Oh, a contest!
Hmm, we do have a few hours…
How about “guess the number of wins for ‘Kraken’ (I’m starting a trend to drop the ‘The’)”?
My guess: 35
I’ll guess 44, that division is weaksauce.
We’re through Night 1 of something like 193 or so. Can’t recall, not interested enough to go look it up.
Pittsburgh defeats Tampa Bay 3-0 in the part of the game where two goalies were in net, then 3-2 in the part of the game where only one was in net.
Seattle doesn’t have first game magic like Vegas had when it entered the league. First shot faced goes into the net, they trail 3-0 but rally back to tie it, only to fall 4-3.
ESPN’s coverage? I’ll give it pretty decent marks. They’re definitely feeding you a steady diet of the theme song. Not sure how I like the wandering camera angle; I think it has potential, but they’ll have to figure out how to use it. You can tell Steve Levy and Linda Cohn are thrilled to be covering hockey. Messier, Chelios? Eh, they were OK. Kevin Weekes was outstanding as usual.
Tonight is TNT’s turn, I think? Didn’t catch their preseason broadcast, we’ll see how it looks.
Kings win big, Kopi gets a hat trick, his 5 points the highest ever for a Kings Opening Game, if that is a record worth noting. His 1-on-2, dig-the-puck-out-of-the-corner-with-a-kick, pass it up to the point, ending in a score was another day at the office.
Farts (my new name for Alex Faust) didn’t even get a shot at Jeopardy!, still as lame as ever. Guess we’re stuck with him.
Lol nice nickname, I still think Faust is one of the best in the league, but thats coming from a non-Kings fan.
To be fair, he is a lot better on the national telecasts.
Hey, Blues are 2-0 to start the season! OK, it’s been against a Colorado squad missing 2/3rds of its top line and then an Arizona team that barely qualifies as NHL-caliber, but 4 points is 4 points. The future HOFer had an assist last night, the former 1st-round pick who’s a possible replacement for a 30-goal scorer had a pair last night, … will be interesting to see if they can do this against an actual NHL team some time this season.
Will also be interesting to see if they can keep this up when things aren’t going 100% like they need. I harbor serious doubts about it.
Hey, Blues are 3-0 to start the season! Again, against an undermanned Vegas team missing basically its top line and a few other guys that would surely make a difference.
Maybe it’s just me - feel free to say so - but I don’t buy into the narrative some are pushing that the Blues are an elite team that has the potential to go far in the playoffs. Sorry, I don’t see it. I see a team that’s better (deeper) at forward but worse at defense and with painfully little depth there, who can get solid goaltending from Binnington to carry them through a postseason as long as he’s not having to stand on his head and bail the team out repeatedly - and I think that weakness on defense is going to be the team’s eventual downfall unless they’re completely healthy and catch all the breaks they did in 2019, which is asking a hell of a lot.
What am I missing?
Credible data?
Kings are sucking it up, so much that the DAL game tomorrow night is on only ESPN+.
The 6-on-5 Empty Net Game Plan is same as last year, as they converted zero last year and keeping the streak alive. Probably more important to get a lead and keep it?
There’s that too, but it feels like a redux of '17-18 (load up the top-6, hope to hell the bottom 6 doesn’t kill us … which worked until we had injuries to the top-6, specifically Schwartz, and then it was downhill from there) and '18-19 (roster is loaded up, and we think the HC who was crap will be better and the #1 goalie who was crap will be better and everything will be fine - which didn’t happen at all).
When you’re planning for perfection, it very typically doesn’t happen and things go downhill - sometimes very quickly - from there.
Blues 7, Kings 3. Blues match their best-ever start to a season from 2017-18 at 4-0-0. Lots of similarities between that season and this season.
Based on comments from Blues Nation, I guess we can start building the statues outside Enterprise Center for a few players, notably Kyrou and MV63. Guess we can also start planning the Cup parade now.
The LOLeafs, … not that I think Sheldon Keefe should be under pressure, but I don’t think a 7-1 blowout at the hands of a Pittsburgh team missing Crosby, Malkin and Letang is what the Leafs braintrust expected to see this season. I wonder if they’ll start pounding the hell out of the panic button if the team is still drifting around the 20-game mark.
Man, stinking up the joint! No doughty gonna be rough.
And, another defenseman off. Just a freak injury.
Making plans for better odds on a nice high draft pick.
Good news for the Blues: they go to 5-0-0, first time in franchise history.
Bad news: O’Reilly joins Saad on the COVID list. We’re going to see if we’re really as deep as people claim we are.
Also: four teams start the season 5-0-0, first time in NHL history. Probably easier to accomplish with 32 teams than with 6, 12, or 21.
Chicago Blackhawks fined $2 million for actions relating to the 2010 sexual assault by ex-staffer Brad Aldrich.
Stan Bowman out as GM and President of Hockey Ops. [Add: also out as GM of the USOT.]
Al MacIssac out as Senior VP of Hockey Ops.
<chucklesimindanger.gif> applies to current Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff and Panthers HC Joel Quenneville, who were reportedly involved in a meeting that discussed the first of the two sexual assaults reported to the team.
$2m doesn’t seem like a whole lot of a penalty. Is that it?
A team like the Devils got a $3m fine and draft pick implications for offering a legal at the time but stretching the rules contract to Kovalchuk 10 years ago.
The Coyotes also got worse from an NCAA-esque violation, they lost multiple important draft picks and were fined for giving a few prospects early physical evaluations.
Truthfully, $2 million is woefully inadequate for what happened. Yes, I would have made it whatever the maximum available is. (I think $5 million right now, which is still too low given what teams generate in revenue now.) I think the only things that mitigated it are that it was 11 years ago now, and 2 of the characters - including the apparent leader in the decision-making - are gone from the organization and out of hockey.
The Devils got docked because I think they consulted with the NHL and were told “don’t do this” and did it anyway. [Rant about how the NHL should have cracked down on that stuff years prior, when it was evident what teams were doing - and I’m talking before we saw the Hossa, Luongo and Chara contracts - omitted.] The Coyotes - specifically, uber-analytics guru John Chayka - apparently knew what they were doing was probably over the line, but did it anyway; the loss of draft picks is a direct reflection on the advantage they gained.
I would vigorously argue that Aldrich should be the 2nd person to have his name crossed off the Cup. Doesn’t fix that he got to celebrate with it and got his day with it, but fixes the ability of him to point to it and say “see, I’m on there for all time.”
Yeah that should definitely happen. The player in question has come out, its former high end prospect Kyle Beach. No wonder his career never took off.
Kraken’s “Three Stars” tradition born: