Official Hockey discussion thread

And that's the thing with Ottawa. The arena was built in the middle of nowhere and nothing's sprung up around it at all. There's car dealerships and that's it. They put this thing anywhere downtown and restaurants will pop in.
 
Ovie is on a six game goal streak. I'll be happy if he just gets to 20, but of course internet gonna internet and say he's "on pace" for 32.
Same with Crosby, dude hit 30 which is great on its own, but now they have him on pace for 50 again. "On pace" has come to mean nothing to me. One of those casually thrown phrases. It doesn't account for injury, illness, cold streaks, etc. Big ol' nothing burger.

Beddard is back and got an assist. I was chatting with my brother and told him I hope this is his only major injury moving forward, like McDavid's collar bone. After all, it was a matter of when, not if. Saw him and Crosby chatting at the All-Star and I joked with my brother that they're probably talking about broken jaws.

Also Kessel on a conditioning stint with Vancouver's AHL team. Crazy if he can come back to the NHL, but I don't know if he can put the Canucks over the top like he did with the Pens.
 
Just watched Jagr's retirement ceremony, well, it's still going on, they haven't lifted to the rafters just yet, but still. A ton of Pen legends were introduced onto the ice, then Jagr who gave a speech. Seriously had a "I'm not crying, YOU'RE crying" moment lol. I remember when Lemieux retired I just felt empty, just disbelief that he chose to cut it short. Then when Yzerman retired I also got teary eyed. This is the first one since where I've gotten this emotional. With other greats like Sakic, Lidstrom, Roy, etc. It was sad, and heartfelt, but no waterworks. Some just hit different.
 
The Jagr cermony was well done for sure. Legend

On another note. 2 games back 1 goal (another reveresed due to offsides) and 2 assists. Nice!
 
I've been basically offline for a week. Why? A friend of mine was up and we went to six hockey games in seven days:
Professional Women's Hockey League - PWHL Minnesota @ PWHL Ottawa, TD Place Arena, Ottawa, ON
Professional Women's Hockey League -PWHL Minnesota @ PWHL Montreal, Place Bell, Laval, QC
Ontario Hockey League - North Bay Battalion @ Ottawa 67s, TD Place Arena, Ottawa, ON
American Hockey League - Hershey Bears @ Laval Rocket, Place Bell, Laval, QC
National Hockey League - Dallas Stars @ Ottawa Senators, Canadian Tire Centre, Kanata, ON
Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League - Halifax Mooseheads @ Gatineau Olympiques, Centre Slush Puppie, Gatineau, QC

Live hockey rocks, at basically any elite level. Getting to see four leagues in seven days also helps highlight the skill level of the PWHL, which is truly elite. None of those games stand out as lesser than any of the others. The CHL games serve to showcase some interesting talent, but you kinda get sad when you realize that maybe a couple of the kids out there are gonna make the NHL. Maybe one guy we saw in both games has a chance of being a regular in the NHL (Ty Nelson of the North Bay Battalion will probably make the Seattle Kraken).

We saw a goalie get pulled (Jake Oettinger of the Dallas Stars), a couple multi-goal games but no hat tricks, a shootout win, a penalty shot saved by Jakob Dobes of Laval, a late game collapse followed by OT heroics. Honestly, it was a hell of a week.

I have a game on Wednesday, PWHL New York visiting Ottawa, and I'm pumped.
 
I saw the live stream of PWHL Minnesota v. OTT, might have seen you in the crowd LOL. And yeah, LOVE the games, they're fantastic. Live hockey is great at ANY level, not just elite. Still remember watching a midget game and seeing the little kids barely able to skate chasing the puck, the goalie barely able to move, so cute and hilarious and awesome all at once.
 
That is quite cool @LooseCannon Best I can do around here would be NAHL, ECHL, and NHL ... but yeah live hockey at any level is fun. In the 80s USIU (United States International University located near San Diego)) for some odd reason, decided to go big into hockey and play Division 1. They had some fairly good teams, 2 players very briefly played in the NHL. But, I went to a ton of games, it was close to my house, tickets were $1 ($2 on weekends) and you could stand right on the glass on either end. They played against some really good college teams. I was quite upset when the program folded

United States International Gulls men's ice hockey - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Think I'll go check this out. Seems like fun and some good names as coaches

The Coaches

8 teams. 6 skaters + 1 goalie and a coach on each team. 9 tour stops in 9 cities starting in Summer 2021. 3ICE has been created to bring the fans one thing…pure, unadulterated excitement. This is the best part of hockey. This is 3ICE.
www.3ice.com www.3ice.com


Rules are interesting

www.3ice.com

3Ice Rules

The official rules of the inaugural 3Ice season. This is hockey.
www.3ice.com www.3ice.com
 
Crosby just became the 2nd player ever to have 19 point per game seasons along with Gretzky. He has a real chance of being the ONLY player to have 20 next season. He's also 3 goals away from a 40 goal season and 3 assists away from 1000 in his career. What... a.... BEAST!
 
LooseCannon said:
... And the Pens are bad!
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Yeah, my brother and I have been talking about that a lot as of late. He wants Sulli fired, neither of us is happy with the Guentzel trade and we see little benefit in them actually making the playoffs if they are most likely going to get eliminated in the first round. At this point I'm more satisfied by personal marks like these, or Geno getting another 20 goal season, Letang and Karlsson getting their .9 or so points per game and the like. But aside from personal milestones we're both just looking forward to next season.

As for my Bruins.... oh man, They have a pretty steep mountain to climb. If they're going to make it to the finals they have to get through FLA and/or CAR. Not too concerned about TOR, but who knows. I keep saying that just like WASH in 18 who had to go through PIT to get their Cup, Toronto HAS TO go through Boston for theirs, "slay the dragon" BS and whatnot.
 
I get the Guentzel trade from the perspective of Dubas. If the Pens had blown everything up 2 years ago when they had the option of re-signing Letang and Malkin and done this then, they could have gotten back prospects and picks and around now those players would be emerging, giving 2-3 years of Really Good Sid left. But now they're locked into paying a bunch of money to declining players, and not enough time to blow it up before Sid ages out. So you need prospects who are ready to play in a year or two, not picks that take 3+ years.

Don't count the Bruins out. The East is going to be a firefight and they have a good chance to get out of it.
 
I truly feel the day of the line brawl should be past us. We just saw Chris Simon, a retired NHL enforcer, join the ranks of other hockey pugilists in early death after he took his own life. A fight here and there, fine, but this Matt Rempe kid is just punching his way through the NHL at the same time the league is insisting there's no link between CTE and sport.
 
Unfortunately I gave my copy of Dryden's, "The Game," to my brother and can't quote directly, but that is how old, I'm sure it's older, this argument is. It's also at the core of Slapshot. If I remember correctly Dryden says something around the lines of the league admonishes it in public and says it hates it, but still allows it.

This is something contact sports can't do anything about it except.... stop being contact sports. no matter how much padding one adds to helmets, outlaws head hunting or whatever, whenever someone gets tackled in football or checked in hockey, if their brain shakes inside the skull they're at risk of CTE. No equipment can protect from that.

We celebrate the North American game for it's physicality, we worship the NHL playoffs for how "tough" they are and then call international hockey, be it Olympics, World Championships or just the European leagues "boring" because of the bigger ice. But I wonder if that "boring," "slow" hockey with less physicality also has less incidents of CTE.
 
LooseCannon said:
I truly feel the day of the line brawl should be past us. We just saw Chris Simon, a retired NHL enforcer, join the ranks of other hockey pugilists in early death after he took his own life. A fight here and there, fine, but this Matt Rempe kid is just punching his way through the NHL at the same time the league is insisting there's no link between CTE and sport.
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I've lived in the Atlanta area since I was 7 and have been a hockey fan for 50+ years. I've suffered through the loss of the Flames and the Thrashers. The NHL has always been last in the big four (NFL,MLB,NBA) in America for a long, long time and I feel part of the reason is the fighting. Many Americans think of it as a goon show and don't take it seriously. Which is sad because I truly feel it's the best sport.
 
Iron Lurker said:
I've lived in the Atlanta area since I was 7 and have been a hockey fan for 50+ years. I've suffered through the loss of the Flames and the Thrashers. The NHL has always been last in the big four (NFL,MLB,NBA) in America for a long, long time and I feel part of the reason is the fighting. Many Americans think of it as a goon show and don't take it seriously. Which is sad because I truly feel it's the best sport.
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I think that's part of the reason for sure. Part of it is how easy the game is to play as a kid, because playing builds lifelong fans. Part of it is just how bad the game was in the 90s. Hockey was ready to break out in the early 90s but then there was a lockout and the product got terrible to watch. But the fighting does mean it's not gonna expand to people who don't realize how much of the game is a skill game now. Connor McDavid, Nate MacKinnon, even greybeard Sidney Crosby, they do things that are so fuckin cool. None of which involve throwing fists.
 
I fell in love with hockey in the mid 90s and a big reason was the fighting. I thought all other major sports were hypocrital about it, especially baseball where dugout emptying brawls seem like a tradition. Being more familiar with soccer the low scoring never bothered me. The U.S has a warped sense of points where ONE touch down is worth 6 points and they think it was a "high scoring game" when only 4 touchdowns got scored, but scoff at a 5-4 hockey game. So silly. Hockey is much faster, much more physical and it has the best attitude towards fighting. a 5 minute major. Fights are at a historic low, so I don't see what the problem is. Again, fighting, a SINGLE element of the game has less to do with concussions than elbows to the head at 50MPH. I'm sure a bigger problem are broken fingers/hands/wrists which lead to painkiller dependency.

It is insane how much punishment these players take. Did you guys see the official getting knocked out after "bumping" into Hayden Fleury? That was an accident, these guys get hit on porupose constantly and get back up. Hockey is a brutal sport, fighting is the least of its worries.
 
No, I'm sorry. Being an enforcer has been linked to early death. While CTE and post concussion syndrome is a problem for the guys who take those Matt Cooke-style hits, it's extremely linked to the guys who fought for a living in the 1990s. The fact is that the more you fight, the more likely you are to die early. Suicide, drug overdose, car accidents, there's a litany of things that off you more than the average ex-NHL player population if you fought more than 50 times in your career.

My opposition to fighting isn't entirely that it's unnecessary, it is that the NHL is still denying the link between fighting and CTE. If a player wants to throw hands a few times in a career, that's fine. But Matt Rempe is on the fast train to eating his 2040 Thanksgiving dinner from a straw, and the league doesn't care. That's my problem.
 
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