Sport

He won the Vezina twice for cripes sake. The only surprise about this hot streak is he got It back after some down years when it looked like he was washed.

Who's your all-time favorite Denver Nugget? Mine's Nick Van Exel.

We finally got the Crew! First couple seasons they couldn’t win a game at TQL. Now they can’t lose.

If three more years at the Mullet is the bar then there's dozens of cities we could draw out of a hat that would perform better. They'd appreciate having a major league team too. How about, picking a place at random, Omaha? Somewhere in Middle America. Wouldn't even need to realign the conferences.

"Where should the Coyotes build our new home?" You know how lawyers say never ask a question to a witness on the stand that you don't know the answer to? The social media version of that is never ask a question that has an obvious joke answer.

I’m telling you Bettman has no interest in actually solving this situation. Maybe he did 10, 5, 3 years ago, but now he’s just going to keep delaying and stretching things out with the Coyotes until he retires and then they’re the next guy’s problem. I know checked out senioritis when I see it. I’ve left jobs before.

Was that the easiest win in team history? Felt like a walk in the park and could've easily had two or three more goals. Winning is fun. I hope to do it again Saturday!

The people said no. There's never been a more clear message that the Coyotes are not worth it to the residents of greater Phoenix. The league said "options" moving forward and I see two - Either get TF out of there or pay for the arena your damn selves.

No and I haven't heard anything that would suggest that's a serious possibility. I don't think the league would do that to Columbus, one, and, two, Cleveland is a small market that's already over-extended with their NFL, MLB, and NBA teams. Sounds like AM radio guys openly brainstorming about available cities without much thought beyond "hey they cold they have arena they have other sports"

Enormous Dallas Stars fan here.

Is that me? I'm getting worn down with the deluge, onslaught, and torrent of alternate uniforms we're being asked to keep up with throughout sports so where I once could've been arsed to give a passionate honk one way or the other about this, now I cannot muster up a care. I mean, they'll be worn a few times out of 162? And then they'll get replaced by the next shiny new uniform program the league adopts. I have a hard time getting fired up when I know it's not going to stick around long either way. As far as actual looks go, they look cool, I guess? Dark pants will never not look like those guys who take slow pitch softball too seriously, but I realize I'm losing this fight and one day color pants will be an every day look for most of the teams. Just like with what happened in the NFL. I have decided to just stop worrying about that and accept it. I'll probably buy the hat just to have it and because it does look good, but nothing about the jersey or the striping excites me all that much. I guess at this point in year 25 of using black you can no longer say this is BFBS so no issue for me on that front, but I was hoping for a look inspired by the pullovers of the Big Red Machine years that used multiple shades of red - burgundy, red, brick, pink, etc. Be the literal Reds. The wordmark reminds me of the panels on the side of Convention center. Is it supposed to? If not, then I see no way this connects to the city like it's supposed to.

Yeah sexual assault is everywhere in hockey because we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas. Continuing to try nothing isn’t an acceptable solution. Three reasons you punish the Blackhawks with actual, visible consequences like stripping picks: 1. so they’re an example for everybody else working in the sport. Nobody cares about the fine and the guys involved being blacklisted - The organization needed to face actual damage and they didn’t. You make it hurt so the next time it happens a team handles it properly. 2. It also demonstrates that the league is taking sexual assault seriously and their approach so far to the Beach scandal has been a whole lot of “ahhh hey not good, guys. Cmon”. Optics are important. Instead their punishment is they get the next great superstar and the league looks incredibly stupid for gifting him to a team who shouldn’t even have a pick. 3. How about :censored:ing mother :censored:ing god damn :censored:ing justice? Because it’d be refreshing to see some consequences one :censored:ing time? Truly a banner night for OITGDNHL moments. It’s just a very crappy night for the sport.

They were probably supposed to go to commercial before showing the third pick and Weekes read his copy early over the Bedard highlights footage so when they came back from commercial they decided to cut out the Blue Jackets card and jump straight into the top two. It’s still really dumb that the card turning is pre-taped, while the show is live, and the lottery is done behind the scenes. It’s like they want it to look rigged.

This take stinks and your beef with the hurricanes is bizarre. I may have caught that. Most Blue Jacketsy thing to happen since they lost a playoff game because Zach Werenski Malarchuking out of his face wasn’t enough to get a whistle against the Penguins.

I’m not a draft lottery conspiracy theorist, but that was weird. Funny that the team who should’ve had all their picks thrown out for a decade gets Bedard. No, excuse me, “funny” isn’t the right word. What’s the word? Oh right, grossly infuriating.

Ottawa? LOL it took the Predators, Blue Jackets, and Thrashers 6, 8 and 7 seasons to make their first playoffs. The Predators lost their first five playoff series, the Blue Jackets didn't win a series until year 19, and the Thrashers moved to dang ass Winnipeg. Minnesota's only won 2 playoff series since 2003. GTHO with this Ottawa nonsense. Things changed when Vegas paid a massively historic sum to join the league and the league finally figured out thanks to the Turn of the Century expansion teams's struggles that maybe it's bad business to haze new markets for, at minimum, a half decade.

Right. Cleveland, Toledo, and Cincinnati sprung up for actual reasons. Columbus only exists in its current form because it happened to be in the exact middle of the state.

Probably right out of the gate yes because both cities were more accustomed to having local pro sports teams. Columbus struggled early on with lifelong natives of the city wearing Red Wings, Blackhawks, or Penguins jerseys to the arena only to turn around and wear a Blue Jackets jersey for the next home game when they would play, like, the Sharks or something. But that behavior is going away as the team and city grow together. There seems to be fewer Penguins and Red Wings and Blackhawks fans every time they play. If the team ever gets and stays consistently good Columbus might surprise - During our brief brush with competitiveness the playoff crowds were the rowdiest sports crowds I've ever been a part of and I started to notice a mindset shift during the 2017-2020 where expectations for the team set in and the approach people took began to smell very similar to Ohio State football attitudes. Not sure I liked it, but if the team ever wins or threatens for cups I think Columbus would hold its own in the annoying fanbase department. LOL yeah basically.

Oooh a topic I'm uniquely suited to discuss. At the time in the mid-90's Cincinnati was already over-served relative to our population size with the Reds, Bengals, and college basketball, while Columbus was just sitting there without a major professional sports franchise (unless you want to count John Cooper's Buckeyes! FOLKS!) and in an open hole on the NHL map with a comparable population to Cincinnati. I think they also sold the BOG that Columbus could theoretically draw fans from all over the state, which happens more now, but definitely wasn't happening in the franchise's first decade when they were complete ass. You're right that people that live in Cincy are from Cincy and people that live in Columbus are from Hilliard or Upper Arlington or Westerville or they're Cleveland, Akron, Dayton, Toledo natives who went to OSU and never left. Cincinnati is a city, Columbus is a collection of suburbs. Columbus is a boring person's Sim City city while Cincinnati is a drunk person's Sim City city. Cincinnati has more character, more charm, more of a centrally established culture, more history, more grit, more diversity, more tactility, less sterility, less planned, and is geographically more interesting. Columbus has better schools, more space, a better educated populace, but it's also more dull. People come to Cincinnati and they either love it or they hate it, nobody can ever seem to muster any emotion one way or the other in the same way for Columbus. And I'm allowed to say this because I'm from both places. Better hockey city? On vibes, maybe Cincinnati, but in actual practice I don't know if Cincinnati would-be the better NHL city. Columbus has quietly built a nice little hockey ecosystem there with very active adult leagues, lots of rinks, lots of youth and high school programs (a Columbus school just became the first school not from Cleveland or Toledo to win the state championship), and a good season ticket holder base. Plus there’s infrastructure for Ohio State hockey and junior hockey. There's more white-collar money in Columbus and they only have to split sports dollars with an MLS team and a college football team rather than MLB and NFL and now MLS that Cincinnati has. Of course all of that grassroots development probably would've happened in Cincinnati if there was an NHL team plopped here in the late 70's WHA merger or a 2000 expansion team, but it's hard for me to imagine it being as good as Columbus has been. I agree with everything else, but Carolina was second in attendance this year. I don't think they're in the shaky ground category right now. If you want to hold bad attendance against them because they missed the playoffs from 2010-2018 then you'd have to hold Buffalo to that same standard. If Carolina has solid attendance when the team is good then they're on par with most every other American market. Sunrise is Glendale East and I heard they didn't sell out game 6 against the Bruins. Don't know how true that is, but it looked like half the crowd was Boston fans. Wouldn't shed a tear if the NHL left south Florida.

I know you're not Elliotte Friedman because he insists on using CLB on twitter because of some personal style guide preference he created and then when he found out that Blue Jackets fans hate it he started going out of his way to do it more. I prefer CBJ because it's just their first initials. It's tidy and COL was already taken. NYR and NYI have been in use for forever, right? If we must use a city only 3 letter abbreviation then CBS would be the best way to go. Las Vegas being shortened to VGK kills me though. I read it as Vaj-K every time. Still hate that they insisted on being called Vegas rather than the full city name.

Boston losing was shocking for sure and one of the biggest upsets ever just because of the season they had, but when you examine it closely it's just kind of one of those flukey hockey losses. They easily could've won in five and then couldn't get one more save in three straight games. It's not an indictment of the playoff format nor does the entire sport need an overhaul, they just choked. It's not like they got destroyed like when the Lightning were swept by our beloved Columbus Blue Jackets. 1 seeds lose all the time. The Avs losing was an upset, yes, but they were only 9 points better than Seattle and struggled with injuries and the cup hangover all season. I'm not stunned they lost in the same way as I am with Boston. That series was a coin toss so really our dude is mad about one series.

6 out of the 8 higher seeded teams won their series. It’s one of the least chaotic first rounds we’ve ever had.

The higher seed won 5 out of the 7 completed series. The Devils can make that 6/8 tonight, but even if the Rangers win that's still a coin toss series. There were only two upsets. It's already one of the least chaotic first rounds we've ever had.

Yeah according this guy the Bruins have the worst prospect pool in the NHL. https://hockeyprospecting.com/2023/05/01/team-strength-rankings-may-2023/ The Bruins will be good again next year, but they've been "old" for a while now. Eventually that'll fall off a cliff. The 2020 Lightning were still relatively young and got the Kucherov cap-circumvention bump (or was that 2021? I can't keep track of things anymore), though I maintain that if the Blue Jackets had found a goal in the 5 overtime game in the bubble they would've eliminated the Lightning again, but every cup winning team seems to have one or a dozen Sliding Doors brushes with death so can't really hold that against them.

Best hockey week of my life. It was only four years ago, but it was also forever ago. I think we have maybe two guys left from that team? Outside of my big moment there wasn’t many notable moments. The Blues winning their first cup felt less climactic than I expected it to. I remember that playoffs having a lot of sweeps - The Penguins got swept by the Islanders who got swept by the Hurricanes who got swept by the Bruins, which is super embarrassing for the Penguins.