#nick and Liam teammates would go crazy

[nick-cassidy]

they dont want you to know Liam Lawson has a formula e seat rn . it’s the year of the kiwis !

[thornescratch]

Nicklas Backstrom: Nicky or Backy.

“I’m a boring guy,” he said with a wink and a smile.

Travis Boyd: Boydo or Boyder.

John Carlson: Carly.

Nic Dowd: Judy. As in Judge Judy. As explained by Dowd himself:

“It happened while we were playing sewer ball last year. It’s called sewer ball because you basically try and screw each other over. You get two touches. If you don’t get the two touches you’re out. You can kick shitty balls at people, so it’s sewer ball. It happened at Cap One. Quite frequently, Ovi will plead his case as to why he should not be out. Then it usually comes down to rock-paper-scissors, and whoever wins stays and whoever loses is out. Frequently it comes down to that, even though maybe Ovi should be out most of the time. But he’s the big man so, you know��

“One game I said something right away. I was like, ‘No, you should be out. You should be out.’ Ovi looked at me – and he had said this before to other guys, it’s just kinda one of his Ovi Sayings – he looked at me and said, ‘Whatever, Judge Judy.’ Willie (Tom Wilson) was there and had never heard it. Willie just loved it. He looovvveeed it. It was one of those things, like it didn’t even cross my mind because Ovi had said it so many times to other guys. ‘Whatever, Judge Judy.’ But Willie loved it. And it stuck.”

Lars Eller: Lar or Tiger.

As for “Lar,” that was a Nate Schmidt creation. “He was like, Lar!” Eller, recalled, referring to the former Washington defenseman who now plays for Vegas. “He was just walking around here yelling it as loud as he could every time he saw me. It was for no particular reason, as I remember. And it just kinda stuck.

“It’s mostly Lar, but it’s Tiger, too, when guys want to have a laugh.”

Bonus story: Eller’s teammates in Montreal called him “Larry.” He hated it. The nickname briefly followed him to Washington, but he nipped it in the bud before it had a chance to become a thing.

Radko Gudas: Gudie.

Carl Hagelin: Hags.

Garnet Hathaway: Garf.

Wait, what?

Dowd “has been calling me Garf. He’s been trying to get it (to) go,” Hathaway explained. “Then I got some people calling me Garfunkel. Dowder kept getting called Judy and he wanted to call me something. He’s the biggest salesman I’ve ever seen trying to sell it.

“I don’t know,” Hathaway added, shrugging. “You got me.”

Braden Holtby: Holts or Beast.

Nick Jensen: Jens.

Michal Kempny: Kemps or Psycho.

Yes, there’s an explanation for the latter.

“I think it’s because I like going in the cold tub,” he said. “I’m going whole body most time, so that’s why it’s ‘Psycho.'”

Pressed for more, Kempny shrugged and laughed. “Maybe it’s because I’m kind of an explosive person, too” he joked.

Evgeny Kuznetsov: Kuze or Kuzy.

Brendan Leipsic: Leiper.

Tyler Lewington: Lewy.

Liam O’Brien: Big Tuna or Tuna.

“It’s just Tuna,” the recent call-up said. “It was Big Tuna, but everyone just calls me Tuna now. It was Nate Schmidt when he was in Hershey my first year. I’m pretty sure it came from ‘The Office.’ He would just come in the room and say, ‘The biiiggg Tuuunnnaaa.’ He liked it and he said it fit me really well. It just kinda took off. Coaches call me it. Friends back home call me it.”

Dmitry Orlov: Snarls.

“My first year in the NHL, my roommate was Cody Eakin,” Orlov explained. “He did this nickname for me.”

The first time Orlov heard it, he needed someone to translate Snarls into Russian.

“I can live with this,” he recalled thinking at the time.

“It’s kinda funny,” Orlov added. “Even my family knows this nickname. They said it’s the perfect nickname for you.”

T.J. Oshie: Osh. Osh Babe. Babe.

“That started in St. Louis. I say to a lot of people, ‘What’s up, Babe?’ So a lot of people became ‘Babe’ when we got here. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s something with hockey players – half the time you aren’t called anything related to your name. It’s crazy.”

Alex Ovechkin: Ovi or O.

“Everyone calls him ‘O,'” Oshie said. “No one on the team really calls him Ovi.”

Richard Panik: Pans.

Ilya Samsonov: Sammy.

Jonas Siegenthaler: Siegs.

Chandler Stephenson: Steve or Stevie.

Jakub Vrana: V.

“There’s a few, but most guys call me ‘V,'” he said. “That’s my main nickname. It was right away, since my first day in North America. (Head equipment manager Brock Myles) and all those guys started calling me V. It makes sense. I like it. It’s nice and easy. It suits me.”

Tom Wilson: Willie or Whip.

