It’s late July and everyone is on vacation, but at least we’ve had a blockbuster trade and some other news to chew on. Let’s see what’s on your mind in an offseason mailbag.
Note: Submitted questions have been edited for clarity and style.
Hypothetically, what would have happened if Brad Treliving had just yelled “psych!” as soon as Matthew Tkachuk had signed the eight-year deal with Calgary and refused to trade him? Is there something addressing this scenario in the CBA? Obviously there are moral repercussions here, but contract-wise, is there a grievance case? — Jessica R.
The short answer: It would have been the greatest moment in NHL offseason history.
The longer answer: It wouldn’t have worked. Tkachuk obviously would refuse to play for Calgary, and the NHLPA would jump in with a grievance. The Panthers would too. They’d have precedent on their side, based on the Eric Lindros double-trade fiasco where an arbitrator essentially ruled that a handshake deal trumped one on paper. The league has no doubt tightened up its loopholes since then, but it would be a hard case for the Flames to win.
My guess is that it would come down to Gary Bettman having to rule, maybe after a few levels of arbitrators and appeals. Do you think the commissioner is going to side with the Canadian team trying to hold an American star hostage, or the struggling southern market trying to acquire the superstar to put them over the hump as a Cup contender? Yeah, me too.
Still, it would be fascinating to watch it all play out. And maybe it ends with Bettman ruling that the Panthers’ deal wasn’t official and Tkachuk has to go back on the market (since he’s still refusing to play for the Flames). Can Calgary get a better deal from someone else? I can’t see it. Probably best for everyone involved that they didn’t try to pull the rug out. Well, everyone except fans of Team Chaos.
The crew handed out grades to the massive Matthew Tkachuk trade. Lots of good analysis in here from @domluszczyszyn, @coreypronman, @hayyyshayyy, @seangentille and @hailey_salvian ⬇️https://t.co/F0h94d0FWL pic.twitter.com/GLvuCOz0k8
— Craig Custance (@CraigCustance) July 23, 2022
I was thinking the other day about how long Jaroslav Halak has been playing, and always as a 1B or high level backup. And then I wondered: is he the best backup goalie of all time? And if not, who else would be in the running? — Anthony L.
Man, that’s a good question.
My first thought was to look up which modern-era goalies had played the most seasons where they’d appeared in 40 games or fewer. That turns out to be a two-way tie between Curtis McElhinney and Craig Billington, and yeah, those are two decent candidates.
Halak has 10, which is a solid number but doesn’t put him among the active leaders. Those would be Craig Anderson and Anton Khudobin, who each have 12. I think of Anderson as a starter, but Khudobin definitely feels like a Halak-type of 1A guy. So do guys like Jeff Hackett, Ron Tugnutt, Marty Biron and Bunny Laroque, who are all in the double-digit club. James Reimer and Brian Elliott could join them next year, and we should also mention guys like Garth Snow, Ken Wregget and Bob Essensa.
I could keep going, but this would just turn into 2,000 words of remembering some guys, so let’s throw out one more contender that I think would be on a lot of lists: Glen Healey, who played 15 seasons but only had four where he saw more than half the action (and just one where he cracked 50 games). He bounced around four teams, always had decent numbers for the era, and won a Cup backing up Mike Richter with the 1994 Rangers. We’re probably overrating his playing days based on his media and NHLPA visibility since then, but I think he’s a solid contender for the title of best backup ever. But yeah, Halak might be pushing him.
My brother-in-law is a Jets fan, and he was lamenting the upcoming start of free agency. I thought that to help him out, the NHL should allow teams to offer a physical version of their team name to free agents without cap implications. I’m pretty sure Artemi Panarin would have thought very hard if he was offered a Gulfstream to play in Winnipeg. I thought it would be fun to rank the teams based on how big of an advantage that would be. — Kurt R.
This is some great offseason content. Let’s do a top and bottom five, with the caveat that we have to be dealing with tangible things that could actually be given to someone. That means no kraken, hurricanes, lightning or stars, because we wouldn’t want a world where Winnipeg is allowed to give players a jet to be unrealistic.
Top five:
5. Penguins. Wouldn’t you want to own a Penguin? I would.
4. Sabres. I’ve kind of always wanted to own a sword. They’re just cool, you know?
3. Golden Knights. I’m imagining a suit of armor here. Give me this and my sabre and I will absolutely crush the local Dungeons & Dragons scene.
2. Jets. Look, when Kurt is right, he’s right.
1. Panthers. Would it be a smart long-term possession? No, but I feel like a 20-something pro athlete is going to be all over this. In fact, somebody check Matthew Tkachuk’s backyard right now.
Now, five teams that would never sign anyone:
5. Sharks. This feels tempting in the same way the Panthers do, but where are you going to put it? Oh, you have a pool? Congratulations, now you don’t anymore. You know some players would end up letting this thing go in the lake at the cottage.
4. Blue Jackets. Yeah, I know, the actual name is a Civil War thing, but nobody wants a coat.
3. Senators. Some corrupt old man who doesn’t do anything? Pass.
2. Predators. There are various ways to imagine this playing out and none of them are good.
1. Maple Leafs. I have hundreds of those things on my front lawn that I have to deal with every fall, I don’t want one more.
I beg you, please help spread awareness regarding the correct name for “The Michigan” goal.
In hockey, there are three types of shots: The slap shot, the snap shot, and the wrist shot. Each shot has the word shot in it. Therefore, the only appropriate name for “The Michigan” is a scoop shot. — Andy B.
You had me for a second, but here’s the problem with your theory: the backhand. It’s also a classic shot type, but without the word “shot” so your rule goes out the window. Not to mention the wraparound, which is the closest equivalent to what we’re dealing with because it comes from behind the net. So no, whatever we call this thing doesn’t have to have “shot” in it.
All that said, I do think we should all be able to agree that “The Michigan” is a terrible name. It also doesn’t make sense, because it’s not like players in Michigan are doing it all the time. One guy did, over 25 years ago. If we’re going to name it after that moment, we should name it after him. But barely anybody remembers who Mike Legg is, all because we got lazy and just went with the school. Tough break for Mike.
So yeah, “The Michigan” is bad. So is “The Svech” or “The Zegras” because you don’t get something named after you by doing it two decades after someone else. “The Crosby” doesn’t work because he never did it in the NHL. “The Lacrosse Move” is OK, although it doesn’t really capture the skill involved. So what’s left? Scoop shot isn’t terrible, but doesn’t really grab me.
I’m open to suggestions. Commenters, help me out here. And do it quickly, because we’re a few years away from these goals happening all the time.
Can you please explain intentional offside to me like I’m six? I’ve been watching hockey for 30-plus years and still don’t understand what exactly makes the faceoff come all the way back to your end. — Kyle C.
I’ve been making a recent push on the podcast for people to send in questions like this — the sort of “I’m supposed to know this but I don’t and I’m tired of faking it so please explain it to me” thing that a lot of hockey fans have kicking around somewhere. I love these questions. You’d be surprised how many fans are confused by hearing that the red line was removed in 2005 when it’s clearly still there. We even heard from one fan who’d always thought the trap (as in neutral-zone trap) and the trapezoid (behind the net) were the same thing, and had no idea what the rest of us were talking about when we brought them up.
So yeah, great question here by Kyle. The answer is that intentional offside is meant to capture situations where a team knowingly goes offside in order to delay the game. The assumption is that most offside plays are accidental — somebody enters the zone a little too early, or the defenseman can’t quite keep the puck in at the blueline. It’s an unintentional infraction, and blowing the play dead for a neutral-zone faceoff is a reasonable punishment. But there are times where a team might want to be offside, usually to kill the play and get a rest and a line change. We want to discourage that, so the rulebook gives us the ability to call an intentional offside and take the puck all the way back into the defensive zone.
(And yes, we do leave it to the officials to judge intent, and it generally works out just fine. Why we can’t do this with shooting pucks over the glass, nobody seems to know.)
Speaking of offside…
I’ve been wondering about this for a while/ Why does the offside rule exist? It seems in the age of overuse of video replay and less than stellar offense, the offside rule is nonsensical. Scrapping this rule kills two birds with one stone. It would increase goal scoring, and cut down on tedious video replay stoppages where a play is called back because a player’s pinky toe was over the blue line. — Philippe R.
Man, the “get rid of the offside rule” movement is growing these days. And I’m not sure it’s wrong.
Let’s start with your first question. Offside exists because way back in the day, the idea was to encourage station-to-station hockey, and discourage teams from just having guys loiter in the offensive zone waiting for long passes. From an entertainment purpose, you can kind of see it. Nobody wants to watch a 200-foot game of tennis, so forcing teams to attack as a unit made some sense.
But that was a long time ago. As Jeff Marek has often asked, if you were designing hockey from scratch today, would this be a rule you’d want? Would you insist on a special line on the ice, somewhat arbitrarily placed, that held a unique power to negate an offensive play? Of course you wouldn’t.
The argument for just scrapping the rule altogether is that strategy and tactics have evolved enough over a century that we no longer need to force teams to work together. We know for sure that today’s defense-obsessed coaches wouldn’t let their forwards hang back waiting for breakaway passes. And what if they did? Wouldn’t that just stretch out the defense, and really test the guys making those long breakout passes? It might be fun to find out, and at the very least we’d get a faster-flowing game without awful replay reviews.
Here’s my one hesitation. I wouldn’t miss offside on zone entries at all. But I think I would miss the blue line battles to keep the puck in, and the sense of relief that comes when a team that’s under attack in their own zone finally gets the puck out over the line. Those moments can be good ones, and I’d miss them if we lost them completely. So while you could sign me up for some sort of floating blue line proposal (where once you lose the zone the whole team has to tag up to re-enter), I’m not sure I’m on board with completely scrapping the concept altogether. But I might be getting there.
What are your top five NHL things we all pretended were really funny but weren’t really funny at all? (e.g spicy pork and broccoli). — Ben D.
Oh man, do NHL fans ever love to pretend things are hilarious that absolutely aren’t. I’ll push back a little on your idea that some of this stuff wasn’t funny at all, because that’s usually not true. Instead, we take something that’s a little bit funny and pretend it’s the greatest thing ever, because we’re all desperate for any vague sign of a personality from anyone associated with this sport.
So if you want a list of things that aren’t funny at all but some of us still pretend were hilarious, that list is all variations of Gary Bettman making the same awkward jokes when he’s booed and league-friendly media guys immediately going “Oh wow he’s having fun with it, what a comedian” even though he’s on the verge of tears the entire time. But I’m going to give you the top five things in recent NHL history that were kind of funny but nowhere near as funny as we all pretended.
5. Spicy pork and broccoli.
"Some spicy pork and broccoli."
Louis Domingue was FEASTIN' before entering the game. 😋 pic.twitter.com/1CAw4IXIoc
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 4, 2022
4. Literally every vaguely interesting piece of social media content that any team account posts.
3. Wes McCauley announcing any penalty.
No one does it quite like Wes McCauley. 😂 pic.twitter.com/ZVno8a99jf
— NHL (@NHL) January 5, 2022
2. That one SNL sketch with Chance The Rapper where the whole premise was “Wouldn’t it be completely ridiculous if a cool person had to pretend to care about hockey?”
1. Daniel Alfredsson pretending to throw his broken stick into the stands after Mats Sundin got suspended, followed by Maple Leafs fans being huge babies about it, followed by everyone else having to pretend it was a moment of comic genius. This is the all-time champion and will never be topped.
(Honorable mention: Every Down Goes Brown tweet ever.)
(Photo: Sergei Belski / USA Today)
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