#sucks to be north american hockey

[stereax]

is there a reason why Carolina is losing all their affiliates???

Other than being assholes to Erik Haula?

Okay, but in all seriousness, there's a short answer and a long one.

The short answer is two words long: Pyotr Kochetkov.

The long answer? Meet me under the cut.

Alright, hi there. So to answer this question fully, we need to talk about the AHL in depth. The AHL, or American Hockey League, is the second-highest league of North American pro hockey, under the NHL. Most people tend to believe it's just "where prospects play before they hit the NHL". This is... only a part of the story.

There are 32 teams in the AHL to match 32 NHL teams. The idea there is that every NHL team would have an AHL affiliate - the most recent expansion, for example, the Coachella Valley Firebirds, is the AHL affiliate for the newest NHL team, the Seattle Kraken. Many of these teams are owned by the same group as owns the NHL team - Harris Blitzer, for example, owns both the New Jersey Devils and the Utica Comets. Others don't - the AHL's Charlotte Checkers, for instance, are owned by Michael Kahn, whereas their NHL affiliate, the Florida Panthers, is owned by Sunrise Sports (aka Vincent Viola).

Why is this important? Well, if you're an NHL team that owns your AHL team, you can let that AHL team leak money. You're turning a good profit on the NHL team, so you don't have to make your AHL team economically viable on its own - you just put it in as a massive tax write-off and go on with your day. Thus, you can put all of your AHL team's resources into developing your AHL players to get ready to play at the NHL level. Of course you sign some vets and such of your own, maybe get a few undrafted guys for the AHL team too, but generally, an NHL-owned AHL team's sole purpose is to develop NHL players. Winning the Calder Cup (the AHL equivalent to the Stanley Cup, not to be confused with the Calder Memorial Trophy given to the best NHL rookie) is just gravy on top.

Contrast this to independently-owned AHL teams, where this is not the case. For these teams, making money is paramount. How do you make money? When you win. Fun fact - the Chicago Wolves, incidentally, used to be televised on main channels partially as a fuck you to Bill Wirtz, who didn't let the Chicago Blackhawks' home games be televised, presumably to drive ticket sales. The Wolves saw that and pounced on the opportunity to make some cash. So if nothing else, love them for sticking it to the Hawks. You can still watch Wolves games on My50, it seems, if you've got that channel, as well as AHL streaming options.

But back to independently-owned AHL teams before I go on my daily anti-Hawks crusade. You want to make money. You do that when you win. When you make the postseason. When you win in the postseason. Independently-owned AHL teams want to win, not necessarily develop for the NHL. So when your NHL team keeps taking your best player away for weeks and then giving him back... you get annoyed.

Now let's play Chicago Wolves Simulator. You are Don Levin and Buddy Meyers, the Wolves' owners. Your goal is to win the Calder Cup or at least come pretty damn close so you can pay the bills. You have a good team - hell, you won the Calder last year! - but your best asset is this star goaltender named Pyotr Kochetkov. When Koochie's in net, you usually win because he bails out your team. When he isn't there to help you win, you kind of don't. Now, Carolina's going through its own issues in net, so they keep calling Koochie up and down. And, as previously mentioned, you kind of suck without Koochie. To be fair, you're not all that great with him, but you suck without him. And you have no control over when he goes up to Carolina, even just to sit on the bench.

You miss the playoffs by one point. One. And your three-year contract with the Canes is up. What do you do?

Waddell Young, GM of the Wolves, says their philosophy and the Canes' fundamentally differed. The Wolves develop and win. Winning develops, to them. The Canes wanted the Wolves to focus solely on development. Not winning. So, when their deal with the Canes was up, the Wolves said "no thanks, we're not going to continue this, we're going independent". This decision makes them the first non-NHL affiliated team in almost 30 years. Now, this isn't to say all independently-owned AHL teams are doomed to fail in partnerships because of divergent philosophies. Look at the Hershey Bears and the Washington Capitals for a prime example of that - the Bears are one of the best teams in the AHL and have won four Calder Cups with the Caps as their affiliates since their affiliation began in 2005. But the Wolves were quite unhappy with the Canes, and so the two split. Also notable is that the Canes have also poisoned the waters with who should be their local AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers, to the point where the Checkers affiliated with the Panthers instead. So... there's that.

So what can the Canes now do with non-roster players? They can affiliate with another AHL team (co-affiliation); one instance of this was when the Seattle Kraken affiliated with the Charlotte Checkers in 21-22 because the Coachella Valley Firebirds weren't yet ready. Supposedly the plan is to get an affiliate for 24-25. But what do they do this year? Especially if they can't find an affiliate to share, which seems more and more likely as the summer drags on? Well, you can't sign players to two-way deals with the Wolves anymore, so you can't really keep veterans around in the AHL to call up if needed. So you... sign nine defensemen to NHL contracts and carry them on the roster at all times. Yep. Don Waddell, Canes GM, has basically stated outright that his roster is probably going to have to carry 22 or 23 players at all times to be sure to have replacements in case of injury. And your prospects? They either go to Europe, where they're basically inaccessible for the whole year, or you loan them to other AHL clubs. Waddell has said plans are in place with several teams to send 2 or 3 players each to several different AHL clubs. For your youngest, they go back to major junior in the CHL and related leagues. Same for your veterans - if you want to keep them, you'll have to sign them one-way (I believe) and then loan them down to scattered AHL teams across the league. Prospects who you could have signed to play in the AHL and develop? You're probably going to have to let them go to free agency (see: Kevin Wall, leading player for Penn State and Carolina draft pick, who just inked a deal with the Milwaukee Admirals, AHL affiliate of the Nashville Predators). And then you can send your worse prospects to your ECHL tea- wait. Oops. They just lost that too. Can't do that either. Well, shit.

And remember, one of the Canes' biggest assets is their system of play (with strong defense) that they execute well. The Wolves needed to teach their players the Canes' system and prepare them so the jump from AHL to NHL wouldn't be that tough. The Canes put their coaches on the Wolves for that purpose (the Wolves have since cleaned house and instated their own). Loaning your players to another AHL team? Why would that team be incentivized to teach your player(s) the system? So now even when you're calling up someone to play for the Canes, you have no idea how well they know the system and no idea how well they can play in it.

This now begs the other question - how will the Wolves fill their roster? Well, they've got options. Generally, an AHL team takes the prospects of its NHL affiliate and then fills the rest of the roster with AHL veteran free agents that the AHL team signs to AHL-only deals. But without an NHL team, it's a smidge more complicated, or perhaps easier. Firstly, other NHL teams can loan their prospects to the Wolves instead of their own AHL teams if they consider the Wolves better at developing them, for instance. The Wolves can now also sign whatever free agent players they find roaming around that could be a good fit for their team - undrafted college players, good ECHL players that can't seem to get called up enough, AHL veterans, players on European teams (especially Russians who might want the chance to get the fuck out of Russia) and so on. These free agent players could see the Wolves as a stable AHL team that can pay solid money (the AHL doesn't have a cap) with a strong chance at contending for the Calder as well as a possible stepping stone to an NHL contract. The Wolves also don't have to worry about these free agents taking ice time away from the Canes' prospects, who would need to be prioritized under an affiliation, which would also be a strong incentive for AHL free agent veterans to sign with them - they'd be able to get a truly fair chance, unlike under an affiliate system where prospects are the priority and free agents are generally playing fewer (and worse) minutes.

And remember - Chicago just drafted Bedard. The city's getting back into hockey and Hawks tickets are expensive. Want to watch some quality hockey on the cheap? Why not come to Wolves games! They're only 18 miles away from the Hawks, too!

Let's now talk about the ECHL and the Norfolk Admirals. Thankfully, this is going to be a lot simpler. The ECHL, unlike the AHL, has only 28 teams. This means 4 NHL teams don't have an ECHL team. In addition, very few, if any, ECHL teams are owned by their NHL affiliates. This further incentivizes them to play for profit (winning the Kelly Cup, the ECHL version of the Stanley Cup) instead of development. On top of this, relatively few ECHL players actually make it to the NHL. ECHL affiliates change fairly frequently, especially due to many of the teams folding because of financial issues (most recently the Brampton Beast, Manchester Monarchs, and Quad City Mallards). So if an ECHL team decides to drop its NHL affiliate, or vice versa, there are four other suitors, all of whom would probably want to pay the ECHL team decent money to be their associate. For the Admirals, it's easy - they see the Canes lose their AHL affiliate and decide they'd rather take the Jets' offer instead, whether it be for the money (Carolina's supposedly notoriously stingy) or for the security. It's just really fucking funny that it happens at the same time Carolina loses their AHL team. Get fucked lol.

TL;DR stan the Wolves for rejecting the system. Canes Suck.

[lesbiancharliedalton]

also the last game was fucking hilarious it was cubs vs. white sox (second one i've been to, hilarious. like we're all from the same city. but it's like north side vs. south side so yuppies/suburbanites vs. real fucking bitches) and there was a runner on the field like some guy got up and ran around, faked out security and then got tackled and then ANOTHER guy tried to jump onto the field and immediately injured his fucking ankle lmaoooooo when security tackled him everyone booed................. and then there was a fight in the cubs side of the stands and everyone was like go back to naperville........................ it's so fucking funny to me i've never done sports or been into them but i honestly love a baseball game. the only sports games i'd go to are baseball and hockey. (american) football can suck my hard cock literally hate it and everything about it and i also don't understand how it works.

[anthonybialy]

Another Chance to Boo the Buffalo Sabres

The Sabres lose.  It’s who they are.  They’re furious you’re aware.  Reports that players are ticked at fans who offer accurate criticism of emblematically atrocious performances somehow make the experience of following them even more unfulfilling.  I’m almost impressed they find new ways to insult.  Athletes are not going to win by bickering with fans, which with this club is the normal result.

Those poor millionaires on the verge of extending the league-record playoff drought are very upset those they’ve wronged by not completing job tasks possess the insolence to react appropriately.  You know a locker room emanates a bad vibe when fans get blamed.  I have a related update about the Sabres.

