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everwitch-magiks · 3 years

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dance with somebody (ch. 26/26)

start from ch. 1 | back to ch. 25

Throughout his five years in professional hockey, Connor Whisk has been called a great many things.

During his rookie season with the Pittsburgh Penguins, the adjective most frequently used by ESPN was promising. (Editor’s note: we’ve counted. Yes, we’re nerds.) However, soon after Whisk’s abrupt trade to the newly minted Seattle Kraken, sensational and unprecedented quickly started climbing the charts. It truly seemed like Whisk had found himself perfectly at home as a rising star on a young and fiercely untamed NHL expansion team, full of players with nothing to lose, yet so much to prove.

At least, that was the way things appeared.

Whisk suggests meeting at a quiet coffee place in Pioneer Square. He’s already waiting outside when I arrive (and it should be noted that I'm at least ten minutes early). Whisk's handshake is firm, his shirt is completely lacking in wrinkles without a single button undone, and there's something carefully proper in his manners as we exchange pleasantries and order coffee.

We don't have an abundance of time, which is why I get right into it almost before we're seated. What’s his opinion on the current standings? If the Kraken do make the playoffs again, like most experts have assumed, what will be their strategy for staying in the game longer, this time? And what’s changed for the Kraken, during these last couple of seasons, that have enabled them to become such a force to be reckoned with so soon after the team’s very foundation?

Whisk, who isn't necessarily known for taking pleasure in excessive attention from the media, seems surprisingly at ease with my onslaught of questions.

“We’ve worked really hard as a team to get to this point, slowly but surely. It may look like a sudden breakthrough from an outside perspective, I guess, but that’s very far from how we’ve experienced it. Although, I’ll be the first to admit that those first couple of seasons in Seattle were tough. Extremely tough. We were fighting so hard every single day, trying to get some semblance of proper teamwork, trying to get our plays to work, get anything to work, really. A lot of the guys were rookies, and many of us who weren’t had been pretty shocked by our trades. We did alright, for a new team, but we all knew that we should be doing better. That was the thing, really – we all felt that we could be so much more. Maybe, if we had believed that a little bit less, things might not have felt so hopeless at the time.”

Whisk speaks with a familiarly serious expression. Some of my fellow sports journalists have pronounced him subdued, and stiff, and on one memorable occasion, unemotional. Yet as we continue to chat about his teammates over a second cup of coffee, and Whisk goes into detail about what the Kraken’s recent achievements have meant for each of them, those descriptors couldn’t be further from the picture Whisk paints. Connor Whisk is clearly compassionate. Effortlessly earnest. Irresistibly determined.

"Last season, when we made it to the playoffs for the first time, that was such an important milestone. It proved to us that we’d had it right, all along. That as a team, we could be capable of anything. And I think, especially for the older guys who’d uprooted the lives of their families after their trades, getting that recognition from the whole league was so important. It’s definitely helped us feel like we have every reason to go into each game with that much more confidence, this season. Our plays are bigger, bolder and braver, and it’s really been paying off. This year, the goal is to make sure that energy lasts us not only all the way to the playoffs, but much further beyond.”

Whisk speaks about his teammates with both respect and compassion. It’s really quite obvious just how he's earned himself the title of Assistant Captain. And on the subject of leadership – is there any truth to the retirement rumours surrounding the Kraken’s current Captain, Donald “Ducky” Rodriguez? And would Connor Whisk agree with the consensus among both supporters and sports media, that he is practically guaranteed to inherit the title?

It's the first time since the start of our conversation that I find a certain amount of evasiveness in Whisk's answer.

"It's difficult to say. Every player has their own journey, and I can't speak for Ducky when it comes to his thoughts on possible retirement. As for my own feelings on the subject, I'd prefer it if Ducky just stayed in the game forever." Whisk laughs. "Really, I would. Ducky probably wouldn't have described his trade from the Aeros to the Kraken as the best thing that ever happened to him, back when it all went down, but it was honestly one of the best things that could've happened to me. I had looked up to Ducky for a long time, and having such an experienced player join us made an enormous difference for a lot of us who were relatively new to the game. We've had a great run together in Seattle, and I know Ducky has talked at length about how rewarding it's been for him to captain this team, especially at this point in his career. And honestly, I can't even really think about what might happen after his eventual retirement. I just can't. I guess I'm just trying to focus on the now, one game at a time, until the end of this season. That's as far as I'm allowing myself to think."

Of course, on the subject of the Houston Aeros, I must ask about the rumour that seems to circle back around every so often without ever being properly addressed. It's time we all knew, once and for all. Did Connor Whisk, during his time as a free agent, really decline an offer from the Houston Aeros? If so, when? And, perhaps most importantly, why?

"No, I did." Avid Aeros supporters will be pleased to know that Whisk has the decency to look quite apologetic. "It was during my time in the NCAA. I found it a very interesting offer, but ultimately, it just wasn't the right time for me. I'm sure it would've been a journey that was rewarding in other ways than the path I'm on, now. But sometimes, you've got to go with your heart, and my heart was very much still in Massachusetts with the Samwell team. I was very lucky to be able to make that decision and still have such great opportunities to play professionally after graduation. That was never something I took for granted, when I made that call."

Before we run out of coffee, and more importantly out of time, I remember to ask about Whisk’s tattoos. As frequent readers of Sports Illustrated will be well aware, he has two, both on his upper right arm. According to my quite extensive knowledge of Whisk’s frankly limited media appearances, he has never once commented on them.

Evidently, they're not some big secret. Whisk readily rolls up his sleeve.

“The first one, got your back, is a saying from my college hockey team. It’s about always looking out for your teammates on and off the ice. My time on the Samwell team really meant a lot to me, I was fortunate enough to play alongside incredible NCAA players like Eric Bittle, Will Poindexter and Nathan Piper. I learned so much, both about hockey and about myself. A lot of the guys actually got the exact same tattoo at some point, without any of us really talking about it. It caused a bit of unintended comedy at our last reunion.”

The second tattoo, know where we stand, is placed just a few inches below the first.

“That one is more personal. It's about having trust and faith in those I love, about making sure they always know how much they mean to me. I'm a somewhat private person, I guess, but anyone close to me could tell you that it's very important for me to make sure that my feelings are known.”

Private is certainly a word that comes to mind. Whisk doesn't agree to many interviews, and his fans have long given up hope of getting more than one or two TV appearances per season, post-game interviews not included. He's on Twitter, as is the whole Kraken rooster, but his activity is mostly limited to retweets of various sports accounts. His instagram feed? Almost exclusively pictures of his aquarium.

At the mention of aquatic creatures, Whisk’s expression brightens.

“My housemate actually took this amazing picture of our axolotl a while back, I have to show you. Look at this magnificent queen.”

Somewhere between several anecdotes about Whisk’s certifiably adorable pets, and a tangent about his commitment to supporting organisations working towards marine conservation, we do finally run out of time. As we say our goodbyes, I’m reminded once again of Whisk’s polite, proper manners, a stark contrast to his somewhat unfeeling reputation. But if one thing’s for certain, it’s that Connor Whisk is anything but unfeeling. He’s reserved, yes, and perhaps somewhat reluctant to put his innermost thoughts and feelings on display. But he’s certainly an impressively focused athlete, one who has proven time and time again to have an admirable commitment to supporting his teammates, on and off the ice.

I can only imagine the regret that must be felt over in Pittsburgh. Seattle, meanwhile, has every reason to celebrate. It’s really something, given how much Whisk has already achieved, that he still gives off the energy of someone who’s got so far to go. The question is, just how far is that going to get him, in the end?

Will he be remembered only as a key factor in the foundation of Seattle’s so-far successful expansion endeavour, or could he be a true star player in the making, one on the verge of creating a legacy that will last well beyond a time and a place?

Only time will tell.

Whiskey lets the door fall shut behind him. He takes a deep, steadying breath.

There’s a familiar suitcase that’s been left right in the hallway. Whiskey quickly toes off his shoes and walks past it. Ah, there’s a t-shirt. And a bit further, a pair of jeans. Then socks.

Whiskey follows the enticing trail of clothes into the living room. He passes by the mantelpiece, where his Samwell Men's Hockey Captain's plaque sits right in the center, with his Art Ross Trophy from last season over on the side.

Out in the kitchen, he finds a pair of boxer briefs. The double doors out to the patio are wide open. Whiskey eagerly steps through them, his feet quickly carrying him across the patio, over to-

Yes.

Oh, yes. Finally.

Miguel breaks through the surface of the water just as Whiskey makes it to the side of the pool. Immediately, Miguel offers him a wide smile. He looks so perfectly relaxed, back in his pool, in their home. In the nude.

God, he’s so beautiful.

“Water’s warm,” Miguel greets him softly. He trails his fingertips across the surface of it, almost like he’s reacquainting himself with how it feels. “Much more pleasant than the Atlantic, let me tell you.”

“I’ll take that as an invitation.”

“Oh, please. Come here.” Miguel’s tone turns impatient as Whiskey pulls off his shirt, only to take a moment to fold it. “Fuck, just, come here. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too. So much.”

Whiskey willingly abandons his attempts to keep his clothes from getting wrinkles. He makes quick work of his pants and underwear, before he lets himself slip into the water. Immediately, he gathers Miguel up in his arms.

It’s not a languid kiss, by any means. Being separated for eight fucking weeks will do that to you. Miguel kisses Whiskey like he’s been trying to breathe underwater for months, like Whiskey is his fresh gulp of oxygen, his moment of clarity. He kisses Whiskey like Whiskey is his very reason for breathing.

Which is almost funny, given that Miguel has been doing quite a bit of breathing underwater, lately.

“Did you get bulkier?” Miguel murmurs against Whiskey's bare skin. He’s trailing his fingertips along Whiskey’s forearms. “You’re kinda firm, here. I like it.”

“Maybe a little.”

Whiskey kisses the top of his head. He lets his hands travel lower, let's his fingertips glide across Miguel's ribcage over the ink that matches Whiskey's own, four little words with so much meaning. He grins as he reaches Miguel's ass and let's his hands come to an abrupt stop. God, it's been much too long.

“S'okay. You're here, now.” Miguel shivers pleasantly from Whiskey’s touches. “Practice run over?”

“No, Angela called me in. She needed me to sign off on the final draft of that article.”

“Sports Illustrated?” Miguel recalls curiously. “How bad was it?”

“Actually, it was… Fine.” Whiskey thinks back on the feature. “Better than I expected. There’s even a couple of paragraphs where that reporter’s made me sound, I don't know. Oddly sweet.”

“You are sweet.” Miguel smiles fondly. “Is it really so bad, if people find out?”

“I suppose not,” Whiskey agrees reluctantly. He lets himself give Miguel's ass another indulgent squeeze. “And they actually included my off-hand mention of my housemate, this time. So that’s something.”

“Good job,” Miguel says with a flushed grin. “Angela must be so pleased.”

Angela Johanson, PR and communications officer for the Seattle Kraken, had indeed been extremely pleased.

Her strategy had really worked for them, so far, which was why Whiskey wasn’t too inclined to argue with it. “If you want to hide anything from those vultures in the media,” Angela had told him during one of his earliest PR briefings, “You’ve got to do it in plain sight.”

Of course, there had been other parts of Angela’s PR strategies that Whiskey had found himself arguing with. Especially during their very first conversation with one another, before he’d had the chance to inform anyone in Seattle of his situation.

It had been right after the trade – hours after, literally. Whiskey was still in Pittsburgh, both physically and mentally. And, fine, Whiskey had maybe already started to realise that Pittsburgh wasn’t completely right for him. It was a very good team, but they were so swamped with talent, and maybe fighting his way to the top of that rooster should’ve been an exciting, motivating challenge, but it wasn’t. It just wasn’t. Whiskey had spent his whole rookie year feeling like he was working against his own team. He had known there was a fair chance that he would get traded. He wasn’t even entirely opposed to the idea.

But Seattle? The Kraken? A team that, for all intents and purposes, didn’t even so much as exist, yet?

“We’re rolling out a whole media package,” Angela had informed him over the phone – as soon as Whiskey’s very first chit-chat with management was over, they’d switched him right over to PR. “There is an enormous amount of buzz right now, given that you guys are the very first players we’re signing. I’ve got some talking points to go over, and then you’re going live on channel four tonight at-”

“Hold on,” Whiskey had cut in. “It’s, I’m not… I don’t usually do many interviews.”

“Oh, you will now.” Angela actually had the audacity to sound cheerful. “We’re right in the middle of establishing our whole brand, and profiling our players in the media is an incredibly important part of that. I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”

“I’m not too interested in being a… A media profile.” Whiskey had tried his best not to panic completely. Really, he had. “I don’t… I’m fairly protective of my private life.”

“Well. You’ll certainly need to share the overall gist of it.” Angela had sounded almost confused. “We need you to be approachable, Connor. Likeable. You’re young, and very handsome, and incredibly talented. We’ve been hoping to have a broad interest in this franchise, all different age groups and so on, and right now, you’re looking a lot like our best bet to attract some real interest from young girls and women. We’re not going to miss that chance.”

“Look," Whiskey had told her flatly. "I’m going to tell you something in confidence, alright? In confidence. This needs to stay between you and me.”

“Okay? Connor, I’m not sure if-”

“I have a boyfriend.”

Angela had been quiet for well over five seconds.

“Oh,” she’d said. To her credit, there had been something like embarrassment in her tone. “I see. Of course, that’s not an issue. Not at all. We’ve done a lot of groundwork about the values of this organisation, Connor, and I want you to know that you’re going to be completely safe with us.”

“Right. Thank you.”

“And,” Angela had added, just a bit hopefully. “If you would choose to be open about that, I can assure you that you would have our full support to-”

“No,” Whiskey had interrupted. “No. I’m not going to.”

“Right.” Angela had paused. “Okay. We’d really be prepared to back you up, you know. It might cause a bit of a media frenzy, and earn us some frankly disgusting press, but we’d be ready to take that on.”

“Yes, a media frenzy sure seems like the last thing on your wishlist.” Whiskey hadn’t bothered to keep his anger out of his voice. “In any case, I’m not going to cause it for you. I’m extremely protective of my private life, and for very good reason. And I’m not going to go live on channel four, today or any other day.”

“Right, okay," Angela had said quickly. "Okay.”

There was a longer moment of silence.

“I hear you.” Angela’s tone had shifted significantly. Somewhere in the background, Whiskey thought he could hear the sound of papers being shuffled around. “I think… Well, won’t need this anymore. Or that. Hm. Let’s see.”

Whiskey managed something of a breath. He was feeling slightly calmer, although honestly not particularly regretful. Really, he’d be more than prepared to fight the Kraken’s entire PR department, if that’s what it took.

“Look.” Angela had apparently found something to say again. “I’ve seen your tapes, Connor.”

Whiskey frowned slightly.

“Okay?”

“You’re very good.” Angela’s tone was quite careful. “Very, very good. I used to play, you know, back in high school. You’re fast, and you play very smart. I’ve heard the way our head coach talks about your technique, and about your adaptability on the ice. Quite frankly, he won’t shut up about you.”

“Is any of this supposed to make me like you better?”

“That’d be nice,” Angela had said calmly, and okay, she was certainly brave. Whiskey had to give her that. “Most importantly, though, you should take me seriously when I say that we’re fully expecting you to be one of the faces of this franchise.”

“On the ice, sure, but that doesn’t-”

“And,” Angela cut in, “That means the media is going to be all over you. Even if you won’t let us schedule you for appearances, they’re going to find something to write about anyway. Really, I’m sure they’d be thrilled to publish all sorts of assumptions and speculation, especially if there’s nothing else out there to contradict them.”

Whiskey wasn’t sure what to say to that.

Angela actually had a point, was the thing.

“I understand the need to keep your professional and private lives separate,” Angela had continued. “And, Connor, I’d really like to help you with that. Because you’re going to need help. If we could work together and figure out a level of public visibility that you could actually be comfortable with, that would definitely keep a lot of so-called journalists from spinning a narrative that we have no control over.”

“Right.” Whiskey hadn’t needed to hesitate much longer. “I understand that. Honestly, I’ve seen the way certain publications go after some of our big names here in Pittsburgh. I’d hate to face something like that without a solid plan for how to handle it.”

“We don’t want you to feel like you’re facing anything on your own, or without a plan.” Angela had sounded quite hopeful once more. “Connor, I… I’m sorry if I came on too strong, just now, and demanded too much from you. We’re genuinely thrilled that you will be joining us in Seattle. I hope that you and I can figure out a media strategy that actually works for you."

“That sounds good.” Surprisingly, Whiskey actually meant it. “I, uh. This is all extremely important to me. I appreciate that you’re making an effort to see my perspective.”

“Of course.” Angela’s tone had been warm. “My job is ultimately about supporting you, you know.”

“Well.” Whiskey had actually smiled. “I suppose I’m glad to have you on the team, then.”

“That’s my line, isn’t it?” Angela had chirped pleasantly. “So. I’m cancelling with channel four. Let’s talk about alternatives for how to make your first impression.”

Whiskey hadn’t quite understood, back then, just how invaluable Angela was going to prove herself during his time in Seattle.

He also would never have guessed that, over a series of meetings where the two of them had drafted contingency plans for various hypothetical scenarios of Whiskey being outed, as well as quite a few bottles of increasingly expensive red wine, he and Angela would actually end up with something not entirely unlike a friendship.

"Angela says hi, by the way," Whiskey tells Miguel presently. They've made it out of the water – except, Miguel's already dived back in. Whiskey has sat himself down on the edge of the pool, content to stick his feet in and just watch Miguel. "She practically demanded that we have her over for dinner, this weekend, when I mentioned you were coming back home."

"Oh, I'd love to see Angela." Miguel dips beneath the surface, just briefly. "You could make those dark chocolate brownies for dessert."

Whiskey smiles.

"You've missed my desserts."

"Come on, try again." Miguel grins. "You're so close."

"Ah. You've missed my chocolate desserts."

Miguel rolls his eyes. He disappears back underwater with a playful splash.

Whiskey smiles softly as he watches Miguel swim down, down towards the bottom of the pool. He still remembers the first time Miguel took him swimming, remembers how his breath hitched at the sight of Miguel moving in the water, his lithe, flexible body completely in control. It was, and honestly still is, the most beautiful thing Whiskey has ever seen.

There's a picture of the two of them that hangs framed in their bedroom. It was taken the summer before last, during a trip they took to see Miguel's family. Miguel is looking at the camera, and his smile is the one that Whiskey loves the most – it's soft and warm and just so lovely. His brown eyes are wonderfully bright in the sunlight. He looks beautiful, and full of life and love. He looks perfect.

In the picture, Whiskey isn't looking at the camera. Instead, he is looking at Miguel. He's smiling, too, and although his smile isn't anywhere near as radiant as Miguel's, it's definitely gentle and content. He looks happy.

They both look happy.

The picture sometimes makes Whiskey wonder what others see, when they look at the two of them. Miguel, so full of energy and life, always bright with excitement and emotion, easily allowing his feelings to flow freely in any direction like a rippling, playful wave, his world a whole sea of excitement. And next to him, Whiskey. So purposeful, and focused, and bold. Always serious and earnest, making every decision with exact precision like he's carving his whole world out of ice.

And yet they come together so perfectly, almost as if they were always meant to find one another.

Miguel breaks through the surface again, with a bigger splash this time.

"I almost forgot," he says, a little breathlessly. "Whiskey. I do actually use Twitter, you know."

Whiskey frowns slightly.

"I don't."

"And as much as I love you, you're not the only account on there." Miguel rolls his eyes. "You Can Play made a pretty interesting announcement, today. Did you see it?"

Ah. Quickly, Whiskey looks away.

"They've received another one of those big donations," Miguel continues. He sounds delighted. "And still no sender, can you believe it? Funny, how this always happens right after you win another big game."

Whiskey ducks his head, grinning. It's only happened a handful of times, that Whiskey has managed to quietly donate a few thousand dollars to You Can Play without Miguel connecting the dots. Ever since that first time, when You Can Play had announced their deepest gratitude to an anonymous donor the very same week that Whiskey had received his signing bonus, and Miguel had immediately texted Whiskey a string of cash emojis and a question mark, it's become something of a game between them.

"Fine. You win this time."

"I win every time." Miguel grins, too. "I guess I should just be grateful that you haven't splurged too much on another ridiculous welcome-home present. I'm still getting over the shock from last time."

"You love the pool," Whiskey reminds him softly. He clears his throat. "I, uh. I might actually have gotten you something."

Miguel stills.

"Please tell me it's something that fits inside the house, this time."

"Well..." Whiskey knows that it's better if he just sticks to his plan of showing Miguel, when he gets the chance. They've been making loose plans for a trip to Boston, anyhow, and Miguel definitely won't mind going back to the New England Aquarium. Especially when he finds out that they'll be attending the opening ceremony for the aquarium's new, privately funded manatee conservation program. "It's not really something you can take home. But I know you're going to love it."

"Okay, mister." Miguel looks a little bit weary. "God, you've got that look in your eyes. I'm getting nervous."

"You'll love it," Whiskey repeats firmly. He smiles. "And, uh, speaking of love. We got a letter from Dex and Nursey, yesterday."

Miguel's eyebrows shoot up.

"A letter? Don't you guys text, like, a lot?"

"They've finally set a date."

"Oh," Miguel exclaims. His smile widens. "Oh, that is so exciting! We're going to a wedding!"

"We are, yeah." Whiskey smiles, too. "I haven't RSVP'd, yet, but…"

"No, no, of course we're going." Miguel is still beaming. "Wow. Wow. Do you know what colors they're doing? Ooh, and what's their venue?"

"I don't… We can read their invitation together." Whiskey watches Miguel for a moment. "You like weddings."

Miguel pauses briefly.

"I like seeing our friends happy." He smiles. "Whiskey, you know that I don't expect… I've never really thought that I would be married."

"Me neither." Whiskey isn't quite sure how to phrase his next question. "But, just because you didn't think it was in the cards… I mean. That's not necessarily the same thing as, you know. As not wanting to?"

"I guess not," Miguel agrees easily. Still, he shakes his head. "Honestly, it's really not something I've ever dreamed of, the way some people do. My choice of career was always going to be a big commitment for me, one that would certainly make things complicated in the romance department. But then you came along, and we've managed to build this life together, and it's just… It's so perfect. I don't need anything more."

"I know." Whiskey returns his smile. "I love the life we've built together, too. But, I'm just… Well. Actually. I've been thinking."

Slowly, Miguel's expression shifts.

"You have?"

"It's not…" Whiskey begins, only to pause. He needs to get this right. "It's something I'm still thinking about. I don't have all the right answers, yet."

"Okay." Miguel tilts his head. "Whiskey, did… Did something happen? To make you question yourself?"

Whiskey's smile softens. It's really something, how Miguel knows him so well.

"Kind of," he admits. "You know I went home, recently?"

"Yeah. For a funeral, right?"

"Exactly. My one of my uncles passed."

"Right." Miguel is nodding, even though his expression is somewhat confused. "I don't… You said you two weren't very close?"

"No, we weren't," Whiskey agrees. "But still, I… It got me thinking."

"About marriage?"

"About death." Whiskey almost smiles when Miguel's eyebrows shoot up. "I promise this isn't constantly on my mind, okay? It's just something I've kept coming back to, recently. Something I haven't ever thought about before."

"Okay." Miguel watches him in apparent confusion. "Whiskey, I'm sorry. You've lost me."

Whiskey takes a deep breath.

"When we die, I want them to bury me next to you."

Miguel is quiet for a moment.

"Oh," he says. His tone is careful. "I… Oh."

"And I don't think that would be possible," Whiskey continues. He actually smiles. "Unless… You know."

"Wait. Really?" Miguel actually manages to sound equal parts serious, and reproachful. It's really quite something. "Connor. I may never have dreamed of the perfect proposal, but if this is your idea of one, death might greet you a whole lot sooner than you think."

"No, it's not," Whiskey says quickly. "It's… I haven't finished thinking about this, not yet. I mostly feel like I don't really know what I should want."

"Maybe what you should want isn't the right question." Miguel sounds slightly more calm. He pauses to actually think for a moment. "You know, I'm… I hadn't really thought about that, either. But you… I think you have a point. You really do."

For a moment, they just look at one another.

"Well," Whiskey says lightly. It feels like something significant has shifted between them. It feels big. "I guess we'll see?"

"Yeah." Miguel seems to have found his smile again. "It wouldn't have to be an extravagant affair. You'd hate that."

"I would," Whiskey agrees. "But, at the same time… We wouldn't necessarily need to keep it just between you and me."

"I like that." Miguel tilts his head again. "You know, if… If we did? The world would find out, eventually. When we're gone, if nothing else."

"Yeah. I know."

"I don't know how I feel about that. I'll need some more time." Miguel's tone is unusually thoughtful. "But you would be okay with it?"

"I… I guess." Whiskey pauses for a moment. Suddenly, he remembers everything Angela's told him about the importance of taking control over the narrative. And honestly? Just like always, she has a point. "Except, if that is the path we take, maybe we should actually make sure that we have a say in how this story gets told? Not anytime soon, but, I don't know. At some point down the line."

"Right." Miguel is nodding, even though he still looks quite contemplative. "That's probably not a decision we should rush into."

"There's no need. We can figure it out at whatever pace feels right." Whiskey offers him another smile. "Thank you, by the way."

"For what?"

"For listening to me. For going through all of this with me."

"That's not something you need to thank me for." Miguel's smile softens into the one Whiskey loves best. "It's, you know. Sickness and health, good times and bad times. No matter what we tell the world, we both know that's what this is."

"Yeah," Whiskey agrees softly.

Sometimes, he still can't believe that they got here in the end. He smiles, helplessly.

"That's right. You're exactly right."

71 notes · View notes

bigbrotherlouis · 3 years

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ok ok i don't have any specific questions but tell us about some hockey/fic thoughts about whichever player(s) are currently living rent free in your brain

i always have many many many many fic thoughts in my brain and i’m trying to think of one i haven’t shared with you yet!! i think a lot about an au that is more a premise and less of a plot, so i don’t think i’ll ever write it, that me and @cactusandfir talked about a while ago.

fate is hockey fate of course but i kinda wonder if the fates mixed up the 2015 draft because like connor and dylan and mitch seem destined for each other’s teams. connor could’ve done without the weight of a franchise, and mitch could’ve done with a place far away from home, and dylan could’ve done with a team where he knows people (and a team that had a young presence) already. what i’m saying is that i think a lot about a world where connor went to arizona, dylan went to toronto, and mitch went to edmonton, and how it feels like it could’ve been more of a fit. phoenix isn’t a hockey town, and i think it would do a lot for connor’s nerves to not have to play where gretzky’s name is so entwined. that legacy is heavy!! meanwhile, staying closer to home and playing on such a young n talented line seems right up dylan’s alley, plus he’s got travis dermott there to be a friend. on the total opposite side of the spectrum, mitch should’ve gotten distance a little. i know playing for a hometown team is a big amazing thing but what if!! he could’ve gotten to stretch his wings a little more!! what could’ve happened!! there is no plot so i won’t write it but it’s fun to play around in

OH. you’ll appreciate this one. wjc werewolves (cc: @workingforitallthetime)!! i was reading about how the canada team spent like 52 days together and had the whole rollercoaster of emotions playing the tournament, losing the tournament, and then almost immediately flying away, and just like. that’s SO MUCH. after almost TWO MONTHS of that bonding, to just LEAVE after such a LOSS (or a win). OUCHIE. SEPARATION ANXIETY. WHAT IF WE ADDED WOLFPACK DYNAMICS INTO IT.

what if they all turned at the beginning of quarantine, so they all bonded together as a pack because that’s what you need as a baby wolf, and that’s who was there, and it’s good team building anyway. but it’s all fun and games until you have to leave each other, and then it’s very very bad. in my mind, i borrow the plane the kings/ducks commissioned for their six prospects and reappropriate that idea for the players i decided to learn about after the tournament was over. it’s fiction and it’s my fiction so: we’re gonna put dylan cozens, bowen byram, kirby dach (i KNOW he was injured and didn’t go but again: fiction plus he was there for some of the bonding), cole caufield, cam york, and trevor zegras all on a private jet together as new, adrenaline-filled wolves and see what happens. what happens is they fight a little, because the canadians are sad and the americans are happy and they all have a lot of emotions they don’t know what to do with, and then end up sleeping in a big puppy pile together. i am at peace.

#i wrote this instead of the last scene of my wip oops #also don't know if it makes sense??#oh well #hockey #hockey bros #meghan #fic talk #fic ideas #moondoggiestyle #long post #wjc

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sincerelyreidburke · 4 years

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PLEASE ELABORATE ON QUINN AS EVAN HANSEN OMG

SAY NO MORE!!!!!!!! :D

Bless you for sending this ask. You’re enabling me.

I need you all to know that Quinn as Evan Hansen has been taking up a large section of real estate in my brain for the past week. So. There’s that.

- Anyway, the Samwell drama club selects it as their spring musical during the crickets’ freshman year. Now, technically I know that this was 2018, and that the show probably wasn’t actually available for licensing that early, but we’re going to pretend that in the omgcp universe it was. So. They pick the show.

- Quinn knows he wants to audition, but here’s the thing. In high school theatre, he was never exactly intimidated by other actors, but coming to college sort of changes the game just a little— only because he is filled with the immense need to impress as a freshman. Quinn bases just a little too much of himself on whether or not other people approve of his performance— whether academic, or theatrical, or social, you get the picture.

- So anyway, he very much plans to audition, but he doesn’t think there’s a chance in hell he’s getting cast. He resolves to be on the crew instead, fully prepared to volunteer himself to the costuming department once the list comes back and he’s inevitably not on it.

- Spoiler alert; he gets cast!!!!!! I need you to know that he auditions with Waving Through A Window, because Quinn Cooper goes hard. He never explicitly tells the production staff that he’s going out for the lead, but he walks off the stage after the audition and the staff look at each other and they’re like, WHELP, that’s Evan.

- (By the way, leading up to that audition, he is super nervous. Quinn’s nerves manifest as him getting grouchy, so he’s a bit irritable for the few days leading up to it, and Nando can tell. Nando is patient and knows how to deal with this, because by the time this audition rolls around, they’ve been dating for about two months. Quinn does a lot of practicing and going over stuff in front of him, and also Nando definitely makes him do a chill night at some point where he makes him tea and they snuggle and it’s soft as all hell. Okay, anyways.)

- He doesn’t get a callback. He is confident that this is because he bombed the audition and he is not being cast. Other people who have become his friends do get callbacks, because they’re trying to decide on those supporting roles, but by the time the day of the cast list posting rolls around, he has landed neatly in the acceptance stage of grief. He’s ready to go to costuming and sign himself up to help.

- Then. The day arrives.

- The Samwell drama club has an unspoken agreement that nobody spoils each other’s parts for them, because people can’t all get to the cast list posting outside the auditorium at the same time. What they will do, however, is, once they see the list, text their friends who are on it to go look at the list!!!!!! go see the cast!!!!!!!!!!!! go to the auditorium!!!!!!!!!!!!

- So Quinn has a busy morning. He has class and then a lab, so it’s late lunchtime when he gets a moment to be free and walk across campus to look at the list. He asks Nando to meet him there, because he kind of wants moral support. Meanwhile, his phone is being bombarded by people who have already seen the list.

Quinn go see the list!

dude it’ll be worth your while go see the cast list

GO 2 THE BOARD

- Ford even texts Nando. Please tell your boyfriend to go look at that cast list ASAP, he needs to see it. They don’t tell Nando that Quinn got cast, because Nando wouldn’t be able to keep that secret for shit.

- Nando brings him Annie’s. It’s his standard order, hot earl gray tea with milk and cane sugar. Nando also gets himself one of those mocha frappes because the boy has a serious Annie’s addiction.

- Nando gets to the auditorium first. He can see the board where the list is posted, but he doesn’t go look because he wants Quinn to see it first. Instead, he sits on a bench. A few random performing arts majors probably see him, this huge dude in a Samwell Hockey sweatshirt, and hiss because why is there an athlete in their auditorium. (This is literally High School Musical.)

- Anyway. Quinn finally shows up. He’s nervous and he’s been itching to get over to the auditorium all day. He sees Nando and asks if he’s looked. Nando shakes his head.

- Quinn takes a long, therapeutic breath. He walks to the cast list. He is ready to accept his defeat.

- Wait— wait— wait wait wait wait— what?!?!????!

- The only reason Quinn does not physically fall over when he sees his name at the top of the list is because Nando catches him.

- And then they do a huge celly in the middle of the auditorium lobby.

- Holy crap, this is getting long and he only just got cast. Sorry. Okay, let’s talk.

- He’s so good. Hold on, I have to cry. He’s so good????? He has a lovely voice and he’s such a good actor and he just... makes the perfect Evan? Real-life Quinn is not socially anxious like that, but he’s just so serious about connecting with the characters he plays that he takes it upon himself to get very in his head, and he just... why am I crying?

- I’ve been thinking about Quinn singing For Forever for the past two days straight. Especially the long high riff at the very end on all we SEE is LIIIIIIGHT—

- I also somehow came up with the idea of Rhodey playing Connor Murphy, but that can’t happen because a.) Rhodey can’t sing or dance well enough, and b.) the hockey schedule would never allow it. I think I had this thought because Rhodey has that Connor Murphy aesthetic.

- Rhodey makes Quinn practice Sincerely Me with him, though, so he can do the Connor parts and live vicariously through him.

- I’m sorry, but Sincerely Me is so fucking funny. I laugh my ass off every time I listen to the recording. This is just an aside.

- Quinn is still a little intimidated by some seniors in the cast, because there is a small handful of people who are pissed that a freshman got the lead. Not only that, but Quinn can be precocious? Quinn is not an asshole, in any way, shape, or form, but he’s just... he’s Quinn. We love him. And although he can be a fussy person, he’s never a high-maintenance actor.

- I can see him in the costume so well. If someone drew this, I would physically ascend. I don’t think I would even know what to do with myself. By the way, his performance day outfit is peak fashion and I’ll tell you about it if you want.

- I could make a whole other post about the actual performances, so hit me up if you want to hear more about this, because trust me, there is more to say. There’s an entire scene that’s been in my head all day about when Nando comes to see him and then they reunite in the lobby after the show on opening night.

- Apparently we’re all in our feelings tonight about DEH Quinn.

Thank you for this extremely enabling ask. I owe you my life. I also will definitely write fic about this at some point. But as long as the asks keep coming, I will also ramble on my blog about it.

Ask me anything about the crickets and company!!!!!

#oc taddies #crickets #this is the BESt ask #aaaaaahh #quinn theatre hours #mini quinny

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highbuttonsports · 2 years

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The Ever-Shifting The Hart Trophy Race

In the first months of this NHL season, the battle for the league's most valuable player was constantly changing hands. For a while, the Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin seemed to have a stranglehold on both the Vezina and the Hart as he boasted an incredible .937 SV% (save percentage) through his first 40 games but has since fallen off since mid-March with a .906 SV% in his last seven games played.

Although Shesterkin could very well still earn a nomination, the focus has since shifted to the seemingly inhuman point production of Connor McDavid and the unbelievable goal-scoring pace of Auston Matthews.

McDavid has continued to play the best hockey of his career this season, currently sitting at 42 goals and 66 assists for 108 points in just 71 games played this season. It’s his fourth time eclipsing the 100 point-plateau and would certainly be his fifth if it weren't for the 2019-20 season being cut short for reasons we’re all familiar with.

McDavid is currently on pace to score 123 points this season. An incredible feat that will surely net him the Art Ross trophy, but points aren't everything when it comes to providing value to your team.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, Auston Matthews is not so quietly making Maple Leafs history. He has recently broken the franchise record with 58 goals in just 67 games played and is now on pace to net 66 goals on the season, a feat that hasn't been achieved since Alex Ovechkin in his third year.

Matthews has all but run away with the Rocket Richard trophy, which would make him the first back-to-back winner since Ovechkin in 18-19 and 19-20.

Once again we reach the dilemma that we reach every year when discussing the Hart trophy. What makes a player valuable to his team?

A good criterion that is often brought to the forefront of this conversation is a purely hypothetical one. If this player were taken away from his respective team, how would that team do without him?

It also raises its own question. Should we really be judging a player's value based on a hypothetical scenario that has yet to come to fruition? Or should this trophy be based solely on what we can truly measure?

For example, many fans would make the argument that if you were to take away Connor McDavid’s goals this season, the team would only have 213 goals on the season taking them from 6th in goals for to 19th, just above the Vancouver Canucks who currently sit at 5th place in the Pacific and 18th in the NHL.

So looking at his goal contribution, taking McDavid away from the Oilers would likely result in that hypothetical team missing the playoffs. However, should McDavid sustain a significant injury that would keep him out of the lineup long-term, we can’t assume that the rest of the team would behave the same way with him healthy.

Hypothetical scenarios such as this one are, and can only ever be pale imitations of real life. When we’re contemplating a scenario like this one, we try to consider all possible variables that could affect the way the team would play. We would have to look at overall team morale, consider the emotional effect the absence of the team captain would have on each individual player, possible injuries that may or may not happen as a result of increased ice-time, and every other possible effect that losing McDavid would have on the players in the locker room.

If McDavid were to sustain some kind of injury that would keep him out of the lineup for the entire year, not only would his teammates behave differently with their captain absent, but management would also behave differently. Would Ken Holland still fire Dave Tippet? Would he still be able to sign Evander Kane? Would he aquire Brett Kulak at the trade deadline? Would he make other moves with an additional $12.5 million in cap space?

Would the increased ice time take a toll on Leon Draisaitl? What if he sustained a season-ending injury as well? See where we end up when we entertain these unrealistic hypothetical scenarios? We end up with only more questions. Questions that are, by their very nature, impossible to answer. A player’s deservedness for a trophy cannot be based on a hypothetical scenario that is impossible to fairly determine.

Let’s focus on judging players based on statistics we can actually measure.

As their respective player cards show (courtesy of @JFresh on Twitter), both players are offensive superstars who provide immense value to their teams in the offensive zone and on the rush.

Neither player kills penalties, so those two categories seem to even out, but the most noticeable difference between the two cards is the single red box on McDavid’s side. EV defence measures through WAR(wins above replacement) how effectively a player limits on-ice scoring chances against his own team. In this case, Matthews is clearly the better defensive player.

There’s nothing wrong with McDavid’s focus on offence as it very well contributes to him being able to produce more points for his team, but if we’re talking about value, true value comes from a player who can contribute at both ends of the ice and in all situations.

If a player's coach can rely on him to score goals and put up points, that’s great. But if that same coach can rely on a player to score goals and defend a lead, that’s true value.

Both players are generational talents and both players deserve to be nominated for the Hart trophy this season. But, by metrics we can actually measure and not false hypothetical scenarios, Auston Matthews deserves it just a little bit more.

-Dave

#hockey #nhl news #sports #toronto #leafsforever

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mitchbeck · 4 years

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CANTLON'S CORNER: HOCKEY NEWS AND NOTES VOLUME 8

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - The suspension of hockey continues though the NHL may resume the regular season or go straight to a playoff format in an attempt to conclude the 2019-20 season. The AHL, meanwhile, is on the verge of announcing the cancelation of the rest of the regular season and Calder Cup playoffs. COLLEGE PLAYER SIGNINGS The New York Rangers' goaltending situation got a bit more interesting with the signing of their sixth-round (174th overall) pick in 2016, Tyler Wall. The former UMass-Lowell senior was signed to a two-year, entry-level deal ($925K-NHL/$70K-AHL). The organization now has six goaltenders under contract starting with Henrik Lundqvist, who is entering the final year of his contract that pays him $8.5 million. Alexander Georgiev will become a Restricted Free Agent (RFA) in 2020-21. He's proven he is more than NHL-ready. Igor Shesterkin enters the second year of his two year deal and would become an RFA in the 2021-22 season. Shesterkin spent half of this season in Hartford where he was superb in net and brought the Wolf Pack to first place for at least three months. The team then struggled mightily after his recall. The team dropped to a .500 record. Add to the list, second-year pro, and former UConn Husky, Adam Huska. He will enter the final year before he hits RFA status. Then there is J.F. Berube. He was acquired in a late-season trade for his fellow goalie, Thomas McCollum, with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. He will be a UFA at the end of June. Nobody knows for certain how this entire thing will shake out in the end. The NHL salary cap for next year was originally pegged to land between $84-$88 million, however, with the COVID-19 pandemic and other external factors, that number is now in a complete state of flux with the entire worldwide economic landscape having been dramatically altered. The cap could potentially drop below $80 million. That would force all of the NHL's teams to do some serious refinancing of its payroll structure. On the goalie front, the Rangers would be faced with even tougher choices than they already were going to have. Wall, 22, from Leamington, Ontario, appeared in 32 games with the UMass-Lowell Riverhawks (HE) this season. He posted an 18-8-6 record, along with a 2.10 GAA, a .931 save percentage, and two shutouts. He was named to the Hockey East Third All-Star Team this season, which was the conference’s deepest position. Darien’s Spencer Knight (Boston College) and Hobey Baler finalist Jeremy Swayman (Maine) were the two in front of him. Wall appeared/started in 32 of UMass Lowell's 34 games this season. He earned all of his team's wins during the season and established a collegiate career-best in save percentage, Wall was tied for ninth in NCAA Division I in save percentage. In addition, Wall ranked eighth in the NCAA in saves at (924). His 336 saves in either the third period or overtime were the third-most in the country. This past season, Wall's stinginess saw him allow just two goals or fewer in 22 of his 32 appearances, including one goal or fewer in eight different appearances. He was named the Hockey East Defensive Player of the Week on six different occasions and served as an alternate captain, becoming the first Riverhawk goaltender to wear either a 'C' or an 'A' on his jersey since Dwayne Roloson did so in 1993-94. Wall stands 6'3" and weighs 214lbs. He covers the lower part of the net very well. Wall appeared in 103 career collegiate games over four seasons and amassed a college career record of 58-34-10, a 2.28 GAA, a .918 save percentage and nine shutouts. Wall's 58 career wins with UMass Lowell are the most by a goaltender since the school began playing in Division 1. He broke Roloson's record of 51 wins. He established a collegiate career-best in appearances (37), wins (26), and GAA (2.06) as a freshman in 2016-17, and he established a UMass-Lowell record for wins by a rookie goaltender, previously held by current Winnipeg Jet, Connor Hellebuyck. Wall also helped UMass-Lowell win the Hockey East Championship in 2016-17, and was named to the Hockey East All-Tournament Team. He posted a 2.10 GAA or better in three of his four collegiate seasons. IN OTHER SIGNINGS After four years at Penn State (Big 10), Peyton Jones signs a deal with the Colorado Eagles for 2020-21. Yanni Kaldis Cornell University (ECACHL) signs with Bakersfield (ECHL). Along with Wall, that makes 93 Division I players who have signed North American professional contracts. Including European deals, 150 collegiate players in total have turned professional. Hockey East saw 21 players turn pro in North America and the Big 10 has 20. They are followed by the NCHC with 17. The WCHA has 13, while the ECACHL has 12 and the AHA with nine. Penn State has the most signees with seven. They are followed by Western Michigan (NCHC) with six, Ferris State (WCHA) with five, and Hockey East's Boston University and Vermont with four each. Leading the 39 Division III signees is Northland College (NCHA) who've had four players put their names on contracts. Matt Tugnutt of Sacred Heart University becomes the 13th Division I grad transfer and the second one for Providence College Friars (HE) in goal. Jason Herter, Assistant Coach with the two-time defending NCAA champions, the University of Minnesota-Duluth, has stepped down to take another position in hockey but has not declared if it was in pro or college. Scott Morrow (Darien) just finished at Shattuck’s St. Mary in Minnesota, had his USHL rights traded from the Youngstown Phantoms to the Fargo (ND) Force for next season. In 2021-22, Morrow starts playing for North Dakota (NCHC). He was also drafted by the Val D’ Foreurs in the 2nd round 21st overall in the 2018 QMJHL Draft. NHL SEASON The NHL wants to minimize the loss of revenue to the escrow fund which they and the players share as a part of the CBA agreement. The NHL is trying to salvage the regular season and the Stanley Cup playoffs a massive revenue generator. Presently, they're trying to find COVID-19 light cities to re-start and complete the remaining 14-15 games left in the regular season. There is also talk that they could jump to just a 12-team per conference playoff format. It is unclear which way they are going to go. Also being discussed is the recall of AHL players from each team's affiliates as a taxi squad once the AHL season is officially canceled. However, there are some serious issues regarding contracts that need to be worked out. “It comes down that the NHL is trying to preserve the sponsorships and the TV ad revenue to minimize the losses. It's paramount to the league right now, however, we’re getting close to fish-or-cut-bait time for the NHL and AHL because the clock is ticking to a new fiscal year of business that starts by the end of June,” commented a long-time hockey source. The NHL isn’t alone in trying to complete their seasons. Both Ukraine and Spain have tentative plans to finish their playoffs in September. Ukraine still has the semifinals and finals while Spain has just its championship round. CONGRATULATIONS Former Hartford Whaler and Rangers' defenseman, James Patrick, will be inducted into the University of North Dakota's sports Hall-of-Fame. Patrick was a first-round pick (9th overall) by the Rangers in the 1981 Draft. While with UND, he led the Fighting Sioux, as they were known then, to an NCAA title in his freshmen year and he was an all-tournament selection in the Frozen Four. Patrick was on the WCHA Conference's second-team All-Star. He was the conference Rookie-of-the-Year and won a WJC gold medal with Canada. In his sophomore season, he was a first-team WCHA All-Star, was first-team NCAA All America, and was a Hobey Baker finalist. Patrick played in 1,280 NHL games with the Rangers, Whalers, the Calgary Flames, and Buffalo Sabres. Upon retiring, he spent seven years with Buffalo and then three years with the Dallas Stars as an assistant coach. Patrick is currently entering his fourth year as head coach with the Winnipeg Ice (WHL), a franchise moved from Cranbrook, BC (Kootenay) two years ago. His nephew Nolan is a member of the Philadelphia Flyers. IN OTHER COLLEGE NEWS Three weeks ago, The Vermont Catamounts saw long-time coach, Bob Gaudet, announce his retirement after 23 years. Todd Woodcroft becomes just their fifth coach in Vermont school history. This week the University sadly mourns the passing of their first Division I coach, Jim Cross (1965-1984), who shepherded them in from the Division II level. Cross, 87 passed away due to COVID-19 complications. Cross coached Vermont to three ECAC Division II championships including back-to-back titles in 1973-1974 with a conference record of 37-1. He was named National Division II Coach-of-the-Year in 1974. Cross help the Catamounts transition to Division I hockey in the ECAC in 1974 getting into third place in their first season. His 19-year coaching mark was 280-251-9. A BU grad, Cross was honored by the Terriers in 1975 with its Harry Cleverly award given to alumni who excel in coaching. Cross was inducted into the University of Vermont Athletic Sports Hall-of-Fame in 1996 and just last year, the Hobey Baker Memorial Foundation named him recipient of the “Legend of College Hockey” award. He will posthumously be inducted into the Vermont Sports Hall-of-Fame later this year. Among the players he coached in Division I included, former New Haven Nighthawk, John Glynne (Hamden) and Kirk McCaskill, who had a much better professional baseball career with the California Angels (nee Anaheim Angels) for eleven years as a pitcher, after one season with the Sherbrooke Jets (AHL). He was one of the few hockey players drafted in two sports hockey (Winnipeg) and baseball. USHL DRAFT On Monday and Tuesday, the USHL conducted Phase I and Phase II of its annual draft. In Phase I, in the 2nd round, (26th overall), Connor Welsh (Greenwich/Brunswick Prep) was selected by the Sioux City Musketeers. Andrew DellaDonna from the US Selects Academy at South Kent Prep U-15 team was taken by Cedar Rapids Roughriders in the 4th round (55th overall). He is an Ohio State (Big 10) commit for 2022-23. In the fourth round (57th overall), the Fargo (ND) Force took Cam Knuble, the son of former Ranger, Mike Knuble, who played with the Fox Motor Sports U-15 (T1EHL). His older brother, Cam Knuble, just finished his junior career with the Muskegon Lumberjacks. The elder Knuble was his head coach and an assistant coach with Grand Rapids this past season. In the fifth round (63rd overall) Cedar Rapids selected John Emmons Jr. from the Oakland (MI) Grizzlies U-15 (HPHL). He is the son of John Emmons Sr. (New Canaan/Yale University) who was an assistant coach of his team this season. Lucas DiChiara (Fairfield), of the nationally renowned Shattuck St. Mary’s program in Minnesota, was taken in the ninth round (131st overall) by Muskegon. He is not currently college committed. In Phase II on Tuesday, Tabor Heaslip of the Avon Old Farms Winged Beavers was taken in the fourth round (56th overall) by Sioux City. He is currently slated to play for the UCONN Huskies (HE) in the fall. Five spots later, Matt Crasa from the Selects Academy at South Kent Prep, went in the fourth round (61st overall) was taken by Fargo. He skated for the Cowichan Valley Capitals (BCHL) this year with 44 points in 51 games and is slated to skate with the Sacred Heart University Pioneers (AHA) in the fall. In the ninth round (125th overall), Zach Tonelli of Taft Prep (Watertown) was taken by Cedar Rapids. He is the youngest son of New York Islanders great, John Tonelli. He is Brown University (ECACHL) commit 2021-22 where his older brother Jordan, also a Taft grad, will start in the fall. Ten picks later, David Andreychuk of Gunnery Prep (Washington, CT) went to the Waterloo Black Hawks. He is a St. Lawrence University (ECACHL) 2021-22 commit. The sons ex-Hartford Wolf Pack and Bridgeport Sound Tiger, David Karpa, were selected one round apart. In the 15th round (223rd overall) Zakary Karpa was taken by the Waterloo Black Hawks. He played for the US National Development Team (USNDTP) in the USHL, the US National U-18 Team. He's committed to the Princeton Tigers (ECACHL) in the fall. Younger brother Jakob Karpa went in the 16th round (242nd overall) to the Omaha Lancers from the Victory Honda U-18 (T1EHL/Midget) team. He is slated to skate for the Grande Prairie Storm (AJHL) in the fall. Lastly, Ryan Vellluci, the son of ex-Whaler Mike, the current coach of the Wilkes Barre/Scranton Penguins, was taken in the 18th round (262nd overall) by Muskegon from the Detroit Little Caesars U-18 (T1EHL) squad. He was taken by Saginaw Spirit in the 2018 OHL Priority Draft in the 13th round 242th overall. The other US junior league, the Tier II NAHL, will have its Supplemental Draft on May 12th. 81 players will be drafted (three per team) and an extra tender contract can be offered to one player per team the next day. The NAHL has pushed its main draft to July 21st. The QMJHL Draft will be conducted remotely and is scheduled for early next month. The first round will be on Friday, June 5th, with rounds 2-14 the following day. The U.S. Draft will be Monday, June 8th. The QMJHL released its CSB’s final list of available players and there are quite a few Connecticut kids listed as possibilities. A slew from the Greenwich-based prep school, Brunswick School. John Burdett, leading scorer, Andon Cerbone (Stamford), and John Gammage are on that list. Jakub Teply (Stamford) is scheduled to play for the Powell River RiverKings (BCHL) in the fall, and Beanie Richter, the youngest son of former Ranger great, Mike Richter. From Greenwich HS's Charlie Zolin and William Richards (Westport) from Staples HS, Peter Ungar (Stamford) of the CT Whalers U-15 (AYHL), Arthur Smith (Farmington) from the US Selects Academy at South Kent Prep and Daniel Lurie (Westminster Prep (Simsbury). Nicholas LeClaire (Colchester), a grad of Xavier HS (Middletown), who is now at Northfield Prep (MAPREP) and Charlie Leddy (Fairfield) of Avon Old Farms, who is slated to be with the USNDTP U-17 team in the fall and a Boston College (HE) commit in 2022-23, Aidan Cobb (Ridgefield) from Kent Prep and a Cornell University (ECACHL) commit for 2020-21, Charles Andriole (Branford) of Loomis Chaffe (Windsor), and incoming Taft Prep (Watertown) player, Isaiah Green (Sandy Hook) are also expected to be selected. The CHL Import Draft usually held a week after the NHL Draft is in a state of suspension because of COVID-19. TRANSACTIONS Alexander D. Tertyshny (Choate Prep), after playing with three teams last season, Belye Medvedi Chelyabinsk (Russia-MHL), Corpus Christi (NAHL), and Northeast (NAHL), heads to AIC-American International College (AHA) in the fall. Tertyshny is the son of former NHL’er, Dmitri Tertyshny, who played just one season with Philadelphia but died in a tragic boating accident in the off-season in Kelowna, BC on July 23, 1999. Justin Danforth (Sacred Heart University/Sound Tigers), departs Lukko Rauma (Finland-FEL) to Vityaz Podolsk (Russia-KHL) for next season. Heading to Europe will be Swedish defenseman Pontus Ahberg from the Toronto Marlies to Traktor Chelyabinsk (Russia-KHL) after playing for six years in North America. Anton Wedin leaves Rockford/Chicago (NHL) for HV 71 (Sweden-SHL). According to European media reports, several players are in the last stages of contract negotiations and are waiting on the call of the AHL season to be officially be canceled before making the announcement. Mikhail Vorobyov of Lehigh Valley (Philadelphia Flyers) is said to be heading to Salavat Yalaev (Russia-KHL). Josh Persson Bakersfield Condors (Edmonton Oilers)/San Diego Gulls, and Gustav Forsling from the Charlotte Checkers are both to be going to EHC Biel/Bienne (Switzerland-LNA). Christian Folin Laval Rocket (Montreal Canadiens) to Frolunda HC (Sweden-SHL) and Henrik Borgstrom, Springfield Thunderbirds (Florida Panthers) to Jokerit Helsinki (Finland-KHL) are all still pending. That would make eleven players in total, with 10 of the 31 AHL teams to have at least one player sign overseas for 2020-21. Ex-Pack goalie, Miika Wiikman, who played last year with the Coventry Blaze (England-EIHL) and with HC Anglet (France-FREL) last year, announced his retirement due to injuries. Anton Sundin, the son of year one ex-Wolf Pack, Ronnie Sundin, after playing with three teams last year, signs with Halmstad HC (Sweden Division-1). Henrik Samuelsson, the son of ex-Whalers great, Rangers player, and an assistant coach with the Wolf Pack and Avon Old Farms, Ulf Samuelsson, leaves Manchester (England-EIHL) and signs a deal with Saryarka Karaganda (Russia-VHL). Ulf is still listed as the head coach for Leksands IF (Sweden-SHL) and a pro scout for Seattle (NHL). The youngest brother, Adam Samuelsson, is with Sudbury (OHL), and the eldest brother, Philip, is said to be close to signing with HK Riga (Latvia-KHL). Ex-New Haven Nighthawks and Ranger, Glen Hanlon, leaves DVTK (Hungary-EBEL) for Krefeld (Germany-DEL) as their new head coach. Former Beast of New Haven defenseman, Jaroslav Spacek, is an assistant coach of HC Plzen (Czech Republic-CEL) and an assistant with the Czech National Team program, saw his eldest son, David Spacek, who plays for HC Plzen U-16/U-18 squads and for the Czech Republic U-17 Team last season. Read the full article

