as a single Norris vote, but he was pretty good.

So… how did he wind up lining up next to the Canadian dream team in 1987?

The easiest answer is that he was a Flyer at the time, and his coach was Mike Keenan, who also happened to be running Team Canada. He'd been solid in Philadelphia and was coming off a big playoff year, and Keenan trusted him, so he made the team. Hey, it wouldn't be Team Canada without a weird pick or two. Besides, it's not like Canada was all that deep on defense that year. While they had future Hall of Famers Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque, and Larry Murphy, they also had to lean on guys like James Patrick, Craig Hartsburg, and Normand Rochefort.

All of those guys had to play a role for Canada to win, but only Crossman got to hear his name announced as a starter in one of the most star-studded games ever played.

Be It Resolved

There's a new trend going around the league. Various teams are holding open tryouts to fill the role of emergency backup goalies. Fans can show up, strut their stuff, and earn the job of backup to the backup.

The concept is getting rave reviews, and seems destined to spread across the league fairly quickly. It seems like the perfect way to give fans a shot at actually appearing in an NHL game. Who wouldn't get behind that? The whole idea is, as one observer put it, "freaking awesome."

Like hell it is. Faithful readers, this cannot stand.

Look, I love me a good EBUG, just like any fan should. The emergency backup goalie is one of those fun hockey oddities, one with a long and proud history. Sure, they never actually play (almost), but it's the mere possibility that makes it work. May the hockey gods bless the valiant emergency backup.

But the key word here is emergency. It's the chaos of an unexpected injury followed by a mad scramble to find someone, anyone, who knows how to hold a goalie stick that makes it fun. The guys who win these tryouts are going to be available at every game. Even worse, they're going to be good. Not NHL good, sure, but good enough not to embarrass themselves. Where's the fun in that?

I want to see some terrified dude hyperventilating into a paper bag on the bench. I want ushers and parking-lot attendants and web producers. I want to see the owner's deadbeat nephew shoved out there against his will. I want to see more scenes like Roberto Luongo stealing an ambulance to make a dramatic return from the hospital, Stone Cold Steve Austin-style, so that the goalie coach doesn't have to go in:

If this tryout thing catches on, we lose all that. Every rink will just have some former junior star in the press box, munching popcorn and waiting to see if he's needed. So be it resolved that we need to nip this in the bud. The noble EBUG has suddenly become an endangered species, and we need to save him—even if he never gets the chance to save anything for us.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

A cynic might suggest that the entire preseason schedule is just a massive cash grab, in which teams force fans to buy tickets to watch has-beens, never-will-bes, and PTOs signed specifically to circumvent the veteran roster rules, all playing in games in which nothing ever happens. Well, that's not completely accurate. I mean, almost all of it is. But while it's true that nothing important ever happens in the preseason, that doesn't mean nothing interesting ever happens. One example—OK, the only example—came exactly four years ago today.

So it's September 22, 2013, and the Sabres are visiting the Maple Leafs in preseason action. The score is…well, honestly it doesn't matter. But things are about to get goofy, so let's settle in and enjoy the dumbest line brawl in recent NHL history.

We open with play-by-play legend Joe Bowen informing us that Buffalo's John Scott is unhappy about something. If you're looking for backstory, here's what happened just before our clip begins. Long story short, the Sabres thought their guy had been victimized in a mismatch. Scott's their enforcer, so it's his job to exact some payback.

Unfortunately, he's lined up next to Phil Kessel, and The Code clearly states that he's not allowed to pummel a squishy-soft skill player. But Scott can do the next best thing, which is try to make Kessel poop his pants on live television.

Scott politely gives Kessel a heads-up on what's about to happen, at which point Kessel whips around like he just got a whiff of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. I always thought Scott got a bit of a raw deal on all of this. You hear about how he "jumped" Kessel, but he never really did. Let's be honest, if Scott wanted to hurt Kessel, he absolutely could have. Instead, he basically gives him the "cat batting around a wounded mouse" treatment.

Kessel, of course, doesn't know this, so he immediately tries to break Scott's ankle with a golf swing slash. That's totally fine, by the way, as it's clearly self-defense. Then, after the cavalry arrives and Scott is fighting off two guys, Kessel circles back and hacks him again. That's, um, also self-defense? I would be a bad hockey lawyer.

None of the other Leafs player on the ice are fighters, so they basically gang-tackle Scott—who, it should be pointed out, is listed at 6'8" and 270 pounds. They do a pretty good job, too. Almost too good. Like, it seems like they may have an extra guy. Ah well, I'm sure that won't turn out to be important.

Meanwhile, Kessel pairs off with Brian Flynn for what will be only his second career NHL fight. And he…well, he kind of destroys him. Seriously. It's not quite Clark vs. Brooke, but by the end of it Flynn is leaking blood all over the ice. It will not shock you to learn that this remains Flynn's one and only NHL fight to this day. When Phil Kessel is splitting your face open like it's a jelly-filled donut, there's a good chance you're not very good at this.

Bowen does a reasonably good job on the call, although he's had better.

We get the now standard overhead view of the action, which reveals that all six Leafs seem to be handling business just fine. Wait a second, six? That seems high. Let's see if we can figure this out, now that all the fights are over and there's clearly nothing else that's going to happen.

Uh, did anyone notice anything odd in the lower right corner just there?

Huh, I could have sworn that looked like Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier heading out of his net for some strange reason. Ah well, I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe he's going to get a drink of water or something.

No, he's apparently going to fight Ryan Miller, who speaks for all of us when he reacts by doing this:

As per Canadian law, Bowen immediately references the Felix Potvin vs. Ron Hextall superfight, which we broke down here. That one was the greatest goalie fight of all time. But this one isn't too bad once Miller finally decides to try. It's so entertaining that the other players forget that it's not 1986 and you're not allowed to crowd around to watch a fight.

As that scrap ends, we see Kessel go over and get one more jab on Scott, who's tangled up with David Clarkson. Wait, was Clarkson on the ice when all this started? He and Kessel play the same position, so it wouldn't make sense unless… oh. Oh no.

"All five players…all six players on the ice, including the goaltenders…" Keep counting, Joe.

After several replays, it's only in the final seconds of our clip that Bowen and friends put two and two together. Or more specifically, they put six and one together, and realize that Clarkson jumped on the ice during the brawl, even though the situation was already under control and he really had nothing to do once he arrived. That means that a player the Leafs have just paid a fortune to get has earned himself an automatic ten-game suspension before his first season even starts. Or, as Toronto fans now know it, "the high point of the David Clarkson era."

The epilogue here is that Kessel was suspended for three games, Clarkson never recovered, and Leaf fans loved Bernier right up until he started doing stuff like this. And to this day, Brian Flynn is afraid to go near a hot-dog cart.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Wes McCauley. The only referee on the planet who should ever be allowed near a microphone was at it again. I'd get in there if I were you, Nate.

The second star: Patrick Eaves. D'aawwww.

The first star: The Golden Knights Twitter… again. Good lord, rest of the NHL, how many times are we going to do this?

Guys, come on. This is like when Troy Crowder showed up in 1990 and started speedbagging everyone. Sure, you can understand catching the first few opponents off guard, but by now the scouting report is out. These folks are not playing. Stay down, NHL teams.

(Side note: Can we start wagering now on which thin-skinned owner will be the first to complain to the league about his team getting roasted on Twitter by the Knights? This feels like a Eugene Melnyk thing, but I'm open to other suggestions.)

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The NHL is using the preseason to crack down on two types of fouls: face-off violations and slashing. That's resulted in a ton of penalties being called, disrupting any sort of flow to the games and confusing fans and players alike. The outrage: Knock it off, NHL—we didn't wait all summer for hockey to come back just so we could watch you call a bunch of nitpicky penalties all night. Is it justified: For the face-off violations, sure. Those have been annoying, and seem like a weird thing for the league to be focusing on. NHL fans love to complain—some of us have entire podcasts for it—but I've never heard any paying customer argue that face-offs were a problem. I wrote a little bit about the face-off crackdown earlier this week, and my basic message was that we shouldn't panic yet because it will probably be short-lived. But if we get to November and we still have linesmen calling three or four of these things a game, we'll have a problem.

So yeah, the face-off thing is dicey. The slashing, though? Not remotely. It's about time the league took a stand on this one.

Two guys cheating on a face-off might turn the draw into a scrum, but it doesn't really hurt anyone. Cracking a guy across the hands with your stick? Yeah, that can do some damage. And there's no reason for it. Reaching out and slashing someone who beat you for position isn't a legitimate defensive tactic, no matter what guys like Jon Cooper say. There's no skill involved. And there's no entertainment value, either. At least a big open ice hit is fun to watch. Seeing a star player get hacked because he had the nerve to actually possess the puck doesn't help anyone.

Well, except for guys who are slow and out of position. Those are the guys who are apparently suffering here. OK…good. Let's phase those guys out. If they can't play defense without using their stick as a weapon, my guess is not too many of us will miss them. Let's swap in a few guys who can keep up with the play and aren't always a stick's length behind the better players.

For years, the NHL has been a league where simply having the puck on your stick meant you had to accept a few hacks across the wrist. It was the price of admission for actually trying to create some offense. It's been that way for so long that it's going to take some adjusting for players to stop reflexively swinging at anyone who skates by.

Will that be annoying for the first few weeks or months or however long it takes the players to figure this out? Definitely. Will penalty boxes occasionally look like this? Maybe. But it's a price worth paying to get this garbage out of the game, and to have it happen before Connor McDavid or Patrik Laine or whoever else gets their wrist broken. Complain all you want about the face-offs if the league actually sticks with it, but the slashing crackdown is long overdue.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Last week was the 30th anniversary of what many consider the greatest hockey game ever played: Team Canada vs. the Soviets in the deciding game of the 1987 Canada Cup, one that ended with Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux teaming up on their famous winner. The game was an incredible back-and-forth contest featuring an almost unimaginable amount of talent. I mean, just look at the starting lineups.

That's three Hockey Hall of Famers for the Soviets, plus two more guys who each had a strong cases of his own. And Canada has four guys who made it in on the first ballot, including two of the ten players in history who were such slam dunks that the customary waiting period was waived for them.

And then there's this week's obscure player: Doug Crossman.

Crossman was a sixth-round pick by the Hawks in the legendary double cohort draft of 1979. Weirdly, he went within five picks of not one but two other Obscure Player alumni, Bill McCreary and Rick Knickle. He'd make his NHL debut the following season, and spent three seasons in Chicago before being traded to the Flyers for legendary tough guy Behn Wilson. He spent five more years in Philadelphia before being traded to L.A. in 1988, which would signal the start of a five-year stretch in which he was traded six times for everyone from Ray Ferraro to Basil McRae. He was also claimed on waivers once, and ended up closing out his career in 1994 having played for eight teams, only two of which kept him for more than 100 games.

Crossman was a decent defenseman who could play in both ends. He never topped 60 points, but he was a +20 or better for three straight years in the mid 80s, and early in his career was a bit of an ironman. He was never an All-Star nor did he receive so much as a single Norris vote, but he was pretty good.

So… how did he wind up lining up next to the Canadian dream team in 1987?

The easiest answer is that he was a Flyer at the time, and his coach was Mike Keenan, who also happened to be running Team Canada. He'd been solid in Philadelphia and was coming off a big playoff year, and Keenan trusted him, so he made the team. Hey, it wouldn't be Team Canada without a weird pick or two. Besides, it's not like Canada was all that deep on defense that year. While they had future Hall of Famers Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque, and Larry Murphy, they also had to lean on guys like James Patrick, Craig Hartsburg, and Normand Rochefort.

All of those guys had to play a role for Canada to win, but only Crossman got to hear his name announced as a starter in one of the most star-studded games ever played.

Be It Resolved

There's a new trend going around the league. Various teams are holding open tryouts to fill the role of emergency backup goalies. Fans can show up, strut their stuff, and earn the job of backup to the backup.

The concept is getting rave reviews, and seems destined to spread across the league fairly quickly. It seems like the perfect way to give fans a shot at actually appearing in an NHL game. Who wouldn't get behind that? The whole idea is, as one observer put it, "freaking awesome."

Like hell it is. Faithful readers, this cannot stand.

Look, I love me a good EBUG, just like any fan should. The emergency backup goalie is one of those fun hockey oddities, one with a long and proud history. Sure, they never actually play (almost), but it's the mere possibility that makes it work. May the hockey gods bless the valiant emergency backup.

But the key word here is emergency. It's the chaos of an unexpected injury followed by a mad scramble to find someone, anyone, who knows how to hold a goalie stick that makes it fun. The guys who win these tryouts are going to be available at every game. Even worse, they're going to be good. Not NHL good, sure, but good enough not to embarrass themselves. Where's the fun in that?

I want to see some terrified dude hyperventilating into a paper bag on the bench. I want ushers and parking-lot attendants and web producers. I want to see the owner's deadbeat nephew shoved out there against his will. I want to see more scenes like Roberto Luongo stealing an ambulance to make a dramatic return from the hospital, Stone Cold Steve Austin-style, so that the goalie coach doesn't have to go in:

If this tryout thing catches on, we lose all that. Every rink will just have some former junior star in the press box, munching popcorn and waiting to see if he's needed. So be it resolved that we need to nip this in the bud. The noble EBUG has suddenly become an endangered species, and we need to save him—even if he never gets the chance to save anything for us.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

A cynic might suggest that the entire preseason schedule is just a massive cash grab, in which teams force fans to buy tickets to watch has-beens, never-will-bes, and PTOs signed specifically to circumvent the veteran roster rules, all playing in games in which nothing ever happens. Well, that's not completely accurate. I mean, almost all of it is. But while it's true that nothing important ever happens in the preseason, that doesn't mean nothing interesting ever happens. One example—OK, the only example—came exactly four years ago today.

So it's September 22, 2013, and the Sabres are visiting the Maple Leafs in preseason action. The score is…well, honestly it doesn't matter. But things are about to get goofy, so let's settle in and enjoy the dumbest line brawl in recent NHL history.

We open with play-by-play legend Joe Bowen informing us that Buffalo's John Scott is unhappy about something. If you're looking for backstory, here's what happened just before our clip begins. Long story short, the Sabres thought their guy had been victimized in a mismatch. Scott's their enforcer, so it's his job to exact some payback.

Unfortunately, he's lined up next to Phil Kessel, and The Code clearly states that he's not allowed to pummel a squishy-soft skill player. But Scott can do the next best thing, which is try to make Kessel poop his pants on live television.

Scott politely gives Kessel a heads-up on what's about to happen, at which point Kessel whips around like he just got a whiff of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. I always thought Scott got a bit of a raw deal on all of this. You hear about how he "jumped" Kessel, but he never really did. Let's be honest, if Scott wanted to hurt Kessel, he absolutely could have. Instead, he basically gives him the "cat batting around a wounded mouse" treatment.

Kessel, of course, doesn't know this, so he immediately tries to break Scott's ankle with a golf swing slash. That's totally fine, by the way, as it's clearly self-defense. Then, after the cavalry arrives and Scott is fighting off two guys, Kessel circles back and hacks him again. That's, um, also self-defense? I would be a bad hockey lawyer.

None of the other Leafs player on the ice are fighters, so they basically gang-tackle Scott—who, it should be pointed out, is listed at 6'8" and 270 pounds. They do a pretty good job, too. Almost too good. Like, it seems like they may have an extra guy. Ah well, I'm sure that won't turn out to be important.

Meanwhile, Kessel pairs off with Brian Flynn for what will be only his second career NHL fight. And he…well, he kind of destroys him. Seriously. It's not quite Clark vs. Brooke, but by the end of it Flynn is leaking blood all over the ice. It will not shock you to learn that this remains Flynn's one and only NHL fight to this day. When Phil Kessel is splitting your face open like it's a jelly-filled donut, there's a good chance you're not very good at this.

Bowen does a reasonably good job on the call, although he's had better.

We get the now standard overhead view of the action, which reveals that all six Leafs seem to be handling business just fine. Wait a second, six? That seems high. Let's see if we can figure this out, now that all the fights are over and there's clearly nothing else that's going to happen.

Uh, did anyone notice anything odd in the lower right corner just there?

Huh, I could have sworn that looked like Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier heading out of his net for some strange reason. Ah well, I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe he's going to get a drink of water or something.

No, he's apparently going to fight Ryan Miller, who speaks for all of us when he reacts by doing this:

As per Canadian law, Bowen immediately references the Felix Potvin vs. Ron Hextall superfight, which we broke down here. That one was the greatest goalie fight of all time. But this one isn't too bad once Miller finally decides to try. It's so entertaining that the other players forget that it's not 1986 and you're not allowed to crowd around to watch a fight.

As that scrap ends, we see Kessel go over and get one more jab on Scott, who's tangled up with David Clarkson. Wait, was Clarkson on the ice when all this started? He and Kessel play the same position, so it wouldn't make sense unless… oh. Oh no.

"All five players…all six players on the ice, including the goaltenders…" Keep counting, Joe.

After several replays, it's only in the final seconds of our clip that Bowen and friends put two and two together. Or more specifically, they put six and one together, and realize that Clarkson jumped on the ice during the brawl, even though the situation was already under control and he really had nothing to do once he arrived. That means that a player the Leafs have just paid a fortune to get has earned himself an automatic ten-game suspension before his first season even starts. Or, as Toronto fans now know it, "the high point of the David Clarkson era."

The epilogue here is that Kessel was suspended for three games, Clarkson never recovered, and Leaf fans loved Bernier right up until he started doing stuff like this. And to this day, Brian Flynn is afraid to go near a hot-dog cart.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Wes McCauley. The only referee on the planet who should ever be allowed near a microphone was at it again. I'd get in there if I were you, Nate.

The second star: Patrick Eaves. D'aawwww.

The first star: The Golden Knights Twitter… again. Good lord, rest of the NHL, how many times are we going to do this?

Guys, come on. This is like when Troy Crowder showed up in 1990 and started speedbagging everyone. Sure, you can understand catching the first few opponents off guard, but by now the scouting report is out. These folks are not playing. Stay down, NHL teams.

(Side note: Can we start wagering now on which thin-skinned owner will be the first to complain to the league about his team getting roasted on Twitter by the Knights? This feels like a Eugene Melnyk thing, but I'm open to other suggestions.)

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The NHL is using the preseason to crack down on two types of fouls: face-off violations and slashing. That's resulted in a ton of penalties being called, disrupting any sort of flow to the games and confusing fans and players alike. The outrage: Knock it off, NHL—we didn't wait all summer for hockey to come back just so we could watch you call a bunch of nitpicky penalties all night. Is it justified: For the face-off violations, sure. Those have been annoying, and seem like a weird thing for the league to be focusing on. NHL fans love to complain—some of us have entire podcasts for it—but I've never heard any paying customer argue that face-offs were a problem. I wrote a little bit about the face-off crackdown earlier this week, and my basic message was that we shouldn't panic yet because it will probably be short-lived. But if we get to November and we still have linesmen calling three or four of these things a game, we'll have a problem.

