PLUS/MINUS is the NHL's most ridiculous stat. Don't use it to justify how good a player is or a freaky wall monster might capture you and take you to the minus-world.
PLUS: 34 Days until the World Cup starts.
MINUS: The Summer Olympics. Swimming? This is a sport people care about? Swimming? If you are a swimmer, then it might be interesting, I guess. But for regular people? I thought soccer was a boring sport to watch, but televised swimming? Like, actually sitting on your couch and watching people swim?
This is a sport that is jealous of the action happening in televised darts.
I will never understand why, when you put an Olympic gold medal on the line, people will sit there and watch anything.
PLUS: Patrick Roy quitting.
I am not an Avs fan, I don't have anything personal against Roy. I think he's a bad coach, but since I don't care whether the Avalanche are a good team, it doesn't make much of a difference to me.
But what I do like is how the guy everyone assumed was the puppeteer behind Joe Sakic quit because he didn't have enough power, and that Joe Sakic himself seemed legitimately confused by the whole thing - it's just an entertaining situation.
MINUS: The automatic assumption Roy will end up in Montreal.
It has to be annoying to be the only French team in hockey and have everyone just assume that every french person connected to the league will end up on the Habs. I know if I was a Habs fan this would drive me nuts.
Especially when that person is an unhinged egomaniac who isn't especially good at his job.
Perhaps it's just a coincidence that Roy is French and an ex-Hab. Maybe we are just so convinced of Marc Bergevin's incompetence that we assume replacing one of the league's worst coaches with another of the league's worst coaches is exactly what he'd do.
MINUS: You know Roy will end up back in the league, so a huge minus to the fact that the league just recycles coaches instead of giving new ones a chance. There's a good chance the Avs will replace Roy with the equally terrible Bob Hartley.
MINUS: Antoine Vermette's agent tweeted out that his client has five offers and will make his decision Monday.
Statistically, you could bring up virtually any AHL player and get a better performance than Vermette will give you. Marc Arcobello and Brad Boyes don't have contracts, but some regressive team is going to pay for Vermette's ability to win faceoffs?
Good for Vermette for weaseling out another contract, he's a nice guy and all. But it is confusing why professional hockey teams continue to choose their players best on reputation.
PLUS: Jimmy Vessey can sign with a team next week, thus ending one of the most ridiculous phases in NHL history. I get that the summer is quiet and you have to do all you can to get some content out, but there are literally five blogs per day on where the kid might sign.
NEUTRAL: There are a lot of hockey podcasts. I mean, a lot. So many that you could do a podcast on podcasts. (though, for the love of God, why would you?)
here's the problem: most of them are boring. I'd be interested to learn what your favorite ones are so I could find a couple that are good.
The ones I have sampled seem to be just guys who are fans of hockey and who bring on 'celebrity' guests to pander to.
MINUS: The guy on yesterday's blog comments section who posted a spoiler about the final episode of Stranger Things. I mean, I guess I should have known better than to bring it up before watching the end of it, but come on.
To this person, I hope you read this. I hope you feel shame. If it was up to me, I'd ban you from this site permanently. I think it says a lot about the kind of person you are that you'd do that. Way to go.
PLUS: Despite the efforts of the guy who I would have to get myself fired in order to express my true feelings about, the finale of said show was absolutely fantastic. I am comfortable ranking this show as one of the truly great shows in history, along with Breaking Bad and Lost. (Lost is itself another show that Stephen King probably deserved a writing credit on.)
MINUS: Reason #4356 why I hate social media: I don't want to see picture of what players do when they get the Cup. It ruins the mystique.
MINUS: Ever since declaring on Tuesday that my novel was finished, I can't stop thinking of ways to make it better. (or ways in which it is currently terrible).
MINUS: I would have thought I'd be getting more free crap from companies for doing this by now. I guess I will have to write to some companies and brag about my circulation!
MINUS: The Leafs haven't traded James Van Riemsdyk.
I get that you can't go 100% with young players. But JVR is 27. His prime and the Leafs window of competitiveness will not exist at the same time - he has a great contract and will bring back a prime asset, most likely one young enough to not need expansion draft protection.
Same thing with Leo Komarov and Bozak. If you need vets, there's lot of guys you can get on PTOs or as UFAs who'd help out, but you have to trade your assets in a rebuild. You have to.
PLUS: As it stands now, the Leafs have Connor Brown, Kirby Rychel, Kasperi Kapanen, Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, Zack Hymen, Brenden Leipsic, Dmytro Timashov, Andreas Johnson, Nikita Soshnikov, Frederik Gauthier and Josh Leivo. That is a lot of rookies who are at least somewhat ready to try out the NHL.
The Leafs are in a weird spot because they are so absolutely stacked with prospects, but too many of those prospects seem to be ready to audition in the NHL at the same time.
It will be extremely interesting to see where they go from here.
They could be the first team to realize the fact that having players statistically peaking at age 24 and while teams have an average age of 28 is pretty stupid. Then again, Lou Lamoriello.
MINUS: Perhaps the biggest MINUS this column has ever dished out goes to the new expansion team in Las Vegas. First of all, it sucks that they didn't go with a better choice for GM, but this news that they want to use some variation of the word "Hawk" in their name is ridiculous.
There are over 1.5 million animals on earth and just 30 teams in the NHL. You literally have a million choice and you choose not only one that is already taken, but one that is objectively stupid?
Here's a few better choices: the Las Vegas Robot Scorpions, the Las Vegas Nun-chucks, the Las Vegas Vegan Ninjas, the Las Vegas Doc and Marty's, the Las Vegas Random Name Generators, the Las Vegas Legally Rejected Names, the Las Vegas Copyright Infringers, the Las Vegas Horrible Example of the NHL's Greed, and finally the Las Vegas Should'a Gone to Quebecs.
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