Competing for the draft lottery offers a thrill unappreciative types don’t cherish.  An eternal exile from the playoff race is the only thing more irritating than lame excuses from well-paid athletes who don’t know how to properly manipulate a puck.  The team in question sucks at a historical rate.  Rare wins are accompanied by a lack of caring about frequent shortcomings.  Can you believe the crowd doesn’t cry with joy?

I just wish there were a way to prevent a fanbase from getting cranky like not missing the freaking playoffs yet again.  Roster members focusing understandable frustration on job performance isn’t as easy as condemning anyone with the nerve to buy a ticket.  Cognizance of the investment’s foolishness does not justify annoyance in those who ultimately receive a portion of gate receipts.  They should be infinitely more ticked at how close a Buffalonian born on the last day the Sabres won a series is to voting.

Technical players are allegedly particularly upset that followers are familiar with the flailing failing coach.  Of course Sabres players like Don Granato: he doesn’t hold them accountable when they underachieve.  The owner likes him as well because he’s cheaper than someone skilled.  The only problem is that bit where his squad is supposed to win games regularly.  Dwindling backers have the audacity to notice.

Keep flipping off those you’ve disappointed: it’s the surest way to express shame.  Ingratitude is particularly super when aimed at those who pay to watch you work in the hope you can bring them a little joy.  Attending a professional hockey game is an investment.  Going to a Sabres game costs nearly as much.

Optimists in spite of it all who spend a considerable sum hoping to vainly see success are crushed by the exact opposite.  Players get mad… at the honest summary of their ineptitude.  Their setbacks somehow get even more infuriating. 

Bickering with those ultimately funding your career is a guaranteed defeat like the Sabres after a win.  I’m shocked sportsbooks take bets on a lock like the inevitable letdown.

Perspective makes matters worse if you follow this team.  It’s easy to examine each result under a microscope.  But step back to see how distressing an activity that’s supposed to be a merry diversion has been over a way too long time.  Hissing is a natural reply.

Why are you not cheering with delight for a ceaseless desert exile?  The fact anyone keeps showing up at all is testament to loyalty.  The devotion may not be rational under the best of conditions, and hockey’s Washington Generals have created less than pleasant ones.

Catharsis is necessary when coping with a team that’s been this lousy for this long.  The Sabres are the worst franchise in the NHL.  There are others with fewer points this season, but nobody has been more consistently woeful over time.  They may be the worst of any North American pro outfit.  Debate enthusiasts might suggest similarly dreadful entries like the New Jersey Jets, but the fact that the Sabres are a plausible candidate is sufficiently depressing.  And they could be the worst globally unless there’s a Romanian handball team that runs to the town square and pummels anyone they find wearing team gear after each thrashing.  

Fans are actually too nice.  Mild jeering is the nicest possible feedback regarding an unprecedented run of losing.  The Sabres are lucky they don’t play in the Vaudeville era.  The concession stands don’t sell rotten vegetables for a reason.

It’s preposterous even having to note cause and effect.  Entertain your customers.  The product has been rotten on a semipermanent basis with no relief in sight.  Since there seems to be confusion, I’ll point out that’s the fault of those inside the dasher, specifically the ones on skates wearing home jerseys.  The Sabres think you’re not allowed to dislike a movie because it’ll irk the director.  And it’s your job to make Coldplay not suck by being supportive at concerts.  Get back here and attend.

“Of course they’re booing.  They have the right at any time and especially when we don’t meet expectation.  We’re here to entertain those who treat us as heroes and have come up short.  We understand and respect their dissatisfaction and hope it will disappear once we start competing at a suitable level.”  There: I wrote an apology for them.  You have to do everything for this team.  Wear a jersey to games because you might be called upon to join the third defensive pair.

True pros would be begging for forgiveness.  But this team doesn’t qualify.  Uninspired play is just the start.  The Sabres are not just generating garbage but treating their admirers the same way.  They deserve more booing.  I hope the fact nobody but Hans Moleman is saying “Boo-ryson” hurts their feelings, as they’re getting off easy compared to the devastated congregation generating the most genuine response.

[ear-worthy]

Ear Worthy: Markle Redux; Pod The North Sparkles ; Augmented Reality Guidelines

Meghan Markle podcast -- Part Deux

 "If you don't succeed, try, try again" is a familiar maxim for those who screwed up the first time.

The podcast network, Lemonada, is taking a chance on a second chance. The network just announced a new creative partnership with Meghan Markle, The Duchess of Sussex. As part of their new deal, Lemonada will distribute the first season of the award-winning “Archetypes” for all audio platforms and also develop a new original podcast series as yet untitled hosted by Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex. 

In 2020, Spotify had announced a $20 million podcast deal with Markle. Although the podcast Markle produced and hosted, Archetypes, was generally well-received, Spotify abruptly canceled the deal last year when it discovered to its surprise that its "We will conquer the podcast universe by throwing money at it" strategy failed.

Archetypes has seen over 10 million downloads, averaging nearly a million listens per episode, and debuted as Spotify’s No.1 podcast in 47 countries around the world.

No word yet on guests, but Archetypes didn't have a problem attracting big-name guests, from Serena Williams to Mariah Carey.

_____________________________________________________

 Canada's Finest Podcast Newsletter -- Pod The North

I think it must suck a lot to be America's neighbor. Overlooked, misunderstood, and patronized, Canadians actually do have their own media universe. 

We have Canada to thank for Rachel McAdams, Celine Dion, Michael J. Fox, Ryan Gosling, Ryan Reynolds, and many others. Can we return Elon Musk for a full refund?

And guess what, America? Canada is kicking our ass in all kinds of podcast engagement,

 Did you know that 71% of Canadians have listened to at least one podcast at some point, and 29% of Canada’s monthly podcast listeners spend at least five hours per week listening to podcasts?

 Revenue from podcast advertising is expected to reach $127.1 million in Canada in 2023, and brands have seen 89% higher brand awareness after advertising on podcasts. Even more impressive, 51% of bi-weekly podcast listeners have bought a product after hearing about it on a podcast.

And the future is bright for Canadian podcasters because 42% of Canadian monthly podcast listeners are aged 18 to 34 years old, so they'll be around listening for a long time.

If you're interested in podcasting in Canada, be sure to check out the Pod The North Substack newsletter by Kattie Laur.  

Pod the North is a free, biweekly newsletter aimed at uplifting the Canadian podcast ecosystem and fostering community. In each issue, you’ll find ecosystem commentary (to keep you in the loop), podcast recommendations, opportunities for your podcast ($$$ and notoriety!), and digestible interviews with Canadian podcasters who you need to know about. 

Kattie Laur is an Award-Winning Freelance Podcast Producer, Consultant, and Writer based in the Greater Toronto Area. Last October, Kattie hosted a live anniversary celebration of Pod the North in Toronto. I'm sure they'll be more live events to come.

You can reach Kattie: @Podkatt (Twitter, Spotify, and Goodpods) | @ PodtheNorth (Bluesky)

Here's an example of a Pod The North story. 

"In a press release that came out this morning, Canadaland has announced the launch of CanadaLabs,a hub for the next generation of audio journalists, open calls for short audio stories from across Canada, and applications to become Canadaland’s first Audio Journalism Fellows."

Check out Pod the North if you're a Canadian podcast fan, or an American who realizes that Canada has more to offer than ice hockey, Banff, and maple syrup.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Guidelines for Augmented Reality in Ads just released

For many, I'm sure this announcement is filed in the "I don't give a s**t" category.

But we should care, because guidelines on the use of any new technology is critically important. Look what happened when we left social media to do whatever the f***k it wanted. We got Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, trolls, Nazis, Chinese bots, "Fakebook," the conspiracy theory of the day, and Donald Trump midnight rage messages.

So here's what is going on.

 In collaboration, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Media Rating Council (MRC) have released their Augmented Reality (AR) Measurement Guidelines to establish clear and consistent definitions and measurement guidelines for ads within Augmented Reality campaigns. The guidelines are open for public comment for a 30-day period until March 9th, 2024. 

The IAB AR Measurement Guidelines Task Force, working with MRC, set forth guidelines for advertisers and marketers to quantify how much media is delivered and gauge how well their media achieved their business objectives within AR media campaigns.

“Brands are increasingly utilizing AR in their media campaigns to connect with consumers in more meaningful and immersive ways,” said Zoe Soon, VP, Experience Center, IAB. “The Augmented Reality advertising market is projected to generate $1.2 Billion in revenue in the U.S. this year. Thus, as an industry, we need to establish a greater consistency on how we define and measure AR advertising to foster fairness and transparency for buyers and sellers.”

To effectively capture the impact of AR campaigns, these guidelines set a framework to establish clear and consistent definitions for ad delivery, viewability, audience, engagement, and performance. The guidelines are inclusive of AR’s interactive and immersive formats, as AR can accrue non-physical interactions with products as well as the physical interactions related to browsing in the context of attribution.

Did you get all that? Good. Now, can you explain it to me.

[academy13]

Just read something about why the AZ Cardinals suck and like... honestly none of it was wrong and it even called out the Coyotes and Suns too. The fact that the Diamondbacks and Mercury weren't even mentioned was also on brand because nobody remembers the Mercury most of the time (and they have more championships than our NHL, MLB, NFL, and MBA teams COMBINED, because the D-Backs have only won the World Series once, the Coyotes have never won a Stanely Cup, the Cards are tied with baseballs Clevland Guardians for longest active championship drought in North American professional sports at 75 years, and the Suns can't seem to win fucking finals.) and the D-Backs are kind of a middle of the road team (I still can't believe they actually made it to the World Series this year, like 22 years to the fucking day of their first at that).

