The Best Game You Can Name (Ice Hockey)

1 Like

It wasn’t us! :partying_face:

SHUT

IT

DOWN

What were they paying, like 10 grand per player? That can’t be right.

It’s right. They were and are very underpaid. NWHL did not make enough money for it to be a full time job. Just about every single player in the league is doing something else as a full time job, or is a student.

This is a point a lot of people miss when discussing professional women’s sports.

While for many sports there are, in aggregate, performance differences for particular tasks, that is in many cases not the reason for perceived differences in performance compared to men’s sports.

The men also have the advantage of being paid well, having access to nearly unlimited training / coaching resources, and being able to dedicate themselves full time to the sport.

It is unreasonable to expect the same level of “performance” from women who are barely paid, have day jobs, and have no real career path in the sport long-term.

I bet if men and women had equal access to resources, there would be some women playing in the NHL today.

1 Like

Goalie goal in the QMJHL

Tom Wilson of the Capitals is a piece of shit. This has been known for years. Though he has been suspended several times, he has never learned his lesson, mostly because the NHL only really started the punishment on him late and many people feel he never quite got what he deserved


A couple of nights ago he punched Rangers player Pavel Buchnevic, while Buchnevic was face-down on the ice and Wilson was basically pining him down by the neck. He also grapped star Player Artemi Panarin by the hair, jerking him backwards and throwing him to the ice. This ended Panarin’s season, though with only a handful of games left to play and the Rangers eliminated from contention this may partially be precautionary. Wilson was only fined 5,000 dollars for this. The Rangers released a statement, calling this nonsense and directly labeling a “dereliction of duty by NHL Head of Player Safety, George Parros” and I have no choice but to agree.

That’s not quite right. We talked about it on the podcast.

It was Buchnevich that got punched in the head while being pinned to the ice. In the ensuing brawn, Panarin was rag-dolled. Wilson appeared to pull Panarin’s hair after his helmet came off, and slammed him down on the ice. He was very close to having his head hit the ice.

My mistake. Updated the post.

Lots of events happening in the NHL:

First of the Seattle Kraken had their expansion draft on Wednesday and they did
 poorly. A lot of GMs were wary after what happened four years ago in the Vegas expansion draft. Kraken GM Ron Francis tried to engineer similar deals but was unsuccessful. However, the draft choices were not great, passing on several high-risk high-reward options for no real reason while they are still miles beneath the salary floor.

Most baffling is that they took neither James van Riemsdyk nor Jakub Voracek from the Flyers, two productive forwards that could also be tradable assets if you don’t want to hold on to them, since they have reasonable contracts. Instead they went and picked a no-name fourth liner.

Perhaps Seattle’s head coach Dave Hakstol, who used to be head coach of the Flyers, had part in this, but JVR never played for the guy. Also Hakstol was a terrible choice to begin with.


Yesterday the normal NHL entry draft, and in the run-up to it NHL GMs collectively lost their minds with terrible trades.

Well, one of the first trades a couple of days earlier in which the Flyers traded Nolan Patrick and Philip Myers to Nashville for Ryan Ellis was great, as the Flyers plugged a hole in the lineup for expendable assets. Patrick is a former 2nd overall pick that the Flyers got thanks to luck in the draft lottery, but never worked out in Philadelphia because of bad luck with injuries and a migraine disorder that cost him an entire year. The Predators were also not that high on him, immediately flipping him to Vegas in exchange for Cody Glass, another prospect that similarly isn’t living up to expectations.

A day or two later the Flyers send Shayne Gostisbehere alongside a 2nd round and a 7th round draft selection to Arizona for
 nothing. They just wanted to get rid of Ghosts contract which isn’t that great. I think Ghost is still a decent player, but at the end of the rope in Philadelphia. However, spending additional assets just to get rid of the contract is not great asset management, though Gostisbehere was exposed to waivers last year and with Seattle also not taking him in the expansion draft, all 31 other NHL teams passed on him.

Flyers turned around yesterday and used the freed up cap space for Rasmus Ristolainen by trading for him from Buffalo for their first this year, a second rounder and bottom-pair defenseman Robert HĂ€gg. Ristolainen was a very high selection several years back but has been pretty awful so far in his career. The price they paid is absolutely baffling and I definitely don’t agree with it. Flyers hope a new environemnt and a reduced role will be in favor of Ristolainen, but I am having terrible flashbacks about the time they acquired Andrew MacDonald.

The saving grace here is that it isn’t the worst trade of the day, as the Rangers traded Pavel Buchnevich to St. Louis and all they got in return was a second round selection and a replacement level player in Sammy Blais. Buchnevich needs a new contract, but the price is a pittance for a player who would have hit 30 goals and 70 points this year if the season had been the normal 82 games long and Buch had played them all. It feels like the returns for Buchnevich and Ristolainen were somehow switched with each other.

Previously the Rangers had traded a 7th rounder for impeding UFA Barclay Goodrow from the Lightning, whom they immediately signed to a 6-year extension, which seems like a lot for a bottom-six player. Supposedly the Rangers are also gearing up to trade for Eichel from the Sabres, who have started another complete rebuild.

Lots of big-name defensemen on the move. First the Oilers acquired Duncan Keith from the Blackhawks for Caleb Jones and a conditional draft selection. Notably the Hawks don’t retain any of Keith’s salary. Keith is a surefire Hall of Famer, but long past his prime and feels like less than ideal acquisition for an underperforming team like the Oilers.

The Hawks today also Seth Jones from Columbus, paying a princely return for him. The full deal is Jones and the 32nd overall pick (which Columbus previously received from Tampa) for 20-year-old forward prospect Adam Boqvist, Chicago’s 2021 second round pick, a first round pick in either 2022 or 2023. Seth is Caleb’s much better brother, and immediately signed an 8 year extension with Chicago, that will pay him 78 million dollars. Jones is a good player, but these long term deals are also always risky and I don’t think Jones is worth a cap hit north of $9 million per year.

Another defenseman on the move is Coyotes’ Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who went to Vancouver for Jay Beagle, Loui Eriksson, Antoine Roussel and a 1st round pick. All of those players are expendable, but the volume of them is a bit surprising. The biggest piece in return is the 1st. This is the deal that can work out for both parties, but OEL is already 30 so there is considerable risk involved.


I can’t say much about the draft itself because I don’t know a lot about prospects and it is always a gamble. However, what I can say is Fuck the Habs.

The Habs used their 31st overall selection to pick Logan Mailloux. Mailloux is facing criminal charges in Sweden for distributing pictures of a sexual encounter. The encounter itself was consensual, but the sharing of the images was definitely not. Mailloux tried to renounce himself from the draft and reportedly several teams already had crossed him off their list, but the Habs drafted him anyway, which is on one level ironic but also completely terrible by the Habs.

Well, the Flyers have also traded Jakub Voracek, in this case to the Blue Jackets for Cam Atkinson who is a decent middle-six winger with a much lesser cap hit (though longer term). I am going to miss Jake though, absolutely a cornerstone of the team for the past decade or so.

And then he comes in in twitter and just puts me in the balls by linking to a Warren Zevon song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UotS7F0Orks

Not much left to be said there.

All I have to add is the complete shit-show the Chicago sexual assault situation is. If they were an NBA franchise, we would probably be seeing a situation where the owners are forced to sell the team because of it. If there was justice, many many heads would roll over this, including Bettman’s, for not taking enough action quickly enough.

Yeah, I’ve not been sure what to say about the situation in Chicago for a long time. My mind for some reason just doesn’t want to process it.

Fuck the Blackhawks

The Capitals just re-signed Alexander Ovechkin. That’s not surprising at all. However, the terms are a doozy for me. Five years at 9.5 million per. Ovechkin is a great player, one of the best to ever do it, I admit. He is also 35 years old, which also means that the Caps are on the hook for it come hell or high water due to the CBA. Ovechkin at this point has a blank check from the organization I imagine given he is the face of the franchise and has been for the past 15 years and brought them a cup, and “Russian machine never breaks” and all that, but this is a bit too risky for my tastes.

This isn’t one of those contracts where they are paying based on expected performance. They are compensating for services already rendered. That’s what happens with a cap. A player that deserves more than you can pay them gets this kind of deal at the end.