Rite of Spring 2018-“What happens in the playoffs stays in the playoffs”

[Kevin W.]

3 hours ago, KittSmith_95 said:

Stop hating on this team.

No. Maybe when the league stops acting like this farce is organic, then I'll stop hating.

[Unocal]

Getting back to the other series..... why the hell does Tampa play SO much better on the road? Save for 1 bad third period against New Jersey, they've been so much better away that if I'm the Caps, I wouldn't mind taking my chances in a game 7 on the road.

[Mac the Knife]

8 hours ago, rams80 said:

Al Lerner paid $540 million.  Texans' group paid $700 million for terms that were scarcely more generous than Cleveland's.  And those terms were a willful correction after the Panthers and Jaguars made it to the Conference Finals in Year 2.

 

The league has no problem with creating a doormat in Seattle.

Different leagues, different times, different environments and different situations.  Seattle could very well end up a doormat to be sure, but it won't be because the NHL watered down the expansion draft because of Vegas.

[sparkychewbarky]

Here's "The Hater's Guide to the VGK Expansion Draft" in hindsight...

 

 

[RaginRonic]

7 minutes ago, sparky chewbarky said:

Here's "The Hater's Guide to the VGK Expansion Draft" in hindsight...

 

 

 

Without actually watching this, I can tell one thing....

 

It was just their own way of trying to game the system and screw Canada's NHL clubs over. Same old crap from all of the U.S. teams all the time.

 

Ho hum. Same old crap every year from the NHL. Nothing different ever discussed, permitted, or tolerated.

 

> = P

[DC in Da House w/o a Doubt]

Vegas deserves a ton of credit.  Regardless of talent, getting 25 new guys to play this well together is impressive. 

 

My hot take: they will pound whoever comes out of the East. 

[crashcarson15]

14 hours ago, Dalcowboyfan92 said:

 Vegas was supposed to be an absolute laughingstock.

 

Not as bad as the expansion Caps or Sharks were, but horrible; like the expansion Blue Jackets were for example.

I mean, if you expected the Knights to be as bad as the expansion Blue Jackets were, that's on you.

 

Columbus had to split everyone's fourth-line forwards and third-pair defensemen that Nashville and Atlanta didn't want. Vegas got to select from everyone's third-line forwards and second-pair defensemen and didn't have to share the player pool with three other expansion teams.

 

I dunno, clearly I didn't expect Vegas to be as good as they've been, but I think possible playoff contender -- in a league prone to randomness where having a good goalie is pretty important -- was a reasonable preseason expectation. It's clearly a group of guys over-performing expectations in a market that had to go through something really awful before the season started, and it's all a bunch of stupid fun, so in that sense, it's cool to see. It embarrasses the league too, which is also kinda neat.

 

When LeBron was in Miami, I always lamented that as a Cleveland fan, I couldn't really appreciate what he was doing down there, and in some sense, I feel the same way as a Jackets fan with Vegas. If I was a fan of any other team (perhaps Florida aside?), I'd be 100% behind Vegas -- but it's a little frustrating seeing a team keyed to success by a player who was part of your team's long-term future (and then seeing people make the argument that VGK is a team full of guys whose teams didn't want them). I don't really know the intricacies of the roster situation for other NHL teams, and the short- and long-term importance of the players they lost, but I know the Jackets were put in a bad situation where they effectively had to lose a guy under 25 who would've been a top-nine forward this year. So it goes.

 

I didn't want Vegas to suck and hoped they'd get off to a good start and be competitive within a couple years -- because I wouldn't wish what Jackets fans had to go through to even get to now on anyone other than a Pittsburgh NBA expansion team -- but it's a little annoying to watch as a fan of a team that's drawn the short end of the stick in two expansion drafts, their own and this one.

 

 

tl;dr -- I guess I'm fine either way with what happens. If Vegas wins, it's pretty funny, a neat story for the city, and proof that hockey is stupid anyway. If they lose, I don't have to watch a player my team wanted to keep, but was effectively forced to give up, hailed as a key player on a Cup winner.

[Sport]

10 hours ago, KittSmith_95 said:

To all of you mad at Vegas's run:

 

 

Stop hating on this team.

 

No. 

 

10 hours ago, KittSmith_95 said:

They weren't expected to do this well. They weren't expected to get this far. Even with the players they drafted, nobody expected certain guys to break out or contribute this well. I say the team that look the most stupid right now are Minnesota & Florida, with Columbus being a close third. The NHL wanted this team to be solid, but everyone predicted they would be the worst team in the Pacific. 

 

What everyone thought in October is irrelevant. They've proven in the present that the league messed up. 

 

10 hours ago, KittSmith_95 said:

 

I personally couldn't be happier. This is stuff sports fans should be cheering about.....

 

If it were a pure Cinderella story, sure, but it's not. The league jimmied the rules, made it too easy on them, and accidentally handed a championship to a first year team, which is the happening of a low level Arena Football league. It shouldn't be happening in a league like the NHL. If they'd had the same restrictions that the previous expansion teams had I would be fine with it, but competitive integrity was fractured the second the rules were agreed upon. 

 

10 hours ago, KittSmith_95 said:

yet because the team is in a market you guys think/thought was a stupid place to out a hockey team, you're  bitter. Had this team been put in Quebec City, would you be as angry? 

 

If they'd been in QC they wouldn't have gotten the same rules because establishing hockey with an instant winner wouldn't have been a priority, but let's say it all worked out the same way in Quebec - it's still a farce and a huge dump on competitive integrity. I've already answered this five times this season - Location has nothing to do with anyone's problem with this team. 

[DC in Da House w/o a Doubt]

Honest question: Why didn't the Blue Jackets just protect William Karlsson in the expansion draft?  Was he supposed to be this good?  Or is this somewhat unexpected.  If he was supposed to be this good, I find it hard to believe that Columbus has 7 forwards they wanted to keep over him.

 

Same question for [insert good Vegas player] and [team he played for last season]

[RaginRonic]

32 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

 

No. 

 

 

What everyone thought in October is irrelevant. They've proven in the present that the league messed up. 

 

 

If it were a pure Cinderella story, sure, but it's not. The league jimmied the rules, made it too easy on them, and accidentally handed a championship to a first year team, which is the happening of a low level Arena Football league. It shouldn't be happening in a league like the NHL. If they'd had the same restrictions that the previous expansion teams had I would be fine with it, but competitive integrity was fractured the second the rules were agreed upon. 

 

 

If they'd been in QC they wouldn't have gotten the same rules because establishing hockey with an instant winner wouldn't have been a priority, but let's say it all worked out the same way in Quebec - it's still a farce and a huge dump on competitive integrity. I've already answered this five times this season - Location has nothing to do with anyone's problem with this team. 

 

Yeah....let's just sit by and do nothing for Quebec City...don't let them have any good players when they come back, and railroad the hell out of them for all eternity...nice, fascistic message being sent there, McCarthy.

 

Appropriate name for such a message too, right?

 

I hope that, when they come back, they raid the NHL dry, and poach at least 5 big names out of Vegas, as Vegas' punishment for skipping ahead in line over Quebec. And then Vegas' Cup hopes go down the toilet afterward.

 

> = P

[Sport]

10 minutes ago, RaginRonic said:

 

Yeah....let's just sit by and do nothing for Quebec City...don't let them have any good players when they come back, and railroad the hell out of them for all eternity...nice, fascistic message being sent there, McCarthy.

 

Appropriate name for such a message too, right?

 

 

Fascistic? STFU and reread what I wrote. Nowhere did I endorse the league's actions in that hypothetical scenario. I WANTED QUEBEC CITY TO HAVE A TEAM BEFORE LAS VEGAS, NEVADA GOT A TEAM. I STILL THINK IT'S INSANE THAT THEY DON'T HAVE A TEAM. 

 

Way to miss my point. I was saying, hypothetically, that the league wouldn't have felt as much of a need to win over the QC market as they did Vegas and therefore the rules wouldn't have been as generous. It would've been wrong on their part. GOOD :censored:ING GRIEF. 

[Sport]

1 minute ago, DC in Da House w/o a Doubt said:

Honest question: Why didn't the Blue Jackets just protect William Karlsson in the expansion draft?  Was he supposed to be this good?  Or is this somewhat unexpected.  If he was supposed to be this good, I find it hard to believe that Columbus has 7 forwards they wanted to keep over him.

 

 

Short Answer: He had 6 goals last year so yes this season was somewhat unexpected, but he was always a good penalty killer and a good rock down the middle on the third line. 

 

Long Answer: Due to forwards protected by exemptions or contract stipulations there were more like 4 forwards they wanted to keep over him. In essence because of only 6 goals last year and the protected list and that the team also had to keep VGK from taking the backup goalie as well as up-and-coming forward Josh Anderson, Karlsson was the logical choice to expose and for Vegas to take and that's still true today. BUT that doesn't mean, for the simple minded hockey writers/fans, that the team didn't want him. If VGK doesn't exist he's still a Columbus Blue Jacket and the same can be said for a lot of teams so to say this is a team of castoffs and misfits I find incredibly disingenuous and hockey writers should know better. He's always had 30 goal scorer potential so I'm not as surprised as the national hockey intelligentsia at large that he blew up this year. It makes sense to me that a guy of his ability would be able to benefit statistically with the linemates he's been playing with. And you know what? I do the same deal again even knowing what we know now. His shooting percentage is absurd, VGK (or someone) is going to over-pay him a ton of money and this will be his career year while the guys they made the deal to keep still have good careers in front of them and that deal allowed the Jackets to unload the worst contract in team history to VGK (David Clarkson). 

[FGM13]

As an Oilers fan, it’s extremely frustrating to see a team just waltz into a Stanley Cup Final in the their first year when my team has been punching itself in the face for twelve years.

 

As a Canadian hockey fan who wants hockey to succeed and believes that the best way to do that is to put teams in hockey-mad markets, it’s frustrating to see this horrible idea for a hockey team get an advantage in the expansion draft that no other team has gotten.

 

As a sports fan, though? I do have to admit I kinda am okay with this run. Sure they shouldn’t exist in the first place and their team is more stacked than any other expansion team in history, but the fact remains that they’re still vastly overperforming their expectations and true-talent level, they’re playing exciting, fast-paced hockey with unreal goaltending, the story has been fantastic, and they do seem to have created some real hockey fans in Las Vegas, at least for the time being.

 

Is it dumb that there’s a team in Vegas? Sure. Should they be as good as they are? Probably not. Are they capturing the minds of sports fans in a way that no hockey team has in a while? Sure seems like it! Am I finding it fun? Hell yeah I am.

 

Let people enjoy things, FFS.

[OnWis97]

Many of you know a lot more about the business of the NHL than I do.  But is part of this that the last run of expansion teams included four teams in three years?  Obviously, they could not give those teams the same treatment that Vegas is getting.  

 

I think what the league really wanted was to have Vegas be competitive and it worked too well.  Why?  Maybe because they were skeptical fans would go out an watch a last-place team (though if so, it's not a great market).  Anyway, win or lose, I have to think the NHL did not plan on this and may not like it.  That said, I think fans in general love this.  I know I have to be careful not to treat anecdotal internet commenting as data, but the ESPN story today is full of commenters who think this is great.

 

The NHL's downfall, if it ever happens, probably won't be attributable to this.  But it really, really bugs me.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I just ordered a Vegas Golden Knights hat, so I'm an idiot and the NHL has succeeded.

 

 

[RaginRonic]

1 minute ago, DG_Now said:

I just ordered a Vegas Golden Knights hat, so I'm an idiot and the NHL has succeeded.

 

 

 

Give it to me, so I can take it, a pic of Bettman, an NBC logo, and a U.S. flag so I can burn them all.

 

Garbage in, garbage out. Right?

 

> = P

[JerseyJimmy]

29 minutes ago, RaginRonic said:

Give it to me, so I can take it, a pic of Bettman, an NBC logo, and a U.S. flag so I can burn them all.

 

Garbage in, garbage out. Right?

 

> = P

 

MOD EDIT: That sort of language is not necessary.

[charger77]

14 minutes ago, DG_Now said:

I just ordered a Vegas Golden Knights hat, so I'm an idiot and the NHL has succeeded.

 

 

 

I have one too!

[RaginRonic]

36 minutes ago, Jimmy Lethal said:

 

MOD EDIT

 

What? I'm not allowed to comment on anyone who thinks it's okay to kiss the rear end of the current NHL administration, and tell them they're funny, when in reality, there's not much funny about the NHL lately? And hasn't been since 1994?

 

I'm just here to represent those who don't think that anything that he thinks is good for the league at all, and to leave Canada's franchises alone, and get those ones back into serious Cup contention before the U.S .teams get that treatment.

 

And, as a fan of all 7 teams here in Canada equally, I don't appreciate being used, disrespected, or crapped on for not wanting anything to do with anything the league wants that doesn't have Canada go first.

 

After seeing nothing but Old Glory forced down my throat for 25 years, I think the taste of it sucks.

 

> = (

[OnWis97]

3 minutes ago, DG_Now said:

I just ordered a Vegas Golden Knights hat, so I'm an idiot and the NHL has succeeded.

 

 

When I was a kid and Jordan started being Jordan, a lot of people wearing Bulls gear would claim they liked the Bulls before Jordan even got there (at least 9 out of 10 were lying).

 

It'll be a difficult claim for non-local fans ofr the VGN.  "I liked them when they were bad" isn't going to be a thing.