Historically our teams just suck, we all know it. I've watched high school football more exciting than Cards games of the last few years. In fact the order of ranking I give to our teams in terms of fucks given is pretty much whatever season is going on, and then the Coyotes, because truly we do not care about them. They're playing out of a damn college hockey arena because they got kicked out of Glendale for not paying their damn rent, and this is after the fucking nonsense was them ending up being owned by the fucking NHL for a bit because of the complete nonsense of the owners. Wayne Gretzky could not save this team, and he was literally head coach. The D-Backs moved up a little this year because of the World Series, but I know it won't change a damn thing heading into Spring Training and the 2024 season, my expectations remain where they are, in the goddamn gutter. Truly the only expectation I have is that I get a good game out of it, I want to at least enjoy the sport even if my team loses. At least the Cards seem to be playing a game, not like the shit show that was Rosen's rookie year.

[nickgerlich]

In The Net

I fell in love with a sport when I was in grad school at Indiana U. No, it wasn’t football (Indiana always sucks). It wasn’t basketball (even though IU was dominant back then). It wasn’t baseball or tennis. It was soccer, and IU had back-to-back NCAA championships. I went to many matches at the soccer pitch, and became a true fan.

Of course, I need to throw out a sidebar and issue an apology. “Soccer” is what we call it here in the States. The rest of the world calls it football, a far more appropriate moniker given that the players’ feet are making steady contact with the ball. It’s just that we already have a football sport, one in which an oddly-shaped ball is primarily thrown, and only kicked in special occasions.

But I digress.

As a result of my fandom, I went to many pro soccer matches back home in Chicago during the summer. The Chicago Sting of the North American Soccer League had lured German star Karl-Heinz Granitza to play for them, and the excitement was palpable.

Alas, even though soccer has been played in the States since the 1850s, and at the pro level since 1968, it has never taken off like the Big Four (football, baseball, basketball, and hockey). Even international stars like Grantiza in the 1980s and Pelé in the 1970s couldn’t propel the sport to national prominence. It mattered not if soccer was played at pro, collegiate, or youth levels, it just couldn’t gain traction. Americans prefer a different kind of sport, one with lots of points, and typically not with the finesse that is common in soccer.

If you have ever experienced watching or playing to a nil-nil draw, you know just how intense the play is, with ball-handling and defense on par with one another. It’s that many Americans find it all too tedious.

But not anymore. Soccer has enjoyed a rise in popularity, thanks to the success of the US Women’s team (and to a much lesser extent, the Men’s team). Better yet, and this is the really big news for soccer, the arrival of Lionel Messi. He captains both the Inter Miami soccer club and the Argentinian national team.

And suddenly, soccer is grabbing headlines. Heck, Inter Miami’s Instagram account has more than 14 million followers, which is more than any professional sports team in the US. Take that, American football and the rest of you wannabes. More than 19,000 fans recently showed up at Toyota Stadium to watch Inter Miami and Messi take on FC Dallas, unprecedented for Cowboy-crazy Dallas.

What really matters for the marketers, though, is not so much how many butts in seats there were, but how many eyeballs were watching on television. Apple TV is enjoying a surge in subscriptions, thanks to its exclusive offering of Major League Soccer. Eyeballs can be advertised to.

Viewership of the US Women’s team in World Cup competition sagged this year, but that may very well have been because of inconvenient kickoff times, and not so much the sport. The time difference between New Zealand and Australia compared to the US was too much for many fans to overcome.

I am thrilled to see soccer finally gaining some level of success in the US. It has taken far too long. It doesn’t mean we should banish the sports that have long been popular here. It just means we need to get another chair for the dinner table. And with a growing Latin American population, for whom soccer is popular in their homelands, the sport is set to surge here now.

Besides, just like with the metric system, the US is the odd man out when it comes to the global arena. It’s high time we join the rest of the world. For the marketers to enjoy all those eyeballs, though, they need more players like Messi to put MLS on that stage. We—that means all of us—need to take the time to learn a little bit about the game, how to appreciate the style of play, and the method to the madness.Just like I did 35 years ago in Indiana.

Dr “Kick It!” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[smileysvech]

hi! i have a question and you're gonna be the one I ask it to asjhgjf sorry to bother you buuuut... for the past decade or so i've been only a football (or soccer for my fellow north-americans) and f1 fan but I've seen a match or two of hockey in the past and lately at my grown age of 24 i started to have a midlife crisis and feel like i want to enjoy more things and honestly just suffer more with this thing we call sports and I began to feel *consumed by the desire* of getting more into hockey but idk where to start? hockey isn't very relevant or really that well known in my country so I was wondering if you or any of your followers here would have some tips on where to begin and how bc so far I'm lost 😭 thx and sorry for this long ass ask

oh my gosh please it’s no bother at all!! welcome to hockeyblr! 🫶🏼

honestly, I’m still pretty new to hockey considering I only started watching and following a few teams during the 2021 playoffs. tbh most things i’ve learned were from watching games and learning along the way with some google searches to help me learn some of the terminology and i’m still learning things as i go. I also have some pretty cool and knowledgeable friends like @pyotrkochetkov and @hockstuff who were kind enough to answer any questions I had.

as for getting into specific teams/players, sometimes a player just intrigues me and i go through their tags a little mindlessly and fall down a rabbit hole of watching their highlights or interviews or the fun little games they do for social media and it sucks me in and then i start looking up their teammates and the teams. also, some accounts make “primers” which give you a quick run down of the team’s history, current players, culture/traditions, etc. I also used to watch some of the hockey guy’s videos on youtube because he’s really knowledgeable about all the team’s histories and he makes videos about every team.

sometimes I also listen to podcasts or follow local reporters for my teams to keep up with any news. the athletic is a pretty good source in my opinion and their monthly subscription is like $2 I think.

sorry if this isn’t as helpful as you were hoping for but if anyone else wants to add in, i’ll definitely share!

[fruitcoops]

Hi, I love your blog so much! I recently got ankle lateral ligament reconstruction done, and as an athlete, it sucks so bad. I watched my basketball team play yesterday, and it felt really horrible to watch them lose by one point in overtime when I know I would have made a difference if I were on the court... I know you have lots of asks and prompts, but if you have the time and want to, could you possibly hurt me more than I’m already hurting with some angsty ankle injury stuff😩 like maybe Cap watching the Lions lose without him.

Thank you for all the awesome fics you write! Your blog is amazing!

Anon, this ask really struck a chord with me and I wanted to do it justice as best I could--going through a sports injury like that is the worst feeling in the world, and watching your teammates play without you just adds salt to the wound. Sending all the love and healing vibes your way, okay? Please keep me updated on how you're feeling if you feel comfortable <3

Combined with an ask for pre-Coops and Sirius' photo of Remus! SW credit goes to @lumosinlove

TW for canonical injury and mentioned scars (Remus)

Sirius felt a nudge at his arm and his irritation flared, but he did not take his eyes off the game. “Fucking hell,” he muttered as James missed yet another blatant pass. There’s three.

The next nudge was more insistent.

“What?” he snapped, sparing half a glance to his left and feeling his stomach swoop.

Remus raised his eyebrows and held the mouthguard out further. “Either put this in or unclench your jaw.”

You’re not my mother, Sirius almost snarked back, just to be even more of an asshole. He was cold from being at the rink without his gear, severely pissed off by the general bullshit happening on the ice, and the itch in the boot locked around his stupid fucked-up ankle was slowly driving him mad.

Remus offered the mouthguard again, and Sirius’ temper cooled by a few degrees at the soft encouragement on his face. Pretty, his brain supplied. He swallowed hard around his sudden dry mouth and shoved the plastic between his teeth, beating back the unruly emotions with a mental baseball bat. Nope. Not tonight. Focus on being angry.

Logan got distracted, and Finn paid the price as an enforcer slammed him against the boards; he bounced back immediately, but Sirius ground the mouthguard so hard it squeaked. “Tabarnak—”

“Come with me for a sec,” Remus said, raising his voice just enough to be heard over the angry shouts of Lions fans.

Sirius shook his head. What he wouldn’t give to be in the heart of the fight, letting off some of the steam that had been building with no outlet for weeks. “Game’s not over.”

Remus pressed his lips together, but said nothing; Sirius’ throat constricted as he looked at the scoreboard. There may have been three full minutes left on the clock, but the Lions had already lost—unless they pulled a miracle out of their asses, this game would be a stain on their record. Or if they just let me play.

Sirius sighed through his nose. The urge had been growing stronger the longer he stayed cooped up and restless, banging at the walls of his brain and bringing headache after headache.

“Cap.” The hand on the back of his bicep was surprisingly gentle and he closed his eyes as Remus gave him a light tug. “Come on. We can at least be productive instead of sitting here and stewing.”

He smells nice. How does he always smell so nice? Sirius stood and followed Remus down the tunnel, not even bothering to force smiles for the people pounding on the glass partitions. Don’t focus on the game.

Focus on his shoulders, something close to his heart suggested. You like his shoulders.

He scrunched his nose up at the thought—if he dwelled on the smooth, strong curve of Remus’ upper back for any longer, he would start remembering the one time he saw them bare, covered in sweat with scars that shone like moonlight and—

“Are you okay?” Remus asked, snapping him back to reality. Sirius jumped and concern flickered over the golden planes of his face. “You’re twitchy tonight.”

“Just…” He made a vague, aborted motion toward the ice before continuing toward the PT room, though he did not miss the worried look Remus shot him. Fantastic, now I look like a dick and an idiot.

“What’s going on, Sirius?” The door clicked closed behind them and Remus leaned against it with his arms crossed loosely as Sirius limped over to the table and sat down, pulling the mouthguard out. He stared at the floor and the hunk of plastic—don’t think about how nice his voice sounds around your name. Don’t.

He shook his head; through the door, the sounds of the game were faint. “They’re better than this.”

“Yep.”

“They’re all going to be angry tomorrow, which makes them sloppy.”

“Probably.”

“Coach will be upset.”

“No question.”

“It’s the Badgers.”

Remus made a face. “I know, right?”

“They’re a good team, but—” He tightened his jaw again and looked away.

“But we’re better,” Remus finished for him.

“Yeah.” Silence fell between them for a few moments, though it wasn’t uncomfortable. Being quiet around Remus was never uncomfortable, and Sirius was pathetically grateful for every scrap of it he could get. “I—the game would be different if I was out there.”

“Would it?”

“It would.” He had been going over every mistake for two and a half hours, placing himself in like a chess piece to stop the missed passes, fumbled pucks, and thoughtless plays. “They need me with them.”

The paper crinkled as Remus sat down next to him, and every one of Sirius’ senses went on high alert. “They need to you get better,” he said simply, those caramel-apple eyes making Sirius’ knees go weak. “Have you been doing your exercises?”

“Of course,” he scoffed.

“Good.” There was no defensiveness or indignation in Remus’ voice—guilt snapped, a firecracker behind his teeth.

“Sorry.”

Remus smiled wryly. “When you’re around injured hockey players all day long, you get used to a little bit of bitchiness.”

“I’m not bitchy!” Sirius spluttered. The poorly-concealed amusement on Remus’ face made mortification heat his cheeks. “I’m not!”

“Uh-huh.” The note of smug disbelief should not have been as attractive as it was. “Alright, lay down.”

Sirius swore he heard a few crackling noises as his brain short-circuited. “Quoi?”

“I’m not kneeling on freezing linoleum to check out your ankle, Cinderella,” Remus snorted. “Now get a wiggle on.”

“You have the strangest sayings,” he said as he laid back and stretched his leg out, bewildered and yet somehow relieved.

“And you—” Remus pulled the top buckle free. “—have no appreciation for the great American north.”

“I can take it off,” Sirius mumbled, feeling redness rise once again.

He cocked an eyebrow. “The boot? I might not be a muscle-bound athlete, but I’m pretty sure I can manage a couple strips of Velcro.”

“No, it’s—doesn’t touching people’s feet freak you out? Like, the sweat and everything?”

“If it did, I’d have to find another profession, because I’m damp all the time from you fuckers and you all seem to have a habit of breaking things below the knee. Bend.”

Sirius complied, drawing his knee toward his chest. His bare foot looked weird in the bright lights, pale and still swollen, but Remus was as golden as ever. You can watch from afar, he conceded when the cute little furrow appeared on Remus’ forehead while he felt around the bone. Just for a little while. “Your hands are warm,” he said before he could stop himself.

Remus glanced up, and his small smile caused a flood of butterflies in Sirius’ stomach. “Thanks. They’re usually pretty cold, so I’m glad I’m not accidentally giving you foot hypothermia.”

“Is that real?”

“No,” Remus laughed. Sirius wished he could keep that sound forever. “How’s that feel?”

“Uh, fine.” He blinked a couple times to come back to himself as Remus put light pressure on the sole of his foot. “Still fine.”

“You’re a lot more flexible than before. Things are healing well.”

A loud buzzer went off outside—Sirius closed his eyes as disappointment and frustration fired up once more. The crowd wasn’t cheering. The windows weren’t shaking. He didn’t even want to look at the TV to check the score. I should be out there, he thought for the umpteenth time. I’m letting them down.

“I’m sorry,” Remus said quietly as he worked through a few more exercises.

“Not your fault.”

“It’s not yours, either.”

Sirius wanted to believe him. “I’m the captain.”

“And you’re being responsible by doing this with me so you can heal faster.” People rushed past the door outside, but the PT room remained peaceful. Sirius stared at the plain ceiling and wished for a miracle. “They miss you.”

“Y’know, that’s not exactly making me feel better.”

“Sorry.” They lapsed back into silence. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Cool.”

Sirius chewed the inside of his lip for a solid two minutes, following Remus’ simple instructions without looking at him. He should have been out there with them, ankle be damned. It was basically healed anyway; they were just tying up loose ends, and maybe Remus needed to be a little less careful. “Is this really necessary?”

“I’m gonna give you five seconds to ask a different question.”

“I’m just saying, it feels fine and—”

“Time’s up.” Remus let go of his foot and Sirius only spared a moment to mourn the loss of his comforting touch before he caught the stormy, mulish stubbornness that took the place of Remus’ concentration. “Sit.”

“I am.”

He narrowed his eyes, and Sirius dragged himself upright with a huff. Arguing with Remus Lupin was about as useful as arguing with a brick wall, and that was coming from someone who won the ‘Most Stubborn’ superlative at their last end-of-year party. “First of all, ankles are annoying and the soft tissue will still be damaged even if the bone is healed. Second, it’s my job to fix you up so your boys stop whining to me about healing you faster. And third, I’m not giving up on you.”

Sirius paused for a long moment. “What?”

“I’m not giving up,” Remus repeated. His jaw set and he made direct eye contact. “I would love nothing more than to kick Snape in the kneecaps and let you go out there as soon as you can stand on your own, but that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to make sure you’re ready to kick ass and take names no matter what that little shit was trying to do. So don’t you dare sit there and try to chicken out at the finish line, because I know you want this even more than I do.”

In his chest, Sirius heart was hammering like he had just run five miles. I’m not giving up on you. Sirius had never wanted to kiss him more. “Thank you.”

Remus softened with a slow breath. “We’re in this together, Sirius. You and me.”

“I know.”

“Then let’s get to work. Next time you play the Badgers, make ‘em regret this game.”

--------------------------------

Sirius walked back toward the locker room feeling rather nauseous. The whole team leaked their bad moods into the air—Arthur had barely looked at them before sending them home with a quiet “we’ll talk more tomorrow”, the equivalent of an arrow through Sirius’ heart. I need a pick-me-up, he thought as the rest of the guys trooped out in a melancholy raincloud. He fist-bumped each of them, per tradition, but their responses were weak at best.

Ice cream sounded good. Maybe a milkshake. Oh, who was he kidding, he needed a solid hug and something other than ice to look at. Not for the first time, he contemplated getting a dog, just so the house wouldn’t be empty and dark when he returned.

Laughter rang out ahead and Sirius inhaled sharply, letting the sound roll over him. “I’m not kidding!” Moody chuckled.

“Bullshit,” Remus countered, still snickering. “There is no way—”

“I’ve been around here longer than you’ve been alive, kid.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Remus groaned, though Sirius could hear the smile in his voice even from around the corner. “You only bring it up every goddamn day.”

“Brat.”

Sirius entered the room just in time to see Remus playfully knock the side of his foot against Moody’s; both were grinning. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, old man?”

Moody nodded to him. “Night, twelve.”

“A demain,” Sirius called, offering a slight smile as his eyes lingered on Remus. He was leaning back against the wall with stick tape in his hands—his hands, which never failed to make Sirius throw caution to the wind—and raised it in farewell. “See you, Loops. Thanks again.”

“No problem, Cap.”

He grabbed his duffel off the floor and slid his keys, wallet, and phone into his pockets as Moody and Remus resumed their conversation. He wondered how long they usually stuck around, and if they would oppose him staying—he wouldn’t interrupt, but being around people who weren’t going through the five stages of grief already felt nice.

An idea struck as Remus’ laugh raised goosebumps on his arms once again. With a careful glance over his shoulder, he slipped his phone out and snapped a picture before hurrying off toward his car. His breaths were shallow; that was such a creepy move, and surely one of them noticed—

No voices chased him. Nobody gave him strange looks. He waited until he was safely in the front seat of the car before unlocking his phone, and all the air in his lungs left in a rush.

The photo was perfect. It caught the lopsided tilt to Remus’ mouth, his slender-but-strong fingers, his long legs, the scrunch of his nose mid-laugh. Everything Sirius never let himself look at for long. He didn’t have much space left among the collection of paper memories on his dresser, but maybe if he put it in the back where nobody would see it unless they knew where to look…

He turned the car on. Later. He would print it out and deal with the taut rubber-band-ball of feelings later. Until then, he could settle for the imprint of Remus’ warmth taking away the pain in his ankle and the determination on his face as he promised to bring Sirius back from the personal hell he was living in. You and me, he had said, and Sirius wanted nothing more than to believe it.

[hockstuff]

i personally love sitting towards the corner of the lower bowl facing the benches because i get a little bit of everything from there but the nosebleeds/upper levels are usually (from my own experience) where the atmosphere is most exciting and you hear the most chirps!! its also louder depending which arena youre in. sitting about 10ish rows behind the goalie is also nice if youre into the ~technical~ and play making and goalie stuff but its a little difficult to see the other end of the ice

as for pricing… i live in canada so tickets are usually never less than like 200/250 cad for the lower bowl and the seats higher up usually cost around like 100-200 im pretty sure??? the prices change depending on who’s playing and what time of the year it is too tho. like tickets for the playoffs for the jets are never cheaper than 500 and some reg season game tickets vs teams that suck get really cheap. usually tho if you buy tickets (if there are any left) right before a reg season game, you can get them for less than 100

omg all of you coming in clutch with the seating options😤 thank you gabbie!!!! that’s all actually really good to know!!! when the day comes where i finally buy tickets and watch a game, it will be the day i sit in front of my laptop for hours on end trying to decide where to sit sigh

oh mannn those prices yikes but i guess it makes sense. my north american hockey tour extravaganza may have to be demoted to a north american hockey game extravaganza

[csykora]

hey i was reading your post about evgeny kusnetsov and alexander semin (the friendship necklace one) and i got into hockey somewhat recently but i've heard/read some things about sasha and i was wondering if you could give me a rundown/what your perspective is? you mentioned cultural assimilation, but also social class, ethnic identity, ability, neurodiversity, and trauma and i was really curious what exactly you were talking about??

First, that’s cool you’re getting into hockey! How’s that going? I hope you’re having fun. Second…thanks for making me reread my old writing as we come up on the New Year ;)

That was one of my very first posts, and I think it reads like it—I definitely wasn’t much of a sports writer back then, and (I don’t think) I tell stories quite the same way now.

I don’t think some of those words I used mean much, except that I was angry. So I’d like to spell out what made, makes, me angry. The first half of this is stuff I’ve said before, more organized, with jokes. The second half is not fun, but it’s also something I think NHL fans have a duty to think about. So I want to try to talk about Lokomotiv.

Sasha Semin is the star and captain of a quite good, more fun KHL team. Today he was named to the All-Star team, actually. KHL All-Stars is a magical place where the players sing acoustic covers and routinely set things on fire, so hopefully they’ll let him bring his sword.

(I love the KHL)

Before that, he was the cool big brother of a generation of Russian stars. In the early 2000s the first post-Soviet young players were coming of age and working out what post-Soviet, now-Russian style hockey was going to be. In that moment we got two spectacular players: Sasha from Siberia, and Sasha from Moscow.

The Soviet style of play was supposed to be egalitarian—players skated the opposition sick and pass-pass-passed, always giving it to a teammate instead of taking chances, until whoever happened to have it had a sure shot. The Alexanders grew up in that style, and they grew up fuck-off strong. They started feeding off all their teammates’ passes and beginning to gun down goalies with one of two shots: Alex Ovechkin had the one-timer, and Alex Semin had the best wristshot in the game.

Did you watch Vegas’ magic season? Pull some clips of Wild Bill Karlsson. Imagine if he had upper body strength but was just as light on his feet. That’s how inexplicably electric young Semin was.

His and then Ovi’s performances at World Juniors were so explosive they convinced American businesses to risk money on something new. Semin was oldest, and the Capitals kind of sucked, so they got him first. Then a few years later they still sucked, so they got Ovi too. Then the two of them got Nicklas Backstrom and matching line promise necklaces and played really good hockey together for a number of years.

(If anyone would like 3,000 more nicer words about the above subjects, @ me)

A couple things shaped what happened after that:

▪ Semin’s unique wrister, twisted to be almost as hard as a slapper, is like spending every night downing jägerbombs with a shot of carpal tunnel. He seems to have chronic wrist and hand problems from inflammation, with apparent flare-ups that sometimes got rest and sometimes didn’t. So that’s a factor—not the only, but a—in why he had periods of poor shooting.

▪ Either because he never really went to school or just because he’s wired that way, Semin seems to suck at math.

▪ Ovi’s hot stick and the Sid Incident (Sidcident?): 

In their first interview together, Ovi described him and Sid as “partners”, and Sid asked for Ovi’s shirt. But over the first few years the League swung from branding them as buddies to making money off a rivalry, and Don Cherry started a string of bitter conflicts with Ovi.

Local journalists who knew him wrote about seeing Ovi flinch in interviews. They described him starting to hesitate, pale, tired, doubling back over answers to make sure they were watertight. We now know from Tatyana Ovechina that he was spending a lot of nights on the phone back home with her, asking if he was letting everybody down.

Sasha, who’s basically that guy on twitter who found kittens in his sock drawer and adopted them all, but with little brothers, got protective. He told Russian media that he thought Sid was a good player, but not his favorite, and said that the way the League was pushing media attention could make someone a ‘star’ even if they weren’t that good. The phrase he used means “dead wood”, or boring, useless person. The grammar he used means something like “even if he were (ie, he isn’t)”.

I think this was objectively very funny. And I still hold that anyone saying the level of exposure Sid endured was good for him or anyone sounds like the stage parents on Toddlers & Tiaras.)

But people get protective of their person, and most won’t stop for a grammar lesson before deciding what they think something meant. There was a media blitz, mostly accusing Sasha of wanting the attention Sid got, which made sense, if you didn’t know Russian or two things about him—that he’s best friends with Alex Ovechkin, and that he’d only just started to practice English with local reporters after several years. If he were an egomaniac, he was bad at it.

From his reaction it seems like he hadn’t thought his comment was that wild, and wasn’t prepared for the backlash. Next time he talked to local reporters, he brought the translator back. Asked routine questions he’d been getting for a couple years, he flinched and turned to them to rehearse every word of his answer. Asked what was up with the translator, he said “I just don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

Although teammates like Mike Knuble, Jeff Schultz, Backstrom and Ovechkin kept talking about his personable, joking side, and we’d see it plenty in practice, he started insisting to reporters that he didn’t know English and that he was boring anyway, claiming “I’m just an ordinary person, just like everybody else. The only difference is I’m out there on the ice and that’s it. I’d just rather talk about hockey.”

–> Without math or English, Semin’s career depended on his agent, Mark Gandler.

Try not to depend on Mark Gandler.

As the Globe and Mail put it, “to many Canadian hockey fans, Mark Gandler is nothing less than the Prince of Darkness.”

Mark Gandler’s business was based on presenting himself as a friendly face to young Russian athletes, and pissing of NHL franchises. I’m pro-pissing off the NHL in general; my problem with Gandler is that if he was sincerely trying to get the best deal for him clients, he was bad at it..

When anyone talks about something Semin decided, they’re talking about what Gandler decided for him. Semin was honest with the media that he had no fucking clue what Gandler was asking for in negotiations. The Caps and Gandler couldn’t agree on anything, so while Ovechkin was locked down for life, Semin was only ever signed to one and two year bridge contracts, constantly up, his performance a constant subject of discussion and every wobble obvious.

Note: the following is the bit where I got angry and A. asked why the hell I was looking at photos of this and told me to go lie on the floor and do my butterfly exercises for a while.

One year Semin’s game really sucked. It didn’t help that Ovechkin was sucking too—they both got benched, Coach got fired, and still the Capitals just kind of sucked. Around the league, Russian stars were mostly fizzling. That was the 2011-2012 season. 

On September 7, 2011, the airplane carrying the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team, coaching staff, and four youth players had overrun the runway, struck a signal tower, crashed, and caught fire moments after takeoff. Every member of the team onboard was killed.

I can’t understand, so certainly can’t explain, how that day changed the community. I’m not trying to speculate too much on anyone’s personal situation, but to point out how much more profound it was than just some other league’s trivia.

I don’t think there’s a mainstream North American parallel for the hockey community in Eastern Europe. Players are raised in a small number of hockey schools, often at that time in dormitories like the one where Semin lived in Chelyabinsk. While young North Americans are quite strictly separated by age, the Russians are growing up with older and younger kids from the same school all around them. Older teens are encouraged to mentor younger ones—Kuznetsov’s attachment to Semin is endearing, but not really so weird. Stanislav Yarushin is several years older than Sasha, and he befriended him, and then down to Kuz. In a community like that, any one person is intimately connected to the others.

From the coaches to the rookies, someone from three generations across nine nations was killed in the disaster. Each of them was connected not only to their peers, but to players older and younger than them, and to the city that raised them. Every Russian, Czech, and Slovak in the NHL lost at least one person they knew deeply.

Just that spring, Kuznetsov won gold at World Juniors with a little clique of friends. Vladimir Tarasenko, Artemi Panarin, and Dmitry Orlov are stars now, and two of the others are dead.

Kuznetsov is the one draped in the flag. #14, with the awesome hair, smiling, is Danylo Sobchenko. #12, reaching up towards the cup, is Yuri Urychev. Urychev had been injured, and supposed to stay home the day of the disaster, but he asked to be allowed to fly with them, so he could cheer for his friends.

Tarasenko himself was born in Yaroslavl, and his father played for Lokomotiv; he knew even more of the team, and if he’d taken a hometown offer instead of signing with Sibir, he would have died that day too.

The thing about a loss like this is that it keeps budding with new losses. It hadn’t been a problem with the plane, or a freak accident. Over the following month a miserable investigation revealed that the airline had fudged documents, and the pilots just didn’t know what they were doing. So as well as losing friends, the younger players lost any trust that people in authority were going to keep them safe in the future.

After the disaster, Ovechkin, Semin, and Malkin had to hold their phones waiting while Alexander Galimov (a friend from nationals) was found with burns over 80% of his body, stabilized, transported, placed in a medically-induced coma and ventilated. He finally died five days later. The day he died Tarasenko and Kuznetsov and all the others got back on their own planes and kept playing, so the NHLers just had to keeping waiting up for them, too. Now Tarasenko and Kuznetsov have little brothers on those planes. They’re better fucking planes now, because the disaster changed Russian law, but they’re still not great.

In a grim way, Semin and Ovechkin were lucky, because they had each other. At the time almost no NHL team had as many Eastern Europeans as the Caps, meaning almost all the others were alone.

Of course it just wasn’t possible for the North American public to grieve with them the way that Europe did, but how quickly it was boxed away and forgotten as a factor in players’ lives just…sucks.

You don’t just grieve somebody when you lose them; people who aren’t sure what to say will say it fades with time, but what it really does is rise and fall in waves. You grieve them when you lose them, and again when you’re as old as they were and realize how insufficient it really was, and again, when you’re older than they’ll ever be, when you’re old enough to see children their age. Like injuring your wrist, you can get back to work, but never back to exactly what you were before. 

Five years later, when Tarasenko scored his 100th goal, he dedicated it to Sobchenko and Urychev. 

Most of a decade later, Alex Ovechkin wears the Lokomotiv crest on his chest protector, over his heart.

So if we know all that, we can start to imagine why they sucked at hockey.

Actually, after a slow start to the season, Sasha sucked the least of all the Capitals. Always a stronger possession player than Ovechkin, Sasha actually recovered after the Caps brought in Dale Hunter, who ripped up the Goals First, Goals Always game plan and tried to make Ovi play defense. Sasha ended the season with the best possession metrics on the team (yes, including Nicke Backstrom). 

His goal-scoring didn’t recover, but that was because Coach Dale was basically treating him like Ovi’s security blanket, putting him on the second line with Mojo so Ovi couldn’t cuddle him until Ovi backchecked. Mojo (this is a Science fact) is not Nicke Backstrom.

The reason the Capitals traded Semin is they desperately needed to trade someone to make up for the team’s collective failures that year, he could be traded due to his shitty contracts, and he was worth trading. 

I’m not actually angry the Caps traded Semin. It made sense. I am mad the Habs did, because it was one of many decisions made by Marc Bergevin coughing up a heavily-gelled hairball on a depth chart, but hey.

Sports is hard. I don’t mean that teams should keep players who aren’t playing the way that team needs them to out of sympathy. I mean that it’s possible to say that Semin or Ovechkin sometimes play badly without saying they don’t care. It’s possible to name a practical problem without making it a moral one.

Because when we see someone not doing what we want, and we make it moral, we say, “well gosh, I can’t imagine a reason why they aren’t jazzed to do what I want right now, so there can’t be a reason, they just suck,” we’re always wrong, because we miss shit!

In 2011, the common complaint that Russian players “don’t seem to care” went from boring to breathtakingly cruel. 

It’s a collective failure of empathy, where a lot of us didn’t even know that empathy’s needed. How many NHL fans don’t know Lokomotiv existed? If we don’t even know what weight another person’s carrying, we can’t possibly judge them rightly! 

The athletes we’re watching aren’t just cartoon characters for American consumption, who always act and react in easily-readable ways. They’re people with beliefs, behaviors, and problems which might be meaningfully different from what we’re personally familiar with and really hard to sympathize with.  

But when we see someone struggling to do what we want them to, we have to wonder why, and look around to learn more about moments like this, and then offer empathy. I believe that if we have information, most people use it to be kind. So we really fucking need historical information.

I’m back on the floor and don’t have a closer, so here’s a picture of a cat with big mitts like Sasha. His name is Peppers.

[ginalinettiofficial]

a usa starter pack

alabama / deep south, conservative, hillbillies

alaska / far north, cold, nature, conservative rich white ppl + lots of native culture

arizona / hot, dry, scorpions, great mexican food

arkansas / yeehaw

california / socal is california of tv, norcal is hippies smoking a lot of weed

colorado / weed capital of the states, also lots of nature and skiiing

connecticut / to quote an SNL skit: “the haunting in connecticut?? what’s scary about connecticut?? losing your tennis racket at the pottery barn??”

delaware / ngl i never remember that delaware exists and i’ve never met anyone from here or heard anyone mention delaware ever. might be fake

florida / where the craziest shit happens. giant swamp with many major party areas as well as hella alligators, crazy politics, retirees, and felons galore. we all stan and fear florida

georgia / southern af but also p black. deep bible belt but atlanta is POPPIN and a super fun city.

hawaii / we colonized them and now like to invade their home regularly as tourists which sucks. hawaii is a cool little nation w lots of volcanoes

idaho / they make potatoes and racists

illinois / north side of the state is where chicago is, a HUGE liberal center in the US. very midwestern. as you get more south, becomes rural, small town, conservative middle america.

indiana / v conservative politically, illinois’ twin and bud, that’s where we get all our guns and fireworks. v midwestern. parks and rec is set in indiana and that’s p much all u need to know

iowa / worst state in the union everyone from iowa is just WEIRD yes i AM an iowa hater and i am PROUD. if u tell me ur from iowa i don’t trust you

kansas / they’re p chill. conservative state w some fun cities and midwestern weather. kansas city is cool

kentucky / horse races and hillbillies

louisiana / it’s a damn party. deep south, major french influence from back in the day, swamps, large african american population, new orleans is a jam, debatably the most melodic of southern accents

maine / rich white ppl in vests and chinos sailing on boats and eating lobster

maryland / baltimore & DC make maryland a pretty blue state

massachusetts / boston owns all of our assess. beautiful sprawling state w lots of old ass houses cuz it’s colonial and shit. boston has over a hundred universities so the whole area is very youthful and fun

michigan / michigan is vaguely shaped like a mitten so if u ever ask a person from michigan where they’re from they hold up their hand and point to somewhere on it as if their hand is a map

minnesota / the canada of the US. snowy, cold, midwestern af, hockey, casserole, mall of america

mississippi / s o u t h. education?? never heard of her. quality of life?? good joke

missouri / basically rhymes with misery and that’s all you need to know

montana / i think they have mountains and ranches and white ppl but don’t quote me on that

nebraska / even their cities are rural

nevada / las vegas and a whole lot of desert

new hampshire / whomst knows. one of those small east coast states

new jersey / new jersey is the florida of the north

new mexico / again, the border crossed them. basically arizona jr but they get mad if u say that

new york / nyc and then a bunch of suburban ppl who are mad they’re not from nyc but will go to their graves denying it

north carolina / racist white ppl who talk way too much about the confederacy in 2019

north dakota / one of the dakotas has that mountain with the four heads carved into it. that’s IT

ohio / ohio is deceiving cuz it has about six major cities and they’re all like fun and cool???? they all start w the letter c tho so good luck remembering which is which

oklahoma / ooooooooooklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plains (there’s a musical called oklahoma and it’s iconic) they share kansas city with kansas which is fun. cross between the south and the midwest

oregon / hipsters and rain

pennsylvania / philly is poppin, pittsburgh is slightly less poppin, scranton is where the office is set

rhode island / she smol

south carolina / see north carolina but with more ghosts and better food

south dakota / see north dakota

tennessee / memphis and nashville are FUN. p southern, p conservative, GREAT barbecue and huge music scene

texas / it’s texas

utah / mormons and conservatism

vermont / this is where bernie sanders and the people who make ben & jerry’s ice cream are all from

virginia / dc is in the north part of virginia which helps to split it into nova, the blue/urban/liberal part of the state, and sova, the conservative confederate lovin’ christians

washington / oregon but even more rain

west virginia / might be fake

wisconsin / cheese and beer and classic midwestern attitudes

wyoming / she’s a beaut ngl. it’s basically one big national park with some ppl sprinkled in here and there. harrison ford lives here

[luffyasksandanswers]

// “hi, I’m not from the US” ask set ALL OF THEM YOU COWARD. ALL OF THEM. YOU REBLOGGED THAT MEME NOW COMMIT. GIVE ME MY STALKER KNOWLEDGE. GIMME. OR MEET ME IN THE PIT.

“hi, i’m not from the us” meme - @fearllacy //Bruh, you curious George xD! But dare is a dare and me not want to the coconut pit D: so here we go!

1. favourite place in your country?

Summer cottage, a place to escape the hectic city life *thumbs up*

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad?

Toss me with a shoe because of my unecological thinking but I do like to see new places and cultures  so whenever there is a chance, I try to travel abroad. 

3. does your country have access to sea?

We are the land of thousand lakes buuut we also have sea around us, a lot in the south! so we can escape to Estonia xD 

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

Praised Karelian Pasty and Kalakukko here! otherwise our food is pretty much either stolen from Sweden or colorless/tasteless xD 

5. favourite song in your native language?

Me revealed some of them hier :>

6. most hated song in your native language?

Spent the yesterday browsing around Youtube xD and results are täällä

7. three words from your native language that you like the most?

Wow, this is a thing I’ve never thought about it so this should be something to be asked from my mates because they know better which words I repeat nonstop *laughs*  Hey, how about teaching you fellow buddies a few Finnish words?

- Juoksentelisinkohan?  (=I wonder if I should run around aimlessly?)Never heard anyone say this but I think it’s very amusing word in general xD 

- Lohik��ärme = dragon Simply put so but if you write “lohi” and “käärme” separated, you get salmon and snake. In other words the translation could also be salmonsnake,kinda makes sense, kinda doesn’t *laughs*

- Pöpelikkö

= ThicketRarely used word for a forest/growth that is hard to walk through, maybe in spoken language means more like “in middle of nowhere” or at least that’s how I use that word ::D  

Bonus: lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilasThe longest officially approved finnish word monster. In english it would beAeroplaneshowerturbinemotorhelpmechanicnoncommissionedofficerstudent. 

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom?

I probably told this before but I’m not a bloodline finn, my biological roots are in China (but I’ve spent practically my whole life here so my soul is very suomi perkele saunaan ja torille xD). As imaginable, this causes awkward situations because people get misunderstood or assume things right away but well whoopsies happpen as long as no one makes a number about it, it’s all ok ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best?

Revealed #lifegoals här!

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?

Maybe the most heard sweard word is the finnish version of F-word  [x]Frankly spoken I don’t like or use it because it’s like the C-word and dunno, sounds weird when people love to repeat loudly a word that literally means woman’s genitals :D Nah my favorite swearword is “Perkele” because when you are angry you can feel the power in the R-letter.  But I actually use “Helvetti” (=hell) the most, no idea how it happened but anyway, if it’s not “PERRRKELE” then it’s “EI HELVETTI” *laughs* last time I swear like mad was when I had to assemble a furniture at work xD

11. favourite native writer/poet?

Tove Jansson adoration here :>

12. what do you think about English translations 

I have to admit I’m not familiar with translated literacy D: wait no I lied! I’ve read 2 Moomin books in english but don’t remember paying attention to the translation, only thing that was confusing first was the names in english because there wasn’t any expalanations to the names of the (random) side characters xD

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?

We finns love icy waters but we have another tradition that is a dank meme. I mean TORILLE!! which basically means finns rush to the local market places if we win hockey championships or are good in any other sports. I think it’s a global jokebut yeah finns are trash for getting national recognision. Just mention us anywhere outside the borders and transmit that info to Finland and you can hear and see people hyping it like mad and I am not sure if other countries do this too in such extreme ways xD  

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

One thing that makes watching the finnish tv boring is that they literallt recycle the celebrities which means same faces in almost every fame teledrama or shows and practically everywhere you go or channel surf, you’ll see them and then even tabloids need to write nonstop about their slighest moves.  It is good to be ecological but if there is an actor that needs to shove their face everywhere no matter what and they try to keep their fame in every way, it just doesn’t work plus this might be stereotyping but in those “finnish versions” of big shows, finns are somewhat stiff and don’t go like “yeehaw WOHOO \o/” the same way like in the original shows  so it sometimes looks like they try too hard to be like the original or they are just “forced” to be superhyper. 

Another reason I don’t watch much finnish series is that the articulating is bad or then there is something wrong with the audio or it’s just my bad hearing but the actors tend to speak very very quietly so you have to put volume on if you want to hear anything on the telly and then your ears get rekt and wasted because when the commercials (which are louder than the normal speech) comes, the sound is even louder [x] just like when you open your computer and forgot the volume is at maximum and whe Windows start music suddenly appears. 

I bet there are good finnish movies too that are high quality and I personally enjoy the game shows (quiz like thingies) but in general, nah :p 15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

Another thing outsiders maybe don’t understand but finns love to queue and freebies and an ultimate example is that usually if a new shop opens up, people can start to queue a long before the grand opening. Funniest thing is that free buckets are the most queued thing and why not because they are useful xD

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

Maybe my favorite finnish stereotype is that finns love personal space [x] It is a national joke that if there is a bus stop, finns don’t stand next to each other (well in the capital and big cities maybe) but they have at least 2 meters distance xD 

17. are you interested in your country’s history?

Frankly spoken nah, I mean I liked to hear my grandparents’ stories about the life when they were younger and how my both grandfathers had to see the wars but in general nah, because well we’ve been owned by Swedes and Russians and had a civil war.  

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language?

I’m originally from the Eastern Finland that has its dialect  and people distinguish it easily. Especially now that I’ve lived outside my hometown during studies and work, people tell that they hear strong dialect although I only use it in the person pronouns *eyes emoji*

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem?

Blue is a nice color so thumbs up for that! Well can’t say I’m a fanatic finn but of course it sounds nice to hear the anthem on telly [x]

20. which sport is The Sport in your country?

Hockey is probably where Finland is the most successful but we also like football (duh, everyone likes) but we suck at that so bye FIFA dreams xD you know about that Phil because I ranted about it last summer XD

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?

SALMIAKKI and that free bucket *laughs* 

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?

There are many things very well in Finland, like everyone gets a free basic education and natural disasters such as earthquakes are very rare so it’s quite safe. 

What am I ashamed of? Well frankly spoken we are way too soft on criminals in my opinion so our country should fix the law system so that the criminals would get rougher and longer punishments for rough crimes. 

23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country?

I think beers, wines and long drinks are in now? 

24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country?

Sweden! It’s a common joke that we are so jealous of Swedes being better people and succeeding in everything and of course in our jokes swedes are the dummies. I think Scandinavian countries do that about each other like Finland vs Sweden, Iceland vs Denmark and Sweden vs Norway *laughs*

25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country?

But I am born in another country xD Nah no, I wouldn’t change a thingblue eyes would be cool but finns tend to burn in the sun and I enjoy the summer I’m happy like this :p 26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?

The latest news about Finland in American media must’ve been that when Trump misunderstood the forest defense thing and said something like Finns are so diligent they rake their forest floors [x] but the truth is that we don’t because our climate is different. Of course we have forest fires too but they are much much smaller than in California. 

27. favourite national celebrity?

I fangirled Antti holma here, he handsome, he funny, he has a podcast  :> 

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites?I think a couple of mountains exsist [x] but more rivers and thousands of lakes! I like the lakes, since I’ve spent most of my summers at our summer cottage near the lake. Actually never been in the north but I’d love to go on a roadtrip someday to see them!

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country?

We beat Sweden and Russia so no one shall mess with our smol country! :p

Fun fact: There is a guy named Simo Häyhä, a sniper who is said to be killed more than 505 men during the 1939–40 Winter War [x]

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family?

We have a multicultural family tree, relatives from France, Germany, Sweden, Japan and so on :)! 

[lankonleafs]

Brooms: Leafs Sweep Oilers in Mini Series

3 games. 2 shut outs. 13 goals for. 1 against. What a team!

What a HUGE series for the Leafs. Probably the best stretch of hockey and most complete games this team has played all year.

Nylander is red hot. Hyman is red hot. When you’re missing your best player and can still win games is always unbelievable. And let’s talk about that third line. Hyman Soupy and Engvall has turned out to be a great move by Keefe. Those three play so well together and have great chemistry.

Andersen looked a little shaky in the first few minutes of this game but settled in nicely and looked nice in his return. Matthews came back from the wrist injury and I was a little worried that he might have been rushing back but his shot seemed good and it didn’t look like it was too much of an issue.

Can we talk about one thing here though? I am so tired of everyone talking about how the Leafs being at the top of the standings shouldn’t count because they haven’t played Tampa Bay or the Bruins. WHO GIVES A FUCK?! They don’t choose who they play! The Lightning don’t play Vegas and the Bruins don’t play the Avs. There are terrible teams in every division. 8 of the 10 worst teams in the league are NOT part of the North division. If the North division is so bad why are the top 3/4 teams in the North not the top of the league? It’s a tired argument already. Guess what!? The North division winner doesn’t play any American team until the semi finals anyways so your argument sucks anyways.

Enjoy the season we have. It will probably be the only time we see a season like this. Have fun with it! Who cares who’s in first right now?! The only time it matters is the big dance.

[loserdudes]

I've been thinking are the leafs actually good or do the other canadian teams just suck per usual

i keep posting things and immediately forgetting i did that and that was the case with that post too fksjdfkl but i actually have opinions on that

so like. i actually watch the canadian division a lot because i watch almost every canucks game because i enjoy pain apparently but the north is So Much different than the rest of the league like. it is known pretty much that most north division games are gonna be really goal and offensively heavy and that really benefits the leafs who exclusively have guys that can score and like none that can defend so its really great for them! but also like. any award that matthews or anyone wins this year is literally gonna come with the biggest “but they only played canadian teams” because the canadian teams have very little defense and are just huge goal fests and like if that’s what you consider good hockey that’s fun for you but anyways its late and i forget where i was going with this so uhhhh fuck the leafs they suck and i cant wait till next season where i can watch them get their ass beat by american teams

[gospacegay]

LRTIHEW: Part Three

The title stands for “Longest Rusame Thing I Have Ever Written”.

First Chapter: https://gospacegay.tumblr.com/post/165808913233/lrtihew-part-one

Previous Chapter: https://gospacegay.tumblr.com/post/165809176713/lrtihew-part-two

There is swearing, fluff, eventual smut, insanity, and lord knows what else.

Eventually Ivan had to go back to his own country. After a surprisingly fun visit of two days, the burly Russian's phone was going off like bomb every couple hours. His strict pseudo-dictator boss was likely furious with him about something trifling. The human knew he simply didn't answer his phone when on official government sanctioned vacations. Maybe he didn't answer it other times as well...

Time was a funny thing for nations. Six months could pass by without noticing, yet singular events in society could shape them forever. An entire season had slipped by, winter now gripping all of Russia fiercely. Despite global warming, his land had yet to relent it's icy heritage. Ivan knitted while staring at the blizzard outside absently.

The power had cut out hours ago, interrupting his prerecorded hockey game. Some fool must have crashed into a pole during whiteout conditions. At least his boss couldn't call him right now. The living room fireplace crackled warmly, casting a flickering orange glow over the room. Something odd formed in the swirl of flakes outside. It was a dark shape... moving? A person perhaps? They seemed to be carrying something. Strange. Ivan didn't remember ordering take out.

Still, he should probably investigate. He set the knitting aside, lighting a candle. Before reaching the door, there was loud knocking. Ivan paused, wondering if it was Belarus. She was less obsessive about marrying him these days, due to a century of rejection. Still, she was not to be underestimated. How many times had he woken up to her being in his bed, fondling his shaggy platinum locks of hair? Ivan shuddered at the memory.

“Let me in man! It's frozen hell out here!” a familiar voice yelled, competing with howling wind. Ivan opened the door, pulling Alfred inside before the house lost anymore heat. The door was promptly closed and locked. The American was bundled up, snow stuck to every part of him. His eye lashes were frosted over into white rims. “Hey big guy! Do you know what day it is?” Alfred asked excitedly, snow falling everywhere as he bounced on his feet.

Ivan pondered the question, wondering if he had missed yet another civic holiday. He was interrupted mid-process. “It's Christmas! Woo! Merry Christmas Ivan!” Alfred whooped loudly, shoving a wet brown bag of things into Ivan's arms. Ivan stood there, confused. The honey blonde had used his real name. No one ever did that. Was this a prank? “Open it! Open it!” Alfred urged, peeling off his increasingly soggy winter wear. He wore a brazen American flag shirt underneath with blue jeans.

The present practically unwrapped itself upon returning to the living room. The soggy paper bag fell apart, some items escaping to the floor. There was a bottle of good vodka, a container of dessert squares, a book, and a hand gun. It was honestly a well thought out gift. Ivan did enjoy all of these things naturally.

“Thank you... Alfred. I assume you are here to improve political relations.” Ivan replied, still puzzling over why the American was here at all. It felt so strange to speak in a casual manner, with real names. The other nation frowned. It really didn't suit him. “No. I came because it's Christmas, you ass.” he grumbled. The American was a lousy liar, hesitating before his response. Fine, Russia could play this game too. “I apologize, the storms have causes a blackout. I can only offer you tea, or perhaps coffee.”

“I'll take a coffee... but how?” the honey blonde asked in response. Ivan was no stranger to blackouts, since most of the wiring in Moscow was from the 1950's to 1960's. He had a kettle of water and a long iron hook by the fire place. Over the fire was a removable metal grid. Putting the kettle on, Ivan returned to knitting. He looked over to his guest, seeing Alfred visibly shiver. Ivan had waited before in cruel amusement, to see when the stubborn fool would ask for a sweater. He hadn't for over one hundred and twenty years, and likely wouldn't now.

At this rate, his knitting was never going to be finished. Ivan stood in the name of good relations to fetch a sweater anyway. As he began the notion, America spoke up. “Hey... while you're up, could you get me a sweater?” Well, Alfred's shift in government had really made a difference. Maybe they could finally hold trade meetings without spitting hatred and curses. Ivan desperately needed it after all of Europe sanctioned him into the ground for the third time.

Ivan was going to give him a thin ugly sweater, but changed his mind. Coming back with a vaguely Russian flag themed sweater, Ivan hoped his guest would notice the increase in craftsmanship. “Thanks big guy. It's freezing in here.” Alfred said, catching the sweater as Ivan tossed it. “The power has been out for two days. I too wish this storm would pass.” Ivan sighed, picking up his knitting needles.

“Two days? That's totally crazy, and... Wow this sweater is so fluffy! It's so fluffy and It's almost America colours! Hey didn't you used to have a cat?” The jaunt in topics was annoying, but Ivan bore with it. This was the first time in a while anyone had been to his house. It was decidedly nice. “Koshka died some time ago. I have not replaced him, though I am considering it.” Ivan replied. “Oh... that sucks. I used to have dogs, but after having like twelve die on you, it gets too sad. My horse lived way longer, but old age... yeah. Mattie's so lucky, he has his bear. Apparently he had it before England, before France.” Alfred rambled like normal, “I suppose that makes him older than me by a bit, but there's no way in hell I'm telling him that.”

“Can't have Canada having large ego.” Ivan mused, not looking up much. “Exactly. You get it. Love my bro but he could crush nations if he wasn't so... wimpy.” Alfred agreed. For some time, they chatted about any number of things. Who would die first during apocalypse. England obviously, because he was an idiot. What space satellite design was the coolest looking, which Russia felt he dominated. The inevitable topic of holiday plans came up, which Ivan despised. He didn't have plans, and never did since the USSR failed. Everyone was still too scared of him, even as his economy crumbled at the edges.

“Well I had plans, but ever since I roughed up North Korea... yeah. Fuck all to do.” Alfred admitted openly. Wasn't Alfred incredibly popular? Ivan didn't know these days, getting rather slack in his international espionage. “I did actually come with politics in mind. It's... uh, I can't believe I'm asking.” the tanned American started, scratching his neck nervously. Well, wasn't that interesting. The police of the world was nervous about something.

[csykora]

Hey hey hey! I was wondering how i could find that post ab Kuzy and the struggle to adapt for North American hockey?? My dad is saying international hockey is easier to play than North American (as a justification for why Nylander is doing better @ worlds than this szn but that’s a diff story) and I’m trying to prove a point (Russians aren’t bad hockey players just because they (historically?) struggle in North America!) thanks xxx

Hey there.

**The following is not an opinion on Willam Nylander. I am agnostic. I suspect he may exist and you all cannot make me do more than that.**

Lemme chat with your dad a min? I got questions.

what does he think makes one game harder?

Factually we know what the difference is, right: one rink is wider than the other. 

how does that then make that game different?

Restricting the width of the rink, the skaters’ room to move, changes the goals of the game.

Any moment that I have the puck and you do not seems like it should be good for me. If I have it, you aren’t scoring a goal with it. If I try to score a goal with it, maybe I score, but maybe I mess up and you get it and you score a goal and that’s bad. Shooting is giving up possession in a meaningful way.

But in a narrow rink, we’re always closer together, it’s easier for you to smash into me, so you have more chances to take the puck away from me. Some of the time you’ll manage and then you’ll have it and you can score goals with it. I just plain probably won’t be able to keep possession all game, trying to do that would be risky for me, so it makes sense for me to try to score goals before you do.

In a big rink, if I’ve got the puck—oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t hear you across all this ice, wide enough that I can push off and hit peak speed going any direction, not just end to end. Did you say you want this? Did you want to smash me and take it and try to score some goals with it? Sure, you can try. Catch me and my several speedy friends first.

Corner work and board battles are less practical for you, so holding possession becomes more of a virtue for me. Goals still happen, but they happen when one team outshines the other enough in skating or passing that it makes sense for them to award themselves a point. An equal or even ultimate goal is to keep control until the clock runs out.

With more ice on the wings, wingers become more like centers. They have to spend more time managing their space, rather than mostly finishing plays that their center managed down the middle. They’re judged more for what North Americans see as classic center beauty (speed and awareness, as they’re expected to travel the full length of the ice, puck control as they skate, passing). Kuznetsov and Malkin were wingers in Russia, because they suck at faceoffs, and in Russia that’s seen as the only thing centers really do that wingers don’t, to the point that Kuznetsov and Malkin on the wing didn’t seem like a waste.

What North American men call ‘overpassing’ starts to happen: instead of the first person in with the puck aiming for a goal, the puck carrier will pass back and forth with other players until someone feels secure to shoot. This slows goals, which, remember, aren’t the only goal.

The other two NHLisms that Kuznetsov struggled with, by his own account, are the idea of dumping the puck and the idea of shooting over passing. These are not hard for him to do. They are foreign to him, hard for him to remember to prioritize doing. He thinks they’re irresponsible and rude, because they don’t contribute to the goal of his game.

In the NHL, they do. And that’s fine! The NHL plays on small ice and has its own goals and values and skills, and they’re awesome. They are no more or less awesome.

Now your dad might say, G, if non-North American hockey is better adapted for big ice than North American style, 

how come Canada does so great in competition, huh?

What do we know about Team Canada?  Sidney Crosby can have Steven Stamkos and Patrice Bergeron on his wings if he wants. You don’t crack that roster if you’re not a top 10 center, even on defense.

I think North Americans tend to know that and think, “well centers are good so more centers is just better,” but if that were always true we would train all wingers to think like centers. A three-center line doesn’t work well on narrow ice, where the winger needs board skills and finishing skills (and, frankly, to be less of a diva). It does work as a bridge when the two games meet in competition.

I just described what international hockey is, not how hard it is.

which is harder, jumping a horse or jumping on a bike?

Now, I might say riding a horse is easier, because I know how to do it. Or I might say it’s more complicated, because again, I know what all it takes to do it.

Both those answers are honest and both are less useful than I don’t know how to ride a bike.

When my brother does well in a bike race, I’m not gonna ask him hey if you’re so “good” at this why’d you fall off the pony that one time then huh? I’m not gonna make him race me.

Or if I did, and I crushed him, I wouldn’t say my sport is better, I’d say oh right I’m on a horse, they big. If he won at 50 yards and I won at 200 yards and at 5 miles and he won at 50 miles, I’d say wow, it’s like a bike and a horse are good at different things in different situations.  

Different kinds of hockey aren’t as different as that, but my point is that it’s possible for two things with two different goals to have two different ways of doing them well. And someone coming over from one thing to judge how you’re doing the other is silly.

Another question to think about:

If international hockey is easy, why do North Americans who go to the KHL also suck?

I don’t think your dad has heard their stories, because let’s be clear I don’t think your dad knows international hockey, but those players exist and have the same darn struggle as Russians in the NHL.

Now, your dad could argue that that’s because we’re pitting North American D-listers who have to go to the KHL against a league of Russia’s A-listers, but frankly that’s offensive to Amur, who’ve assembled a crack team of Russian D-listers and are also very bad.  

Americans who go to Russia don’t immediately dominate with scoring. They take a while to learn the game, and then they start to excel in the ways that you can excel in the KHL’s game.

why have Russian players historically struggled?

We’ve seen individual players have trouble adapting. We’ve also seen Alex Ovechkin, so, you know, he fucks any generalization. Kucherov’s doing okay. Svech sure looks alright.

Russian players make up a very small percent of the NHL today. “Russian NHLers” is barely a big enough test group to sample flavors of toothpaste, much less make sweeping claims about people’s experiences.

And there are so few of them because historically speaking, Russia is real big and not real friendly to North American business interests (which is what NHL teams are), so NHL teams don’t maintain scouts there.

Can you name a player from East Russia? I guarantee it’s not cause there’s no ice there! But it’s a wild huge amount of space to cover. When KHL teams take days and–I can’t stress this enough, have repeatedly died in travel accidents–just to get to games, the NHL is not investing in that.

The NHL doesn’t try to draft Russians unless they’ve already made a name for themselves at international tournaments. Imagine if only the Canadian boys who got to go to Worlds and scored points there were on anyone’s radar. The NHL’s business model is to get quick dibs on obvious talent and let the rest bubble up.

Which is one of many things that makes the modern NHL and NHL fans’ devotion to the draft difficult. There are good reasons that some kids go undrafted who are as good as the drafted kids, so fans have the idea that non North Americans who are left to develop are devalued. (The idea that anyone should be ready for the NHL right out of the draft is really new and really, really wild, like, biologically-speaking. 18 years is the age you can sign a contract, it has nothing to do with your physiological or athletic development).

Big question: does your dad like international hockey? Does he follow the Swedish or Russian leagues? Does he like William Nylander?

You say ‘that’s a different story’ but honestly I think that is the story.

Because if we agreed that actually, Nylander is talented at some things, then the argument that anything Nylander does well must be easy to do doesn’t make sense. It’s a bit like seeing Nylander ride a bike and asking why he couldn’t ride that pony. Maybe Nylander is better at one thing than the other thing. This rests on Nylander being bad, and/or Swedish hockey being bad.

If your dad is honest, he doesn’t like William Nylander, and he doesn’t like Swedish hockey. And that’s fine! He didn’t have to justify that. 

But he is back-engineering an argument to justify not liking them that rests on already not liking them. 

And he’s kind of digging at the value of anyone who likes what he doesn’t approve of: “easy” is a heavy word. The implication is almost that Nylander is worse for doing something “easy” well but being too lazy to work hard in North America

I swear if I get a single comment asking me to think about Nylander beyond his hair I am turning this blog around

Your dad isn’t behaving well in this argument. Relatable, but not well.  

I’m not saying shame your dad! I hope he’s otherwise great. But I encourage you to ask questions that encourage him to self-reflect, more than trying to feed him facts. Mostly because that won’t work. And it won’t be a failure on your part when you don’t say the perfect facts in the perfect way to make him acknowledge them. This is between him and his hockey gods, you know?

I think a lot of us could stand to learn not to argue like he’s doing, but a lot of us could stand to learn how to talk to someone who is arguing unfairly without taking too much on ourselves, trying to justify what we like back to them when neither of you have to justify shit. 

So if it will bring you joy to shove these points at him, good luck, have a ball. If not, go watch some Swedes be good at Swedish hockey, and have a blast.