“I was Willie for my first two years and then Stick (Justin Williams) came,” Wilson said. “So there were two Willies, and Trotzy (Barry Trotz) said we had to come up with something else.”

OK, but why Whip?“

Eric Fehr is the one that came up with it,” Wilson said with a smile. “That’s all I can tell you. No comment. You can call him.”

Tarik bringing us valuable up-to-date info on current Caps nicknames.

[mtg-weekly-recap]

MTG Weekly Tumblr Recap - Volume 1, Issue 1

Wanted to doodle something silly!  Saheeli prob love cats <3 

Original art by @isharton | Please support them at their Patreon!

Welcome to the very first issue of the MTG Weekly Tumblr Recap of the new year! For those unfamiliar with what we do, the MTG Weekly Tumblr Recap is a gathering of some of the most notable posts and trends from within the MTG Tumblr community for a given week. For this issue, we will be covering the week of January 8, 2017 through January 14, 2017. If you are interested in joining our writing team, please PM any of our writers and we will add you to our Discord group chat.

1. Banned & Restricted Update Discussion

Original image posted by @sarkhan-volkswagen

Wizards of the Coast announced bannings this past week, and I can’t say I’m surprised. Emrakul, the Promised End, Smuggler’s Copter, and Reflector Mage were banned in Standard, while Modern bans were simply Gitaxian Probe and Golgari Grave-Troll. There have been mixed feelings about these bans: many people were annoyed and upset that their favourite cards were banned, while others were quite relieved.

Emrakul, the Promised End, the final titan to be released, and the first to be banned. According to WotC, Emrakul was “created to be scarily powerful,” and “delivered on that promise too well.” @ugin guessed that “if an Emrakul hit the field, I would guess that approximately 90% of the time that person would win.” Scarily powerful indeed, and this was made even more scary with cards like Aetherworks Marvel. As a counterpoint, @life-is-short-for-us said that it isn’t unbeatable, but didn’t suggest how to actually beat it. Instead, he simply said that for Standard, it isn’t about “banning cards that are too good, but banning cards that are so good they are damn near impossible to beat and your only hope is playing the mirror match and they are like 70% of the field.”

This brings us to our second card banned, Smuggler’s Copter. While I don’t play much Standard, this one annoyed the hell out of me, and now that it’s banned, I’m kinda relieved. For this one, Wizards says that it was in too many of the top decks and was restricting creativity. I agree, as does @queen-marchesa: “The one that is least surprising is the Copter. It really was too omnipresent in Standard to allow for exploration or creativity.” I have always thought that the Looter Scooter was too powerful for a turn-two artifact, which helped turn the format stale.

Our final Standard banning was Reflector Mage. There’s not much to say about this one, really, and I think it was one of the odder bannings. Wizards says that, “Our data showed the White-Blue Flash deck was too powerful against the field,and Reflector Mage has been on players' lists of most-disliked cards, since the days of Collected Company.” I suppose when you take down decks with Emrakul and Copter, W/U Flash would be the one to dominate. Tumblr users agreed, with one stating, “The card ended up being very effective in this format.” Others thought it was a surprising ban, but seeing that it’s stuck around for so long, “makes sense.”

As for the Modern bans, let’s start with Gitaxian Probe. This one is one of the least surprising to me, as it takes some skill out of the game. According to @jurou-tenshi, “Git probe has had it coming for a long time. It enabled too many degenerate strategies.” @avatar-of-woah states, “Probe’s actually a real issue in infect because it takes play skill out of the equation. Instead of trying to read your opponent and what they could have that would beat you, you just pay two life,” and proceed from there. According to @urzas-raven-armour, “With the probe ban, storm is even less playable now.” I would assume that this ban also hits Delver decks, but I don’t know enough about them.

The final ban released this week was Golgari Grave-Troll, and from what I have found, people are glad to see it go. One user said that “Dredge is a silly silly deck that has proven to be too powerful for Modern,” and with the Delve mechanic brought back in Khans of Tarkir, I agree. Golgari Grave-Troll is a creature with Dredge 6, and it enters the battlefield with counters equal to the number of creatures in the graveyard. You can also pay one generic mana and remove a counter to regenerate it. Now, that seems extremely powerful to me, especially in the late game, where you’ll most likely have a lot of creatures in your graveyard, but it is definitely the Dredge 6 that puts it over the top, enabling way too many graveyard shenanigans.

--- Connor S, @solemnly-mystifying

2. This Past Week’s Magic Story Review

Kari Zev - playing around with a doodle. | Original art by @sketchydoodles​

In this past week’s new Kaladesh Story “The Skies Over Ghirapur,” by Ari Levitch, we were introduced to the feisty teenage pirate captain, Kari Zev. In this story Kari Zev and Jace Beleren team up to assist the renegades, first by going on a heist to obtain aether, then to help the renegades take on the Skysovereign after they lost control of the Aether Hub in the story “Burn.”

The Tumblr community met this story with overwhelmingly positive reviews. The community adored the tenacity of Kari Zev and her sidekick, the monkey Ragavan. Tumblr user @zomburai claimed that the story was a delight. Others, like @abzanascendancy, were most excited about sky pirates. They also applauded Kari Zev for being 15, yet also being able to “pilot, command and crew her own ship.” Community members were even more excited about pirates then they were already, and some probably hope that a pirate-themed block will come along in the not-too-distant future.

With only three stories left in the Aether Revolt storyline, the MTGcommunity is anxiously waiting to see what happens next, with the Gatewatch’s final confrontation with Tezzeret and the Consulate, and what else that is in store for the plane of Kaladesh.

--- Chelsea W, @chelsea-beleren-vess

3. General Magic Story Discussion and Speculation

Deploy the Gatewatch | Original art by Wesley Burt

This week has been rife with Magic Story metadiscourse, from speculation for the future, to reflection on the past. Fans discussed Nissa’s shift toward tolerance in Magic Origins, and whether or not this made her a “Mary Sue”, prompting @commandtower-solring-go’s analysis of the term and its relationship to Magic [x]. On the other side, @chelsea-beleren-vess compiled potential points of civil war foreshadowing [x]

Prior to her Origins revision, Nissa, like most elves, believed that elves reigned superior over other races, and moreover her band of elves above even other elves. When her backstory was updated, these biases were no longer present. Lots of fans were upset by this. They missed their little racist, which is a little distressing, honestly. It’s important we ask ourselves why it’s so important for her to be hateful. This led one user to ask @markrosewater why the Gatewatch was composed of “Mary Sues.” By and large, “Mary Sue” is a term used to degrade a character for being all-powerful or infallible. This term really doesn’t describe the Gatewatch. Take Gideon, who was too proud and got his Irregulars killed, then repeated the mistake on Zendikar. Look at Jace --- neglectful of his duty as the Guildpact, and by even his own admission, annoying and pretentious as all hell. Liliana is, well, Liliana. Chandra has consistently been short-sighted and rash; she has consistently endangered the lives of the people she cares about, including the Gatewatch (see “In This Very Arena” and “Burn”). Nissa has been altoether aloof and unable to relate to her teammates, and was made to suffer immensely over the course of the Battle for Zendikar storyline.

Wizards could be setting the stage for a civil war within the Gatewatch, ala Marvel. In this hypothetical confrontation, Gideon leads one side, while Jace rallies his allies. Who will side with whom is anyone’s guess, but I’m personally partial to Chandra, Nissa, Gideon, and Ajani squaring off against Jace and Lili, but this is clouded by my distaste for Lili and her relationship with Jace, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

--- Nick D, @nick-dowdle-jeskai-judicator​

4. Incoming WoTC President Chris Cocks’ Digital Tease

Glimpse the Future | Original art by Andrew Robinson

Last Thursday, the President of Wizards of the Coast, Chris Cocks, released a public statement regarding the future of WotC’s IP, concentrating on the following points:

Reimagining digital versions of Magic and other Wizards games.

Bringing their characters and worlds to other games and experiences.

Making people’s Wizards experiences more efficient, connected, and convenient.

What most Tumblrs seemed to latch onto was the idea of Magic: the Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons branded video games, and many people wanted to share their thoughts on the matter.

@simic-initiate said, “I’ve no doubt irritated many friends by consistently insisting that Magic has a criminally underused mythos and cast of characters. Wizards does SO much world building each plane that just, hardly gets used again if ever.” [x]

@planeswalkerwithtardis suggests, “Persona JRPG with MtG characters as the personas, color combinations replace arcana. It would also hedge Wizard’s bets by crossing their customer base for that product with the ever hungry Persona fan base.” [x]

@youknowwhatscrewyou went a different direction: “I would love an mtg fighting game, similar to smash bros or something, so that is not too competitive and allows for some fun, crazy stuff.” [x]

@mixingmetaphorsoup also thinks MMOs are a hiding to nothing: “What? Throwing spells at a Planeswalker in an MMO? Surely you mean MOBA. As I’ve said before, Magic fits perfectly into a MOBA shell.” [x]

What video game genre do you think would make a good Magic game?

--- Liam W, @coincidencetheories

BONUS! “LILIANA VESS - MAGIC THE GATHERING.” Original art by @lunardays22

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Thank you again for reading this week’s issue of the MTG Weekly Tumblr Recap. If you are interested in contributing to the Recap, either by keeping track of notable posts and trends throughout the MTG community on a given week, or writing a short blurb on a specific topic, please PM our main editor @the-burnished-hart or any of our staff writers.