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violetsystems · 5 years ago

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#personal

There’s been a lot of encouraging news in the face of absolute disaster lately. None of it really applies to anybody but me. So I have been living that reality to the best of my ability. It hasn’t been without missteps. Things feel even more fucked up than they were in the world let alone life. For me society trends downward when I shut the door. So I’ve been focusing on improving my surroundings. My kitchen has officially become my office. Google announced their employees were working from home until the end of the year. Facebook threw its hands up and said forever. My situation is far more complex but doing my job depends on the internet. I upgraded my router back in April at the first hint of all of this. Slowly I’ve been building up the infrastructure around here to support me being able to do my job. I upgraded my internet and finally got a home phone number linked to a 312 area code. I’ve been relying on package delivery for a good month and a half. The amount of packages I’ve had stolen has dwindled. Yesterday the Stussy drop from Dover Street Market was misdelivered. The day before they wouldn’t drop it off without a signature. I had to flag down the fed ex truck on the corner. I walked them back to the address explaining that I had to be vigilant due to gang activity. That morning when I put out the signature release one of the gang members from the block had talked to me. Mostly in passing about life. I’m pretty sure theirs is rougher than mine. But that’s the upfront and transparent life I live. Having to be up front and center with people at all times nobody what emotions I feel inside. I wore a mask when I approached the fed ex truck. When I walked them back they discovered they had delivered both packages for my address to the neighbor. So I killed two birds with one stone though my neighbor would never know. I woke up Sunday morning to a pigeon completely ripped apart on my porch. I can’t tell if it was the cats or something else. I cleaned it up at eight in the morning regardless. Finally just decided to clean and minimize the porch for the summer. I had a refurbished shark robot vacuum delivered by UPS that same day. They texted my phone and I ran out to grab it. The guy thanked me for being fast. I plugged it in and set up the app on my phone. The splash screen showed a clean, neutral home. Lurking in the background picture was my router. I let the thing run for an hour. It picked up dust I never knew existed. My cat is bewildered and afraid. Much like most of the neighborhood is when my name comes up in conversation. What is he like? What does he do? Is he single? No. No. And no. Do I get things delivered on time? I get them in the end. I ran around the neighborhood in the Nike X Stussy drop after my works hours yesterday. I almost got run over twice. The shirt says increase the peace. I guess I struck a nerve. And yet people have been walking over me for years. The embarrassing part is now everybody sees just how much and in what context. And people are reasonably scared because as calm as I seem if they were in my shoes it would be different. They would break down. They would collapse. My credit score went up a hundred points this week. That’s some encouraging news. Cash positive is a good look. Too bad our president isn’t.

Money seems to be all that is important to people these days. How much you spend. What deals you make and steals you uncover. I try to play that game sometimes. I’ve saved a lot of money over the last few months. Locked down. I’ve improved my health, my cooking skills, my body tone, and my video game performance. I just pieced out the first stage of a new desktop. A mid sized microatx ryzen. The first PC I’ve built in over a decade. My goal is to play wow at the maximum settings on my TV. More so like the phone, I’d just rather have my own computer for home. My watch has organized a lot of my appointments and responsibilities in a low key way. Much how I continue to live my life. Low key. This is not to say I feel trapped between two huge plates of metal. The one grind where I’m not good or important enough to pay attention to in real life. The other grind where people use me as a bait or decoy to trick people. Neither of those cases treat me like a human being. I have been hurt so much by this process that I have transcended to a point where I don’t bother much with society. And yet society still expects so much out of me. I ordered my Jacobin magazines for Mayday. I might sit out on my porch, drink tea and read them by myself. But nobody ever engages me in a way that’s respectful. It’s all trick after trick. Scam after scam. Hushed back talk and shadowed praise. I am fucking invisible. Nobody cares about me. If they do, they aren’t able to show it. And there’s only a few people I love enough to understand that relationship deeply. The rest of the world is empty to me aside from animals and gardening. I should be so much more. And somehow looking back to the last decade I am. It’s just not of value to anyone but me. And I’m not really interested in taking another step backwards to show how genuine and truthful I am. The embarrassing thing is while people gave the most vile people the pass because they were more famous or pretty I suffered. Over and over and over again. To the point where whatever it was people were chasing after seemed meaningless to me. I tried so hard to get back on track. And then I did. And I took a look around and it frightens me. Nobody knows the value of anything beyond money. And I’ve held a job consistently for twenty years. Paid taxes for twenty years. Grown actual competitive job skills for twenty years. Accrued a pension. Travelled the world. Networked all over the map. And I’m still here on tumblr every Saturday. Typing away as a warning. One that nobody really hears other than myself and my friends. Who I think have offered me a place to control my own narrative in the face of lies, bullshit, and selfishness. It all took work. Courage. Callous confrontation. A look in the mirror of what it is I could become. And what it is I am now. I don’t really know. I deserve to know. I deserve to be loved, respected and treated like a valuable human being. I know I am not.

For the record, I’m Tim. I fucking hate politics. I am an adult who has seen more of my time wasted and freedom siphoned. And I also live in America. A place where people tell me to stay indoors and shut the door. A place where if you come knocking with a warrant you better be wearing a mask. A place where I pay it forward enough and keep a high enough profile to avoid awkward conversations like that. And yet space is still encroached on. I am for the record enjoying the territorial markings. I’ve carved out a very special place for myself in the third most populated city in America next to LA and New York. I was thinking about heading to LA for a day sometime. A lot of my friends out there are in the same ecosystem. And yet the internet has kept us all together regardless. Tied and knitted together by the stories, art, fashion and ideals we felt important to share with each other. We are a community in and of itself. The community that I pay forward to and have seen so many great things happen in my life. Free thinking and independent minds linked like block chain when it comes to the latest drops or rare trivia related to science, anime or that little horny fucking skeleton guy you people draw. People are always failing at engaging us. And so we fall back to our dead platform and seeth in our collective anger sometimes. Other times life goes on and we post another picture. I post the same picture every once and awhile to let everybody know how much of a nerd I am. And also how romantic I think I am when everybody tells me I don’t exist and could never connect with anyone. I’m not good enough. Handsome enough. Young enough. Happy enough. For the record, people lie to discourage you. They talk behind your back because they’re afraid of the competition. They’re afraid of having to work as hard as you. Suffer as a horribly as you in silence. They have no plan other than being negative. Playing dirty tricks. Playing people against each other. Using discontent, anger, division against their own people for the sake of consolidating power. I’ve written about it in anguish for years. And people just don’t listen. I do. I act on things creatively. I think on my toes. When the package doesn’t get delivered I don’t sit and wonder why. I go out there and get it. When the test of time is withstood. It’s me sitting there with a faint smile on my face and a knowing look. It’s been a long time. And as long as I’m around you know what consistency looks like. And maybe what forever has the potential to be. Me and you. Not me, you and the rest of society constantly knocking on our door asking for milk and sugar. What will the neighbors think if I don’t answer? That my time is more valuable spent with you. A long time of no regrets. Just forward thinking and self care. And a humidifier in the bedroom. Speaking of clearing the air. <3 Tim

0 notes

thrashermaxey · 7 years ago

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Ramblings: Krejci Conundrum

David Krejci was a late scratch for the Bruins with an upper-body injury. He is not expected to be available for tonight’s game either. He has now missed 13 games already. When healthy, he has produced at a 60-point rate, fantastic considering he isn’t getting top unit power play time, but these injuries are making him woefully unreliable.

Even without Krejci the Bruins laid the smackdown on the Blue Jackets putting up seven goals. Danton Heinen and Jake DeBrusk put up three points apiece. Heinen is of particular interest thanks to some recent usage on the top power play unit, but it appears that that has dried up with Ryan Spooner back.

All the same, Heinen has 21 points in 27 games, a 61-point pace. He has been particularly hot of late with nine points in his last seven games, including five power-play points. I’m not over the moon for this option, but there’s some short-term value if you are in a pinch.

Spooner, by the way, moved into Krejci’s spot as second line center. He has scored three points in two games since returning from injury. With exposure to Brad Marchand and the rest of the Bruins’ big guns on that top PP unit, he certainly has value. However, he has only 11 SOG in 12 games. I’m never going to fall head over heels for a guy with such limited shot volume.

Sergei Bobrovsky has had a rough go of it in the month of December having allowed 29 goals in eight starts. He does have a shutout mixed in there, but six of his eight starts have seen him allow three goals or more. I don’t think this is reason for alarm, however if there was ever a time to make a pitch to the Bobrovsky owner it is surely now. You’d still pay through the nose to get him, but I don’t think you’d be automatically rebuffed if you made a great offer.

Alexander Wennberg has run his scoring streak to three games. That ain’t much, but it’s a darn good sign. I would prefer if they pushed all-in on the Pierre-Luc Dubois experience, but we may be a year or two away from a genuine breakout.

Ryan Miller has not been lit up much this season, but the Devils sure did the trick last night. You may have figured that with Taylor Hall and Kyle Palmieri returning from injury that it was those big horses who got the job done, but instead it was Stefan Noesen, Miles Wood and Brian Boyle who led the way.

You have to give Boyle some credit as he has put up six points in the last two games, and 12 points in the past 13. He is seeing consistent minutes as the net-front man on the Devils’ top PP unit, and has banged in goals on 22% of his shots. I’m not prepared to use Boyle in most formats, but in a deep enough league there is serious value here.

Nico Hischier continues to trend downward. He has now run his scoreless drought to six games. Here’s what I wrote about him in my latest fantasy hockey stock market piece:

Hischier has been on a downward slide over the past month scoring just six points in the last 15 games. He is currently riding a five-game scoreless drought. Star linemate Taylor Hall should be returning soon, which will help Hischier plenty, but there are still reasons to be sour on the rookie. For whatever reason the Devils still are not using him on their top power-play unit, which has hurt his chances of racking up cheap points. Of his 20 points only four have come with the man advantage.

He needs to get bumped up to the top unit for a better chance of consistently producing points, but that hasn’t happened, not even after Adam Henrique was traded.

The good news for Hischier is that he centered both Hall and Palmieri at even strength.

Palmieri skated only 13:23 in his return to the lineup, so it may be a week or two before he is up and running at full clip.

Adam Henrique had a big-time revenge game with a goal and an assist against his former team. He had gone three straight games without a point, but continues to be interesting thanks to use in all phases of the game including time on the Ducks’ top PP unit. His low for minutes with the Ducks is 17:36. There was a mass dropping of Henrique when news of Ryan Getzlaf’s return broke, but he has managed to stay relevant.

Rickard Rakell has now gone nine straight games without a goal dating back to before he was injured at the end of November. He has just three points in those nine games. His ownership on Yahoo has slipped to 71%. If he has been dropped in one of your pools, I advise scooping him up. He is good enough, shoots enough and has enough elite exposure to warrant some patience. Plus, I always favour Anaheim players thanks to an abundance of off-night games. If you have a Duck or two on your roster you can usually get an extra game every week simply because they don’t overlap as often with other players.

For instance, the fantasy playoffs in most of my leagues run from March 5 to March 25. Over that three-week stretch the Ducks play 10 games, with only two of them on the common Tuesdays, Thursdays, or Saturdays. Odds are, any Duck player you have is going to be usable for all 10 of those games, which is a great way to maximize a roster spot.

After a hot start returning from injury Marian Gaborik is fading from relevance. He has just four points in the last nine games and has skated under 14 minutes in six of those nine games. He has drifted down to the third line and has started to concede top PP unit minutes. Last night he split duties with Tyler Toffoli on that top unit.

I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the point where Toffoli consistently gets top unit run, but a goal-scorer of his calibre could breakout with consistent use in that phase. We’ve seen Toffoli put together a 31-goal/58-point season with irregular PP time, but there is more meat on the bone. A full season of 3:00+ minutes per game with the man-advantage could yield a 70-point season. Dare to dream, I suppose.

Patric Hornqvist was sent back to Pittsburgh with an upper-body injury. Their next three games are at home, so this doesn’t mean Hornqvist will miss much time. Keep an eye out for updates. Jake Guentzel steps into top unit PP time whenever Hornqvist is out so he is the main beneficiary.

I keep wondering when Daniel Sprong is going to get a call-up by the Penguins. He made the NHL for 18 games as an 18-year-old then vanished back to junior for a couple of years and is now shredding the AHL as a 20-year-old. He has 15 goals and 22 points in 25 AHL games, a great rate of scoring. He warrants a look at the next level, but there aren’t many minutes to around with the Penguins loaded on the wing.

I wonder if there isn’t a deal to be made to bring in a centerman and move out a winger using Sprong or Dominik Simon (who is currently up, but was out sick last night) to fill the void. Of course, depth is hugely important so perhaps Simon and Sprong are merely fated to be black aces this spring and waiting to get their chance next season. With those two on the cusp, the Penguins have a nice succession plan on the wing which would allow them to move on from Hornqvist (an unrestricted free agent) this summer.

Sven Andrighetto notched a couple of points in just 14:29 of action. He has really fallen out of favour with just four points in the last 16 games. His ice time has been drifting into that 13-14 -minute range, which makes it awfully difficult to be productive even as he remains an efficient per-minute scorer.

Alexander Kerfoot was reunited with Tyson Jost and Nail Yakupov, but that line was held under 10 minutes across the board. Kerfoot is averaging 1.0 SOG per game and is shooting 30%. There isn’t a league out there where I think he has relevance despite his gaudy scoring pace. If he can scratch back onto the top PP unit, he’d resume value in deep leagues, but JT Compher was skating in that role last night.