So yeah, the face-off thing is dicey. The slashing, though? Not remotely. It's about time the league took a stand on this one.

Two guys cheating on a face-off might turn the draw into a scrum, but it doesn't really hurt anyone. Cracking a guy across the hands with your stick? Yeah, that can do some damage. And there's no reason for it. Reaching out and slashing someone who beat you for position isn't a legitimate defensive tactic, no matter what guys like Jon Cooper say. There's no skill involved. And there's no entertainment value, either. At least a big open ice hit is fun to watch. Seeing a star player get hacked because he had the nerve to actually possess the puck doesn't help anyone.

Well, except for guys who are slow and out of position. Those are the guys who are apparently suffering here. OK…good. Let's phase those guys out. If they can't play defense without using their stick as a weapon, my guess is not too many of us will miss them. Let's swap in a few guys who can keep up with the play and aren't always a stick's length behind the better players.

For years, the NHL has been a league where simply having the puck on your stick meant you had to accept a few hacks across the wrist. It was the price of admission for actually trying to create some offense. It's been that way for so long that it's going to take some adjusting for players to stop reflexively swinging at anyone who skates by.

Will that be annoying for the first few weeks or months or however long it takes the players to figure this out? Definitely. Will penalty boxes occasionally look like this? Maybe. But it's a price worth paying to get this garbage out of the game, and to have it happen before Connor McDavid or Patrik Laine or whoever else gets their wrist broken. Complain all you want about the face-offs if the league actually sticks with it, but the slashing crackdown is long overdue.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Last week was the 30th anniversary of what many consider the greatest hockey game ever played: Team Canada vs. the Soviets in the deciding game of the 1987 Canada Cup, one that ended with Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux teaming up on their famous winner. The game was an incredible back-and-forth contest featuring an almost unimaginable amount of talent. I mean, just look at the starting lineups.

That's three Hockey Hall of Famers for the Soviets, plus two more guys who each had a strong cases of his own. And Canada has four guys who made it in on the first ballot, including two of the ten players in history who were such slam dunks that the customary waiting period was waived for them.

And then there's this week's obscure player: Doug Crossman.

Crossman was a sixth-round pick by the Hawks in the legendary double cohort draft of 1979. Weirdly, he went within five picks of not one but two other Obscure Player alumni, Bill McCreary and Rick Knickle. He'd make his NHL debut the following season, and spent three seasons in Chicago before being traded to the Flyers for legendary tough guy Behn Wilson. He spent five more years in Philadelphia before being traded to L.A. in 1988, which would signal the start of a five-year stretch in which he was traded six times for everyone from Ray Ferraro to Basil McRae. He was also claimed on waivers once, and ended up closing out his career in 1994 having played for eight teams, only two of which kept him for more than 100 games.

Crossman was a decent defenseman who could play in both ends. He never topped 60 points, but he was a +20 or better for three straight years in the mid 80s, and early in his career was a bit of an ironman. He was never an All-Star nor did he receive so much as a single Norris vote, but he was pretty good.

So… how did he wind up lining up next to the Canadian dream team in 1987?

The easiest answer is that he was a Flyer at the time, and his coach was Mike Keenan, who also happened to be running Team Canada. He'd been solid in Philadelphia and was coming off a big playoff year, and Keenan trusted him, so he made the team. Hey, it wouldn't be Team Canada without a weird pick or two. Besides, it's not like Canada was all that deep on defense that year. While they had future Hall of Famers Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque, and Larry Murphy, they also had to lean on guys like James Patrick, Craig Hartsburg, and Normand Rochefort.

All of those guys had to play a role for Canada to win, but only Crossman got to hear his name announced as a starter in one of the most star-studded games ever played.

Be It Resolved

There's a new trend going around the league. Various teams are holding open tryouts to fill the role of emergency backup goalies. Fans can show up, strut their stuff, and earn the job of backup to the backup.

The concept is getting rave reviews, and seems destined to spread across the league fairly quickly. It seems like the perfect way to give fans a shot at actually appearing in an NHL game. Who wouldn't get behind that? The whole idea is, as one observer put it, "freaking awesome."

Like hell it is. Faithful readers, this cannot stand.

Look, I love me a good EBUG, just like any fan should. The emergency backup goalie is one of those fun hockey oddities, one with a long and proud history. Sure, they never actually play (almost), but it's the mere possibility that makes it work. May the hockey gods bless the valiant emergency backup.

But the key word here is emergency. It's the chaos of an unexpected injury followed by a mad scramble to find someone, anyone, who knows how to hold a goalie stick that makes it fun. The guys who win these tryouts are going to be available at every game. Even worse, they're going to be good. Not NHL good, sure, but good enough not to embarrass themselves. Where's the fun in that?

I want to see some terrified dude hyperventilating into a paper bag on the bench. I want ushers and parking-lot attendants and web producers. I want to see the owner's deadbeat nephew shoved out there against his will. I want to see more scenes like Roberto Luongo stealing an ambulance to make a dramatic return from the hospital, Stone Cold Steve Austin-style, so that the goalie coach doesn't have to go in:

If this tryout thing catches on, we lose all that. Every rink will just have some former junior star in the press box, munching popcorn and waiting to see if he's needed. So be it resolved that we need to nip this in the bud. The noble EBUG has suddenly become an endangered species, and we need to save him—even if he never gets the chance to save anything for us.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

A cynic might suggest that the entire preseason schedule is just a massive cash grab, in which teams force fans to buy tickets to watch has-beens, never-will-bes, and PTOs signed specifically to circumvent the veteran roster rules, all playing in games in which nothing ever happens. Well, that's not completely accurate. I mean, almost all of it is. But while it's true that nothing important ever happens in the preseason, that doesn't mean nothing interesting ever happens. One example—OK, the only example—came exactly four years ago today.

So it's September 22, 2013, and the Sabres are visiting the Maple Leafs in preseason action. The score is…well, honestly it doesn't matter. But things are about to get goofy, so let's settle in and enjoy the dumbest line brawl in recent NHL history.

We open with play-by-play legend Joe Bowen informing us that Buffalo's John Scott is unhappy about something. If you're looking for backstory, here's what happened just before our clip begins. Long story short, the Sabres thought their guy had been victimized in a mismatch. Scott's their enforcer, so it's his job to exact some payback.

Unfortunately, he's lined up next to Phil Kessel, and The Code clearly states that he's not allowed to pummel a squishy-soft skill player. But Scott can do the next best thing, which is try to make Kessel poop his pants on live television.

Scott politely gives Kessel a heads-up on what's about to happen, at which point Kessel whips around like he just got a whiff of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. I always thought Scott got a bit of a raw deal on all of this. You hear about how he "jumped" Kessel, but he never really did. Let's be honest, if Scott wanted to hurt Kessel, he absolutely could have. Instead, he basically gives him the "cat batting around a wounded mouse" treatment.

Kessel, of course, doesn't know this, so he immediately tries to break Scott's ankle with a golf swing slash. That's totally fine, by the way, as it's clearly self-defense. Then, after the cavalry arrives and Scott is fighting off two guys, Kessel circles back and hacks him again. That's, um, also self-defense? I would be a bad hockey lawyer.

None of the other Leafs player on the ice are fighters, so they basically gang-tackle Scott—who, it should be pointed out, is listed at 6'8" and 270 pounds. They do a pretty good job, too. Almost too good. Like, it seems like they may have an extra guy. Ah well, I'm sure that won't turn out to be important.

Meanwhile, Kessel pairs off with Brian Flynn for what will be only his second career NHL fight. And he…well, he kind of destroys him. Seriously. It's not quite Clark vs. Brooke, but by the end of it Flynn is leaking blood all over the ice. It will not shock you to learn that this remains Flynn's one and only NHL fight to this day. When Phil Kessel is splitting your face open like it's a jelly-filled donut, there's a good chance you're not very good at this.

Bowen does a reasonably good job on the call, although he's had better.

We get the now standard overhead view of the action, which reveals that all six Leafs seem to be handling business just fine. Wait a second, six? That seems high. Let's see if we can figure this out, now that all the fights are over and there's clearly nothing else that's going to happen.

Uh, did anyone notice anything odd in the lower right corner just there?

Huh, I could have sworn that looked like Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier heading out of his net for some strange reason. Ah well, I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe he's going to get a drink of water or something.

No, he's apparently going to fight Ryan Miller, who speaks for all of us when he reacts by doing this:

As per Canadian law, Bowen immediately references the Felix Potvin vs. Ron Hextall superfight, which we broke down here. That one was the greatest goalie fight of all time. But this one isn't too bad once Miller finally decides to try. It's so entertaining that the other players forget that it's not 1986 and you're not allowed to crowd around to watch a fight.

As that scrap ends, we see Kessel go over and get one more jab on Scott, who's tangled up with David Clarkson. Wait, was Clarkson on the ice when all this started? He and Kessel play the same position, so it wouldn't make sense unless… oh. Oh no.

"All five players…all six players on the ice, including the goaltenders…" Keep counting, Joe.

After several replays, it's only in the final seconds of our clip that Bowen and friends put two and two together. Or more specifically, they put six and one together, and realize that Clarkson jumped on the ice during the brawl, even though the situation was already under control and he really had nothing to do once he arrived. That means that a player the Leafs have just paid a fortune to get has earned himself an automatic ten-game suspension before his first season even starts. Or, as Toronto fans now know it, "the high point of the David Clarkson era."

The epilogue here is that Kessel was suspended for three games, Clarkson never recovered, and Leaf fans loved Bernier right up until he started doing stuff like this. And to this day, Brian Flynn is afraid to go near a hot-dog cart.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Wes McCauley. The only referee on the planet who should ever be allowed near a microphone was at it again. I'd get in there if I were you, Nate.

The second star: Patrick Eaves. D'aawwww.

The first star: The Golden Knights Twitter… again. Good lord, rest of the NHL, how many times are we going to do this?

Guys, come on. This is like when Troy Crowder showed up in 1990 and started speedbagging everyone. Sure, you can understand catching the first few opponents off guard, but by now the scouting report is out. These folks are not playing. Stay down, NHL teams.

(Side note: Can we start wagering now on which thin-skinned owner will be the first to complain to the league about his team getting roasted on Twitter by the Knights? This feels like a Eugene Melnyk thing, but I'm open to other suggestions.)

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The NHL is using the preseason to crack down on two types of fouls: face-off violations and slashing. That's resulted in a ton of penalties being called, disrupting any sort of flow to the games and confusing fans and players alike. The outrage: Knock it off, NHL—we didn't wait all summer for hockey to come back just so we could watch you call a bunch of nitpicky penalties all night. Is it justified: For the face-off violations, sure. Those have been annoying, and seem like a weird thing for the league to be focusing on. NHL fans love to complain—some of us have entire podcasts for it—but I've never heard any paying customer argue that face-offs were a problem. I wrote a little bit about the face-off crackdown earlier this week, and my basic message was that we shouldn't panic yet because it will probably be short-lived. But if we get to November and we still have linesmen calling three or four of these things a game, we'll have a problem.

So yeah, the face-off thing is dicey. The slashing, though? Not remotely. It's about time the league took a stand on this one.

Two guys cheating on a face-off might turn the draw into a scrum, but it doesn't really hurt anyone. Cracking a guy across the hands with your stick? Yeah, that can do some damage. And there's no reason for it. Reaching out and slashing someone who beat you for position isn't a legitimate defensive tactic, no matter what guys like Jon Cooper say. There's no skill involved. And there's no entertainment value, either. At least a big open ice hit is fun to watch. Seeing a star player get hacked because he had the nerve to actually possess the puck doesn't help anyone.

Well, except for guys who are slow and out of position. Those are the guys who are apparently suffering here. OK…good. Let's phase those guys out. If they can't play defense without using their stick as a weapon, my guess is not too many of us will miss them. Let's swap in a few guys who can keep up with the play and aren't always a stick's length behind the better players.

For years, the NHL has been a league where simply having the puck on your stick meant you had to accept a few hacks across the wrist. It was the price of admission for actually trying to create some offense. It's been that way for so long that it's going to take some adjusting for players to stop reflexively swinging at anyone who skates by.

Will that be annoying for the first few weeks or months or however long it takes the players to figure this out? Definitely. Will penalty boxes occasionally look like this? Maybe. But it's a price worth paying to get this garbage out of the game, and to have it happen before Connor McDavid or Patrik Laine or whoever else gets their wrist broken. Complain all you want about the face-offs if the league actually sticks with it, but the slashing crackdown is long overdue.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Last week was the 30th anniversary of what many consider the greatest hockey game ever played: Team Canada vs. the Soviets in the deciding game of the 1987 Canada Cup, one that ended with Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux teaming up on their famous winner. The game was an incredible back-and-forth contest featuring an almost unimaginable amount of talent. I mean, just look at the starting lineups.

That's three Hockey Hall of Famers for the Soviets, plus two more guys who each had a strong cases of his own. And Canada has four guys who made it in on the first ballot, including two of the ten players in history who were such slam dunks that the customary waiting period was waived for them.

And then there's this week's obscure player: Doug Crossman.

Crossman was a sixth-round pick by the Hawks in the legendary double cohort draft of 1979. Weirdly, he went within five picks of not one but two other Obscure Player alumni, Bill McCreary and Rick Knickle. He'd make his NHL debut the following season, and spent three seasons in Chicago before being traded to the Flyers for legendary tough guy Behn Wilson. He spent five more years in Philadelphia before being traded to L.A. in 1988, which would signal the start of a five-year stretch in which he was traded six times for everyone from Ray Ferraro to Basil McRae. He was also claimed on waivers once, and ended up closing out his career in 1994 having played for eight teams, only two of which kept him for more than 100 games.

Crossman was a decent defenseman who could play in both ends. He never topped 60 points, but he was a +20 or better for three straight years in the mid 80s, and early in his career was a bit of an ironman. He was never an All-Star nor did he receive so much as a single Norris vote, but he was pretty good.

So… how did he wind up lining up next to the Canadian dream team in 1987?

The easiest answer is that he was a Flyer at the time, and his coach was Mike Keenan, who also happened to be running Team Canada. He'd been solid in Philadelphia and was coming off a big playoff year, and Keenan trusted him, so he made the team. Hey, it wouldn't be Team Canada without a weird pick or two. Besides, it's not like Canada was all that deep on defense that year. While they had future Hall of Famers Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque, and Larry Murphy, they also had to lean on guys like James Patrick, Craig Hartsburg, and Normand Rochefort.

All of those guys had to play a role for Canada to win, but only Crossman got to hear his name announced as a starter in one of the most star-studded games ever played.

Be It Resolved

There's a new trend going around the league. Various teams are holding open tryouts to fill the role of emergency backup goalies. Fans can show up, strut their stuff, and earn the job of backup to the backup.

The concept is getting rave reviews, and seems destined to spread across the league fairly quickly. It seems like the perfect way to give fans a shot at actually appearing in an NHL game. Who wouldn't get behind that? The whole idea is, as one observer put it, "freaking awesome."

Like hell it is. Faithful readers, this cannot stand.

Look, I love me a good EBUG, just like any fan should. The emergency backup goalie is one of those fun hockey oddities, one with a long and proud history. Sure, they never actually play (almost), but it's the mere possibility that makes it work. May the hockey gods bless the valiant emergency backup.

But the key word here is emergency. It's the chaos of an unexpected injury followed by a mad scramble to find someone, anyone, who knows how to hold a goalie stick that makes it fun. The guys who win these tryouts are going to be available at every game. Even worse, they're going to be good. Not NHL good, sure, but good enough not to embarrass themselves. Where's the fun in that?

I want to see some terrified dude hyperventilating into a paper bag on the bench. I want ushers and parking-lot attendants and web producers. I want to see the owner's deadbeat nephew shoved out there against his will. I want to see more scenes like Roberto Luongo stealing an ambulance to make a dramatic return from the hospital, Stone Cold Steve Austin-style, so that the goalie coach doesn't have to go in:

If this tryout thing catches on, we lose all that. Every rink will just have some former junior star in the press box, munching popcorn and waiting to see if he's needed. So be it resolved that we need to nip this in the bud. The noble EBUG has suddenly become an endangered species, and we need to save him—even if he never gets the chance to save anything for us.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

A cynic might suggest that the entire preseason schedule is just a massive cash grab, in which teams force fans to buy tickets to watch has-beens, never-will-bes, and PTOs signed specifically to circumvent the veteran roster rules, all playing in games in which nothing ever happens. Well, that's not completely accurate. I mean, almost all of it is. But while it's true that nothing important ever happens in the preseason, that doesn't mean nothing interesting ever happens. One example—OK, the only example—came exactly four years ago today.

So it's September 22, 2013, and the Sabres are visiting the Maple Leafs in preseason action. The score is…well, honestly it doesn't matter. But things are about to get goofy, so let's settle in and enjoy the dumbest line brawl in recent NHL history.

We open with play-by-play legend Joe Bowen informing us that Buffalo's John Scott is unhappy about something. If you're looking for backstory, here's what happened just before our clip begins. Long story short, the Sabres thought their guy had been victimized in a mismatch. Scott's their enforcer, so it's his job to exact some payback.

Unfortunately, he's lined up next to Phil Kessel, and The Code clearly states that he's not allowed to pummel a squishy-soft skill player. But Scott can do the next best thing, which is try to make Kessel poop his pants on live television.

Scott politely gives Kessel a heads-up on what's about to happen, at which point Kessel whips around like he just got a whiff of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. I always thought Scott got a bit of a raw deal on all of this. You hear about how he "jumped" Kessel, but he never really did. Let's be honest, if Scott wanted to hurt Kessel, he absolutely could have. Instead, he basically gives him the "cat batting around a wounded mouse" treatment.

Kessel, of course, doesn't know this, so he immediately tries to break Scott's ankle with a golf swing slash. That's totally fine, by the way, as it's clearly self-defense. Then, after the cavalry arrives and Scott is fighting off two guys, Kessel circles back and hacks him again. That's, um, also self-defense? I would be a bad hockey lawyer.

None of the other Leafs player on the ice are fighters, so they basically gang-tackle Scott—who, it should be pointed out, is listed at 6'8" and 270 pounds. They do a pretty good job, too. Almost too good. Like, it seems like they may have an extra guy. Ah well, I'm sure that won't turn out to be important.

Meanwhile, Kessel pairs off with Brian Flynn for what will be only his second career NHL fight. And he…well, he kind of destroys him. Seriously. It's not quite Clark vs. Brooke, but by the end of it Flynn is leaking blood all over the ice. It will not shock you to learn that this remains Flynn's one and only NHL fight to this day. When Phil Kessel is splitting your face open like it's a jelly-filled donut, there's a good chance you're not very good at this.

Bowen does a reasonably good job on the call, although he's had better.

We get the now standard overhead view of the action, which reveals that all six Leafs seem to be handling business just fine. Wait a second, six? That seems high. Let's see if we can figure this out, now that all the fights are over and there's clearly nothing else that's going to happen.

Uh, did anyone notice anything odd in the lower right corner just there?

Huh, I could have sworn that looked like Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier heading out of his net for some strange reason. Ah well, I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe he's going to get a drink of water or something.

No, he's apparently going to fight Ryan Miller, who speaks for all of us when he reacts by doing this:

As per Canadian law, Bowen immediately references the Felix Potvin vs. Ron Hextall superfight, which we broke down here. That one was the greatest goalie fight of all time. But this one isn't too bad once Miller finally decides to try. It's so entertaining that the other players forget that it's not 1986 and you're not allowed to crowd around to watch a fight.

As that scrap ends, we see Kessel go over and get one more jab on Scott, who's tangled up with David Clarkson. Wait, was Clarkson on the ice when all this started? He and Kessel play the same position, so it wouldn't make sense unless… oh. Oh no.

"All five players…all six players on the ice, including the goaltenders…" Keep counting, Joe.

After several replays, it's only in the final seconds of our clip that Bowen and friends put two and two together. Or more specifically, they put six and one together, and realize that Clarkson jumped on the ice during the brawl, even though the situation was already under control and he really had nothing to do once he arrived. That means that a player the Leafs have just paid a fortune to get has earned himself an automatic ten-game suspension before his first season even starts. Or, as Toronto fans now know it, "the high point of the David Clarkson era."

The epilogue here is that Kessel was suspended for three games, Clarkson never recovered, and Leaf fans loved Bernier right up until he started doing stuff like this. And to this day, Brian Flynn is afraid to go near a hot-dog cart.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Wes McCauley. The only referee on the planet who should ever be allowed near a microphone was at it again. I'd get in there if I were you, Nate.

The second star: Patrick Eaves. D'aawwww.

The first star: The Golden Knights Twitter… again. Good lord, rest of the NHL, how many times are we going to do this?

Guys, come on. This is like when Troy Crowder showed up in 1990 and started speedbagging everyone. Sure, you can understand catching the first few opponents off guard, but by now the scouting report is out. These folks are not playing. Stay down, NHL teams.

(Side note: Can we start wagering now on which thin-skinned owner will be the first to complain to the league about his team getting roasted on Twitter by the Knights? This feels like a Eugene Melnyk thing, but I'm open to other suggestions.)

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The NHL is using the preseason to crack down on two types of fouls: face-off violations and slashing. That's resulted in a ton of penalties being called, disrupting any sort of flow to the games and confusing fans and players alike. The outrage: Knock it off, NHL—we didn't wait all summer for hockey to come back just so we could watch you call a bunch of nitpicky penalties all night. Is it justified: For the face-off violations, sure. Those have been annoying, and seem like a weird thing for the league to be focusing on. NHL fans love to complain—some of us have entire podcasts for it—but I've never heard any paying customer argue that face-offs were a problem. I wrote a little bit about the face-off crackdown earlier this week, and my basic message was that we shouldn't panic yet because it will probably be short-lived. But if we get to November and we still have linesmen calling three or four of these things a game, we'll have a problem.

So yeah, the face-off thing is dicey. The slashing, though? Not remotely. It's about time the league took a stand on this one.

Two guys cheating on a face-off might turn the draw into a scrum, but it doesn't really hurt anyone. Cracking a guy across the hands with your stick? Yeah, that can do some damage. And there's no reason for it. Reaching out and slashing someone who beat you for position isn't a legitimate defensive tactic, no matter what guys like Jon Cooper say. There's no skill involved. And there's no entertainment value, either. At least a big open ice hit is fun to watch. Seeing a star player get hacked because he had the nerve to actually possess the puck doesn't help anyone.

Well, except for guys who are slow and out of position. Those are the guys who are apparently suffering here. OK…good. Let's phase those guys out. If they can't play defense without using their stick as a weapon, my guess is not too many of us will miss them. Let's swap in a few guys who can keep up with the play and aren't always a stick's length behind the better players.

For years, the NHL has been a league where simply having the puck on your stick meant you had to accept a few hacks across the wrist. It was the price of admission for actually trying to create some offense. It's been that way for so long that it's going to take some adjusting for players to stop reflexively swinging at anyone who skates by.

Will that be annoying for the first few weeks or months or however long it takes the players to figure this out? Definitely. Will penalty boxes occasionally look like this? Maybe. But it's a price worth paying to get this garbage out of the game, and to have it happen before Connor McDavid or Patrik Laine or whoever else gets their wrist broken. Complain all you want about the face-offs if the league actually sticks with it, but the slashing crackdown is long overdue.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Last week was the 30th anniversary of what many consider the greatest hockey game ever played: Team Canada vs. the Soviets in the deciding game of the 1987 Canada Cup, one that ended with Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux teaming up on their famous winner. The game was an incredible back-and-forth contest featuring an almost unimaginable amount of talent. I mean, just look at the starting lineups.

That's three Hockey Hall of Famers for the Soviets, plus two more guys who each had a strong cases of his own. And Canada has four guys who made it in on the first ballot, including two of the ten players in history who were such slam dunks that the customary waiting period was waived for them.

And then there's this week's obscure player: Doug Crossman.

Crossman was a sixth-round pick by the Hawks in the legendary double cohort draft of 1979. Weirdly, he went within five picks of not one but two other Obscure Player alumni, Bill McCreary and Rick Knickle. He'd make his NHL debut the following season, and spent three seasons in Chicago before being traded to the Flyers for legendary tough guy Behn Wilson. He spent five more years in Philadelphia before being traded to L.A. in 1988, which would signal the start of a five-year stretch in which he was traded six times for everyone from Ray Ferraro to Basil McRae. He was also claimed on waivers once, and ended up closing out his career in 1994 having played for eight teams, only two of which kept him for more than 100 games.

Crossman was a decent defenseman who could play in both ends. He never topped 60 points, but he was a +20 or better for three straight years in the mid 80s, and early in his career was a bit of an ironman. He was never an All-Star nor did he receive so much as a single Norris vote, but he was pretty good.

So… how did he wind up lining up next to the Canadian dream team in 1987?

The easiest answer is that he was a Flyer at the time, and his coach was Mike Keenan, who also happened to be running Team Canada. He'd been solid in Philadelphia and was coming off a big playoff year, and Keenan trusted him, so he made the team. Hey, it wouldn't be Team Canada without a weird pick or two. Besides, it's not like Canada was all that deep on defense that year. While they had future Hall of Famers Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque, and Larry Murphy, they also had to lean on guys like James Patrick, Craig Hartsburg, and Normand Rochefort.

All of those guys had to play a role for Canada to win, but only Crossman got to hear his name announced as a starter in one of the most star-studded games ever played.

Be It Resolved

There's a new trend going around the league. Various teams are holding open tryouts to fill the role of emergency backup goalies. Fans can show up, strut their stuff, and earn the job of backup to the backup.

The concept is getting rave reviews, and seems destined to spread across the league fairly quickly. It seems like the perfect way to give fans a shot at actually appearing in an NHL game. Who wouldn't get behind that? The whole idea is, as one observer put it, "freaking awesome."

Like hell it is. Faithful readers, this cannot stand.

Look, I love me a good EBUG, just like any fan should. The emergency backup goalie is one of those fun hockey oddities, one with a long and proud history. Sure, they never actually play (almost), but it's the mere possibility that makes it work. May the hockey gods bless the valiant emergency backup.

But the key word here is emergency. It's the chaos of an unexpected injury followed by a mad scramble to find someone, anyone, who knows how to hold a goalie stick that makes it fun. The guys who win these tryouts are going to be available at every game. Even worse, they're going to be good. Not NHL good, sure, but good enough not to embarrass themselves. Where's the fun in that?

I want to see some terrified dude hyperventilating into a paper bag on the bench. I want ushers and parking-lot attendants and web producers. I want to see the owner's deadbeat nephew shoved out there against his will. I want to see more scenes like Roberto Luongo stealing an ambulance to make a dramatic return from the hospital, Stone Cold Steve Austin-style, so that the goalie coach doesn't have to go in:

If this tryout thing catches on, we lose all that. Every rink will just have some former junior star in the press box, munching popcorn and waiting to see if he's needed. So be it resolved that we need to nip this in the bud. The noble EBUG has suddenly become an endangered species, and we need to save him—even if he never gets the chance to save anything for us.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

A cynic might suggest that the entire preseason schedule is just a massive cash grab, in which teams force fans to buy tickets to watch has-beens, never-will-bes, and PTOs signed specifically to circumvent the veteran roster rules, all playing in games in which nothing ever happens. Well, that's not completely accurate. I mean, almost all of it is. But while it's true that nothing important ever happens in the preseason, that doesn't mean nothing interesting ever happens. One example—OK, the only example—came exactly four years ago today.

So it's September 22, 2013, and the Sabres are visiting the Maple Leafs in preseason action. The score is…well, honestly it doesn't matter. But things are about to get goofy, so let's settle in and enjoy the dumbest line brawl in recent NHL history.

We open with play-by-play legend Joe Bowen informing us that Buffalo's John Scott is unhappy about something. If you're looking for backstory, here's what happened just before our clip begins. Long story short, the Sabres thought their guy had been victimized in a mismatch. Scott's their enforcer, so it's his job to exact some payback.

Unfortunately, he's lined up next to Phil Kessel, and The Code clearly states that he's not allowed to pummel a squishy-soft skill player. But Scott can do the next best thing, which is try to make Kessel poop his pants on live television.

Scott politely gives Kessel a heads-up on what's about to happen, at which point Kessel whips around like he just got a whiff of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. I always thought Scott got a bit of a raw deal on all of this. You hear about how he "jumped" Kessel, but he never really did. Let's be honest, if Scott wanted to hurt Kessel, he absolutely could have. Instead, he basically gives him the "cat batting around a wounded mouse" treatment.

Kessel, of course, doesn't know this, so he immediately tries to break Scott's ankle with a golf swing slash. That's totally fine, by the way, as it's clearly self-defense. Then, after the cavalry arrives and Scott is fighting off two guys, Kessel circles back and hacks him again. That's, um, also self-defense? I would be a bad hockey lawyer.

None of the other Leafs player on the ice are fighters, so they basically gang-tackle Scott—who, it should be pointed out, is listed at 6'8" and 270 pounds. They do a pretty good job, too. Almost too good. Like, it seems like they may have an extra guy. Ah well, I'm sure that won't turn out to be important.

Meanwhile, Kessel pairs off with Brian Flynn for what will be only his second career NHL fight. And he…well, he kind of destroys him. Seriously. It's not quite Clark vs. Brooke, but by the end of it Flynn is leaking blood all over the ice. It will not shock you to learn that this remains Flynn's one and only NHL fight to this day. When Phil Kessel is splitting your face open like it's a jelly-filled donut, there's a good chance you're not very good at this.

Bowen does a reasonably good job on the call, although he's had better.

We get the now standard overhead view of the action, which reveals that all six Leafs seem to be handling business just fine. Wait a second, six? That seems high. Let's see if we can figure this out, now that all the fights are over and there's clearly nothing else that's going to happen.

Uh, did anyone notice anything odd in the lower right corner just there?

Huh, I could have sworn that looked like Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier heading out of his net for some strange reason. Ah well, I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe he's going to get a drink of water or something.

No, he's apparently going to fight Ryan Miller, who speaks for all of us when he reacts by doing this:

As per Canadian law, Bowen immediately references the Felix Potvin vs. Ron Hextall superfight, which we broke down here. That one was the greatest goalie fight of all time. But this one isn't too bad once Miller finally decides to try. It's so entertaining that the other players forget that it's not 1986 and you're not allowed to crowd around to watch a fight.

As that scrap ends, we see Kessel go over and get one more jab on Scott, who's tangled up with David Clarkson. Wait, was Clarkson on the ice when all this started? He and Kessel play the same position, so it wouldn't make sense unless… oh. Oh no.

"All five players…all six players on the ice, including the goaltenders…" Keep counting, Joe.

After several replays, it's only in the final seconds of our clip that Bowen and friends put two and two together. Or more specifically, they put six and one together, and realize that Clarkson jumped on the ice during the brawl, even though the situation was already under control and he really had nothing to do once he arrived. That means that a player the Leafs have just paid a fortune to get has earned himself an automatic ten-game suspension before his first season even starts. Or, as Toronto fans now know it, "the high point of the David Clarkson era."

The epilogue here is that Kessel was suspended for three games, Clarkson never recovered, and Leaf fans loved Bernier right up until he started doing stuff like this. And to this day, Brian Flynn is afraid to go near a hot-dog cart.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Recalling a Preseason Line Brawl and Nonsense Face-Off Penalties published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv