Sam Fels – Page 169 – Faxes from Uncle Dale

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: Anaheim Ducks

By Sam Fels September 20, 2018 1966 0

They’re just never as bad as you or I want them to be. And they’ll be worse this year, but not bad enough.

While Bob Murray certainly had a hand in torching the Hawks on the ice in the late-90s, his work for the most part in Anaheim has been all right. Their depth has eroded, which happens to most teams, but they seem to keep producing youngsters who can at least step in and not have their brain drip out their ear. Corey Perry is now dead to match his stink, and Ryan Getzlaf will probably be an even bigger passenger than he was before if that’s even possible. Ryan Kesler may not even play, and that may not even be a bad thing.

And most of all, they play in a division that’s a car crash after the Sharks and maybe the Knights (let’s not just put their name in ink just yet until we see if Marc-Andre Fleury tosses up a .907 first). In any other division in hockey they’d struggle to make the playoffs. In this one, simply through Josh Gibson and their defense they probably don’t even have to worry about a wildcard spot, unless the Flames or Oilers get a wild hair on their ass. Let’s run it.

20187-2018: 44-25-13 101 points 235 GF 216 GA 48.6 CF% 48.4 xGF% 8.1 SH% .933 SV%

Goalies: Not only did the Ducks get John Gibson‘s best season, they got one of the better backup seasons in the league from Ryan “They Keep Calling Me” Miller. Gibson threw a .926 at the league and Miller supported that with a .928, which came in handy in 28 appearances. The Ducks get to run that back again this season.

That marked the third-straight season that Gibson was over .920 and second-straight over .927 at evens. As he’s only 25 and entering what you would think his peak would be, this is probably the norm and any team that can sport a .925 goalie every night is going to find it hard to be bad. Which is annoying because everyone, including everyone in Anaheim who would clearly like to be doing anything else but can’t because it’s fucking Orange County, would be happier if the Ducks were irrelevant.

If there’s one thing Gibson is going to have to overcome is an incomplete-at-best playoff resume, as he was silly putty against the Sharks last year and not much better against the Predators or Oilers the year before that. But the Ducks were so overmatched and outplayed by the Sharks I don’t think it matters anyway.

At 38, Miller has found a home as a backup, and the Ducks are one of the few teams that could survive an injury to their starter. You wouldn’t want Miller playing 50 games, but anything short of that is a boon.

Defense: On paper, this has a chance to be a pretty young, dynamic blue line. And yet…

You look at Hampus! Hampus!, Cam Fowler, Josh Manson, and Brandon Montour and you think, “Wow, that’s a lot of mobile, skilled d-men there.” And yet you watch the Ducks and you struggle to find a shit to give. Maybe it’s Randy Carlyle‘s system, but none of these guys pushed the play at a positive rate last year. Cam Fowler has mastered the “So What?” method his entire career. Really, only Manson and Hampus! Hampus! were weapons last season, and they don’t play as much as Fowler and Montour for reasons. If Manson and Hampus! Hampus! take the top pairing minutes and Fowler and Montour do a little more bum-slaying, it will be good. If Carlyle’s mush-brain gets in the way…

The third-pairing looks to be rookie Marcus Pettersson and glorified ent Andrej Sustr, who’s never done anything for anyone. Korbinian Holzer could return in March or so, if that’s something you want to wait for and believe me you don’t.

Forwards: If the Ducks were smart, or smarter, they’d have been trying to move Ryan Getzlaf and his inability to find a fuck to give anywhere down to the #2 center role at least two years ago. But they haven’t, counting on the gremlins and duct tape that Ryan Kesler was made out of to do all the hard work. Well, now thats not an option, and the Ducks will be rolling with essentially an older, balder, dumber, less-determined Jonathan Toews as their #1 center. Getzlaf managed 61 points in just 56 games last year, which would make you think he rediscovered his give-a-shit, but don’t you believe it. He got run over in the playoffs, which is his finisher, and you can count on him to do so again this year. And without Kesler around, he may have to take on harder assignments which he’ll have about as much interest in as your dog does of learning geometry.

Corey Perry died, and good riddance. Rickard Rakell is going to have to do a lot of the scoring to make the top line go, which makes his 34 goals last year pretty handy. Without Kesler, Adam Henrique will be the #2 center with Fifth Feather fave Andrew Cogliano and Jakob Silfverberg, which is a pretty nifty second-line except thanks to Perry’s rotting corpse and Getzlaf’s rotting want-to it’s probably the first line.

The depth after that falls off a cliff though, with really only Ondrej Kase having any level of NHL-success on the bottom six. If the top line misfires, there’s not going to be anyone to pick up the slack, and that’s even if Carlyle could be convinced to trust young kids. Troy Terry and Sam Steel come in with serious junior/college pedigree, and the four Ducks fans who actually know what’s going on will be livid when The Toast Maker is trying to cram Patrick Eaves in ahead of one of them.

Outlook: If Steel and Terry stick, this is a pretty young Ducks team below the top line. The goalies are good, and with the right coach the defense could be as well. But Perry is done, and Getzlaf has to pile up the points that end up not mattering if this team is going to score enough. Still, there is no softer landing than the Pacific., They’re not the Sharks, they’re probably not the Knights. But they’re better than whatever else is stuck to the pipes out west. Another playoff appearance awaits. Just don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: Pittsburgh Penguins

By Sam Fels September 18, 2018 2041 0

It’s kind of startling how quickly you can become an afterthought in the NHL. We’re only a year removed from the Pittsburgh Penguins being two-time defending champs (clap for them) and at times looking like a third was a distinct possibility. But when you finally succumb to the fatigue and your long-time plaything in the Capitals, suddenly no one remembers your name. Despite them still having perhaps two of the best five centers of all-time, a goalie with two rings, a consistent 30-goals scorer on the third fucking line, and quite possibly the best center-depth in the East.

It’s a strange world, this.

And yet, because it’s kind of the same team that didn’t get it done last year, with a much worse player in defense which we’ll get to, it’s whole “You’re Falling Behind If You’re Standing Still” thing. Let’s run it through.

2017-2018: 47-29-6 100 points 272 GF 250 GA 52.2 CF% 52.6 xGF% 7.2 SH% .910 SV% (ES)

Goalies: Here’s something strange to say about a goalie with two Cup runs under his belt: We still don’t know what Matt Murray is. That’s because we only have two regular seasons to deal with, and even in both of those injuries limited him to just 49 games in each. Two years ago he was really damn good. Last year he was very much not. How do you know where to go with that?

Of course, a young goalie having a rough sophomore year is no obstacle to eventual greatness, as every Blackhawks fans should be able to tell you now. And much like football and its quarterbacks, it’s a real advantage if you can have a young, really good goalie for cheap because that’s money you can spend elsewhere before the bill comes due for what’s between the pipes (and one day, goalies are going to get paid market value and there will be several making over $10 million, because they’re that important).

We know Murray is fragile, but beyond that we’re just going to have to find out. We know that there’s greatness in there somewhere, and inconsistency in there as well. As a goalie who can rely on his athleticism too much and end up somewhere near the parking lot sometimes, he’s still learning his angles and anticipation. Sadly, it doesn’t look like he’ll get much help from his defense this time around.

Backing him up is Tristan Jarry, who was basically “there” as a backup last year. Let’s just say if Murray turns out to be Ondrej Pavelec more than Carey Price, the Penguins are going to be pissing up a rope (the only actual good Ween song and go fuck yourself).

Defense: WHY DOES ANYONE EVER THINK JACK JOHNSON IS GOOD HE MOST CERTAINLY IS NOT PLEASE STOP DOING THIS TO YOUR FANS AND TEAM AND REALLY SOCIETY!!!

The Penguins signed Jack Johnson this summer, because they thought he was the guitarist, or because the concise rhythm of his name makes you think he’s good, or you’re actually thinking of the boxer, or you think d-men with big, round, dumb faces have to be good even though Braydon Coburn has been disproving that for nigh-on eight years now. Not only that, they gave this dipshit $3.2 million until he’s 36, even though he’s bad and slow and dumb now. And he’s going to have to take second-pairing minutes while Justin Schultz looks at him quizzically. It’s important to note that Justin Schultz looks at everyone quizzically, because that’s just his face.

It’s even stranger because the Pens had their big, dumb face quota filled on the blue line by another overrated, slow player in Olli Maatta, who I guess will be restricted to only third-pairing assignments, something he’s proven he can handle but that’s it. They think they’ve unearthed something in Jamie Oleksiak. They haven’t.

Which once again means Brian Dumoulin and Kris Letang, for the four minutes something hasn’t fallen off of him, are going to have to shoulder the load in every possible situation. They’ve done it before I guess, but Letang is now 31 with an awful lot of miles and an awful lot of ailments and one wonders when all the king’s horses and all the king’s men are going to arrive and pronounce him DOA. This is clearly the Penguins’ weakness. And they weren’t a good defensive team last year and have added Jack Fucking Johnson. Then again, they weren’t really a good defensive team two years ago and won the damn thing.

#EndHockey

Forwards: The Penguins can get away with a lot of things most teams can’t at the same time because for two-thirds of any game they can throw out Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin. It’s just that simple. That’s 180 points right there, easy. They’re still here, they’re still really good, and as long as that’s the case it’s nearly impossible for the Penguins to be bad.

They’re still accompanied by a host of forwards we can’t be sure are any good but are smart enough to be where Malkin and Crosby need them, otherwise known as “The Marchand Method.” Jake Guentzel scores, I don’t know he does anything else. Bryan Rust is another. Dominik Simon joins the ranks. Carl Hagelin is really fast, and maybe nothing else, but here it works.

Phil Kessel is still around, and he’ll pour in 30 goals without breaking a sweat. Like, literally. And he’ll be a grumpy asshole about it and it’ll be awesome. I hope the Pens win again and beat the Leafs on the way and Kessel misses the Final because he’s too busy walking around Toronto, pointing at people and laughing. This will be the only good ending to the season possible.

Derick Brassard spells his first name wrong and has never been as good as people have wanted him to be, but he’s a damn fine #3 center. He’s not exactly a checking-type though, which means Crosby will have to do more firefighting than he has in the past, because Riley Sheahan blows goats. Whatever, this is still a really fast and skilled outfit that set the new style in motion, and they’re still going to get the puck the fuck up there and score before you can set up and that’s probably good enough for another 100 points at least.

Outlook: The Metro has a few good teams but no great ones. The Penguins have more questions than they’ve had before, but they still have those two guys. You can see them winning the division, getting a sweetheart first-round matchup before yet another kerfluffle with the Caps. You could see them finishing third or fourth in the division, too, as the miles catch up and Matt Murray continues to try and do a rubix cube in the dark.

They’re not as good as any of the Big Two in the Atlantic. But they don’t have to be. They just have to beat them in a series if it comes to that. Really, anything is possible for this team.

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: New York Islanders

By Sam Fels September 15, 2018 2223 0

Well this is a waste of time.

It would appear the New York Islanders didn’t really have a Plan B if John Tavares left. Their hook-and-lateral was to hire Lou Lamiorello to somehow convince JT that they really meant it this time. Now with him off to Toronto, Lou is free to fistfuck this team into oblivion because the game passed him by at least seven years ago and he hates pretty much every player in the league. They’re going to split time with this dreck between Nassau and Brooklyn, as the two communities try and foist this team off on each other in a real, “Hmm, this sauce tastes like shit here try it,” kind of fashion. This is Mathew Bartzal and his misspelled first name and opening band roadies.

There just isn’t much here, so let’s get through it quickly so we don’t get infected.

Goalies: This has been a bugaboo for the Islanders for a while, and it doesn’t appear to have gotten much better. Thomas Greiss has finally wrangled the full-time starting role from the departed Jaro Halak. Well, he didn’t take it so much as Halak got old, was allowed to leave, and Greiss was just about the only person around to clean up the mess. He was at .892 last year, which REEL BAD. Greiss has flashed being NHL starting-quality before, posting years of .913 or .925 the previous two campaigns while splitting time with Halak. But it would seem to be a longshot that he’s going to star in the role.

He could be easily usurped by Robin Lehner. Lehner certainly had his troubles in Buffalo, but if he’s past those he has flashed being a plus-starter before in both Ottawa and Buffalo. You certainly are rooting for him, and there isn’t much here to keep him from the crease unless Greiss goes off in an unpredictable fashion. Neither would seem to provide enough to cause the Islanders to surprise, however.

Defense: Oooh boy. This is still an outfit that’s going to toss Nick Leddy and Johnny Boychuk out as a top pairing, when both are most certainly second pairing players. The hope will be that Scott Mayfield, Ryan Pulock, and Adam Pelech (and don’t worry if you transpose Pulock and Pelech, You wouldn’t be the first), make THE LEAP. Pulock might be the real keeper of the group, as he was the most dominant possession player they had last season.

It actually could be a nifty unit if two of the three kids can take the biggest responsibilities off of Leddy and Boychuk, who simply have never been up to it. That seems like a big ask of three neophytes who were restricted to second and third pairing duty last year. Also, Thomas Hickey is here to dutifully man the second pairing puck-moving role, as he’ll be doing for the next 45 years it feels like. Hickey is one of those players who define the word, “fine.”

Forwards: It was only natural that as soon as he took the seat in the office wherever the Isles deign to place it these days, Nosferatu Lamiorello saw fit to bring in Matt Martin in a glorious return to New York to get mistaken for Jacob deGrom. He also brought in Leo Komarov to provide…well, a dude who smells bad on the bottom six. Those are basically the only additions to a team that lost John Tavares and still finished with only 80 points last year.

The top six will actually be ok in Tavares’s absence. Barzal will slide up to the top line, and he’s most certainly capable of shouldering that. Jordan Eberle and Anthony Beauvillier are certainly dynamic, shifty wingers who make things happen. Anders Lee will score no matter what, it’s just a matter of whether you should give a shit or not. Brock Nelson will slide back to center, which isn’t his best spot but it’ll do. Josh Bailey has been a sneaky good winger for about five seasons now. You can do worse than that.

But this bottom six…WOOF. The aforementioned Martin and Komarov are going to be a waste of everyone’s time. Cal Clusterfuck is the wrong side of 30 and those who play that kind of style do not age well. Cizikas started to back up last year, and again bottom line centers don’t age well even if he’s only going to be 28. Andrew Ladd died three years ago. Barzal and Nelson are going to have to freak the fuck off this year or the Islanders simply won’t score.

Outlook: Even with Barry Trotz parachuting in here like a neckless Mighty Mouse, they’re up against it. As stated, this was an 80-point team last year that lost one of the best centers in the game and didn’t add much. The goaltending solidifying would be a big help and there’s a chance that could happen, but they look awfully short all over the ice. It’s a rebuilding year, and the goal of the year might be flogging Eberle, Nelson, and Lee at the deadline for whatever can be found. If they can’t be built around, that is. It’s going to be a long year, wherever the Isles call home.

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: New Jersey Devils

By Sam Fels September 14, 2018 2203 0

There was probably no bigger surprise last year than the New Jersey Devils making the playoffs. Or it would have been if anyone outside of Newark and maybe Hoboken remembered the Devils existed for more than eight consecutive minutes. And looking it over, the Devils might be the most unlikely team to make the playoffs in years. They basically had a guy and a half scoring. But one of those guys was Taylor Hall, who put up 93 points with the half-guy, Nico Hischier. They only had two other players break 40 points. The top line of Hall-Hischier-Palmieri accounted for a full third of all the goals the Devils scored. Which seems sub-optimal.

So you’d probably think that Cory Schneider freaked the fuck off in net and that’s how they goofed their way into the last wild card spot. Well tough noogies, shithead, because that’s not what happened at all. The Ginger was awful last year, and was replaced by Keith Kinkaid who wasn’t even league-average over the whole season. Kinky went off in March to the tune of an 8-2-1 record with a .923 SV% and then basically spotless in three April starts that locked it down for the Devils.

But yeah, needless to say this was a really weird team that probably can’t be weird in a good way again. They have fully transferred from the aggressive interrogation method era under Nosferatu Lamiorello to an up-tempo, exciting team under John Hynes. But there are still many steps for this team to take.

Let’s get into it.

Goalies: Well, this would have been a murkier question, given that Schneider has struggled for two seasons now, matching a .907 SV% last year with a .908 from the year before. But The Ginger had hip surgery in May, and it’s unclear if he’s going to make an appearance in camp or preseason. He may not be ready for the season. The Devils have to hope that hip’s health was the reason that Schneider’s peak was lost to the abyss. On the other side, “hip surgery” is to goalies what “shoulder surgery” is to pitchers. Sure, you can come back from them but the likelihood of being the same is not all that high, especially when you’re 32 as Schneider is. This is dicey, dicey stuff for the Swampside Hockey Club.

The contingency plan again is Kinkaid, who spasmed something of a career season at 28. And even that overall was a .913, and without that incredible March it’s a lot worse. A hot month-plus is not something you’d call a foundation, so the Devils can only have more questions than answers about their goalie situation. And in case it all goes to pot, Eddie Lack is next in line. That’s a sentence you’d see scrawled on the wall of a rubber room.

The best case for the Devils is that Schneider is back early. But even that could be anything. This is not a good start.

Defense: This is a more intriguing unit than it appears at first glance. It’s led by longtime-servant and oh-that-dude Andy Greene, and including him the rest of the likely group is pretty nimble. That doesn’t mean that they’re any good, but they can get around the ice and given how the Devils want to play now, that fits perfectly. John Moore has departed just before he was egged and TP’d by Devils fans, which should see Will Butcher slide up the lineup. I still contend Sami Vatanen only helps you on the power play and gets utterly mullered at even-strength, but he looks to be serving out the top pairing with Greene.

Butcher is the one to watch, as last year he was able to dominate as a third-pairing bum-slayer while bum-dragging Ben Lovejoy over the ice every night. Damon Severson, while not making really doing anything that you’ll remember, is a huge upgrade in partner. Mirco Mueller and his hilariously long neck will now be on the third-pairing with Steven Santini, who are both pretty mobile themselves. Santini was thrown into the deep end at the beginning of last year with Greene, and the results were so horrific he was exiled to Binghamton, truly a hellish fate, in January and never heard from again. He’s much better suited for the third pairing, and this unit could actually be more dynamic than you’d think, and is clearly the big hope the Devils can surprise again.

Forwards: It starts and ends with Hall. When you beat out that season from Nathan MacKinnon (which he shouldn’t have but it’s hardly scandalous) to win the Hart, you’ve really done something. Hall dragged this team by the dick into relevance, even though he was the only threat anyone had to pay attention to. It mattered not. It’ll take that season again for the Devils to come anywhere near the playoffs again.

Hischier could improve in his second season, though that’s a mark that has seen some stumble. There won’t be any hiding this time, as he’s the #1 center from jump street. He’ll be flanked by Palmieri again, who I’m fairly sure I can’t identify what he does and yet he keeps ending up with 25 goals, so what do I know? Also, a guy named “Palmieri” playing in New Jersey is just about as perfect as it gets. HEY! GABBA-GOUL!

You could look for a breakout year from Marcus Johansson, as it just so happens to be his walk year. The Devils are going to need it, because it gets awfully thin awfully quick. Pavel Zacha is the #2 center, and his name has been a definition of flattering to deceive since he walked into the league. Jesper Bratt flashed at times last year but found consistency hard to come by. You can throw Blake Coleman, Stefan Noesen, Miles Wood, and Joseph Anderson in a bag, toss them around, and empty it in any order and none of you would be able to tell which is which.

Whatever the skill-level here, the Devils have packed this lineup with speed everywhere. So they could overwhelm some teams simply by putting cayenne pepper on their balls and turning up the volume to a point where the opponent couldn’t live with it (they did it to the Hawks twice). More teams are trending this way and the Devils won’t be able to catch as many by surprise. They’ll have to hope they catch enough napping in the doldrums of January and February to rack up the points they’ll need.

Outlook: Well, the Devils are kind of in between the different strata of the Metro. They’re not really all that close to the Penguins, Caps, or Jackets (as long as Bob is interested). They’re far better than the Rangers, Islanders, and almost certainly the Hurricanes if they continue to try and turn themselves into rock people.

That leaves them with the Flyers in the middle, possibly the Canes if they find goaltending. With the Panthers expected to compete hard for a wild card spot as well, there might be only one wild card spot for the Metro. A lot went right for the Devils, but given their youth and that growth is not always linear, along with the questions in net, it could be a lot rockier trip for them this time around. Likely they miss out while still taking steps forward in their development. Which could make things ultra-tricky, as Hall enters the last year of his deal next year, and he’s going to want proof that it’s worth sticking around New Jersey. Otherwise, next summer could be filled with Hall trade rumors, which would definitely set the Devils back a ton.

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Blackhawks Open Camp, Are Covered In Puke Within 10 Minutes

By Sam Fels September 14, 2018 3319 0

People, as I’ve shared in the past, I used to be a comedian. And never, in my seven to eight years of dedicating my life to trying to write stuff to make people laugh, did I ever come anywhere close to anything as absurd and uproarious as the opening hour of Blackhawks training camp this morning. Yes, I use the featured photo a lot, but you sum it up better than that!

Where to even fucking start? So yesterday, company and television stooge Pat Boyle “reported” that Corey Crawford would hit the ice today. He didn’t say in what capacity, if he was just going to check that he in fact can still skate at all, or would be just touching up the logos painted under the surface. This was clearly the Hawks attempt at…

So Crow did actually hit the ice, and he did actually practice…just by himself. Which is…something? I mean it’s better than nothing. It’s on the road to full participation, it’s just that no one has any idea how long that road is. But hey, he’s alive and he’s wearing gear and that’s like, a step forward from where we’ve been. Maybe. Unless he disappears again tomorrow and/or this was all for show. Good stuff, really.

Oh, but it gets so much better.

Right about the time the Hawks were hitting the ice as a team, it was announced that Connor Murphy is going to miss two months with a back injury. TWO MONTHS. BACK INJURY. Let’s try and unpack this all, because it’s a fucking ton and ain’t none of it good.

So, this summer, Stan Bowman hoarded all of his “assets,” such as they are, and decided against upgrading a blue line that was rat semen anyway, because the Hawks are terrified of what they have to pay Nick Schmaltz and Alex DeBrincat in the next two years (no really, that’s the reason). Except there’s no fucking chance Murphy showed up today and said, “Hey I think my back is fucked up.” For it to be a two month thing, they have to have known about it for a while, and still elected to present you with Brandon Manning and Jan Rutta. TICKETS TO THE HOME OPENER STILL AVAILABLE, PEOPLE!

So essentially, what the Hawks are telling you while hoping you don’t notice their lips are moving, is that they know they’re going to be a dungheap this season. Because if you thought you had a chance at being anything, you wouldn’t just toss your hands up at the news that your most consistent d-man of last year was going to be out until December basically, yelling, “Dems da breaks!”

Going further, you wouldn’t do that if your thought your team has any hope of being anything other than a representation of sadness and confusion in watercolor because back injuries of this significance to a player who is, y’know, 6-FOOT-FUCKING-5, have a tendency to be career-altering, if not debilitating. That’s a major, major problem that the Hawks thought they could just sneak by you.

Oh, and Brent Seabrook is going to miss a week with an “abdominal injury,” which simply just has to be a really unruly burrito.

The capper of course is that at the first practice Chris Kunitz was skating with Jonathan Toews and Alex DeBrincat, which couldn’t be a more Quenneville moment unless it came with a bottle of wine, a Whalers jersey, and a mustache painted on the ice. TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE

If there’s a silver lining to all of this, and there isn’t, basically Quenneville is going to be forced into giving Henri Jokiharju a long look because there ain’t shit on shit else. And he was already skating with Keith today, so fuck it, let’s ride that snake as far as it’ll go and figure out the rest later. Or never. Probably never.

So just to review, when the Hawks open the season, your pairings could be a declining Keith with a 19-year-old the coach will hate, Sbarro and Jan Rutta, and The Guy Worse Than Radko Gudas next to Cowboy Gustafsson.

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The Austin Watson Problem(s)

By Sam Fels September 13, 2018 2734 0

I’ll admit my first reaction last night when I saw that Austin Watson had been suspended 27 games for pleading no-contest to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge was, “Well, at least they did something.” Such is my weariness and the way my expectations have been beaten down, not just by the NHL’s, but really all sports’ handling of such things. Honestly, I don’t envy anyone who has to come up with what the right number should be for this charge. There’s many who are incensed that it’s barely more than Nate Schmidt got for his sneeze’s worth of a banned substance, but that’s actually negotiated with the NHLPA and has a standard.

It goes two directions from there. The first is that there are those who think Watson and anyone else caught up in a domestic violence charge should immediately be banned, fired, tarred, feathered, whatever. And believe me, I understand that impulse. Playing in a professional league is a privilege and there’s certainly an argument to be made it should be taken away much easier than it is today.

But various survivor’s groups have said that really isn’t a solution, partly because loss of income doesn’t help anyone in the long run and is a factor in the fear of coming forward for women to report such things. Second it can make a woman or partner an even bigger target for someone who’s already shown to be violent, which can lead to somewhere much worse. I can certainly see the problem.

The second is to mock or spew venom at the NHL for not having a standard, domestic violence policy, and this is obviously understandable, too. Except the standard policies in the NFL, MLB, and NBA haven’t really satisfied anyone either. And I’m not convinced a bad policy is better than none at all. That’s a discussion that could go on forever, but for the only the optics this is probably something the NHL should hammer out with the NHLPA tout suite.

There’s also the small complaint that the players’ union is filing an appeal. And while I could just settle for the usual, “That’s just what unions do,” at some point they have to draw the line as well. It’s one thing to file an appeal to a weird, flimsy failed drugs test or an on-ice suspension. This guy swung at his wife and mother of their baby, and whether or not that’s what they’re actually doing the optics are that the union is taking the side of a wife-beater. Some cases you just let slide by and tell that union member to sit down and swallow this one.

What I do know is that as long as hockey players stop going to school around 7th grade, and their entire social world is developed inside a hockey dressing room and around a hockey team, this is almost always going to be a problem that they’re going to have to deal with.

I don’t know what the answers are to any of these questions, but I do know what I worry about most, even though it’s not the most important component.

When Watson returns to the Predators’ lineup, currently scheduled for December 3rd against the Sabres, we know that he will get a standing ovation from the Bridgestone Arena faithful. This doesn’t really make them any worse than every other fanbase. We’ve already seen this in town with Daniel Murphy and up the road a bit with Josh Hader just in the past couple months. However, next time any media member tries to proclaim that there’s something special about Preds fans, you’ll know there isn’t.

I know it’s not the biggest problem, but it’s the one that seems to wound the most. It’s what I never got over with Patrick Kane at Notre Dame, and we could pick any one of hundreds of instances where this has happened with a player and that team’s fans. Oh, I’m sure some dimwitted Brewers fan would try and tell me, for instance, that what they were really doing is showing Hader that they support him in his attempts to evolve and become better from what he had done and was.

But that’s horseshitt. They know it, we know it. What it is is putting being a fan above all else, that no one really cares what these guys do away from the field as long as they can strike out 38% of the hitters they see or be a decent penalty-killer (if that’s what Watson does and that’s up for debate). When Preds fans salute Watson in December (or November on appeal), it won’t be to show support in his rehabilitation into a non-piece of a shit, if he even does that much. It’ll be a thumb in the nose to his suspension at all, because he’s a player on their team. And what he did to that woman won’t matter, and certainly her emotions won’t either.

And mostly out of ignorance rather than maliciousness, what it will be is a thumb in the nose to any Preds fan, hockey fan, or anyone who is a survivor of domestic abuse or anyone close to one. That their feelings, their history, the damage caused doesn’t matter as much as the Preds winning a hockey game. And there will be Preds fans who feel this, and they’ll feel helpless to say anything because nothing will change and they will fear being drowned out by the masses.

We can figure out the standards and suspensions at some point soon. What the Predators and NHL can do now is find a way to avoid the above scenario. Watson doesn’t have to be booed by his home fans. I feel like it should be greeted by nothing but silence, out of respect to those in yellow who have had this heinous scenario in their lives and also as a patient approach to force Watson to earn the adulation back through demonstrated progress, contrition, learning, and evolution.

I don’t know how you go about that. A concerted campaign by both team and league to illustrate the horrors of this. Perhaps Watson himself doing an ad or speech on the jumbotron, though that would probably just garner applause, too. Some sort of regular press-release about the details of the case and the reasons for the suspension, so it doesn’t fall out of the memory or news cycle. Maybe that’s harsh, but it doesn’t feel like it’s too much so. Perhaps Preds fans themselves could start a campaign to makes this happen, but I’ll just go ahead and assume they’re too busy trying to figure out yet another way to keep Hawks fans from buying their tickets.

There are obviously loftier goals we should be reaching for when it comes to professional sports and domestic violence/sexual assault. And we shouldn’t stop. But for right now, this one, small, attainable step should be something we can accomplish and sharpish.

So the next time a team acquires an Aroldis Chapman or Roberto Osuna or Watson or Mike Ribeiro (never forget), their fans aren’t spurred to cheer even louder because every other fandom is disgusted. That only polarizes and hurts.

Let’s just aim for silence. It doesn’t seem that far away.

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: The Grunty McGruntGrunts

By Sam Fels September 12, 2018 2221 0

We move to the Metropolitan Division, and we start our tour through there with perhaps the biggest example of why hockey needs to die, the “new-look” Carolina Hurricanes. I put “new” in quotes because every utterance and belch out of Raleigh since Thomas “I Punch Myself To Wake Up And Shit” Dundon bought the team last year has been a call-back to some long-gone era that we all decided was best kept in a trunk. It’s like this guy watched that god-awful Bear Bryant movie by ESPN starring Tom Berenger and not only used it for fap material but made it his life ethos and is rich enough to make everyone around him adopt it as well. I mean, look at this happy horseshit:

The Carolina Hurricanes just announced their training camp schedule and if this isn’t the most hockey thing ever, I don’t know what is pic.twitter.com/l7CDwhf5iJ

— Emily Kaplan (@emilymkaplan) September 5, 2018

What the fuck do you do with that? It’s not enough that this guy made his money by ripping off poor people, he’s now got to prove how tough he is by making his team play a style that outlived its usefulness in either 2007 or 1894? Who knows? Team Grit and Team Grind?! Little does this haughty fuckwad know that it makes sound more like a spin class for a gym in Lincoln Park filled with young mothers in $110 yoga pants. You can hear it now, can’t you? “ONE MORE TIME, TEAM GRIND! PUSH IT!” When someone tells him this he might actually Spinal Tap drummer. In about four months, “Carolina Hurricanes” is going to replace “toxic masculinity” as a term in the lexicon.

Anyway, let’s do this shit.

2017-2018: 36-35-11 (83 points) 228 GF 256 GA 18.4 PP% 77.4 PK% 54.4 CF% 53.1 xGF%

Goalies: So supposedly this is where the turnaround is going to begin, and it kind of has to. While Bill Peters’s coaching and system led to the Canes having a majority of possession and chances the entire time he was there, it supposedly left his goalies out to dry. Either that, or his goalie coach was actively using a voodoo doll on them during games to service gambling debts he picked up on a bad night in a country saloon in Saskatchewan. Either way, every goalie under Peters sucked out loud, and that included LOCAL HERO Scott Darling and new Hawks “backup” Cam Ward. I’m not sure I totally buy this, because the past four years the Canes were always on the good side of xGF% and scoring chances, but this was the theory. We’ll find out in Calgary. Actually we won’t because Mike Smith is still shite but whatever, we’ll get to that outfit of the bewildered soon enough.

ANYWAY…Darling is still here, and still slated to be the starter. He was simply woeful last year, with a .888 SV%. About halfway through the season you could see his confidence had been totally shot and he was completely lost. But I’m not going to tell you that’s who I think he is. While Darling’s first year came behind a still competent Hawks defense or better, his last two years were most certainly not. He was behind the declining Keith or ever-expanding Seabrook or the directionless theorizing of Trevor Daley or the corpse of Rob Scuderi or the rim-protecting of Darko Svedberg. And he still put up better than league-average numbers. Yes, it was as a backup and being a starter is a different thing, but I don’t think he’s Darren Pang back there.

The truth is likely in the middle. It’s no secret Darling’s movement is not great, and his starts on the road remain Scott Darling On The Road. But if he’s allowed to play a little more conservatively and use his size instead of his reflexes more, he can be more than serviceable. Which will look like Jesus has arrived to the 17 Canes fans, who haven’t seen serviceable goaltending since The White Stripes were still together.

He’d better be, because there isn’t much of a net (get it?) here. Backing him up is Petr Mrazek, with his missing “e.” Mrazek washed out of Detroit after failing to dislodge (not TEAM LODGE) Jimmy Howard, and then went to Philly when all their goalies got hurt and wasted everyone’s time. It’s been three seasons since Mrazek has even been league-average. Sure, he was behind some awful Wings teams (don’t worry, Stevie Y is coming to the rescue!) and if Rod The Bod behind bench can tighten up the Canes maybe there’s some relief to be found. The better bet for the Canes is that Darling finds it again.

Defense: Still unquestionably the strength of the team, and got even better if they hold onto Justin Faulk. Which they shouldn’t, because they should trade him here for a Manny’s corned beef, but that’s just how I feel. It’s also unclear how Dougie Hamilton is going to fit into the atmosphere created by the owner where grabbing yourself is considered a full sentence.

On paper, it looks great. Dougie is one of the five best d-men in the game and a pretty significant upgrade on Noah Hanafin, who was really good himself. They can really make the pairs anything they want here. They can keep their shutdown pairing of Brett Pesce and Jaccob Slavin together. They could pair Slavin and Dougie and have Faulk and Calvin de Haan together on the second with Pesce simply playing soccer with opposing skulls on the third-pairing. And Haydn Fleury, despite being another missing an “e,” is no slouch himself. Squint and there are four top-pairing guys here and two more second-pairing guys, if de Haan is fully healthy. And they can do anything they’re asked. So this team really shouldn’t suck as much as it has.

I assume Dondon takes Mrazek’s and Fleury’s missing e’s and grinds them with the rhino horns he puts in his coffee he thinks makes him more virile.

Forwards: And yet here’s the same problem as it always is. There isn’t a genuine top line forward to be found. Sure, Andrei Svechnikov will be one day, and that day may be as soon as December. Sebastien Aho probably could be one if you put him on a line with two other genuine, top-line players. But the Canes don’t have that. He probably never would have shown up, but this team should have been all-in on Tavares by trade and tried to convince him to stay. They definitely should be making calls on the impending UFAs like Tyler Seguin, Matt Duchene, and Artemi Panarin. They need the help. As good as the defense is, even with rebounded goaltending is this team going to score enough to beat out one of the Flyers, Penguins, Caps, Jackets for a playoff spot? Are they as good as the Panthers, who probably grab the other wild card? I’ll hang up and listen.

Our Special Boy is still making the first line go, which is a problem in itself because though we have various shrines set up for him throughout the city and suburbs to service our worshipping needs wherever we may find ourselves, he’s a second-line player. Jordan Staal is the #1 center here and he’s 30 and has never been anything other than a glorified checking center with a big dumb face. They lost 30-35 goals in Jeff Skinner, mostly because they thought he was a weak asshole who wasn’t going to stick around. And either they think Svechnikov will replace all of that or they have no plan. And even with that replaced this team missed the playoffs by a $50 cab ride. Michael Ferland was completely a product of getting to play with Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan, and is going to be a Milan Lucic tribute band by the turn of the year.

Maybe grunting louder will solve it.

Outlook: Ok, first off, now that an actual hurricane is going to hit the Carolinas, this entire outfit is going to be a collar-tug the whole season. Secondly, whatever changes Brind’Amour (seriously, what the fuck is with this organization’s spelling?) makes from Peters, there’s a desperate lack of scoring punch here. Sure, the Predators get a ton of scoring from their defense, but they also have Filip Forsberg. There isn’t a Forsberg here. They’ve also got Rinne somehow throwing a .925 at people, and the Canes don’t have that either. Whatever help is in the system is a year or two away at best.

I want this team to be good, because of TiVo Targaryen and they’ve been one of the more entertaining teams to watch. Even if Peters’s system was reckless he at least was forward thinking and had his team push the play. I suppose with this defense Brind’Amour could go the other way and try and lock things down with that defense, and that might get them seven to eight more points. But the 15 or so they’re going to need to get into the playoffs? Seems a stretch.

Oh, and move them to Quebec already.

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: Tampa Bay Lightning

By Sam Fels September 10, 2018 2199 0

While all the news of the summer has mostly been focused north of the 49th, because they have nothing else to do in the summer except annoy the rest of us with their offseason bullshit and I mean jesus fucking christ get a second baseball team or something or spend more than three weeks at fucking “cottage” where all you do is drink the same bad beer you always do and complain about what you spend the rest of the year doing before you go back to complaining about it while you do it and yes we actually have mountains and lakes here in the States too can you believe it and you’re not so special so just go back to locking yourself in your basement and drinking your own piss while you make videos that 16-year-old girls love because that’s not creepy at all you fucking dweeb and..

I’m sorry, that got away from me. Let’s start again. Most of the attention this summer has been on the Leafs after signing Tavares, or the continuing descent into hell’s asshole from the Ottawa Senators and their drama(s) with Erik Karlsson, or the simply mystifying, long-standing incompetence and arrogance of the Canadiens. So you’d be forgiven if you forgot how the Atlantic Division actually works.

The class is still located on the west coast of Florida, which isn’t where anything should ever be located but here we are. The Tampa Bay Lightning haven’t gone anywhere, though they may have taken a half-step back by not taking a step forward. Then again, that step forward is probably waiting either in camp or in mid-season, and it could be a very large one. Let’s hop to it.

Goalies: As you’ll see with most of the team, it’s basically the same outfit as last year that they’re just going to run again. Andrei Vasilevskiy put up a Vezina-caliber season, at least to the eye of the ever-vigilant hockey press and their Nick Kyrgios-level of effort on thinking, finishing third for that award after piling up a .920 SV% and a 2.62 GAA. He was also .930 at evens. Those numbers would look better if he hadn’t tailed off in the season’s second half, as he went .916-.916-.883-.900 in January-April, which is worrying. And it wasn’t a much larger workload that got him, because he made 50 appearances in the season before while Ben Bishop was fighting with the various gremlins that live in his soft tissue (I think I saw Soft Tissue Gremlins open for…).

So maybe that should have been a clue that the playoffs were not going to be filled with glitter and strobe lights for him. The first two rounds saw him get the soft-landing of the one-man Devils and the one-line Bruins, and he obliged accordingly by seeing the Lightning through in 10 games total. But the series against the Caps, who were running on high-octane at that point, was a different story. He posted a .901 in that series, with serious disasters in Games 1, 2, and 7. Sure, his first foray into the playoffs as a starter, and he is allowed another try or five. But given the way he faded as the season went along, there should be sharper eyes on him at the start of this season as teams already have the scouting reports from last season’s back end.

Backing him up is Louis Domingue. He’s perfectly serviceable as a backup, but the Bolts are not going to be able to turn to him if Vasilevskiy’s belly-up from last year is a feature and not a bug. If that happens, they’ll be looking outside the organization.

Defense: So the temptation is to label this their weakness. And it is right now. Except that it very well might not look like what it looks like now. Because the rumor is that Erik Karlsson will really only go to Tampa or Vegas via trade. And if this defense adds the best d-man alive, it goes from weakness to sharp pointy thing with lasers.

But until that happens, if it happens, we can only deal with what we have on hand. Outside of Vasilevskiy, the biggest reason the Lightning got punted by the Caps in seven games is that Victor Hedman was awful in that series. And when he’s not dominating play, they Lightning don’t have anyone else who can do that. It was also what bit them in 2015, and that’s when Anton Stralman could actually move. Hedman carried a 45% corsi-percentage that series, and his scoring-chance percentage was even worse.

Now, some of that, even a majority, could be explained that he was dragging around the bloated, buzzard-ransacked, maggot-infested corpse of Dan Girardi around. I don’t know what it’s going to take for people in the game to realize that Girardi has been a nuclear disaster site for about five seasons now, and no amount of dumb faces he makes or grunts he emits are going to change that. He should be nowhere near anyone’s top four, let alone a Cup-contenders. Even Hedman couldn’t save his immobile, dead ass and that should tell you something, And yet…

Ryan McDonagh and Stralman are still here to man the second-pairing, and while the odometer readings are catching up to McDonagh, a second-pairing assignment is still well within his range. If in between buying new silk robes and testing the viscosity of his own spunk, Jon Cooper could figure out to slide Mikhail Sergachev here instead of Stralman, he’d be doing his team a huge favor. At least until Karlsson washes up on the useless St. Petersberg shores.

The third pairing is the aforementioned Sergachev, who will be praying he no longer has to serve out whatever apprenticeship/dungeon-hood Cooper has in his own mind (Note: Cooper has an actual dungeon in his house but it is for very different things) and can be let loose. The broken-and-pie faced Braydon Coburn is somehow still here, even though it’s been unclear what he does other than break his face since 2012. Slater Koekkoek and the dumbfuck way he either spells or pronounces his last name and Jake Dotchin probably fancy their chances of cracking the lineup regularly, especially when Stralman can’t get out of a chair and Girardi and Coburn can’t figure out how to sit in one.

Forwards: The opposite end of the spectrum for the Bolts. They have two perennial MVP-candidates on their top line in Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov. They’re perhaps the only team that can claim that, except for maybe Winnipeg. Brayden Point–Ondrej Palat–Tyler Johnson could be the best second line in the league, though the other contender might in the same division with Toronto. The bottom six is littered with solid contributors in Alex Killorn, Yanni Gourde, Cory Conacher, Cedric Pacquette, and now Andy Andreoff who washed out of LA can play with a team more suited to, y’know, something other than belching and farting their way up and down the ice. 1-12 it’s hard to find a more complete unit in the Eastern Conference. They don’t have the center-depth the Leafs now employ, but this center-depth was enough to pile up 113 points with spotty goaltending for half the season. And we know that Steve Yzerman is going to add something sneaky and productive at the deadline for a song, and not even a good song. Like a Styx or Springsteen song or something (suck it, Killion).

Outlook: They’ll be challenged by the Leafs for the division crown, which means they’d have to negotiate likely the Bruins and then the Leafs to get back where they were (maybe the Panthers). There is more than enough scoring here if everyone stays healthy and just gets to their career norms. A couple guys getting snake-bitten could be a problem, but could be countered by guys having spikes. The defense is a worry, until it gets buffeted by that Swedish dude with the hair. No, the one they don’t already have. The goaltending is a bigger question than anyone is asking though, but thankfully no one else in this division has a definitive answer there either. The conference final certainly is a distinct possibility, and once you’re there pretty much anything can happen. At the same time, Vasilevskiy could be what he showed for the second half and then whatever resources they were going to chuck for Karlsson might have to be used to go get a goalie. Why do I feel like Henrik Lundqvist could end up here?

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: Montreal Canadiens

By Sam Fels September 8, 2018 2258 0

I wonder if it bothers the NHL that there’s a very good chance that four of the ORIGINAL SIX HARF HARF might seriously be regurgitated foodstuffs this season. The Bruins and Leafs will be good, and then probably play in the first round. If I squint really hard to the point that I prolapse my own asshole (leading to the question, “How would you prolapse someone else’s asshole, dear Samuel?” And I don’t want that answer), maybe the Hawks could find a playoff spot that someone else tossed onto the sidewalk in a fit of pique and shortsightedness. But after going through the Wings on Thursday, I can assure you that the Montreal Canadiens will blow chunks. Their organization and press will still bleat on about how they’re the gold standard, they’ll interview some barely coherent Francophone who was on the third line in 1974 or something, and in French he’ll say the problem is that Max Pacioretty isn’t tough enough. Because the great Habs teams were certainly built on bludgeoning people or something. Why didn’t you let them leave again, Canada? Oh right, access to the smoked meat and strippers. Fair play. Whatever the question is about the Canadiens, the answer up there always seems to be, “Kirk Muller.”

Goalies: Drinky McGoo, otherwise known as Carey Price after he got boring, is once again your starter. Except now he’s ouchy and bad. At least he could be. Price hasn’t managed a full season in three, and last year in 49 games he was objectively awful. Now that could be an aberration, as he just turned 31 and that’s not the time when goalies are supposed to go skunky. Yet considering the workload he’s been carrying since he was 21, as well as carrying the daily mood of an entire province that time, maybe his time has come. We know when he’s on he’s the best in the world. And the Habs need the best in the world if they have any hope of playing a game that means anything past the turn of the year.

If he’s not, the insurance plan is Antti Niemi. Which is basically like having whatever animal in The Flinstones was used to patch things up instead of car insurance. Niemi was good in 17 starts for the Habs last year, with a .929 SV%, in what had to be either the lord’s or the devil’s practical joke on Canadiens fans for their own entertainment. I hope it’s the devil’s, because every fan up there deserves to hear various callers begging for Niemi in November only to see him literally chuck the puck into his own net while falling down like some Cluseau-esque waiter. This is going to happen.

Defense: You know it’s bad when an injury to the already old and fading Shea Weber absolutely cripples your blue line. Welcome to the Habs’ world. They’re going to rock Karl Alzner and Jeff Petry on the top pairing until January. It might not matter how good Price is, because with this blue line he’s going to take off his mask, fold up his jersey, undo his pads, lay them gently down in the crease like The Undertaker and skate off to never come back to hockey again. Victor Mete once had promise, and then Claude Julien beat any sense of self-worth out of him and now he thinks he’s a marmot. How does Jordie Benn still have a job? All he can do is scowl while looking at the forward’s ass no less than four feet in front of him. They better hope Noah Juulsen is the second coming of Larry Robinson… so they can then trade him for whatever other French-Canadian forward who’s good for 38 points they can find in three years. Hey did you know they had Sergachev?

Forwards: It’s basically Max Pacioretty checking his watch every five minutes running out the clock and then a bunch of riff raff. They punted the abused Alex Galchenyuk, the American with the Russian name who was a Canadien, and his fancy collection of mirrors and $1 bills to Arizona for MAGA pudwhack Max Domi and the points he’ll never score. Jonathan Drouin is the top line center simply because you don’t pronounce the last letter of his last name, even though last year pretty much showed he can’t play center. But hey, you can’t have two overhyped left wings, and that’s Domi’s job now! Philip Danault gets to do all of Domi’s skating, though now that he’s actually getting paid it’ll be a couple hours before all the fans hate him even though you don’t have to pronounce the last letter of his last name either. Tomas Plekanec ended up back here because of course he did. The Quebecois will do anything for a turtleneck. Except shower. There is one genuine top-line player on this team and they’re going to trade him at the deadline to the Bruins for whatever Don Sweeney digs out of his ear. Or the Penguins where he’ll score 38 goals in 15 games. Oh sure, there’s Brendan Gallagher‘s Marchand-Lite act, if that does anything for you. It doesn’t, I’ll answer for you.

Outlook: Here’s another team that needs a total overhaul everywhere. The GM was proven a withering dolt at least three years ago, and at this point Claude Julien is outdated. They don’t have a d-man you’d want anything to do with outside of quarantine other than maybe Juulsen and who even knows with him? They even have Xavier Ouellet along for the ride. Remember when he was going to save the Wings? This team probably isn’t as bad as Detroit or Ottawa, as a healthy and focused Price keeps them from that alone. But they’re nowhere near the other four teams in this division, which means they’re exactly where you don’t want to be, hockey purgatory. Maybe they think the league will rig it again so they can have whatever player they want from the QMJHL again, because what you need to succeed in the NHL these days is a kid or two who have played nothing but 8-6 games for three seasons while Pierre McGuire licks the glass behind you.

Fuck this team and organization. Their legacy is utter bullshit. It’s far too wonderful of a place to have a plague like this as its only professional team. Move the Rays there tout suite.

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