I’m not sure that Compher is the answer here either, but he has shown some flashes of brilliance.

It wasn’t pretty, but Cam Talbot stopped 18 of 21 for a win in his return to the Oilers’ lineup. The Oilers also got Adam Larsson back from injury. Larsson isn’t himself fantasy relevant, but was tops among Oiler defensemen in ice time last night. He’ll be an important piece of getting Talbot back to being a top-10 fantasy goalie, which I still think is possible.

I think we’re trending into goalie controversy territory in San Jose. Martin Jones, never a goalie I have been fond of, has tanked in December allowing at least four goals in all six of his starts. To be clear, Jones is fine. He has been average or slightly below across two-and-a-third seasons as the Sharks’ starter receiving over 75% of the starts. That’s a safe baseline, but nothing earth shattering. Basically, he’s third goalie material, but most folks drafted him as their #1 or #2.

On the flip side, Aaron Dell, the Sharks’ backup, has won four straight games. In 26 starts and 32 appearances over the past two seasons he has a 17-11 record with a 1.91 goals-against average and a .934 save percentage. Obviously, we are dealing with a small sample size here. He also benefits from poaching favourable starts and always being rested. However, Dell does have a track record of success boasting a save percentage above .920 in three seasons of AHL action, albeit never skating more than 40 games in any of those seasons.

Could Dell start syphoning starts from Jones? I wouldn’t be shocked if Dell started two of the four remaining games on the Sharks’ schedule this month. The Sharks then face four sets of back-to-backs in January, so there will be plenty of opportunity for Dell to see action over the next six weeks. I still view Jones as the starter, but Dell has already grabbed nine of 32 available starts, putting him on pace for 23. That would leave Jones with 59, assuming Dell doesn’t continue to grab starts at an elevated rate. If this starts trending into the 50/30 split range Dell would have SERIOUS fantasy value in all formats, and he is already a juicy option for spot starts, especially in rotisserie leagues with games-played limits.

If Jones can get back to playing average hockey, he will probably give you 60 starts and 30 wins once again. If not, Dell’s appeal widens. Can Dell continue to provide elite play in a larger sample? I’d bet against him sustaining a .930 save percentage, but I’d bet for him putting up better than league-average numbers.

I think you have to consider handcuffing Dell if you are a Jones owner in a deep league. We don’t want to blow a six-game sample out of the water, but if you share my opinion of Jones before he went on this cold run, then you shouldn’t have too much confidence in him. There is serious potential for Dell to steal starts.

Logan Couture sat out last night due to a concussion. We never know the timeline with concussions, but I wouldn’t expect to see him back until 2018.

Tomas Hertl, Kevin Labanc and Tim Heed all saw PP time with Couture out. Labanc had the most success so perhaps he continues to see run here, although there is room for two of these guys to get minutes.

If you are looking for a replacement for Couture, do consider Mika Zibanejad who was dropped by many after a concussion of his own. Zibanejad is expected back in the Rangers’ tonight, and offers near point-per-game upside.

The Canadiens are shutting Shea Weber down for “a bit” due to a foot injury. I think we can assume he is done until after Christmas, and potentially until 2018. They are on what would be a brutal road trip playing seven in a row away from Montreal, with three against Western Canada and followed by three in the Southeastern US, and have two sets of back-to-backs crammed in there. However, they also get three days off in between for Christmas (along with the rest of the league) so the schedule isn’t as daunting as it could be.

All this considered, now may not be the opportune time to jump on Habs players. If you want a direct replacement for Weber, Jeff Petry has been a tremendous option filling in during previous absences. He put up four points in six games the last time Weber was out, albeit against a much more favourable slate of games.

TJ Oshie was back at practice experiencing full contact yesterday, so look for him to return to the lineup tonight. He skated alongside Evgeny Kuznetsov and Jakub Vrana. Expect him to continue in that spot on the second line as well as in his usual place on the top power play unit.

It appears that Tom Wilson’s run on the top line with Nicklas Backstrom and Alexander Ovechkin will continue.

Brock Boeser owners rejoice:

{source}<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Canucks GM Jim Benning on Brock Boeser’s bone bruise: “It’s a matter of day to day, not week to week.” <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/relief?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#relief</a></p>— Iain MacIntyre (@imacSportsnet) <a href="https://twitter.com/imacSportsnet/status/942896716205789184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 18, 2017</a></blockquote>

Thanks for reading! You can follow me on Twitter @SteveLaidlaw.

from All About Sports http://www.dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-krejci-conundrum/

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plms-hockey · 7 years ago

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Leafs @ Sharks - Game 12 - Oct.30.17

KEY NARRATIVES

Toronto Maple Leafs (7-4-0) vs San Jose Sharks (5-5-0)

The biggest story going into tonight is Patrick Marleau's return to San Jose. As mentioned in the first preview, Patty spent his entire career up to this season in San Jose. The Center/Winger was drafted second overall by a young Sharks team in 1997, picked just after Joe Thornton who would end up traded to and sharing most of Marleau's time and success in San Jose.

While Marleau's track record would earn him anything from reverence to devotion on any team, the fact that the Sharks had only existed for six years before they drafted Patty means he's a genuine cornerstone of the team's history. He holds the franchise records for Games Played, Goals, Points, Powerplay Goals, Shorthanded Goals, Shots, as well as a number of other more granular records. While Joe Thornton is still with the team, at 38 himself, it seems unlikely that anyone will be overtaking Marleau anytime soon.

Tonight is also the first game in the often dreaded California Road Trip. The way schedules break down for most Eastern teams results in one home and one away game against each Western Conference team. To reduce travel, the games against the three California teams are usually scheduled consecutively and in a short timeframe. For the Leafs that means the following lineup this year:

Monday - Sharks Wednesday - Ducks Thursday - Kings

They also have a game on Saint Louis' home ice on Saturday which will bring them to four games in six days. It's a brutal schedule against teams that aren't easy to beat on a good day, let alone on their own turf while you're traveling. It's also particularly scary considering the Leafs have lost three of their last four games. It would be nice if these kids could have gathered up a couple cushion points on that three-game homestand they just completed, but hey sometimes you just wanna play on expert mode.

Don't screw it up.

In more frightening news, in spite of Josh Leivo's fairly brilliant performance on Saturday, which had him coming away with an assist and great underlying numbers, it appears that Babcock is planning on icing the same lineup he used at the beginning of the season. JvR and Matt Martin are both back in the lineup, Brown is back down on the fourth line, and Marner us up next to Bozak and JvR again. While there's no excuse not to play JvR if he's healthy, putting Matt Martin back after Leivo's showing sends a conflicting message from a coach that keeps claiming "hard work is what gets you in the line-up" and yet not rewarding Leivo, who not just works hard but usually produces in every game he plays as a fill in.

If anything, Bozak is actually on the thinnest ice, though slightly more protected than the wingers due to the Leafs' comparatively smaller depth at center. Yet, we did see him bounced down to the fourth line and Marleau moved to center towards the end of the train-wreck against the Flyers. Even though the lines aren't reflecting it in this game, it will be interesting to see how the lineup looks throughout the week, with back-to-backs and travel giving all the more incentive to sit a player or two to keep the team fresh.

On a much more fun note, one thing a game against San Jose always delivers is the glorious play and beards of Joe Thornton and Brent Burns. Joe Thornton is, as mentioned above, the longtime former team and linemate of Patrick Marleau. His claim to fame, besides the beard, is a unique and deadly playmaking ability, which can be seen in his high Assist to Goal ratio, and the high goal totals of his lucky linemates.

On the other side of the ice, Brent Burns is one of the best offensive defensemen in the league, and last year's Norris Winner (best defenseman award). His forward-like ability to score makes him hard to judge as a pure defenseman, extremely fun to watch, and a slam dunk on your fantasy team.

While I will give you their numbers for identification, it's not particularly necessary. You can pick them out using the following aesthetic markers:

Thornton: Dead-eyed, Grey-bearded Man of the Sea Brent Burns: Toothless, Wild Pirate Captain

I’m just saying you wouldn’t be shocked to see either of them wielding cutlasses on the high seas.

Also This:

You're welcome... or I'm sorry... I'm not really sure but it's your problem now.

Some Key Numbers

19 - Joe* Thornton - Center 8 - Joe** Pavelski - Center 88 - Brent Burns - Defenseman 48 - Hertl - Center * - Big Joe ** - Little Joe

THE HIGHLIGHTS

youtube

THE POST GAME

Score: L 3-2

To begin, I was under two false assumptions going into this game. The first was that the time of the Sharks had ended and the age of their core and the loss of Marleau had transformed them into a wounded buffalo primed for the taking. This was completely false. Watching them play was shocking, and looking at their numbers after the game was even more so. That's a damn solid team.

My other false assumption was that the Maple Leafs were good at playing hockey.

Something's critically wrong here. While Matthews, Nylander, and Co. performed to their usual dazzling standard, watching them try to carry the rest of this team was like watching a pony try and carry a 500lb man. The fourth line was such a trainwreck that together they ended the game with a Corsi For percentage of zero. ZERO! Over three periods they took no shots while allowing the Sharks to fire sixteen at Freddie. They also took at least two penalties while drawing none.

Tyler Bozak, who's been having a rough go of it all season, was so bad in this game that Babcock benched him at the end of the third, pulling Marleau from Kadri's wing to have him center for JvR and Marner (which, side note: as much as they haven't wanted to play Marleau off the wing, I didn't hate him as center on the offensive second/third line). He moved Brown up to fill Marleau's spot and then only rolled three lines for about the last ten minutes of the game, resulting in the following top nine:

Hyman - Matthews - Nylander JvR - Marleau - Marner Komarov - Kadri - Brown

At first, you want to be mad at the players for underperforming as they have been. Except, ignoring the natural shutdown of a team’s offense when they have the lead in the final minutes, the Leafs dominated on those new lines the end of that game. If not for the empty netter, they would have tied this game up (not that they deserved to, but for the grace of Frederik Andersen, who had perhaps his best game of the season). The Matthews line, which was untouched, looked amazing. The Kadri line was on the ice for the would-have-been-tying goal. I thought Marner looked better than he has a lot of the season next to Marleau, and JvR almost tipped one in. They all looked dangerous, something the Leafs haven't looked consistently since the first few games of the season.

So if it's not most of the skater's fault, who's is it?

While I won't begin to even touch the idea that Babcock isn't a great coach, he's making some terrible decisions right now. There's a weird vibe in the room and on the ice, perhaps, but the biggest issue was that there were players in the lineup that are clear weak links that lead to a completely broken chain.

Matt Martin plays less than eight minutes a night. He’s not good enough for either powerplay time nor penalty kill minutes. You know who can play on the powerplay? Josh Leivo.

Kasperi Kapanen can play both.

Yet they're both sitting in the press box night after night.

It's the same story on the blueline. Roman Polak has been a predictable disaster in the games he’s played, and the Sharks, like their namesake, smelled blood in the water and targeted him all night. He had the worst Corsi of any defenseman on the team (CF% 39.29) and currently has the 18th worst possession numbers in the entire league among defenseman who have played more than 50 minutes. Whether you're going by numbers or an eye test, that's not a player who's doing so well you can justify sitting Connor Carrick, who's much younger and fast enough to keep up with the rest of the team.

The point is that something has to change. The attitude displayed in the last few games needs to shift, but the biggest weakness on this team right now isn't youth, it isn't the defense, it's the roster decisions. What they're doing isn't working, and I believe the tide will at least temporarily turn on Babcock if changes aren't made to the lineup in the game against the Ducks on Wednesday. Considering it's the first night of a back to back, there's even less excuse not to weave at least Carrick and Leivo or Kapanen into the lineup, just to keep the rest of the team fresh. Ideally, I'd like to see them try out the lines they threw together at the end of the third period for a whole game, and ice the following fourth line:

Kapanen - Bozak - Leivo

Doubtful, but a girl can hope. At this point, if the same lineup is put out against the Ducks, the team approaches the quotable definition of insanity:

"Insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

And it's time we get a different result.

Statistics and records pulled from Corsica.hockey and hockey-reference.com.

#filler1 #filler2 #filler3 #filler4 #filler5 #Sharks #Leafs #103017 #20172018 #Away #Loss

0 notes

plmstest2-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Leafs @ Sharks - Game 12 - 10.30.17

KEY NARRATIVES

Toronto Maple Leafs (7-4-0) vs San Jose Sharks (5-5-0)

Monday - Sharks Wednesday - Ducks Thursday - Kings

Don't screw it up.

While I will give you their numbers for identification, it's not particularly necessary. You can pick them out using the following aesthetic markers:

Thornton: Dead-eyed, Grey-bearded Man of the Sea Brent Burns: Toothless, Wild Pirate Captain

I’m just saying you wouldn’t be shocked to see either of them wielding cutlasses on the high seas.

Also This:

You're welcome... or I'm sorry... I'm not really sure but it's your problem now.

Some Key Numbers

19 - Joe* Thornton - Center 8 - Joe** Pavelski - Center 88 - Brent Burns - Defenseman 48 - Hertl - Center * - Big Joe ** - Little Joe

THE HIGHLIGHTS

youtube

THE POST GAME

Score: L 3-2

My other false assumption was that the Maple Leafs were good at playing hockey.

Hyman - Matthews - Nylander JvR - Marleau - Marner Komarov - Kadri - Brown

So if it's not most of the skater's fault, who's is it?

Matt Martin plays less than eight minutes a night. He’s not good enough for either powerplay time nor penalty kill minutes. You know who can play on the powerplay? Josh Leivo.

Kasperi Kapanen can play both.

Yet they're both sitting in the press box night after night.

Kapanen - Bozak - Leivo

Doubtful, but a girl can hope. At this point, if the same lineup is put out against the Ducks, the team approaches the quotable definition of insanity:

"Insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

And it's time we get a different result.

Statistics and records pulled from Corsica.hockey and hockey-reference.com.

#filler1 #filler2 #filler3 #filler4 #filler5 #Game 12 #Sharks #Leafs #103017 #reports

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flauntpage · 7 years ago

Text

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take

Three stars of comedy

The third star: Kris Versteeg's ongoing Instagram war against Jonathan Toews – It's been going on for months now—you can get caught up here—and honestly at this point it's just short of outright bullying. But when you're one of the best 100 players in NHL history, I'm guessing you can take it.

The second star: Sharks twitter—Hey look, they'd like to make a harmless joke. Jokes are fun, right?

Not bad, guys! But be careful, you're going after the Golden Knights and lately they've been kind of feisty so you might want to watch out for…

Good lord, guys. This was basically the Twitter equivalent of that time Slava Fetisov came after Wendel Clark. It's not even preseason, maybe hold off on the kill shots until camp open.The first star: Artemi Panarin's bread shoes—Absolutely no idea what's happening here, but what the hell.

The NHL actually got something right

This week, we learned that the NHL is making an important change to its video review challenge rules. For offside reviews, an incorrect challenge will now result in a team taking a two-minute penalty. Presumably, the penalty will be for delay of game, the same call that's already on the books for teams that unsuccessfully challenge for an illegal stick.

In other words, they're going to start doing it the way they should have been all along. As listeners to the Biscuits hockey podcast already know, this is the solution I've been suggesting all season. It just makes too much sense. The offside review might be fine in concept, but there are way too many of them. Coaches were calling for reviews on anything remotely close, and rightly so, since the reward for being right dwarfed the cost of being wrong.

The reward still dwarfs the cost—taking a goal off the board is such a big deal in a low-scoring league that there's really no way to change that—and if coaches were purely rational then this might not change much. But pro sports coaches aren't purely rational. If they were, they'd pull goalies earlier, bunt less, and go for it on fourth down more. Coaches like to cover their own behinds, and now they know that if they're wrong on an offisde challenge and it costs their team a power play goal, they'll take the blame. The NHL has basically found a way to turn a league full of conservative coaches' risk-aversion against them. It's beautiful.

Now, maybe you'd have liked to see them go even further. It would have been nice to see them fix those infuriating "skate in the air" calls, and putting some sort of stricter time limit on making challenges would also have been good. The rule change will only impact offside reviews and not goalie interference, so maybe it doesn't go far enough. Or maybe you'd like to see them just scrap offside review altogether, because as we've covered here before, the "just get it right at all costs" argument is deeply flawed.

But the bigger point is that the league made a genuine improvement to a rule that desperately needed it. These days, we'll take our wins where we can get them.

(And hey NHL, while you're stealing my ideas: About that Jagr draft…)

Obscure former player of the week

Matt Duchene will never be traded. It doesn't matter if he refuses to report to camp, as now seems possible. It doesn't matter if more teams get into the bidding. It doesn't matter if the Avalanche are in or out of the playoff race. We will all live and then we will die and then the sun will explode and consume the earth and then Joe Sakic will still be waiting for the Islanders to throw in another draft pick.

So since nobody will ever be traded for Duchene, today's obscure player is a guy who was once traded for a Duchesne. And also a Dufresne. It's as close as we're ever going to get, people. This week's player is Igor Kravchuk.

Kravchuk was a Soviet defenseman who was picked by the Blackhawks in the fourth round of the 1991 draft. He was already 24 at the time, and had won gold at the 1988 Olympics; he would arrive in Chicago shortly after winning another gold as part of the Unified Team at the 1992 tournament. He scored a goal in his first NHL game by stealing the puck from Bob Probert, and somehow lived to tell the tale.

He lasted about a year in Chicago before he was dealt to Edmonton for Joe Murphy, whose name does not sound like Duchene. But after three years with the Oilers, including a 50-point season 1993-94, he was traded to St. Louis for Donald Dufresne. And a year after that the Blues flipped him to the Senators for Steve Duchesne.

He made his only all-star appearance for Ottawa in 1998, and later that year he scored the empty net goal that sealed the Senators' upset playoff win over the Devils. He'd have quick stints with the Flames and Panthers before ending his NHL run in 2003, at the age of 36.

All in all, he had a pretty solid career. And yet his most famous hockey moment came long before he ever arrived on the NHL scene. In 1987, he was a 20-year-old youngster on the powerhouse Soviet team at the Canada Cup when coach Viktor Tikhonov decided to send him out to face the Wayne Gretzky/Mario Lemieux line in the deciding game's final minutes. You probably remember how that turned out. That's Kravchuk making one of the worst pinches in hockey history to set up the 3-on-1 that ends with Lemieux's winning goal.

And yet he still went on to a long and successful career. See? People make sometimes mistakes, and it's not the end of the world. Somebody send that clip to Joe Sakic.

Outrage of the week

The issue: This week, the NHL (along with the NHLPA and several other hockey organizations) unveiled what they're calling a Declaration of Principles.

The outrage: [everyone's eyes instantly roll into the back of their heads while making slot machine noises] Is it justified: You can find the entire list of principles here. It's basically a laundry list of things the league claims to believe are fundamental concepts for the hockey community, including delivering "a positive family experience" while providing "a safe, positive and inclusive environment".

Those sounds like good things, because they are. And even though there's clearly a healthy dose of public relations behind all this—the league even included a letter of endorsement from the pope—the league deserves some credit here. These days, we could apparently all use the occasional reminder not to be completely horrible to each other, so seeing the NHL put its name on this sort of initiative is a positive. That entitles them to some goodwill.

What it doesn't entitle them to is any sort of benefit of the doubt that they'll actually deliver on any of this, and that's where the rest of us come in. It's no secret that the NHL has been decidedly hit-and-miss over the years in living up to the sort of standards they laid out this week. They're certainly not alone in that regard, but the fact remains that there's plenty of room for improvement on the part of the NHL, its teams, and just about everyone involved with the league, including the media. Declaring your principles is nice, but it would be foolish for fans to pat the NHL on the back and call it mission accomplished based on a slick media event and a press release.

That said, that doesn't mean we write this off as one big public relations charade and ignore it. Even if most of the principles read as merely aspirational right now, that still has value. There's something to be said for putting your goals out there in writing for the world to see.

At the very least, if the NHL and its clubs go right back to business as usual, fans will no longer have to resort to vague complaints about how the league should do better. They'll have something concrete to point to.

That's worth something. Exactly how much remains to be seen, and nobody should go into this with unrealistic expectations. But the league made progress this week, even if all they did was make it easier to hold them to a higher standard.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

he Edmonton Oilers have had a busy summer, one that saw them sign two players to massive extensions: Connor McDavid's $100-million extension, and a $68-million deal for Leon Draisaitl. Both contracts spurred plenty of debate, with some seeing the deals as the cost of doing business in today's NHL while others argued that McDavid or (especially) Draisaitl would be overpaid.

Time will tell whether either player can earn their paychecks. But in the meantime, let's travel back to 1982 for an old-school salary debate featuring an Edmonton Oilers star. And I do mean old school…

So it's January 21, 1982, and there's big news in the hockey world. Wayne Gretzky has just torn up his contract with Peter Pocklington and the Edmonton Oilers to sign a brand new deal, and it's a doozy. Gretzky has just become the highest-paid player in NHL history, thanks to a 21-year contract that will pay him more than $20 million. With bonus clauses, he could make that much in just the first 15 years of the deal.

Yes, that's right, Wayne Gretzky is going to make a little over $1 million a year, and we're not sure he's worth it. He's in the middle of a 92-goal, 212-point season, in case you're wondering. Hockey economics were a little bit different in the early 80s.

We're watching the CBC nightly news, and we get a truncated introduction to the story, at which point we cut to the debate portion of the program. Our clip features three giants of Canadian media: CBC newscaster Barbara Frum, journalist Peter Gzowski, and the undisputed star of the piece: legendary curmudgeon Dick Beddoes.

I'm not sure how widely known Beddoes was outside of Ontario, so let me try to prepare you for what you're about to see. OK, imagine Don Cherry. Now imagine he was better dressed, crankier, and the sort of newspaper veteran who did all his interviews next to an old typewriter. That's Dick Beddoes. He was the best.

Frum introduces our two debaters, and we're off to the races. Beddoes comes out strong, playing the "every modern player is terrible" card. It's a strong old-guy opinion, especially when he calls Gretzky a "hairy-legged hockey player from Brantford, Ontario." Let's see how Gzowski responds.

"His legs aren't very hairy, Dick." OK, that's a sentence I didn't think I'd have to type today, but here we are.

Gzowski, playing the role of the bearded voice of reason, makes the seemingly uncontroversial point that Gretzky is the best hockey player in the world, at which point Beddoes interrupts to disagree, throwing some shade at Gzowski's book in the process. So who is the best player? None other than Russian winger Sergei Shepelev, who's coming off a 28-goal season with Moscow Spartak and had recently starred at the 1981 Canada Cup. For what it's worth, Shepelev never made it over to the NHL, but he was good. Not Gretzky-good, but he was fine.

Also, he's currently a coach in the KHL, and I feel pretty safe assuming that he's better than Gretzky was at coaching. Maybe that's what Beddoes meant.

I'm 100 percent going to spend the rest of the day practicing Beddoes's deadpan "You're joking, of course" comeback in the mirror.

Gzowski hasn't exactly shown up to this fight without any ammo, and he calls Beddoes "a well-dressed sourpuss in Hamilton, Ontario.. Man, that phrase started off as kind of a compliment and then got progressively meaner as it went.

Beddoes makes it clear that he just needs to see a little more from Gretzky. How much more? Oh, maybe "15 or 30 years like Gordie Howe". That seems reasonable. What's next, a Phantom Joe Malone take?

Beddoes calls this "a diluted era of hockey", which makes him sounds pretty reasonable, and then mentions being a part-owner of the 1980s Maple Leafs, which does not.

Frum cuts in to try to get things back on track. And yes, if the name sounds familiar to you Americans, she is the mother of that guy you currently have deeply conflicted feelings about on Twitter. She wants to know how the finances are going to work for Peter Pocklington and the Oilers.

Gzowski's answer doesn't include the phrase "Pocklington will just sell him in seven years so none of this will matter," so his answer was wrong. But Beddoes quickly jumps in anyway, pointing out that Gretzky "has got more money than Poland." Is that offensive? I feel like that might have been offensive in 1982, but I'm going to need to go to the replay review to be sure.

We briefly get to the small matter of this whole contract being nonsense, which is why you've never heard of it until just now. Back then, NHL contracts could be renegotiated at any time, and that happened with Gretzky several times over his career. This 21-year deal lasted a few seasons and that was it.

Gzowski lays out the argument for Gretzky's drawing power, including a nice little shot at Detroit as a hockey market. Then we move on to Frum pointing out that Gretzky has just recently scored his infamous 50 goals in 39 games. Surely even Beddoes has to admit that's impressive, right?

"What I want from him, if we're going to make comparisons, is that he might score some year 44 goals in 20 games, like the late Phantom Joe Malone did in 1918…He hasn't done that." I love Dick Beddoes so much.

We close out with Beddoes arguing that Gretzky—who again, is in the middle of a 212-point season—couldn't make third-string center on the 1947 Maple Leafs. Gzowski tries to respond with a quote from Rocket Richard, but Beddoes fires back with a fake French accent that causes Frum to put an end to things with the same "OK you two" rejoinder of a mom who's just walked in on her two children setting the basement on fire.

And that does it for our clip. As it turns out, Gretzky was indeed worth the money, as seven more Hart Trophies and four Stanley Cups would attest. Will McDavid and Draisaitl be able to do the same? It's still early, and old-school Beddoes types won't like to hear it, but there's every indication that the modern Oilers could end up being just as good if not better than they were in Gretzky's years.

I'm joking, of course.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected] .

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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amtushinfosolutionspage · 7 years ago

Text

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take

Three stars of comedy

The third star: Kris Versteeg’s ongoing Instagram war against Jonathan Toews – It’s been going on for months now—you can get caught up here—and honestly at this point it’s just short of outright bullying. But when you’re one of the best 100 players in NHL history, I’m guessing you can take it.

The second star: Sharks twitter—Hey look, they’d like to make a harmless joke. Jokes are fun, right?

Not bad, guys! But be careful, you’re going after the Golden Knights and lately they’ve been kind of feisty so you might want to watch out for…

Good lord, guys. This was basically the Twitter equivalent of that time Slava Fetisov came after Wendel Clark. It’s not even preseason, maybe hold off on the kill shots until camp open.The first star: Artemi Panarin’s bread shoes—Absolutely no idea what’s happening here, but what the hell.

The NHL actually got something right

This week, we learned that the NHL is making an important change to its video review challenge rules. For offside reviews, an incorrect challenge will now result in a team taking a two-minute penalty. Presumably, the penalty will be for delay of game, the same call that’s already on the books for teams that unsuccessfully challenge for an illegal stick.

In other words, they’re going to start doing it the way they should have been all along. As listeners to the Biscuits hockey podcast already know, this is the solution I’ve been suggesting all season. It just makes too much sense. The offside review might be fine in concept, but there are way too many of them. Coaches were calling for reviews on anything remotely close, and rightly so, since the reward for being right dwarfed the cost of being wrong.

The reward still dwarfs the cost—taking a goal off the board is such a big deal in a low-scoring league that there’s really no way to change that—and if coaches were purely rational then this might not change much. But pro sports coaches aren’t purely rational. If they were, they’d pull goalies earlier, bunt less, and go for it on fourth down more. Coaches like to cover their own behinds, and now they know that if they’re wrong on an offisde challenge and it costs their team a power play goal, they’ll take the blame. The NHL has basically found a way to turn a league full of conservative coaches’ risk-aversion against them. It’s beautiful.

Now, maybe you’d have liked to see them go even further. It would have been nice to see them fix those infuriating “skate in the air” calls, and putting some sort of stricter time limit on making challenges would also have been good. The rule change will only impact offside reviews and not goalie interference, so maybe it doesn’t go far enough. Or maybe you’d like to see them just scrap offside review altogether, because as we’ve covered here before, the “just get it right at all costs” argument is deeply flawed.

But the bigger point is that the league made a genuine improvement to a rule that desperately needed it. These days, we’ll take our wins where we can get them.

(And hey NHL, while you’re stealing my ideas: About that Jagr draft…)

Obscure former player of the week

Matt Duchene will never be traded. It doesn’t matter if he refuses to report to camp, as now seems possible. It doesn’t matter if more teams get into the bidding. It doesn’t matter if the Avalanche are in or out of the playoff race. We will all live and then we will die and then the sun will explode and consume the earth and then Joe Sakic will still be waiting for the Islanders to throw in another draft pick.

So since nobody will ever be traded for Duchene, today’s obscure player is a guy who was once traded for a Duchesne. And also a Dufresne. It’s as close as we’re ever going to get, people. This week’s player is Igor Kravchuk.

He made his only all-star appearance for Ottawa in 1998, and later that year he scored the empty net goal that sealed the Senators’ upset playoff win over the Devils. He’d have quick stints with the Flames and Panthers before ending his NHL run in 2003, at the age of 36.

All in all, he had a pretty solid career. And yet his most famous hockey moment came long before he ever arrived on the NHL scene. In 1987, he was a 20-year-old youngster on the powerhouse Soviet team at the Canada Cup when coach Viktor Tikhonov decided to send him out to face the Wayne Gretzky/Mario Lemieux line in the deciding game’s final minutes. You probably remember how that turned out. That’s Kravchuk making one of the worst pinches in hockey history to set up the 3-on-1 that ends with Lemieux’s winning goal.

And yet he still went on to a long and successful career. See? People make sometimes mistakes, and it’s not the end of the world. Somebody send that clip to Joe Sakic.

Outrage of the week

The issue: This week, the NHL (along with the NHLPA and several other hockey organizations) unveiled what they’re calling a Declaration of Principles.

The outrage: [everyone’s eyes instantly roll into the back of their heads while making slot machine noises]

Is it justified: You can find the entire list of principles here. It’s basically a laundry list of things the league claims to believe are fundamental concepts for the hockey community, including delivering “a positive family experience” while providing “a safe, positive and inclusive environment”.

Those sounds like good things, because they are. And even though there’s clearly a healthy dose of public relations behind all this—the league even included a letter of endorsement from the pope—the league deserves some credit here. These days, we could apparently all use the occasional reminder not to be completely horrible to each other, so seeing the NHL put its name on this sort of initiative is a positive. That entitles them to some goodwill.

What it doesn’t entitle them to is any sort of benefit of the doubt that they’ll actually deliver on any of this, and that’s where the rest of us come in. It’s no secret that the NHL has been decidedly hit-and-miss over the years in living up to the sort of standards they laid out this week. They’re certainly not alone in that regard, but the fact remains that there’s plenty of room for improvement on the part of the NHL, its teams, and just about everyone involved with the league, including the media. Declaring your principles is nice, but it would be foolish for fans to pat the NHL on the back and call it mission accomplished based on a slick media event and a press release.

That said, that doesn’t mean we write this off as one big public relations charade and ignore it. Even if most of the principles read as merely aspirational right now, that still has value. There’s something to be said for putting your goals out there in writing for the world to see.

At the very least, if the NHL and its clubs go right back to business as usual, fans will no longer have to resort to vague complaints about how the league should do better. They’ll have something concrete to point to.

That’s worth something. Exactly how much remains to be seen, and nobody should go into this with unrealistic expectations. But the league made progress this week, even if all they did was make it easier to hold them to a higher standard.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

he Edmonton Oilers have had a busy summer, one that saw them sign two players to massive extensions: Connor McDavid’s $100-million extension, and a $68-million deal for Leon Draisaitl. Both contracts spurred plenty of debate, with some seeing the deals as the cost of doing business in today’s NHL while others argued that McDavid or (especially) Draisaitl would be overpaid.

Time will tell whether either player can earn their paychecks. But in the meantime, let’s travel back to 1982 for an old-school salary debate featuring an Edmonton Oilers star. And I do mean old school…

So it’s January 21, 1982, and there’s big news in the hockey world. Wayne Gretzky has just torn up his contract with Peter Pocklington and the Edmonton Oilers to sign a brand new deal, and it’s a doozy. Gretzky has just become the highest-paid player in NHL history, thanks to a 21-year contract that will pay him more than $20 million. With bonus clauses, he could make that much in just the first 15 years of the deal.

Yes, that’s right, Wayne Gretzky is going to make a little over $1 million a year, and we’re not sure he’s worth it. He’s in the middle of a 92-goal, 212-point season, in case you’re wondering. Hockey economics were a little bit different in the early 80s.

We’re watching the CBC nightly news, and we get a truncated introduction to the story, at which point we cut to the debate portion of the program. Our clip features three giants of Canadian media: CBC newscaster Barbara Frum, journalist Peter Gzowski, and the undisputed star of the piece: legendary curmudgeon Dick Beddoes.

I’m not sure how widely known Beddoes was outside of Ontario, so let me try to prepare you for what you’re about to see. OK, imagine Don Cherry. Now imagine he was better dressed, crankier, and the sort of newspaper veteran who did all his interviews next to an old typewriter. That’s Dick Beddoes. He was the best.

Frum introduces our two debaters, and we’re off to the races. Beddoes comes out strong, playing the “every modern player is terrible” card. It’s a strong old-guy opinion, especially when he calls Gretzky a “hairy-legged hockey player from Brantford, Ontario.” Let’s see how Gzowski responds.

“His legs aren’t very hairy, Dick.” OK, that’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d have to type today, but here we are.

Gzowski, playing the role of the bearded voice of reason, makes the seemingly uncontroversial point that Gretzky is the best hockey player in the world, at which point Beddoes interrupts to disagree, throwing some shade at Gzowski’s book in the process. So who is the best player? None other than Russian winger Sergei Shepelev, who’s coming off a 28-goal season with Moscow Spartak and had recently starred at the 1981 Canada Cup. For what it’s worth, Shepelev never made it over to the NHL, but he was good. Not Gretzky-good, but he was fine.

Also, he’s currently a coach in the KHL, and I feel pretty safe assuming that he’s better than Gretzky was at coaching. Maybe that’s what Beddoes meant.

I’m 100 percent going to spend the rest of the day practicing Beddoes’s deadpan “You’re joking, of course” comeback in the mirror.

Gzowski hasn’t exactly shown up to this fight without any ammo, and he calls Beddoes “a well-dressed sourpuss in Hamilton, Ontario.. Man, that phrase started off as kind of a compliment and then got progressively meaner as it went.

Beddoes makes it clear that he just needs to see a little more from Gretzky. How much more? Oh, maybe “15 or 30 years like Gordie Howe”. That seems reasonable. What’s next, a Phantom Joe Malone take?

Beddoes calls this “a diluted era of hockey”, which makes him sounds pretty reasonable, and then mentions being a part-owner of the 1980s Maple Leafs, which does not.

Gzowski’s answer doesn’t include the phrase “Pocklington will just sell him in seven years so none of this will matter,” so his answer was wrong. But Beddoes quickly jumps in anyway, pointing out that Gretzky “has got more money than Poland.” Is that offensive? I feel like that might have been offensive in 1982, but I’m going to need to go to the replay review to be sure.

We briefly get to the small matter of this whole contract being nonsense, which is why you’ve never heard of it until just now. Back then, NHL contracts could be renegotiated at any time, and that happened with Gretzky several times over his career. This 21-year deal lasted a few seasons and that was it.

Gzowski lays out the argument for Gretzky’s drawing power, including a nice little shot at Detroit as a hockey market. Then we move on to Frum pointing out that Gretzky has just recently scored his infamous 50 goals in 39 games. Surely even Beddoes has to admit that’s impressive, right?

“What I want from him, if we’re going to make comparisons, is that he might score some year 44 goals in 20 games, like the late Phantom Joe Malone did in 1918…He hasn’t done that.” I love Dick Beddoes so much.

We close out with Beddoes arguing that Gretzky—who again, is in the middle of a 212-point season—couldn’t make third-string center on the 1947 Maple Leafs. Gzowski tries to respond with a quote from Rocket Richard, but Beddoes fires back with a fake French accent that causes Frum to put an end to things with the same “OK you two” rejoinder of a mom who’s just walked in on her two children setting the basement on fire.

And that does it for our clip. As it turns out, Gretzky was indeed worth the money, as seven more Hart Trophies and four Stanley Cups would attest. Will McDavid and Draisaitl be able to do the same? It’s still early, and old-school Beddoes types won’t like to hear it, but there’s every indication that the modern Oilers could end up being just as good if not better than they were in Gretzky’s years.

I’m joking, of course.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you’d like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected] .

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

0 notes

flauntpage · 7 years ago

Text

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take

Three stars of comedy

The second star: Sharks twitter—Hey look, they'd like to make a harmless joke. Jokes are fun, right?

Not bad, guys! But be careful, you're going after the Golden Knights and lately they've been kind of feisty so you might want to watch out for…

The NHL actually got something right

But the bigger point is that the league made a genuine improvement to a rule that desperately needed it. These days, we'll take our wins where we can get them.

(And hey NHL, while you're stealing my ideas: About that Jagr draft…)

Obscure former player of the week

And yet he still went on to a long and successful career. See? People make sometimes mistakes, and it's not the end of the world. Somebody send that clip to Joe Sakic.

Outrage of the week

The issue: This week, the NHL (along with the NHLPA and several other hockey organizations) unveiled what they're calling a Declaration of Principles.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

"His legs aren't very hairy, Dick." OK, that's a sentence I didn't think I'd have to type today, but here we are.

Also, he's currently a coach in the KHL, and I feel pretty safe assuming that he's better than Gretzky was at coaching. Maybe that's what Beddoes meant.

I'm 100 percent going to spend the rest of the day practicing Beddoes's deadpan "You're joking, of course" comeback in the mirror.

Beddoes makes it clear that he just needs to see a little more from Gretzky. How much more? Oh, maybe "15 or 30 years like Gordie Howe". That seems reasonable. What's next, a Phantom Joe Malone take?

Beddoes calls this "a diluted era of hockey", which makes him sounds pretty reasonable, and then mentions being a part-owner of the 1980s Maple Leafs, which does not.

I'm joking, of course.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected] .

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes

flauntpage · 7 years ago

Text

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take

Three stars of comedy

The second star: Sharks twitter—Hey look, they'd like to make a harmless joke. Jokes are fun, right?

Not bad, guys! But be careful, you're going after the Golden Knights and lately they've been kind of feisty so you might want to watch out for…

The NHL actually got something right

But the bigger point is that the league made a genuine improvement to a rule that desperately needed it. These days, we'll take our wins where we can get them.

(And hey NHL, while you're stealing my ideas: About that Jagr draft…)

Obscure former player of the week

And yet he still went on to a long and successful career. See? People make sometimes mistakes, and it's not the end of the world. Somebody send that clip to Joe Sakic.

Outrage of the week

The issue: This week, the NHL (along with the NHLPA and several other hockey organizations) unveiled what they're calling a Declaration of Principles.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

"His legs aren't very hairy, Dick." OK, that's a sentence I didn't think I'd have to type today, but here we are.

Also, he's currently a coach in the KHL, and I feel pretty safe assuming that he's better than Gretzky was at coaching. Maybe that's what Beddoes meant.

I'm 100 percent going to spend the rest of the day practicing Beddoes's deadpan "You're joking, of course" comeback in the mirror.

Beddoes makes it clear that he just needs to see a little more from Gretzky. How much more? Oh, maybe "15 or 30 years like Gordie Howe". That seems reasonable. What's next, a Phantom Joe Malone take?

Beddoes calls this "a diluted era of hockey", which makes him sounds pretty reasonable, and then mentions being a part-owner of the 1980s Maple Leafs, which does not.

I'm joking, of course.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected] .

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes