It's a good day for the hockey thread

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Season gets started this week.

Devils have already swept Buffalo in a doubleheader in Prague
Rangers opened last night killing Pittsburgh 6-0
Islanders open tonight hosting the Utah Hockey Club (formerly the Arizona Coyotes, formerly the Winnipeg Jets, soon to be the Utah Yeti)

New F1-style documentary series on Amazon, saw a few eps

[metirish]

I did not know the Coyotes moved ,I fell out of love with the NHL , that doc looks good though

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Rangers went to the conference finals last year but can't afford to pay their goalie without wrecking their team.

Devils had many injuries and missed the playoffs but they're young, healthy and have a new coach and new goalie-- they are a trendy pick to go all the way.

Islanders broke up their famous (but slow and counterproductive) "identity line" and intend to be a high scoring team with a dynamic 1st line. Nobody expects much of them this year but I'm hopeful.

[Fman99]

We will attend a few AHL games here in town which are fun. Cheer for the home team, it's not too complicated. My daughter likes to attend in the hopes of seeing good fights and for the snacks. My wife, who is perpetually cold, less so.

[metirish]

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

wow

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Oh i forgot hockey sucks. Cancel this thread

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Islanders: 9 games, 1 win in regulation (3-4-2 overall). They really made only 1 move in the offseason to improve and he pulled a groin & is out for 4-6 weeks.

They're hard to watch. The rest of the league is all about youth speed and explosiveness. The Isles have a wonderful skater in Barzal but that's about it.

I'm about ready to pull the plug on this generation of Islanders and start over

[Frayed Knot]

In '22 - '23 the Boston Bruins had a (sort-of*) record setting regular season earning 135 'points' on a 65-12-5 record (Wins x 2 + Overtime/Shootout Losses x 1)
before being bounced from the playoffs in the very first round after jumping out to a 3-1 lead. Last year they had a good season [47-20-15] before losing in round 2.
This season, after a 1/4 season (20 games) and a 8-9-3 record, they fired coach Jim Montgomery who led them the past two years.

No other sport seems to churn through coaches like the NHL. It's as if coaching success is considered an alchemy thing as much as it is X's and O's and strategy
coupled with a heavy dose of 'what have you done for me lately' attitude.





* I say 'sort of' because the addition of OT/SO in regular season hockey means more standings points are awarded as compared to the era where no OT existed.
I'd certainly consider Montreal's 1976-77 record of 60-8-12 to be superior to what the Bruins did two years ago [8 losses vs 17] even if it produced fewer points.
I'm not even sure it was the Bruins best season ever: the 1970-71 57-14-7 season, also a 1st round playoff exit, was superior even if sandwiched between their
two Stanley Cup winning years. The '22-'23 Bruins season under no/OT rules produces a 54-12-16 record

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Calgary Flames rookie winger Matt Coronato grew up in Greenlawn on Long Island. I was in junior high with his dad.

[Frayed Knot]

Wow!
Hockey-ref lists him as born there and drafted at age 18 in 2021 but doesn't mention HS, only that he subsequently went to Harvard and played for an amateur team in Chicago.
Couldn't have been at Harvard for long because he played his first NHL game at age 20 in April of '23
Not a big guy by today's NHL standards [5' 10" / 183]

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

He went to a Catholic school, the same as his dad for high school. If I'm being honest Dad was a very smart guy but a little smug too.

Played last night vs. the Islanders, the team he grew up rooting for. Has a wicked quick shot but did not figure in the scoring in a boring 2-1 shootout loss

[Frayed Knot]

This season, after a 1/4 season (20 games) and a 8-9-3 record, [the Bruins] fired coach Jim Montgomery who led them the past two years.
No other sport seems to churn through coaches like the NHL. It's as if coaching success is considered an alchemy thing as much as it is X's and O's and strategy
coupled with a heavy dose of 'what have you done for me lately' attitude.

As if we needed a little more proof of the cement mixer that is coaching in the NHL: the StL Blues [9-12-1] became the second team to fire their coach thus far
this season and have hired ... the one the Bruins fired just five days earlier!!

Ob-Lah-Di, Ob-Lah-Da life goes on Bragh ... La La how the life goes on

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Failing to come from behind in the 3rd period vs the Islanders is a firable offense

[Marshmallowmilkshake]

A fun hockey weekend. Saturday night we went to Detroit for a promotional event with the Red Wings. The giveaway was a Zombini-shaped gravy boat. Very cool.

Then tonight we had another promotion with the Red Wings’ AHL affiliate, the Griffins. Our mascot got to ride the Zamboni and engage in assorted hi jinx with the Griffins’ mascot. Plus we gave out thousands of co-branded knit caps!

[Frayed Knot]

A goal, an assist, ... and 40 saves!!


Penguins goaltender, Alex Nedeljkovic*, recorded an empty net goal late in the 3rd period, assisted on a power play goal in the 2nd period, while also
making 40 saves during a 5-2 Pittsburgh win over Beefalo on Friday night.
It's the 19th goal** recorded by a goalie in NHL history and is the first G + A game.


* No, I don't know how to pronounce it. He's from that faraway land of Ohio and I don't speak the native tongue.
** by 16 different goalies. ex-NJD G Martin Brodeur has three of them

[DocTee]

Went to UBS Arena last night for Isles-Sharks. Really great arena and cool atmosphere. It was HoF induction night for Brent Sutter so they gave away commemorative coins, but his speech was wayyyy too long. Good guys win, 4-1.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I watched that gamehere at home. You saw a rare home victory for the Isles. Barzal's goal was fantastic

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Has anyone else checked out 4 Nations? It's a US, Canada, Sweden, Finland round Robin in lieu of a NHL All- Star break.

The 🇨🇦 🇸🇪 game was an absolute thriller. 🇺🇸 beat 🇫🇮 handlily.

Tonight at 8 it's USA canada

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Was rooting for Canada, especially when they booed the Anthem. Three fights in the first 9 seconds.

Bad guys won tho

[Frayed Knot]

That was a pretty ridiculous opening and there wasn't a single spontaneous thing about it, at least not the in the two initial scraps.
I guess the boys felt the need to get something out of their systems but even after the silliness was over the intensity stayed up in a hard but cleaner way as the game went on.


Anyway, good for the NHL for finding a way to revamp their mid-season break in an era of moribund All Star games. The NBA can't seem to properly tinker with theirs even as their percentage of international players continues to grow. Hell, even Michael Wilbon, who shills for the NBA as much as anyone and used to refer to their AS Weekend as 'Black Thanksgiving', now dismisses it as a snooze-fest in need of a major overhaul or even scrapping it altogether. And of course the NFL mercifully canned their Pro Bowl entirely in favor of silly skills competition which football fans probably still watch (and bet on) in droves because watching and betting on televised football is what they do for 20-plus consecutive fall/winter Sundays whether what's on the screen has any import or not.


That said, I'm surprised at the intensity of this mini-tourney. Not just at the fights (though the three in nine seconds last night was more fights than in any single NHL game this year) but the checking and all around hard play in general, especially in a situation where club teammates suddenly can morph into opponents for the week. Baseball fans have a hard time dealing with a similar mini-tourney, even one held before the season once every three or four years, due to fretting about injuries that might occur in something other than service to their club despite it being a much less overtly physical game.


Now can they do this every year? Can they keep this at four teams?
There are certainly enough Russians in the league for them to participate, but they're being punished for Putin and Ukraine so weren't invited. Did the Czechs and Slovaks breaking up mean that there aren't enough of either for each to form their own competitive team these days? I dunno, I don't follow the good old hockey game much these days. And I don't think you want some type of catch-all 'Other' team formed from loose pieces here and there. The country name on the sweater seems to matter a great deal to these guys, even if it's just for a short period.


I only saw pieces of the US-Canada game (it started closer to nine PM than eight), but
- I know Connor McDavid's career more from reputation than observation, but his goal (the lone one for Canada) was a beaut. He's big, he's ridiculous fast, and then he calmly went high on a backhand while fending off a defenseman on his other side.
- USA had the better goaltending


Les Etats Unis (as it reads on the scoreboard in Montreal) will go through to the finals which will be Thursday in Boston

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

The fun has been seeing Western Conference guys like McDavid and MacKinnon, who might be better, play. Both those guys can just skate through the middle. They do turn it over frequently because of that.

Islanders Brock Nelson is an underrated, solid, eveyday pro but he doesn't belong on the ice with these guys. I'd be surprised if he got 7 minutes.

[Frayed Knot]

Another thing I noticed is that they're using a 3-point system during this tournament: three team points for a win, two/one for overtime wins/losses, and zero for a regulation loss.
This is what they should be doing all the time and I don't know why they don't.

The current two-pt system not only awards differing amounts of points for different games: regulation ties award three -- two for the OT winner and one for the OT loser -- while a regulation win just goes two and zero, but it's a system that encourages each side to play for a tie and then hope to come out on top in OT as OT/SO decisions are essentially coin flips. And in a league where half the teams qualify for the playoffs, and where those playoffs are the most random of any sport, notching a point per game plus your random share of OT/SO bonus points is enough to get you there and, once there, you've got as good a chance as anyone to advance further.
It's a rough equivalent to encouraging Don Johnson's character in TIN CUP to settle for pars while playing not to lose (and banking those fat top-ten checks every week) while discouraging the go-for-the-win mentality of Kevin Costner's Roy McAvoy. A weird analogy, I know, but it just came to me.

[Frayed Knot]

Canada beat Finland Monday night setting up a USA-v-Canada match up for the final on Thursday in Boston.
Not sure yet how much lasting cache the winner of this mini-tourney will carry forward but, at least in the short term, this will likely be a spirited affair.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Final about to go into overtime NOW!!! Canada-USA tied 2-2