THE BUSTED WINDOW OF CONTENTION WON'T STAY OPEN: THE NHL 2023-2024 SEASON THRED (INC KNIGHTS HANGOVER & PANIC MOVES. HOCKEY IS THE BEST)

Pens blow obv. this is about the reception i expected

i (srsly!) welcome your input here. this is hardly the place for analytics, tho. the athletic is pretty good

but as a pens fan . . . maybe go to bed and think really hard about how different the world was in 1967

i enjoy sean mcindoe's stuff on the athletic; he's a long-suffering (as if there were any other kind) leafs fan

sean mcindoe is the best

he's probably the main reason I subscribe to the athletic, but their hockey coverage is generally good.

ok sick i already subscribe there. GO LEAFS GOOO

the hockey guy on YouTube has good all around coverage for all 32 teams

yeah, i love hockey guy. i’ve watched a bunch of his league rundowns

thanks guys. May 2, 1967’s #1 was “A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You” by the Monkees. Sid is the best: he made this casual, no-look backhand pass off the boards to a guy behind him like it was nothing. hockey is the best when you see those flashes of natural talent

relatedly, i shot a UA commercial once w/Subban and i'm standing on the ice a bit shakily, he starts flitting his stick super-fast between my ankles, just barely grazing each time (i would've ate ice otherwise!). It was actually crazy to experience the otherworldly talent to even do that. Super fun dude, my favourite.

winning in philadelphia: step one

Kyler Murray reporting for work in Philly wearing a Penguins Sidney Crosby sweater pic.twitter.com/qjkne3ep8v

— Omar Ruiz (@OmarDRuiz) December 31, 2023

this cutter gauthier/flyers thing is a train wreck

Pretty weird but I've moved on already. Drysdale seems great (other than the injuries).

i think they did pretty well with the trade return. but it raises questions like 'why would a top prospect simply not want to play there?' and 'why would anyone, draftee or free agent, want to get involved with a fan base that sends its former players death threats?'

and while i've no idea if it had anything to do with gauthier's situation, i suspect there aren't too many players itching to work with torts at this point

I was not a fan of the Torts hiring at the time. They need(ed) a long term rebuild, and he tends to raise a team's floor in the short term but wear on his players in the long term. That still could be the case, but seeing him up close, my view is he asks things of players that any good coach should be asking (play hard, play smart, play D). He seems open and straight forward and doesn't play head games.

Rumors are that Gauthier was salty that the Flyers wanted him to go back to BC for a second year.

welcome to the Island, patrick roy

this canucks season is so enjoyable

what a jinx

did not expect Patrick Roy at all, but it was time for a change. Isles do have a more offense approach this year, but it seems to have come at the expense of 1) no longer being able to close out games in the third period 2) allowing way too many shots per game

brutal elbow to the face from brendan gallagher last night and he won’t even have an in-person meeting for it, meaning the suspension can be no more than five games

that guy is a real pos imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0faZG1iFzeo

That now makes it 13 NHL head coaching changes since the end of last season: NYR, Calgary, Anaheim, Washington, Nashville, Columbus (twice), Edmonton, St. Louis, Ottawa, Minnesota, NYI and now LAK.

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) February 2, 2024

TmC has been on borrowed time for the last month

real shame that the oilers failed to match the 1993 penguins' NHL-record 17-game win streak

(tbf, they got goalied)

but

Since the Penguins’ 17-game winning streak in the 92-93 season is receiving much attention at the moment, a reminder: Mario Lemieux, in those 17 games, put up 27 goals, 24 assists and 51 points. And he did it only weeks after undergoing two months of cancer radiation treatments.

— Josh Yohe (@JoshYohe_PGH) February 7, 2024

I don't really follow hockey much anymore so don't post here much, but I was following it very much in 92-93 (good year for a Habs fan) and that Mario Lemieux season continues to be the most impressive thing I've ever seen in sports.

I was 13-14ish at the time and I don't think I realized just how crazy it was that he could do it, but as an adult, holy shit.

he's 58 now (born the same day as patrick roy!) but in the back of my mind i somehow keep vaguely expecting him to make another comeback

i know i've said this in several earlier threads but nevertheless the last time i saw anything more terrifying than mcdavid coming out of his own zone with the puck and a full head of steam was barry bonds circa 2001. and you can't walk mcdavid

i can understand why morgan rielly was upset about losing to a shitty team but crosschecking a guy in the head has nothing to do with Respect or The Code

The Code says you drop the gloves, at which point grieg either gets his ass kicked or ducks and runs. what rielly chose to do instead was throw a tantrum, so fuck him

even if they are on your team you can’t defend that kind of stuff

happy 52nd to jaromir jagr, whose number will be retired in pittsburgh on Sunday

https://theathletic.com/5263536/2024/02/12/jaromir-jagr-stories-pittsburgh-penguins

as i understand it, he's still occasionally playing for kladno (which he now owns) in czechia, so the hall of fame has no idea what to do with him

what a player

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwoh4HGmfdQ

A thread of my favorite Jaromir Jagr goals for the Penguins. To both celebrate his jersey retirement and educate the young among us, let's travel back down memory lane and have ourselves a nostalgic Sunday.

— Jesse Marshall (@jmarshfof) February 18, 2024

nice goal

CHARLIE MCAVOY WITH A BEAUTY TO WIN IT FOR THE BRUINS IN OVERTIME!#NHLBruins pic.twitter.com/aDEC5VAGqu

— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) February 22, 2024

reading about how Auston Matthews was the fastest to reach 50 goals since Lemieux in '95-'96 reminded me how great Mario was, he did that after missing a season and a half (69 goals in 70 games!) then he retired again, and after three seasons he came back and scored 35 goals in 43 games.

tbf, the goalies matthews faces are much better and his average opponent is much faster than those in lemieux's era. and those mid-90s penguins teams were absolutely stacked with hall of famers and all-stars. and lemieux didn't have all of southern ontario calling him a loser for never leading his team past the second round

otoh, lemieux *also* had a league-leading 92 assists that year (matthews has 24). and there's the whole back surgery/cancer stuff. and that holding and interference were all but ignored 30 years ago

anyway matthews is super-impressive. somewhere i saw an 'era-adjusted' stat that gave him a slight edge over lemieux re: goal-scoring

52 now, ten in the last five games, six-game leafs win streak after blowing out the reigning champs on the road

waiting for leafs fans to panic that they're peaking too early

No, usually they peak right about Period 1 of Game 7 in the first round.

i take no pleasure in noting that the rangers have won 10 straight (for the first time in 51 years) and are now atop the league

Cackling uncontrollably, where is Bill Magill

Patrick Kane wins it in overtime in his return to Chicago.

No. Way. #Blackhawks pic.twitter.com/uWRyZiPMHs

— Charlie Roumeliotis (@CRoumeliotis) February 26, 2024

rip the penguins' sidney crosby era : /

(tbf he's still awfully good, but he can't do it himself)

tom fitzgerald doesn't seem to understand that when you fire a new jersey devils coach this late in the season, you replace him with yourself

show some cultural awareness ffs

sorcery

Barkov JUGGLED the puck to assist on Reinhart's goal 😱 pic.twitter.com/OSko3aVSYv

— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) March 5, 2024

that is awesome but seriously almost all NHL players -- even the shitty fourth-liners you wish would fuck off -- could (theoretically*) do that

these guys are the best ever and it is incredible <3

sometimes it's useful -- when you think to yourself, 'my team has games in hand; maybe they could go on a heater' -- to see said team blown out at home by another also-ran

anyway i feel like these playoffs could be really great? unless you're a leafs fan, i mean

btw we really need to go back to conference 1-8 playoff seeding rather than divisions imo

seems like not a huge price for Guentzel (wish the Canucks had got him)

love him but i'm not sure how much more you can get for a guy who is a pending free agent

wish that 'conditional first-round pick' was much more likely to happen tho

he's so smart/sneaky -- poster boy for color commentators talking about finding empty areas (that are nevertheless prime scoring areas)