2018-19 NHL Season

[JayMac]

Moral of the story is don't lose to the Flyers. The Kings losing to the Flyers got John Steven's fired and now the Coyotes' owner is selling after a loss to the Flyers.

 

https://www.thefourthperiod.com/pagnotta/ownership-change-coming-in-arizona/

[Wings]

Like the mighty cockroach, the Arizona Coyotes will survive through many millennia. 

[Still MIGHTY]

Last time the Anaheim Ducks had a seven-game losing streak that was ended with a bounce back win and a team with red as the primary color fired their highly successful coach, Randy Carlyle was fired and that highly successful red team coach was hired by the Ducks.

 

I'm not saying, but I'm just saying.

 

And Arizona, good lord, again? really?

[The_Admiral]

I'm really disappointed by this move on a lot of levels. I don't like it as a sentimental Hawks fan who associates Quenneville with the highest highs the organization has ever known. I don't like what it means for the Hawks going forward with a nominal head coach while Bowman's toady looms over him as a freshly reinstalled assistant, but most of all I don't like what it says about the game of hockey as a whole that Joel Quenneville's crap indeed doesn't work anymore. Lots of people lazily thought of the Hawks as a "fast" team because Kane is small and scorey and they had a relative lack of plodding goons, but they weren't fast in the sense that teams are fast now. If anything, their success arose from their ability to slow the game down, to control the puck from one end of the ice to the other and Harlem Globetrotter their way to goals. Now that NHL hockey is this organized chaos where the name of the game is simply to gun it up the ice before the shot-blocking shell takes all your shooting lanes away and then shoot pucks from anywhere you can, or run back and set up your own shot-blocking shell before the guys flying up the ice can get a lane, what place is there for all the east-west breakouts and cycles that the Hawks stole from the Red Wings who in turn stole from the Soviets? So yeah, it's just another cold reminder that time devours us all.

[IceCap]

3 hours ago, jmac11281 said:

Moral of the story is don't lose to the Flyers. The Kings losing to the Flyers got John Steven's fired and now the Coyotes' owner is selling after a loss to the Flyers.

 

https://www.thefourthperiod.com/pagnotta/ownership-change-coming-in-arizona/

 

29 minutes ago, Still MIGHTY said:

And Arizona, good lord, again? really?

 

Third Glendale City Council meeting? It can be the greatest hits episode! 

[CS85]

35 minutes ago, the admiral said:

I don't like what it means for the Hawks going forward with a nominal head coach while Bowman's toady looms over him as a freshly reinstalled assistant

 

This is what bums me out primarily about this whole thing.  Barry Smith finally getting his seat at the adults table with a direct line to Stan Bowman stinks like hell.  If he's there to give Colliton some guidance, whatever, but I get more of babysitter vibe. 

 

A lot of band-aid ripping off still to be done, primarily in regards to purging themselves of the albatross contracts left and right and letting their 33-year-old coach work with a big pile of 20-somethings while they salvage whatever's left of their system. 

 

This is where it'd be pretty interesting if you had guys like Dano and Hartman along with Panarin, Leddy, Kevin Hayes, Schmaltz, DeBrincat, etc, and going balls-out with speed and athleticism.  Instead the bulk of the roster is essentially one giant pile of dead flesh that needs to be sloughed off, hoping you haven't ruined the shiny young talent that would still remain.  Who knows.

[habsfan1]

12 hours ago, CS85 said:

Blackhawks fired Joel Quenneville today.  Writing was kind of on the wall, but meh.  Bowman's show now.

 

*hurls sarcastic confetti*

 

I don't know the full story. But I'm surprised the run of someone of Quenneville's caliber ended with a firing.

[Kaz]

20 minutes ago, habsfan1 said:

 

I don't know the full story. But I'm surprised the run of someone of Quenneville's caliber ended with a firing.

Well, of the Stanley Cup-winning coaches since the cancelled season in 04/05, the only coaches coaching their teams are Mike Sullivan and Randy Carlyle (and even he barely counts since this is his second go).  Tough job to hold down even when you win the Cup

[Kaz]

On 11/5/2018 at 9:38 PM, habsfan1 said:

Still hurts.

 

I'll never accept it...

 

Well...so long for that

[The_Admiral]

I think it was very funny that John McDonough went on the Score and ended an interview with "and I just want to say one thing, people think Scotty Bowman has a lot of power in our organization, well, I'm here to tell you that he doesn't! Thanks for having me on, guys, bye" and the hosts were just like "uh, we didn't say he did."

 

1) Why do you think it's a positive to deny that the greatest coach of all time has held significant influence in your highly successful organization?

 

2) Why did you offer this without a prompt?

 

Sports is a funny business. All these front-office guys were unparalleled geniuses until Duncan Keith's knees wore down and now they're all too dumb to fog a mirror.

[The Six]

Randypuck is dead. 

[habsfan1]

Pacioretty for Tatar, Suzuki, and a pick....what a steal that was!!

 

Also, Vegas is paying most of Tatar's salary.

 

Tatar scored the gwg tonight against the Golden Knights, his former team. 

 

Max Pac pointless this game. And he's having a tough season...

 

Is the cookie slowly starting to crumble for Vegas??

[JayMac]

8 hours ago, habsfan1 said:

Pacioretty for Tatar, Suzuki, and a pick....what a steal that was!!

 

Also, Vegas is paying most of Tatar's salary.

 

Tatar scored the gwg tonight against the Golden Knights, his former team. 

 

Max Pac pointless this game. And he's having a tough season...

 

Is the cookie slowly starting to crumble for Vegas??

It's almost like Vegas sold its soul to the devil to try to win in its inaugural season. They are going to struggle for a couple of years.

[LMU]

That's two goalies with torn menisci.  #CurseOfLMUBuyingSeasonTickets

[habsfan1]

Jack Hughes & Sidney Crosby on the same team could be a real possibility.

 

I've suddenly became a Pittsburgh Penguins fan...

 

[Sport]

Though it would be great and finally hand down the sweet sweet justice they're so very overdue for all the atrocities they've committed over the years, there is zero chance in hell the Penguins miss the playoffs. They'll win like 14.5 out of 15 in JanuFebruary and none of this will matter because they have the largest Troll gene in sports history. This is what they do. 

 

And even if they somehow did miss the playoffs then we wouldn't even get to enjoy it because we all know it just means the NHL will gift them the #1 overall pick again and then we can reset the last 10 years all over again. 

[Still MIGHTY]

How're the Penguins in last with a +1 differential? What exactly is going on in Pittsburgh?

 

Meanwhile the Ducks, losers in 12 of their last 15 with a -17 differential and Randy Carlyle *STILL* behind the bench, are one point out of third in the Pacific, three points out of a Wild Card spot, and four points out of the Division lead.

 

Speaking of that Pacific... WOOF. Thanks to a 4-0 win over St. Louis, the first-place Sharks finally got back to positive numbers at +4, Calgary the same after their latest win at +2, then Vancouver -11, Anaheim -17, Arizona +1, Edmonton -9, Vegas -5 and Los Angeles in dead dead last -22.

[The_Admiral]

Only Tampa and Nashville seem like they're really any good this year. That 31st team sure helped!

[The_Admiral]

And on that note, Tortorella just said much the same:

 

 

I don't think he's articulating himself perfectly well, because hockey has always been about eking out wins by pouncing on mistakes, but I still know what he means, which is that the game has become intolerably sloppy. Speed isn't inherently entertaining if it's not in service of elite skill. That's why Viktor Stalberg sucked. Now it's a Viktor Stalberg league.

[Still MIGHTY]

29 minutes ago, the admiral said:

And on that note, Tortorella just said much the same:

 

 

I don't think he's articulating himself perfectly well, because hockey has always been about eking out wins by pouncing on mistakes, but I still know what he means, which is that the game has become intolerably sloppy. Speed isn't inherently entertaining if it's not in service of elite skill. That's why Viktor Stalberg sucked. Now it's a Viktor Stalberg league.

 

Completely.

 

There's the teams at the top that can execute extremely well, Tampa, Nashville, Toronto, and the MacKinnon-Landeskog-Rattinen line, and then there's everybody else trying to "get traffic, put pucks on net, play our game." There are those teams that have been consistent over the last couple years, but there's also plenty more that have yo-yo'd back and forth.

 

That's not to say everybody's the same save for a few bounces of puck luck back and forth. There's a sliding scale among everyone else in terms of being able to generate/suppress chances, but there's only that very small handful of teams that can string together passes, breakout cleanly, and operate well. And hell, as I saw up close with the Ducks' games against the Predators, Maple Leafs, and the Fighting Nate MacKinnons, even those teams have to muck it out and throw  at the net sometimes.