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caniacwrites · 4 years

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NHL Playoff Preview - East Play-in Matchup 3/4: CAR vs NYR

Hello, and welcome back to my series preview each of the upcoming matchups for the qualifying round of the 2020 NHL playoffs! Today, we’re taking a gander at the third matchup in the Eastern Conference, the Carolina Hurricanes vs the New York Rangers.

So here we are: the write-up I’ve simultaneously been looking forward to and dreading. I feel like I should include a disclaimer here, that I grew up in Raleigh and I’ve been a Hurricanes fan all my life. I’m going to try to be as unbiased as possible (while also not overcompensating so much that I end up conveying an opposite bias), but it’s a tricky balance to strike. Also, by dint of being a Canes fan, there’s also the simple fact that I know more about Carolina than I do any other team, so I’ll likely end up giving them more focus. Still, I’ll do my best to keep it relatively even.

Ok, so first off, there’ve been a lot of jokes being made about how Carolina was one of two teams to vote against the Return to Play plan as it was proposed, that they did that because they were scared of playing against the Rangers. There was more to it than that, which I won’t go into here, but also... the joke works because it’s kind of true.

The Canes have lost 19 of their last 20 games at Madison Square Garden including both this year, en route to dropping all 4 games of the season series against the Rangers. Henrik Lundqvist has been a Cane-Killer his entire career, and unfortunately, his two young protegées Alex Georgiev and Igor Shesterkin both seem to have inherited that trait from him. So many of the Hurricanes’ recent losses to New York that I can remember were almost single-handedly won by the Rangers’ goaltender, whoever it happened to be on that particular night. And in the playoffs, running up against a hot goalie is a death sentence.

New York

Of course, the Rangers have a lot else to talk about, too. FA signing from Columbus Artemi Panarin is easily a leading candidate for the Hart with his 63 assists - tied for 2nd in the league with Connor McDavid - and 95 points. He’s shattered his previous career high by 8 points in 10 fewer games, and was on track to record 110+ in a full-length season. Mika Zibanejad has benefitted enormously from playing with Panarin, also setting a new career high in points in 25 fewer games. He’s also one of just five players in the NHL to score 40+ goals.

Panarin and Zibanejad may be the superstars, but their lineup isn’t top-heavy. The Rangers have seven players who have scored at least 40 points - two of whom are defensemen, Adam Fox and Tony DeAngelo - and four who have at least 50. Chris Kreider and Pavel Buchnevich, two speedy, strong forwards, both had great seasons, and will need to continue to be key factors for the Rangers to make a deep playoff run.

New York is still a pretty young lineup, though, and it remains to be seen if they can buckle down and play playoff hockey. If they want to succeed, they’re going to need a little more depth production from guys like 2019 2nd overall pick Kaapo Kakko and Philip Chytil.

Carolina

Like the Rangers, the Hurricanes also have a good balance of point-producing stars and bottom 6 depth. Sebastian Aho finished the shortened season with a career-high 38 goals in 68 games, up from 30 in the full 82 game season last year. If not for the virus can cancellation, he would’ve easily eclisped 40 and likely even gotten to at least 45. Even so, he was tied for 20th in the NHL in points and tied for 6th in goals.

Aho’s fellow Finn Teuvo Teravainen has also continued to be a consistent producer with 63 points.

Andrei Svechnikov, the #2 pick in the 2018 draft the year before Kakko, has also really begun to come into his own this season. He set career highs in all three offensive categories with 24 goals and 37 assists for 61 points in just 68 games, obliterating his rookie year totals of 20 goals and 17 assists for 37 points in the full 82 games.

Carolina is one of only five teams with 3 or more 60+ point scorers. The other four? Edmonton (Draisaitl, McDavid, Nugent-Hopkins), Tampa Bay (Kucherov, Stamkos, Point), Toronto (Marner, Matthews, Tavares), and Winnipeg (Connor, Scheifele, Wheeler, Laine). I don’t know about you, but I think that’s some pretty good company.

Carolina’s depth scoring has been a slight problem at times, but the acquisition of Vincent Trochek at the deadline and the return of Justin Williams were already starting to improve that in the short time before the season was cancelled.

There’s also going to be a lot of attention on the Canes’ goaltending duo Petr Mrazek and James Reimer. They’ve been very good at times but have also struggled for consistency, and it’s going to be vital that they be able to backstop the Canes from the crease.

Injuries

I’m giving this one a whole section because it’s huge. The Hurricanes are going to be getting some big pieces back from injury by the time the qualifying round begins. Brett Pesce will still be recovering from shoulder surgery, unfortunately, but Ryan Dzingel and Sami Vatanen will both be available for the start of the series vs New York.

By far the most important return for Carolina, though, will be Dougie Hamilton.

Hamilton is, to use a phrase of Tripp Tracy’s, “the straw that stirs the drink,” in so many ways. He’s a cornerstone of both special teams units, a reliable defender who also provides tons of offense. Before he got injured, he’d notched 14 goals and 40 points in 47 games and was a leading candidate to be nominated for the Norris trophy for Best Defenseman. He was on track for a career-high 20+ goals and 70+ points, until an unfortunate collision in mid-January fractured his fibula and kept him out for the rest of the shortened season. The positive impact of what his return will do for the team can’t be understated.

Defense

That leads me nicely into the next thing I wanted to touch on briefly: defense. The Rangers corps of defensemen is really good. They have some great young players in Fox, DeAngelo, and Jacob Trouba, and veterans Marc Staal and Brendan Smith to help anchor them.

But Carolina’s group is incredible, easily one of the best in the league. Jaccob Slavin is one of the most consistent players in the entire NHL. You always know what you’re going to get from him, and it’s always going to be top-tier defense. When he’s reunited with his now-healthy partner Dougie Hamilton, the Hurricanes’ top pairing has few equals.

Additionally, the acquisitions of Brady Skjei and Sami Vatanen at the deadline could make Carolina’s defensive pairs look something like this:

Slavin - Hamilton

Gardiner - Skjei

Edmundson - Vatanen

That’s an exceptional lineup that has a great balance of helping boost the offense of prodiving solid defense. And that even leaves out Trevor van Reimsdyk and Haydn Fleury as healthy scratches - both of whom have been really good this year - and of course, the injury to Brett Pesce. Carolina has a plethora of skilled defensemen, and now that they’re (almost) all going to be healthy, the Hurricanes are going to be even more dangerous than before.

Special Teams

The last thing I want to talk about before I reveal my prediction is, as usual, special teams. And honestly, it doesn’t make the final decision any easier. These teams continue to be very evenly-matched, even in the special teams department.

Thanks to their strong groups of star forwards and high-talent offensive defensemen, both teams have dangerous powerplays. The Rangers with the 7th best PP at 22.9%, and Carolina came in right under them in 8th with 22.3%. But Carolina’s PP is going to hugely benefit from returning Hamilton and Williams to the top unit and adding Trochek and Vatanen to the second unit, so I think I give them a slight edge.

There’s another reason I think that, though. The Hurricanes penalty kill is very good - 4th in the NHL, in fact, at 84%. They’re also tied for 2nd in the NHL with 10 shorthanded goals, 4 of which have been scored by Sebastian Aho. The Rangers, meanwhile, have the 9th worst PK at just 77.4%.

Final Prediction: Carolina, 3-2

Now I know what you’re thinking, of course I picked Carolina. And I admit, it is partially because that’s who I want to win. And yes, there’s the Curse of MSG to consider. But Carolina could still win the series even without winning a game in New York. The bottom line is that both of these teams are very closely matched and there’s a lot that could swing the series either way. For the Hurricanes to win, they need to capitalize on their powerplay chances to solve the Rangers goaltending, and they need Mrazek and Reimer to be at their best. If they can get those things, I think the Hurricanes will win.

Be sure to stop by tomorrow for my look at the final play-in matchup in the East, the Pittsburgh Penguins vs Montreal Canadiens!

CaniacWrites

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thrashermaxey · 5 years

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Ramblings: Power of the Schwartz, Jets’ Season Crashes (Apr 21)

There were three playoff games on Saturday, with one team facing elimination. Let’s see how things went down.

Stars/Predators

Alexander Radulov and Jason Dickinson each scored two goals in the Stars’ 5-3 win in Game 5. Radulov, who leads the Stars with four goals during the playoffs, took five shots from his usual spot on the top line with Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin. Benn chipped in three assists, while Seguin scored a goal and added an assist while firing eight shots.

Dickinson scored his first two goals of the playoffs while taking four shots on goal. Scoring beyond the first line has been a missing ingredient for the Stars all season, so the Dickinson – Roope Hintz – Mats Zuccarello unit has found its stride together at just the right time. Hintz scored two goals during Game 4, while Zuccarello has scored three goals of his own during this series.

For more on Dickinson and Hintz, check out the Dallas Stars page on Dobber Prospects.

Dickinson also succeeded in getting under the skin of the Predators in this game.

One happy camper, scoring goals, drawing penalties — you name it! #GoStars pic.twitter.com/c3feXRu2Jl

— J.D. Burke (@JDylanBurke) April 20, 2019

Fresh off a Vezina Trophy nomination (more on this later), Ben Bishop stopped 30 of 33 shots in earning the win.

“Your best players need to be your best players” is a common theme throughout the playoffs. The Predators are down 3-2 in this series, and their leading goal scorer is Rocco Grimaldi. The 5’6” forward scored his third goal in his fourth game of the series after scoring just five in 53 regular-season games. Meanwhile, the Preds’ top line (Ryan Johansen, Filip Forsberg, Viktor Arvidsson) has combined for just two goals. Arvidsson, the Preds’ leading regular-season goal scorer, has failed playoff poolies so far with no points in this series. They’ll need to step up in Game 6 or they’ll be joining at least a couple of other division winners on the golf course.

Jets/Blues

It was the Jaden Schwartz show in Game 6, as the Blues’ winger recorded a natural hat trick in the Blues’ 3-2 win over Winnipeg. The Blues now advance to face the winner of the above Nashville/Dallas series. Dating back to Game 5, Schwartz has now scored each of the Blues’ last four goals, which is now a team-leading total for the playoffs. This after a regular season in which his production declined (just 11 goals and 36 points in 69 games) with a move off the top line and the first power-play unit (only 5 power-play points in 2018-19).

In the here and now, the decision to move Brayden Schenn off the Vladimir Tarasenko/Ryan O’Reilly unit and onto the Schwartz/Oskar Sundqvist unit during Game 5 has paid off in spades for Craig Berube, though. Expect that deployment to continue (with David Perron on the top line) when the Blues start their next series.

Jordan Binnington appeared to be on his way to an easy shutout, as the Jets could only muster six shots on goal after the first two periods. The Jets appeared to have nothing left after coughing up a two-goal lead in a demoralizing Game 5 defeat. Yet they made a late push with a Dustin Byfuglien goal with about eight minutes left, then a Bryan Little goal with 37 seconds left in the game. Blake Wheeler took an untimely double-minor for high sticking with just over two minutes to play, which made a comeback attempt seemingly impossible for the Jets.

Teams that fall short in the playoffs are often dealing with injuries to key players. The Jets were in that category, as Nikolaj Ehlers and Patrik Laine were clearly hobbled.

Sense going into game 6 was there was a 99% chance Ehlers couldn’t play and 90% chance Laine wouldn’t be available. No excuses. Blues very good, but lots of injuries as is often the case in the playoffs.

— Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) April 21, 2019

Ehlers ended the playoffs without a point in six games. He left Game 5 after blocking a shot, but I wonder if that wasn’t the only injury. Still, there’s been a glaring lack of playoff production from Ehlers, who has never scored a playoff goal and has just seven assists in 21 career playoff games. He was even held to under ten minutes in both Game 2 and Game 6.

Laine was held without a point in his last three games, but he finished the playoffs with three goals and an assist in six games.

This won’t be an easy offseason for the Jets, who will have as many as 15 pending free agents to sort out. Laine and Kyle Connor will need contracts, which means that the Jets might not be able to afford UFAs Kevin Hayes and Brandon Tanev. Then there’s the defense – have Jacob Trouba and Tyler Myers both played their last games as Jets? Beyond pillars Dustin Byfuglien and Josh Morrissey, this defense could look very different. At least fantasy owners should finally be able to see Sami Niku on the Jets for a full season. Then you also have to wonder whether Paul Maurice’s job is safe after what appeared to be a missed opportunity. Needless to say, they’ll be lots of fantasy implications to break down with this team this offseason.

Capitals/Hurricanes

First, the bad news for the Capitals. T.J. Oshie has a broken collarbone, which likely means he’ll miss the rest of the playoffs, even if the Capitals go the distance again. As a result of Oshie’s injury, Tom Wilson was moved up to the top line with Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom, while Carl Hagelin was moved up to the second line with Evgeny Kuznetsov and Jakub Vrana.

The good news for the Capitals, of course, was the game result. After back-to-back losses in Raleigh, the Caps routed the Hurricanes 6-0 to take a 3-2 series lead. Backstrom led the way with two goals and two assists, which gives him five goals in five playoff games. He scored the same number of playoff goals last season, although it took him 23 games to do so.

Ovechkin was also doing his thing, scoring a goal and adding two assists while dishing 11 hits (no fights though). Only William Carrier and Matt Martin have more hits during these playoffs than Ovie (29).

Braden Holtby stopped all 30 shots he faced in earning the shutout, including seven shots from Sebastian Aho. Holtby will try to backstop the Capitals to a series victory back in Carolina on Monday.

Your Vezina Trophy finalists were announced on Saturday, and they are Ben Bishop, Robin Lehner, and Andrei Vasilevskiy. Bishop led the NHL with a .934 SV% and trailed only half-season starter Binnington with a 1.98 GAA. In spite of those impressive ratios, you know that Vasilevskiy will receive a lot of first-place votes because he led the league with 39 wins, which had a lot to do with the team in front of him. Hockey media hasn’t paid enough attention to Bishop’s season, perhaps because he plays in a non-traditional hockey market for a team that squeaked into the playoffs. Because of their goaltender, the Stars might be better than we think as they are on the verge of upsetting Nashville.

To answer an earlier question about whether we are planning any mock drafts, you’ll want to get your hands on the Fantasy Prospects Report, which will be ready for download on June 1. Last season’s FPR included a mock draft that went multiple rounds, ranked player profiles for both draft prospects and prospects for all 31 teams, plus much more! The Fantasy Prospects Report will also be available as part of the Ultimate Fantasy Pack, which will be available for pre-sale on May 1.

For more fantasy hockey information, or to reach out to me directly, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-power-of-the-schwartz-jets-season-crashes-apr-21/

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pabo-reactions · 5 years

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JNGD.S8.G35 Recap: Jets Steal 5-3 Win Against Stealth Clad Sharks

New Post has been published on https://nhlrumormill.com/jngd-s8-g35-recap-jets-steal-5-3-win-against-stealth-clad-sharks/

JNGD.S8.G35 Recap: Jets Steal 5-3 Win Against Stealth Clad Sharks

The Nik Ehlers hat trick and the 41 Connor Hellebuyck saves were beautiful sights for Jets fans on Thursday night. The rest of the game, not so much.

And sure, it looked ugly tonight, but come April when we look at the final points tally, the two points the Jets earned tonight in San Jose with a 5-3 win over the Sharks will look the same as every other point they’ve earned through the season.

FIRST PERIOD

The first frame gets crazy almost instantly as both teams exchange goals early after both teams took slashing penalties on consecutive plays to give us some four on four hockey to open things up.

Big Buff on a breakaway! 1-0 #NHLJets #GoJetsGo pic.twitter.com/3IC5ODRLyl

— JetsNation (@NHLJetsNation) December 21, 2018

Sharks make it 1-1. pic.twitter.com/xGNRA8xkTO

— JetsNation (@NHLJetsNation) December 21, 2018

Buff’s strip of Brent Burns was a thing of beauty and he’s probably fortunate as it was the equally lumbering Burns chasing after him as he broke in alone.

The Kane goal meanwhile may have been a product of Connor Hellebuyck respecting the pass a little too much as it sure seemed like he was waiting for Evander to dish off to Erik Karlsson.

The Sharks made it 2-1 on a power play goal with some heavy traffic in front of the Jets net after Tyler Myers took a rather weak interference penalty.

San Jose makes it 2-1. pic.twitter.com/oWXDLNOeWR

— JetsNation (@NHLJetsNation) December 21, 2018

The crazy period wasn’t even close to done yet as the Jets take advantage of a crazy bounce from a Blake Wheeler dump-in and the always speedy Nik Ehlers of course is the one finishing the opportunistic play off.

Tie game on a nice timed play by Ehlers! 2-2! #NHLJets #GoJetsGo pic.twitter.com/hCXiVPSZpL

— JetsNation (@NHLJetsNation) December 21, 2018

Appleton nets his first NHL goal with some applesuace from Petan 3-2! #NHLJets #GoJetsGo pic.twitter.com/On4uZtmRd5

— JetsNation (@NHLJetsNation) December 21, 2018

With an injury to Adam Lowry going into tonight’s game, Nic Petan got a shot to get back into the lineup and centered a fourth line between Mason Appleton and Brendan Lemieux and Petan was able to show off his slick passing skills that we’ve seen quite often in his time with the AHL. Hopefully it caught the eyes of the Jets coaching staff as well as Mason Appleton finally gets his first NHL goal.

Look how happy this boy is! pic.twitter.com/RoLxzhPZnz

— GameTimeArt (@GameTimeArt) December 21, 2018

The first period ends 3-2 for the Jets and with the Jets holding a 12-10 edge in shots as it looked like an improved team from what we saw in Los Angeles.

SECOND PERIOD

Strike that last comment from the record. The Jets actually played worse in tonight’s second period than they did the entire game against Los Angeles the night prior. Dare I say the second period against San Jose would rival the Jets first period “effort” last month in Calgary where they fell behind 5-1.

The Jets a little over past the halfway point of the second period were being out-shot 18-3 as the Sharks flat out dominated a tired looking Jets club at five on five play.

The game only remained in favor of the Jets thanks to the play of Connor Hellebuyck who made a series of tough key saves.

Funny enough, the Jets in the last five minutes of play started to actually get their collective stuff together and generated a few scoring chances, but as it always seems to be in hockey, just as the Jets started to look like an actual decent hockey team on the ice, the Sharks took advantage of the one bad mistake that Connor Hellebuyck made in the period and evened things up.

San Jose makes it 3-3. pic.twitter.com/HIot8cxsPp

— JetsNation (@NHLJetsNation) December 21, 2018

Hockey is such a stupid sport sometimes.

37 tried to clear it from here.

He has a safe out in the corner. Byfuglien is well positioned to take it.

Hellebuyck can have both a) played a great second period and b) made the primary mistake on this goal. pic.twitter.com/Hs5qa7E5Io

— Murat Ates (@WPGMurat) December 21, 2018

THIRD PERIOD

The third wasn’t much better for the Jets. Some would argue it was maybe even worse.. The Jets didn’t get their fourth shot on goal until two minutes left in the third period and only after the Sharks had collected 10.

Again, funny thing about hockey… It’s not fair. Ever.

After some great work by Wheeler, Ehler nets the go ahead goal. 4-3. #NHLJets #GoJetsGo pic.twitter.com/Wc7ybbgoot

— JetsNation (@NHLJetsNation) December 21, 2018

As the third period dragged on both teams played as a slightly slower pace – even the Sharks as they carried most of the play didn’t seem to do anything overly aggressive to try and take the lead. Perhaps out of fear of making a mistake like the one you just witnessed above.

The game ends almost fittingly, with the Jets somehow inexplicably with a lead and Nik Ehlers earning his fourth career hat trick in maybe the most redicluous way possible… Being taken down at the blueline.

Hooking call that led to Ehlers' hatty. 5-3 #NHLJets #GoJetsGo pic.twitter.com/JdXSdacKGn

— JetsNation (@NHLJetsNation) December 21, 2018

Hockey is so stupid.

We love it.

THE BOXSCORE

PLAYERS OF THE GAME

For Winnipeg: Connor Hellebuyck – Yes, maybe the guy that got the hat trick should get player of the game, but Hellebuyck made 41 saves on the night and really that second period should have seen the Sharks take a two goal lead or more the way the Jets were playing. You know your team has been out-played thoroughly when you let in three goals and still end the night with a .932 save percentage.

For San Jose: Evander Kane – You don’t like it. I don’t like it. But the former Jet came out with an axe to grind and was on fire with a goal and assist and ten shots on the Winnipeg net.

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ralphmorgan-blog1 · 6 years

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Diggy’s Bachelor in Paradise Recap: Week 4 Betches

Another week of Bachelor in Paradise means we’re one week closer to summer being over. But honestly, summer’s already over because I’ve already received an email from Starbucks about PSLs. Before we bring on the Uggs and yoga pants, let’s recap what happened where the clothing is minimal and tequila is plentiful, Paradise.

We start off episode six with the hottest quarterback I’ve ever seen, Angela, throwing the football on the beach. Like most of the relationships in Paradise, the pass lands incomplete. All the couples seem smitten with each other, with the exception of the love triangle that is Jenna, Jordan, and Benoit. (Quick flashback: Last week Jordan wrote “I’m Sorry” in the sand, so to say this dude is sprung is an UNDERSTATEMENT.) It’s the morning after Jenna and Benoit’s date, and as if they didn’t make out enough last night, Benoit continues to be Jenna’s human breathing machine. Have you seen someone perform CPR on a live human? If you haven’t, watch this episode and you will.

The craziness that is “Chris-tal” continues on the beach. Krystal begins hammering Chris with some hard-hitting questions like “Chipotle or Qdoba?” and the reccurring game of “Which of my voices do you like the best?” Apparently he answers the questions correctly, because Krystal mentions how he’s starting to make her glow. I’m sorry Krystal, unless you’re the Green Power ranger or you came out of a magic lamp rubbed by Aladdin, you can keep the glow comments to yourself. This comment of Krystal’s enlightened state all but assures you that “Chris-tal” will ride off into the sunset as the happiest couple in Paradise. But if you’ve watched this series for more than a commercial break, you know that’s not going to happen.

Enter our boy Connor. You may or may not recognize him from Becca’s season, but you damn sure recognize him from his breakthrough appearance in the movie Jaws I, II, and III. My man has a jaw like a hammerhead shark. (Dear candy Jawbreakers: Proceed with caution!) Connor walks in, and immediately Krystal is at a loss for words (which is the best because at least her voice is consistent). Connor starts pulling girls to chat with, but he needs to go no further than Krystal. She somehow finds her voice, and tells Connor, “I came here to meet you and only you and nobody else.” Chris must’ve have been hungry because Krystal immediately runs to him and feeds him some diet bullsh*t on how she told Connor that he should ask some other girls. *Maury Voice* The lie detector determined THAT was a lie. However, Krystal agrees to go on the date in order to be the respectful human that we know she is.

This date has to be one of the least exciting to date. Essentially they go to a campfire to get buried alive and hit with a Mexican Swiffer. They then go deep into the ocean holding on to each other tightly because neither of them got past level 1 swim lessons. Back on the beach, Jordan pours his heart out to Jenna like he’s facing 20 to life if he has to go back home. Whatever he says works, as they proceed to play tonsil hockey until Jenna has had enough……until she hasn’t. She tags Benoit in for his turn, and she begins sucking his face with strength only a Dyson vacuum would envy. Jordan sees this, grabs Benoit, and invites him to the hot tub for the MANLIEST of spa days where they let their legs soak as they argue about who’s right for Jenna.

In “Out of Left Field” News: Kenny has to go back home because he has some overdue RedBox movies and THEY. DON’T. PLAY. (Real reason: McKenzie has a recital that he refuses to miss, and I’ll fight anyone who has an issue with that.) That puts Annaliese back to square NEGATIVE 1 in her quest to look for someone to go half on a baby with. Krystal then returns (with a LOT less lipstick than she left with) and tells Chris, “You have nothing to worry about.” This tells us that T-Rex jaw probably isn’t for Krystal, and Chris is still in the driver’s seat.

Another Exit: John put Jubilee in the friend zone, and she essentially says: “I have 8 friends already and don’t need 9,” and bounces.

A new arrival, Kamil, shows up, and all the girls instantly become single. Annaliese marks her territory with a scent only rivaled by that of a skunk and gets the date with Kamil. They go on a daredevil-inspired date, and end up taking a dip in a Mexican pool with no lifeguard present. RISK. TAKERS. He honestly could’ve taken Annaliese to a hostage situation, and she would just be happy to have a man.

Meanwhile for some reason back on the beach Kevin tells Astrid, “I wish you went on a date with another dude.” I’m single right now but Kevin, I do know this: DON’T ATTEMPT TO LEASE YOUR GIRLFRIEND. He later backtracks (you have to think there was some sort of threat against his life here), and Astrid takes him back.

Benoit continues to try to inch closer to Jenna, and Jordan has had enough. He pretty much lays it all out, like clothes on the first day of school, and Jenna buys it. She immediately goes to Benoit and says: “Is your sh*t packed? If not, it should be.” DOWN. GOES. BENOIT.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the girl next door, Kendall. She’s into Joe, but she needs help to prove to herself that Leo isn’t the man for her.Help’s name = Kevin, as he mentions to Kendall that Leo kissed Chelsea, thinking that she already knew. With the determination of finding his lost hairdryer, Leo’s dying to find the snitch that ratted him to Kendall, and Kevin says, “Yup, it was me, and I give ZERO f*cks.” Now Kevin, as a fireman, I thought your job was to put out fires, not enflame them?! In a heated argument between Leo and Kendall (over what we can only suspect was about who stole Leo’s last hair tie) emotions get high, and her knight in shining armor/board shorts, Joe, comes to her rescue.

Episode 7 stats with Joe saving Kendall from low-budget Fabio (sorry autocorrect, meant Leo). Benoit still tries to find out where he went wrong with Jenna and she ends up crying, which leaves Jordan “mad.” You ever see two models that don’t want to fight because they have a shoot the next day? Yea, this is pretty much the same thing. No fight happens, they do their sassy argument, and boom, off to the spa. This does make Benoit realize that his choices for a rose are either Chelsea or 1800Flowers, so he begins to put in work.

DATE CARD TIME!!! Eric gets a date card for him and Angela that involves a nice hotel room, gold toilets, and enough dairy to leave the state of Wisconsin empty. I’ve seen more affection between second graders on a playground, but hey, I just trust E Bigger did his thing and they left as a stronger couple.

Time for the Awkward Moment of the Day: Kendall kisses….John? This reminded me of when you’re friends with a girl for like, 10 years, and you just kiss her to see whather tongue feels like. Boom. Done. Nothing there.Guilt/Producers force Kendall to tell Joe, and as laid-back as he is he says: “Forgetaboutit.”

Cocktail Party Time!!! 8 women, 12 guys. Leo starts off the “toasts” by calling Kendall fake and Joe “Grocery Store B*tch.” Joe confronts him, but the producers prevent World War III from happening, as it looked like Joe was about to beat the brakes off of Leo. I know Leo is a stuntman, but you shouldn’t have pulled that stunt….man. Without the producers, you’re two seconds away from having three black eyes. Exit stage left, Leo.

Cocktail party continues, and it’s essentially ring around the Chelsea. David, Connor, John all vying for Chelsea’s rose. David tells her he can’t go home yet because his mom’s not home and she has the only key, Connor’s jaw is too strong for anything serious, and John’s dad jokes are suspect at best. Rose ceremony plays out as such: Astrid to Kevin, Jenna to Jordan, Tia to Colton, Kendall to Joe, Angela to Eric, Annaliese to Kamil, Krystal to Chris, and Chelsea to John. On cue, another Benoit meltdown about him not finding love. Don’t worry buddy, with shows like The Proposal in production, anything is possible.

Next day new arrivals show up, starting with Olivia with some Chi-town flavor. I don’t know why everyone didn’t just shout “Pick John,” because at this point, he’s the only one available/wouldn’t be shanked by their girlfriend. Their date consists of them crashing a quinceañera, essentially a latin Wedding Crashers minus a bride and groom.

Eric and Angela continue to talk about how they’re exclusive and would reject dates, which in BIP producer terms means “we gotta f*ck this up.” In comes Cassandra, from Juan Pablo’s season. Right after their “exclusive” talk, Cassandra asks Eric on a date *Kanye shrug* and he says yes. Angela is like “WTF?!” to whichEric says: “I slept on my stomach last night, and now I’m seeing everything totally differently.” Eric, don’t be surprised if your suitcase is soaked in lighter fluid when you get back, because your clothes, like your relationship, might be up in flames.

I know you’re thinking it…..HOW DID I GET TO A RECAP WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT COLTON & TIA?!?! Something tells me we’re in for a heavy dose of the two next week….enjoy the peace while we have it….until next week!!

Images: Paul Hebert / ABC; Giphy (4)

Original Article : HERE ; This post was curated & posted using : RealSpecific

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hsews · 6 years

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The Max Domi–Alex Galchenyuk trade appears to be a “change of scenery” deal for both first-rounders. That got us thinking about some other players around the league…

What’s a trade you’d like to see where both players need a change of scenery?

Greg Wyshynski, senior NHL writer: At the end of the Buffalo Sabres‘ season, Ryan O’Reilly professed his sadness and frustration with yet another disappointing season in what could only be described as an “I lost my smile” lament. So a change in scenery would help both the team and the player. So how about this: Jack Eichel‘s teammate becomes Connor McDavid‘s teammate.

I’d flip O’Reilly and Edmonton Oilers center Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. The Nuge is coming off his best offensive season, with 48 points in 62 games, and I love his game. But O’Reilly is a little better offensively (0.79 points per game in the last three seasons vs. 0.63 for Nugent-Hopkins), and even though Nugent-Hopkins can play the wing, I like O’Reilly’s versatility better, both positionally and situationally.

The age gap isn’t that significant: O’Reilly is 27, Nugent-Hopkins is 25. The contracts are interesting: O’Reilly makes $7.5 million, but it’s through 2023; Nugent-Hopkins makes $6 million through 2021. I like the Nuge as an option to play with Casey Mittelstadt, unless he’s slotted with Eichel. I like O’Reilly as a fit with the Oilers. One problem, of course: In theory, there’s zero chance the Nuge gets moved for anyone that’s not a defenseman. But Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli is not one to validate these theories, typically.

Can the Islanders keep John Tavares? What’s the deal with Corey Crawford? What will Vegas do with all of that cap space? We dig in.

It’s a double change of scenery with two young first-rounders switching homes. Who won the trade?

Eight teams have emerged as front-runners in the John Tavares derby, as his return to the Islanders is not guaranteed. Here’s who is in the mix.

2 Related

Emily Kaplan, national NHL reporter: Under Tom Dundon, it seems almost every Carolina Hurricanes player is ripe be moved — as long as the price is right. A player generating a ton of interest around the league is Jeff Skinner, a three-time 30-plus goal scorer who, at age 26, still has upside. The only problem for the Canes? Skinner enters free agency next summer. As Carolina embarks on a total reboot, the new management might not want to pay up.

Meanwhile, Milan Lucic‘s days in Edmonton are numbered. Once one of the premiere power forwards in the game, the 30-year-old’s production dipped significantly last season (from 23 goals to 10 goals, though to be fair, mainly Oilers struggled) and his $6 million cap hit through 2022-23 is becoming burdensome. The Canes may need help reaching the cap floor, so Lucic’s contract isn’t a problem. Lucic can provide leadership to a young group, and add some name value to an owner looking to sell tickets.

To make this more palatable for the Hurricanes, Edmonton would need to send over a draft pick as well (they have each of their first- and second-round picks for the next three seasons, and an extra third-rounder in 2019). Dundon should view draft picks as the ultimate currency. The Oilers should welcome Skinner — offensively gifted, though defense was never a strength — as a middle-six winger to provide scoring depth. I see this as a win-win.

Chris Peters, hockey prospects analyst: Sticking with the Hurricanes theme, Carolina needs a goalie, and recently crowned Stanley Cup champion Philipp Grubauer wants to be a starter. It sounds like the Caps are going to see what they can do to make that happen. Washington is also at risk of losing right-handed shooting defenseman John Carlson to unrestricted free agency.

They could potentially replace Carlson with Justin Faulk, who still has two years remaining on his current contract at an extremely reasonable $4.83 million cap hit. For the Canes to move one of their captains — even if they’re getting their starting goalie — there might have to be a sweetener in there, but this could be a hockey deal that helps both parties. The Caps should know pretty soon just how feasible re-signing Carlson is going to be. That would obviously be their preference, but even if Faulk isn’t an even trade-off as a replacement, he’s not nearly the dropoff they’d endure trying to fill that spot with youth. Faulk is two years younger than Carlson, and has never had a forward group as deep and talented as Washington’s to boost his respectable offensive numbers.

There could be a workable deal that helps both teams accomplish what they’re trying to do as they move on from quite disparate positions within the league.

Ben Arledge, Insider NHL editor: How about a pair of top-five picks who are currently restricted free agents and have struggled a bit more than previously expected? Ryan Strome came over to the Oilers last season and tallied just 34 points over 82 games, but he’s only a few years removed from a trio of 30-goal seasons in the OHL. Pop the forward into the Columbus Blue Jackets‘ lineup on that second line with Alexander Wennberg, and you might have a bit of a revival from him.

Going the other way? Ryan Murray is still 24 years old, and Edmonton could use another defenseman (as is tradition). Columbus has plenty of depth at the position, leaving Murray as part of the third pairing, but he would certainly bolster the Oilers’ group on the back end, particularly on the penalty kill. The teams would obviously have to sign the respective players, but it’s certainly a move worth considering.

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yahoo-puck-daddy-blog · 6 years

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Puck Daddy Countdown: Tom Wilson, concussions and a huge cap increase

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7. Tom Wilson and also the refs and also the league

This is getting ridiculous.

Like, OK, the argument from the Department of Player “Safety” is that yes, the hit on Jon Marchessault was late but there was no head contact and it’s not technically illegal to hit a guy from his blindside.

But keep in mind, when Matt Cooke basically ended Marc Savard’s career, putting a Legion of Doom-style spiked shoulder pad into a guy’s chin was also technically not illegal. Didn’t change the fact that Matt Cooke had a long and prosperous history of dirty hits most guys in the league who, y’know, have respect for their opponents’ safety, wouldn’t have even tried.

Honestly, in what way is Wilson, a useful player who also happens to be an injurious dumbass, different from Cooke, a similarly effective checking forward who plays to injure? I would love to have that explained to me by a Capitals fan whose brain functions properly.

But that’s the thing with Wilson’s hit. It wasn’t technically anything more than interference but everyone (save for the Tom Wilson stans, who are all sicko freaks) agrees it was late, and y’know maybe I’m crazy here, but it seems like you should have a reasonable expectation to not get drilled at 40 miles an hour by a guy you never saw coming nearly a full second after you got rid of the puck, which is already 20 feet away from you. It’s a predatory hit, full stop. His eyes got as big as saucers; he had plenty of time to not make that hit.

Tom Wilson needs to be stopped. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

(Side note: Shouldn’t Ryan Reaves have beaten Wilson’s ass to death for that hit? Like, not just because a fight there is warranted in the Hockey Man’s mind, but also because if you get Wilson off the ice for five and only have to give up Reaves, that’s a great trade for Vegas. Hell, in theory Reaves’ presence in the lineup should have been a deterrent for that hit in the first place, but hey guess what: It turns out that’s not actually a thing.)

In soccer, if you commit multiple fouls throughout the game, a referee can give you a yellow card for any foul where he feels like, “OK, that’s plenty from this prick.” And Tom Wilson plays like a total prick, sorry. This guy has — or at least should have — long ago torched whatever benefit of the doubt he got from the league, but this is the Cup Final and a bunch of losers from Vancouver still cry all the time about the (deserved) Aaron Rome suspension seven years ago, so you can see why the league would want to avoid that kind of thing again.

Especially because if the NHL acknowledges the refs blew it on the Wilson minor (which maybe should have been a major?) they also must necessarily acknowledge the refs blew it even harder on the Reaves goal, which shouldn’t have counted.

And if there’s one thing the league really wants to do at all times, it’s make sure there’s nothing that would lead to refs being accountable for being horrible at their jobs. That’s playoff hockey baby!

6. Concussion stuff

Came out this week that a bunch of owners, I swear to god, acted like they had never in their entire miserable lives heard of CTE. “Never heard of it, what’s that?” kind of denials, which is pretty amazing considering all the concussion lawsuits that have been going on for the NHL and other major sports leagues. Like even if you don’t know exactly what it is, surely you’re aware that it exists — as in, you’ve literally heard it mentioned, ever.

Also, TSN uncovered a mockup of a concussion awareness poster the league put together that, as a joke I guess(?), said one of the symptoms was “feeling like a giant [sexist term for a wimp or a coward and you know the one I’m talking about].” They also removed language in the finalized versions of those posters advising players that numerous concussions can lead to dementia later in life.

Meanwhile, Johan Franzen’s wife is out here in the Detroit media telling the horror stories about her nice husband’s struggles with brain injuries.

Now, *putting my thumbs into my suspenders* I’m no fancy big-city lawyer, but it seems to me this case is not going to end well for the NHL. They’re not only bad actors on this stuff (obviously), they’re openly contemptuous of it. You’d think this many rich guys couldn’t be this stupid, but wealth strips you of your humanity and the NHL has a long, celebrated history of being horribly run.

So here we are.

5. *Lana Del Ray voice* Playing video games

Here’s my theory: If you put it out there that there’s a highly regarded prospect whose career was ruined by playing too many video games, you’re necessarily going to get every person whose team picked top-10 in the past five drafts to go, “Is it this guy?!?”

And then you have to go out there and say, “I said I wasn’t gonna do this for every player, but it’s not that one guy,” until you’ve done it for every player. So you might as well say the player the first time or — better yet — not say anything at all. Hmm.

This is like in fifth grade when someone tells you, “I have a secret but I can’t tell you what it is” and then also stands around letting you guess for 10 minutes before laughing and walking away. Dumb.

4. Melnyk!

Shout out to Daniel Alfredsson finally just saying everyone wants Eugene Melnyk to just sell the damn Senators already. Everyone hates him! Including the guy who’s running for mayor, which honestly is bound to be a fairly popular political position in town.

It’s like Melnyk keeping the team out of spite (or maybe to get some more vital organs) at this point. Pretty bad scene up there. Wonder if the NHL will try to force his hand here.

3. Narratives

Saw something on Twitter yesterday where they had Keith Olbermann on ESPN saying it might be wise for teams like the Oilers with mega-stars to conisder trading those elite players for several second-line talents.

You know, because of Vegas. And presumably because the Oilers sucked this year.

The premise of the argument is flawed because we know for sure Vegas didn’t just take a whole team of second-line guys. Maybe you say they were incorrectly valued as second-line talent, but that also doesn’t really address the larger issue of the argument that you should give up, say, Connor McDavid or Auston Matthews to get a handful of significantly less impactful players.

This is, I guess, Olbermann advocating for more Tyler Seguin trades. How did that work out for the Bruins, I wonder.

Anyway, you can expect this stuff to keep happening because Vegas is probably gonna win the Cup and people won’t look at the “why” of it, just that it happened. I love not learning anything from anything.

2. The Cup Final

Let’s hope tonight’s game is even 60 percent as entertaining as Game 1, but also like 150 percent better-officiated. This is good hockey.

1. A (potentially) huge cap increase

It was revealed before Game 1 that the salary cap could go up as much as $7 million next season. Not sure if that includes the players’ ability to use the 5 percent escalator (which would mean more escrow payments, but that hasn’t stopped them from both doing the escalator and then complaining about escrow).

But the idea that the cap could go up more than nine percent? Hoo boy. I’m specifically thinking about Vegas here, because they only have $50.2 million or so committed to 19 guys for next year.

And oh yeah, that $50.2 million includes David Clarkson, who they could LTIR the second they hit the cap ceiling, so in theory their actual cap number is closer to $45 million.

They need to re-sign Wild Bill Karlsson after his big season, as well as Colin Miller, Shea Theodore, and both Tomas Nosek and William Carrier. But what do you think those guys put together actually cost? Like $12 million? So they’re up to maybe like $57 million.

This team having like THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS to spend this summer? Come on, man. Imagine they take a run at that Erik Karlsson/Bobby Ryan trade again and pull it off. Imagine they take a run at Ilya Kovalchuk. Imagine they take a run at John Tavares. “You don’t pay state income tax” and (maybe) “We just won a Stanley Cup” is a hell of a sales pitch, no?

Get Karlsson and Bobby Ryan, that’s like $13.75 million. Big chunk of change but presumably Ottawa will take money back, too, just because they have to hit the cap floor at the very least. So maybe $10 million for those two in terms of net costs? OK, that gets them up to $67 million (or more) in cap obligations.

Give Tavares $10 million, whatever. That’s $77 million. Give Kovalchuk $5 million. That’s $82 million.

Plus you can probably finagle a couple sell-high trades to get some money off the books elsewhere. C’mon. It would be incredible.

(Not ranked this week: That Evander Kane deal.

When people said Evander Kane should be locked up, this is not what they meant!

Ha ha ha. Pretty good joke.

But for real, when you can give $7 million times seven to a 27-year-old who can’t stay healthy and has a career high of 57 points (set six years ago) and comes with a litany of what can be generously described as “off-ice issues” (multiple assault allegations) you gotta do it. Right?)

—

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

More Stanley Cup coverage from Yahoo Sports

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flauntpage · 7 years

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We Can Play This Way Too! Seven Takeaways from Flyers 2, Oilers 1

Everyone, even the most casual hockey observers, had to know that the torrid pace the Flyers were playing in the first six games of the season wasn’t sustainable.

Averaging more than four goals a game? Averaging 35 shots on goal? What do you think this is the 1980s?

No. Hockey is forever morphing and changing, but one thing is for certain, if there are extremes in the sport, even for as short a period of time as six games, you can bet someone will find a way to change it.

Just like the amount of slashing penalties being called (more than 90% of NHL games this season have had at least one) will eventually slow down, so will the high-scoring games. So will the wide open ice. Things will invariably change.

And when they do, teams that are prepared for it will flourish, and teams that won’t will perish.

The Flyers? They want to establish that they can accomplish their goals playing varying styles of hockey.

(Wait, did I just use four -ish words in a span of 17? It was completely unintentional and not a bullish attempt to publish this story in a stylish manner. Not at all.)

After a tight-checking, 1-0 slogfest loss to Nashville Thursday, everyone, including yours truly, expected a return to the high-speed, wide-open style of hockey Saturday afternoon against Edmonton and Connor McDavid.

That wasn’t the case at all.

Instead, this game was much more spirited, with a little animosity, a lot of physical play, a lot of unselfish, team-oriented stuff usually reserved for late in the season or the playoffs and not October.

This was especially surprising since it was a non-conference game.

But it’s the way things are right now for the Flyers – who have definitely put the league on notice with the way they were playing over the season’s first couple of weeks.

And now, following their 2-1 win Saturday, they are showing they can win this way too.

To the Takeaways…

1. Not the Same Old Flyers

There was a time when playing the Flyers amounted to the opposition creating a game plan that required good defense against the top line, not getting caught taking too many penalties, and simply being opportunistic when the other lines were on the ice.

It was pretty standard for, oh, I don’t know, about 40 years.

But, something has changed with the organization. GM Ron Hextall’s plan has plodded along slowly, but it’s definitely starting to bear fruit.

The Flyers can skate. The Flyers have depth. The Flyers are no longer a one-trick pony.

And it may have caught the league a little by surprise to start this season. They will roll four lines at you consistently. They will skate with you. And, they have talent throughout the lineup that can score.

Putting up 26 goals through the first six games (really in five, since they were shutout in one of them) was evidence that the Flyers have some firepower on the roster.

And it’s not like the Flyers were doing this against doormat teams. San Jose was the Western Conference Champion two seasons ago. Nashville was the Western Conference champion last year. Anaheim was in the Western Conference Finals and Washington had the best record in the league last season.

That’s all impressive.

But what happened the past two games? Only two goals scored. Only two goals allowed. Only 100 shots total by all teams involved in two games, an average of 25 each and nine off the pace of those first six games for the Flyers.

Teams have decided they need to find ways to slow the Flyers down.

I decided to press this issue with a couple Flyers after the game.

“As the year goes along, teams get better defensively and things tighten up,” Wayne Simmonds told me. “It is what it is and you have to learn how to deal with it.”

And deal with it they are.

“I don’t know if we caught them by surprise with our speed like you said,” Andrew MacDonald told me. “But we have done a good job sticking to our gameplan – and there’s always adjustments to it. Every team pre-scouts the other team and know their tendencies and how they play and we can see certain aspects of that against us out there for sure, but we are trying to focus on the things we feel we can do to beat the other team’s defense.”

What the Flyers showed Saturday – that they didn’t Thursday when Nashville brought the tight-checking style against them – was an ability to be opportunistic.

They may have only scored a pair of goals, and they may have only gotten 24 pucks through on Edmonton goalie Cam Talbot, but they were smart to recognize opportunities that were there and take advantage of them.

They did on the game-winning goal by Simmonds (we’ll dive into it on No. 2 below), but they had other chances as well. The defense was quite active. Shayne Gostisbehere, who has been superb thus far this season, played perhaps his best game and was involved in a lot of plays. Travis Sanheim jumped up into the play for a couple of good chances.

And the forwards took advantage of turnovers, or created them with their skating ability as well. Travis Konecny had a heck of a game and didn’t even register a shot. Matt Read, playing his first game of the season, also had an excellent game – as did the entire fourth line, which has really become more of a third line these days, playing more minutes than Nolan Patrick, Konecny and Dale Weise.

Meanwhile, the Flyers were concentrating mostly on playing smart defensively. After all, when you are playing against Conor McDavid, you better be smart positionally.

They got a little loose in the neutral zone in the second period, getting away from their game plan and affording the Oilers chances – and goalie Brian Elliott bailed them out on a few occasions – but aside from that, the Flyers really did a nice job against McDavid and friends.

A commitment to defense. An opportunistic offense. Speed throughout the lineup – sure sounds a lot like the Los Angeles Kings model that Hextall is employing with this team… and its been good so far as the Flyers are 5-3-0 this season having outscored the opposition 28-18 through eight games.

2. Simmonds is one tough S.O.B.

Wayne Simmonds was hurt in the game Tuesday night. He didn’t skate Wednesday then played through a lower body injury Thursday. He said he was fine, but you could tell he wasn’t quite 100%. Then he took a stick to the mouth while on the bench, and while he doesn’t need oral surgery, he’s likely going to lose teeth – maybe as many as seven.

And yet, here he was, two days later, wearing a mouth shield that he said affected his vision when pucks were at his feet, setting up the Flyers first goal and scoring the game-winner.

“He is as tough as it gets,” Jake Voracek said. “He doesn’t miss many games. It was a great play by [Jori] Lehtera and [Valtteri] Filppula on that goal and Simmer is always in the right spot. So he knows where to go to get those goals. I wish I learned from him sometimes.”

Voracek can joke about the fact that he hasn’t scored a goal yet this season, but Simmonds is making up for it. He has six now and has scored the game-winner in four of the five Flyers wins.

Speaking of, here it is:

CHOO CHOO! http://pic.twitter.com/vZ8JOIrbDu

— NBC Sports Philly (@NBCSPhilly) October 21, 2017

Canadians weren’t too pleased with the effort of defenseman Kris Russell on the play:

observing Kris Russell in his natural habitat http://pic.twitter.com/K2nSi9rhJk

— Dimitri Filipovic (@DimFilipovic) October 21, 2017

But alas, Simmonds is simply clutch. And to do it with a mouthful of hurt is all the more impressive.

While most of us would be home in bed crying less than 48 hours from being told we might lose seven teeth, Simmonds was winning hockey games. Not that he isn’t frustrated about it.

“Trust me, I was swearing up and down in the dentist’s chair for four hours yesterday,” he told me and NHL.com’s Adam Kimmelman.

It likely means Simmonds has to avoid any fighting for awhile too… or not.

“We’ll see what happens if somebody decides to do something stupid,” he said.

3. Giroux’s best game

I know. You think I’m nuts. He had a four-point game last week, how can this be his best game? Believe me, it was. Giroux was committed to the defensive gameplan – something I sometimes criticize him for. It’s really the one knock on an otherwise all-world player.

But Saturday, he was playing at a top level. A lot of guys were.

“Guys were really selling out and were committed out there,” Simmonds told me. “If we want to make the playoffs we’re going to have to play that way all season.”

Giroux played a true 200-foot game. He kept the legs moving the entire time. There was no slow down. There was no passenger-riding in the defensive zone (I always loved that term. John Stevens used to use it all the time. When guys weren’t backchecking or playing good defensive hockey he would say, “there were too many passengers on the bus.”).

And his goal was all about being in the right place at the right time:

Nearly everyone was involved in this beauty.

1-0, Flyers http://pic.twitter.com/6gUHDdhawb

— NBC Sports Philly (@NBCSPhilly) October 21, 2017

Simmonds said that even though it looked like he was passing it to Giroux, he was really trying to just deflect Gostisbehere’s shot into the net.

“You’ve never tried deflecting one of Ghost’s shots,” he said. “It’s hard.”

Giroux jokingly insisted that Simmonds would take credit for a great pass, but he didn’t. The more important part of the play was Giroux’s perfect positioning.

By the way, it was Ghost’s 10th assist of the season. He now has 11 points, which is tops among NHL defensemen (pending the result of the St. Louis game). His eight-game start is tied for the best offensive start by a Flyers defenseman in franchise history (Mark Howe, 2-9-11, 1985-86).

That’s pretty fantastic.

4. Provorov is really, really good.

You don’t need to see stat sheets to see excellence from Ivan Provorov. He’s one guy where the eye test is more than enough.

Provorov and Andrew MacDonald were on the ice almost exclusively every time McDavid hopped over the boards for Edmonton. Provorov was tasked with marking the league’s best player, and he was flawless.

McDavid ended up with four shots on goal, but three came in that lackluster second period by the team, and most impressively, the Flyers held him without a shot in the third period. That was primarily because of Provorov.

“It’s a five-man job to shut down any line that’s out there,” MacDonald said. “But as I’ve said so many times, Ivan’s skating ability and positioning on the ice is so good that he’s able to slow guys down, put them on his back, and just kind of angle them to places they don’t want to go into. It makes it a lot of easier when you are playing with a guy that is capable of doing that so well and covering so much ground because his skating ability is second to none.”

On one occasion in the second period, McDavid and Ryan-Nugent Hopkins skated into the Flyers’ zone on a 2-on-1 break. However McDavid, who is a wizard with the puck, never got off a shot – or a pass for that matter – because Provorov stood his ground and didn’t give him either a passing or a shooting lane, which was pretty remarkable.

There’s no question that Provorov is already a No. 1 defenseman in the NHL, the question is, when will be recognized as one of the best at his craft?

He’s really not that far off. Give it a year, year-and-a-half at most.

5. His partner’s not that bad either.

Here we go with the MacDonald argument again. I really hope not to do this as often as I have so far this season, but talking to fans on Twitter about MacDonald and trying to tell them he’s not as awful as they make him out to be is like knocking on their door, going into their home and making them switch religions.

So yeah… no success.

That said, MacDonald has been steady so far this season – and he really showed some gutsy play and leadership ability in this one.

With the Oilers on a third period power play and the score tied, MacDonald blocked a shot – his sixth blocked shot of the game – by Mark Letestu.

The shot hit MacDonald on top of his right knee, above the padding:

Huge block by Andrew MacDonald on the penalty kill. That hurt him a ton. http://pic.twitter.com/2a41MYAE3v

— Sons of Penn (@SonsofPenn) October 21, 2017

He crumpled him to the ice. He told reporters afterward that it was “just a stinger,” but the fact is, he’s likely still limping today.

He really couldn’t stand up at all. He was in obvious pain. Yet, he dove forward to break up a pass back to Lucic in front of the net that would have been an easy go ahead goal.

And he wasn’t done.

With the shift carrying on for more than a minute after he was hit by the shot, MacDonald tried to play his position and finally was able to even gain control of the puck and clear the zone.

Oh… and it was a rough night physically for AMac:

The fearless plays of the game™ are just Andrew MacDonald getting smoked in the face with various objects. http://pic.twitter.com/3uUeFvIaj9

— Sons of Penn (@SonsofPenn) October 21, 2017

For a guy who is on the ice against the best players on the other team all night, every night, to have a Corsi For percentage (percentage of all shots taken in a game that are taken by his team while he is on the ice) of 48.1% is not horrible.

The argument that he’s not worth his contract, while true, is irrelevant.

Consider the Flyers’ cap hit this year is roughly $72.6 million. It marks the first season in the salary cap era that they have a higher payroll than they did in 2003-04, the last season before the salary cap.

If ever a team couldn’t care less about discarding bad contracts, it’s the Flyers. They’re paying buyout money to Ilya Bryzgalov and R.J. Umberger. Before Saturday they had Matt Read in the minors. MacDonald himself was sent down to the AHL before.

Bad salaries were an issue when the team couldn’t even afford to call up a replacement player because the cap was so mismanaged. There’s a lot of breathing room this year. It’s not our money. What MacDonald, or anyone else makes, doesn’t matter unless Hextall suddenly becomes Bob Clarke and Paul Holmgren and starts handing out a bevy of obscene contracts.

That’s not going to happen. Nor is MacDonald going to suddenly turn into an awful defenseman. Nor are any of the legions of cranks on Twitter going to change their tune.

So, I’m just wasting energy. Good conclusion. Let’s move on.

6. Where’s the Edmonton offense?

The Oilers were the popular pick to win the Western Conference this year.

They still might get there. After all, they’ve only played seven games and teams have made the playoffs with worse records than 2-5-0.

But what is alarming is that while scoring is up across the league, Edmonton has only scored 14 goals, for an average of two per game. That’s pretty weak. And their goal differential is a minus-8, which is better than only four teams – Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Montreal and Arizona.

Part of the reason is arguably their second-best offensive player behind McDavid – Leon Draisaitl – hasn’t played in two weeks.

But the other part is, aside from McDavid, the team has underachieved offensively.

McDavid has three of their 14 goals, and aside from his eight points in seven games, only Patrick Maroon – who scored the lone goal against the Flyers – has more than three points.

It’s not been a pretty start for the Oilers and that could be because of the immense pressure Canadian cities put on their team once there are expectations of success.

This Oilers team is loaded for bear for the long run and is going to be good for the forseeable future, but they are young, and sometimes youthful yet talented teams need to take a step back after their first taste of success before they go forward again, and that might be the case for Edmonton.

7. Loose Pucks

In what is becoming one of my favorite segments of each takeaways piece, here are some items from both the game and my travels around the Wells Fargo Center that aren’t worth a deep dive, but I feel are worth mentioning anyway…

Had my first chance to catch up with Danny Briere since being back on the beat. Briere is now in charge of the Flyers ECHL affiliate in Portland, ME, who aren’t playing this season, but who will be up and running in 2018-19. Briere said he is still living primarily in this area and doesn’t think that’ll change even once the new team starts playing. For now he goes up to Portland about once every six weeks. “I don’t need to go up there. I think the people that are running things up there don’t need me looking over their shoulder every day.” Briere said he’s enjoying watching his sons play some junior hockey and being around the Flyers, but admits he’ll probably have to be in Portland a little more frequently next season.

Andrea Helfrich is the Flyers new in-arena host along with Shawny Hill. She’s also the latest apple of Kyle’s stalker eye here on Crossing Broad. One of the positive changes to the Flyers game presentation this year is they’ve cut down on the hawking of their own merchandise considerably. They were easily one of the worst, if not the worst in the entire league at pushing merch on the annoyance scale. Now it’s just a little bit pre-game and only one or two hits in-game and it’s much better with Andrea suggesting you go buy something than Shawny screaming at you to do it. But yesterday, during pre-game, some doofus member of the Flyers Fun Patrol was trying to put a ski cap on Andrea during the live hit on the JumboTron. His efforts were futile, and Andrea was visually frustrated with him, and at one point ripped the hat out of the guy’s hands and said “Forget it, it’s too small anyway. It’s probably for kids.” This is a ski cap, folks. On her petite head. No. It’s not too small. The actual English translation for the Fun Patrol guy is, “Get your grimy hands off my hair.” Interestingly enough, he didn’t appear with her at any other point in the presentation after that.

Speaking of game presentation – thank God they got rid of that stupid season ticket holder rally horn before each game. What a disaster. I feel like I had something to do with it’s quick demise – the Flyers’ game presentation director came up to me in the press box and told me he was reading my Twitter feed and that I needed to get a hobby. I’m not sure if that had to do with the death of the rally horn or the fact that I noticed Lauren Hart was no longer being touted as the No. 1 “ranked” anthemist in the NHL, but rather just the No. 1 anthemist in the NHL with the word “ranked” conspicuously disappearing from the Big Board. We’ll see next game.

Tired of the off-ice crap? Well Read and Lehtera were in the lineup because both Jordan Weal and Taylor Leier are nursing upper body injuries. Weal skated Friday, but didn’t feel 100 percent. Leier did not skate Friday with a “maintenance day” which is a comical description for a day they aren’t practicing because they’re freaking hurt. But, the Flyers just keep doubling down with the term.

Nolan Patrick has been getting less and less ice time. He also was responsible for the turnover on the Maroon goal. I think it’s possible that if this keeps up Patrick could end up facing the Dave Hakstol traditional rookie benching for a game soon enough that is sure to set Flyers Twitter aflame.

What happened to Woo? There was no sign of the Ric Flair robe awarded to the player of the game by the team in the locker room yesterday. Did someone forget to pull it out of the duffel bag, or has the kibosh already been put on it as a ritual? In other Woo news, no Woo chants from the crowd yesterday, which isn’t a bad thing. However, the Eagles cheer again reared it’s ugly head. Look, if the team is losing or there’s a playoff game the next day or something, fine. But, if the team’s winning and there’s no game for more than 48 hours? It’s completely unnecessary.

We Can Play This Way Too! Seven Takeaways from Flyers 2, Oilers 1 published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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uncleleo16 · 7 years

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Ten Oddly Specific Predictions for the 2017-18 Season

The 2017-18 NHL Season is set to begin on Wednesday October 4th, where 8 teams will square off to begin the 101st season as the NHL. This will also be the first season of the Vegas Golden Knights; who are the first expansion team since the 2005 NHL lockout and first expansion team since the Blue Jackets and Wild joined the league in 2000. The league is also seeing a growth in high profile European skaters join the NHL this season with Evgenii Dadonov (Panthers), Vadim Shipachyov (Golden Knights), Andreas Borgman (Maple Leafs) and others. The League will also witness the 45 year old Jaromir Jagr make his debut for a Canadian Hockey Team as he signed with the Calgary Flames to a 1 year deal. Predictions of this season seem to follow a similar trend however. The general public has the Penguins going for a three-peat, Oilers making a deep run, Clayton Keller winning the Calder Trophy and the Tampa Bay Lightning dominating their division. The Hockey experts are all taking the same picks with a broad brush but I intend to offer 10 specific predictions about various things throughout the league.

10. Jaromir Jagr scores 20 goals and leads Flames to another playoff appearance.

The Calgary Flames sneaked into the postseason last year as a wildcard and struggled heavily in the first round against the Anaheim Ducks. They were outscored 14-9 and eliminated in 4 straight games. Goaltending was a major concern and the team unloaded both Brian Elliott (Signed with Philadelphia) and Chad Johnson (Traded to Arizona, then signed with Buffalo as FA). This off season they traded for 35 year old goaltender Mike Smith from Arizona and Eddie Lack from the Carolina Hurricanes. The Flames also added Defenseman Travis Hamonic to provide better stability on the backend and of course veteran forward Jaromir Jagr to increase a fairly sub-par winger presence. The Flames additions and growth of their young talent should lead them to consecutive postseason appearances. Jagr played 82 games last season and scored 16 goals with the Panthers. Reaching 20 goals is very reasonable and with his tremendous conditioning, he should be able to stay healthy most of the season.

9. Scott Darling struggles with a Save Percentage of .910 at the end of the season but the Hurricanes sneak into the playoffs.

I’m a big fan of Scott Darling and believe the Hurricanes are on the verge of really exploding in this league but the hype surrounding him may too soon. He has spent the past three seasons as a Back-up goalie in Chicago and has accumulated a Goals Against Average of 2.38 and a .923 SV%. However the Blackhawks are a position team that is strong defensively and he is only tasked with 30 games a season. Jumping from 30 games to 55 or 60 is huge and Darling may be shell shocked for a few months during the season. Carolina’s starter and now back-up Cam Ward played 61 games last season with a 2.69 GAA and a .905 SV%. I believe Darling is better than Cam Ward but playing for a young club is challenging (Just ask any Leafs or Oilers Goaltender over the past 5 seasons). Regardless, Carolina will make the playoffs as a wildcard behind an underrated defensive group and some great young offensive stars like Sebastian Aho, Elias Lindholm and Teuvo Teravainen.

8. Vadim Shipachyov leads the Golden Knights in scoring with a 60 point season.

The Las Vegas Golden Knights will most likely miss the post season but Shipachyov might be one of the few bright spots on the expansion team. The 30 year old Russian Center has never played hockey in North America but has absolutely killed it in the KHL over the past few seasons. Last season with SKA St. Petersburg he had 26 Goals and 76 Points in 50 Games and 19 points in 17 playoff games. He is a prolific passer with great vision and skating ability. Last season Alexander Radulov joined the Canadiens from the KHL where he had 65 points in 53 games for CSKA Moscow. In the NHL he was Montreal's best two way forward with 18 goals and 54 points in 76 games. The Knights are hoping for similar results from Shipachyov.

7. Nail Yakupov has a career year with the Colorado Avalanche scoring 20 goals and 50 points.

I’m reaching a lot on this prediction, Nail Yakupov hasn’t shown much promise over the past few seasons but if the Avalanche give the forward a chance he might excel. The former 1st overall pick needs a career year to save his NHL career and Colorado was the best choice to sign. The Avalanche aren’t loaded with talent and can afford to give a 2nd line spot for a player trying to get his game back. Last season with St. Louis, he had 9 points in 40 games on the 4th line but during his rookie season in Edmonton he had 17 goals and 31 points in 48 games. His rookie season was only 5 seasons ago and Yakupov is only 23 years old.

6. Contract Dispute with Andreas Athanasiou ends in disaster for the Red Wings and Athanasiou signs in the KHL.

The Detroit Red Wings are a Cap mess and are now faced with a difficult task of re-signing Andreas Athanasiou (who doesn’t currently have a contract). The Wings still have Zetterberg locked in for 4 seasons at 6 million, Frans Nielsen locked for 5 years at 5 million, Johan Franzen for 4 years at 4 million, Jimmy Howard for 2 years at 5 million and countless other bad deals. Andreas Athanasiou finished second on the team with 18 goals in 64 games and is looking for roughly 2 million dollars a season on his new deal. The 23 year old is one of the fastest players in the NHL and has tremendous hands and can play the penalty kill. The Wings need to offer him a contract and then give him more minutes on the ice but unfortunately it sounds like a mess between the two parties. KHL makes the most sense for this season and then Athanasiou can explore his options next year in the NHL.

5. Brock Boeser wins the Calder Trophy

Brock Boeser is a 20 year old rookie for the Vancouver Canucks and is coming off his sophomore year at the University of North Dakota. Clayton Keller for Arizona is a heavy favorite over Boeser but the opportunity in Vancouver could be greater for Boeser. The Sedins are aging and the team needs a line to step up offensively. That line could possibly be the Boeser, Horvat, Baertschi/Eriksson second line. Both Horvat and Boeser are early in their career and Boeser is naturally scorer. In 9 games with the Canucks last season he had 4 goals and 5 points.

4. The Capitals finish in a Wildcard Spot this season

The Washington Capitals have been at the top of their division for a couple of seasons and won the presidents trophy last season. They lost in a close 7 games series against the eventually Cup winners in the second round. This off season was awful for Washington however, meanwhile the rest of the division got better. The Capitals lost Forwards Marcus Johansson (24 Goals, 58 Points), Justin Williams (24 Goals, 48 Points) and gained Alex Chiasson (12 Goals, 24 Points) and Devante Smith Pelly (4 Goals, 9 Points). They also lost Defenseman Nate Schmidt (Vegas Golden Knights), Kevin Shattenkirk (New York Rangers) and Karl Alzner (Montreal) without addressing any substitutes for them. They also gave 30 year old T.J. Oshie a 8 year deal at 6 million dollars after his first 30 goal season and didn’t draft until round 4 of the NHL entry draft. This season could be unusual for Capitals fans.

3. The Leafs trade away James Van Riemsdyk before seasons end.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have an excess of forwards and struggled during Training Camp with some of the decisions regarding cuts. Last year regular Nikita Soshnikov and playoff Overtime hero Kasperi Kapanen were both sent down to the Marlies because of the lack of room in the NHL squad. Van Riemsdyk is 28 years old and is entering Free Agency following this season. The offense focused Winger had 29 goals and 62 points last season for the Maple Leafs but was heavily criticized for his defensive efforts. The Leafs might not sign him or Tyler Bozak this off season and it makes sense for General Manager Lou Lamoriello to get some return from the American forwards. Expect Lamoriello going after a defenseman or prospect in a potential trade regarding Van Riemsdyk or Bozak.

2. Nikita Kucherov breaks 100 points and wins the Art Ross Trophy

Last season Connor McDavid won the Art Ross Trophy with 30 Goals and 100 Points in 82 games but then only had 5 Goals and 9 points in 13 Playoff Games. Nikita Kucherov had 40 Goals and 85 points in 74 Games last season for the Lightning and tried to carry the team on his back to the postseason without Steven Stamkos in the line-up. The Return of Stamkos and Tyler Johnson will help Kucherov create space offensively.

1. The Minnesota Wild win the Stanley Cup

This is a bold prediction for a team that has struggled in the postseason the past 5 seasons but the Wild are a solid team with great potential to go far. Head coach Bruce Boudreau is in his second year with the club, Captain Mikko Koivu is finishing up the prime of his career at age 34, Matt Dumba and Jonas Brodin are developed into true studs defensively and Devan Dubnyk is a top 5 goalie in the NHL. The team has offensive abilities with Nino Niederreiter, Eric Staal, Charlie Coyle and Mikael Granlund but the best attribute with the Wild is their defense. They are lead by physical two-way forwards and solid defenseman. The Ottawa Senators nearly made the Cup Final with a team that was aimed defensively. This is the year the Wild transition their regular season success to the postseason.

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mitchbeck · 6 years

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CANTLON'S CORNER: WOLF PACK OFF SEASON VOLUME 17

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - The summer months are winding down and teams are finalizing their rosters for their respective training camps in North America. Around the world, however, some seasons have already begun. It was another busy week in the hockey world. PLAYER & COACHING MOVEMENT Ex-CT Whale/Wolf Pack Kris Newbury signs with the Brampton Beast (ECHL), the ECHL affiliate of the Montreal Canadiens after a year in Europe. Ex-Pack, Alexandre Giroux, 37, signs with the Thetford Mines (LNAH) for next season as he winds down his playing career. Ex-Pack, Devin DiDiomete, has gone from SHC Fassa (Italy-AlpsHL) to SG Cortina (Italy-AlpsHL) for next season. Ex-Pack goalie, Miika Wiikman, stays in England, shifting from Milton Keynes Lightning to the Coventry Blaze (England-EIHL). Now an ex-Pack defenseman, Brendan Kotyk, who played seven games last year in Hartford, has signed a deal with Toledo (ECHL). Hershey signed ex-CT Whale defenseman, Logan Pyett to a one-year AHL deal. Pyett was out of hockey for a year batting sarcoma cancer, a bone cancer in his upper thigh. Pyett beat that strain of cancer and has been working his himself back into game shape. The 30-year-old defenseman played last year with the Tokohu Free Blades in Japan in the Asia League Ice Hockey (ALIH) as part of his game training. In 26 games, Pyett scored four goals and 15 points and 49 PIM. Pyett borrowed some playbooks from the Lehigh Valley Phantoms head coach, Scott Gordon, to aid his rehab training. He was supposed to play with the Phantoms two years ago when the cancer was discovered. Should Pyett have a full and successful AHL season next year, he would certainly be a frontrunner for the AHL Hunt Trophy. AHL’ers moving to Europe continues. Zach Sill of the Hershey Bears heads over to play with HC Sparta Prague (Czech Republic-CEL). Paul Postma of the Providence Bruins heads to AK Bars Kazan (Russia-KHL) and Lance Bouma Rockford goes to HC-Geneva Servette (Switzerland-LNA). Yaroslav Dyblenko has already switched teams after leaving Binghamton his contract was traded from St. Petersburg to Spartak Moscow (Russia-KHL) in training camp. The AHL to Euro list stands at 72 players from 26 teams. Three AHL free agent signings. Wayne Simpson goes from Hershey to the Rochester Americans while Chase Balisy, who bedeviled the Wolf Pack the last two years in Springfield with the Thunderbirds signs a one-year, two-way deal with the Ottawa/Belleville Senators for $650K-NHL/$135K–AHL. Six more collegians sign North American pro deals. Brady Tkachuk leaves BU after just one year and signs an NHL entry-level with Ottawa. He can be assigned to Belleville (AHL). He was drafted fourth overall in June’s NHL Draft. Former Terrier teammate, Nikolas Olsson, signs with Adirondack Thunder (ECHL). Jordan Klimek goes from Northern Michigan University (NCHC) to Kansas City Mavericks (ECHL). Joining him in Kansas City will be Brett Beauvais from Robert Morris (AHC), Tim Shoup heads from Dartmouth College (ECACHL) to Orlando (ECHL) and Dexter Dancs goes from the University Michigan (Big 10) to Idaho Steelheads (ECHL). Three more college players are off to Europe in Tanner Jaillet who had the nation’s best GAA at 1.89 with Denver University (NCHC) signs with EHC Wolfsburg (Germany-DEL), Dan Kelly goes from Tufts University (NESCAC) in Boston to Toulouse BHC (France Division-2) and Kevin Loppatto Manhattanville College (UCHC) to Vannas HC (Sweden Division-1) . That makes 30 college players from all divisions to sign in Europe, 178 Division I players have signed North American deals and 235 total who have signed North American and European pro deals. Former Nighthawk, Bud Stefanski, is stepping back behind the bench. Stefanski joins the OHL Sudbury Wolves with his son-in-law, former NHL’er Riley Stillman, as an assistant coach. Stefanski’s grandson, and Stillman’s son, Riley, will be with the Springfield Thunderbirds in the fall. After 12 years in Peterborough, the last six as head coach, ex-Hartford Whaler and New York Ranger, Jody Hull, was named the new associate head coach of the Niagara Ice Dogs (OHL) for next season. Hul played in 831 NHL games over a 16 season career, including 118 with the Whalers and 50 with the Rangers. Former Whaler, Mark Hunter, left the Toronto Maple Leafs to return as the GM of the London Knights (OHL) coached by his brother, Dale. In a very surprising move, Austin Mikesch, the eldest child of former Beast of New Haven forward Pat Mikesch, played with the Nipawin Hawks (SJHL), the team the Humboldt Broncos (SJHL) were heading to play on that fateful day last April. Mikesch has decided to join the Broncos this season. Pat Mikesch is the head coach/GM of the Green Bay Gamblers (USHL). Hlinka-Gretzky Cup results The Canadians captured gold in the five-day Hlinka-Gretzky Cup tournament held in Edmonton and Red Deer, Alberta this year. The Canadian team defeated Sweden 6-2 in Edmonton last Sunday. The tourney was held in Canada for the first time since 1986. Former Wolf Pack goaltending great, Jason LaBarbera, was part of the gold medal squad as a goaltending consultant. Alexis Lafreniere from Rimouski (QMJHL) scored twice. He will clearly be a top five draft pick next summer. Canada has secured gold 22 times in 28 years in this summer hockey tourney honoring the memory of great Czech great, Ivan Hlinka. The US lost to Russia in the bronze medal game 5-4. Vasili Podkolzin had a hat-trick with two-of-the-three-goals coming on spectacular shots. He led the tournament with eight goals and clearly increased his draft stock for next year. The US's Connor Hughes was a standout and earned a top five-star rating toward the draft as well. Russia's Ilya Nikolayev may have scored an even better goal then Podkozin and Hughes. He first went with a backhand spin-a-rama and the shot got blocked, then he got the puck back and scored to the short-side displaying tremendous agility. ECHL AFFILIATIONS MAP Lots of movements in the Double AA affiliate map for the AHL as the leagues try to sync up with a 31-NHL, 31-AHL, and 31-ECHL pyramid structure being the desired goal. The ECHL is always will be difficult because they fall outside of the current CBA agreement with the NHL and the AHL CBA agreement. The ECHL has its own player agreement. The switches have been numerous with Toronto leaving Orlando and going to St. John’s (Newfoundland Growlers). Orlando then hooks up with Syracuse (Tampa Bay). Meanwhile, the Rangers departed from Greenville to go to Maine (Portland). The Minnesota Wild makes a change too after the Quad City Mallards dropped to the SPHL. They now have a new agreement with the Allen Americans in Allen, TX. The St. Louis Blues, now in San Antonio, hooks up with the Tulsa Oilers after the Winnipeg Jets left there. The Jets, in turn, hooked up with Jacksonville, FL while Arizona/Tucson is now in Norfolk. Then there's the Colorado Avalanche who have a new AHL affiliate in the Colorado Eagles (Loveland) who now have Utah, who split from Anaheim. Three ECHL teams are without NHL/AHL affiliates. That makes five NHL organizations without a Double AA affiliate. The ECHL cities are Ft. Wayne, Greenville, and Rapid City. The NHL teams without an ECHL affiliation are San Jose, Columbus, Florida, Las Vegas and Anaheim. SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE HOCKEY In Australia, the nation’s capital city team, the Canberra (CBR) Brave, sit atop the short, thirty-game season AIHL as their season comes toward the end. They will then start their Goodall Cup playoffs. Canberra is 20-4-0-0 (W-OTW-OTL-L) for 60 points. The team's leading scorer also tops the AIHL. He is former UCONN Husky, Trevor Gerling. His 18 goals and a league-best 38 assists (56 points), is one better than Perth Thunder’s, Pierre-Luc Grandmaison, as of the start of the weekend action starts. Cheshire native, Rob Malloy, and his Newcastle Northstars teammates are batting his former team, the Sydney Ice Dogs for the fourth and last playoff spot. Newcastle and Sydney ice Dogs are tied at 35 points as the Northstars have a record of 8-9-0-3-4. Malloy in his sixth AIHL season has 21 points in 21 games played with five goals and 16 assists. In New Zealand, the Southern (Queenstown) Stampede, the defending Birgel Cup champions, will seek their fourth straight title next Friday against the winner of this Friday’s semifinal meeting between the West Auckland Admirals and the Dunedin Thunder. The Stampede still has its player-assistant coach in Adam Blanchette (Berlin/Hartford Jr. Wolf Pack). The Stampede topped the Admirals in the short season regular season finishing first with one more win with a 13-0-0-3 record and topped the five-team league with 110 goals for and the best defense surrendering just 44 goals. Read the full article

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