Follow @james_tanner123 1. Scratching Burakovsky is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen a coach do.
Welcoming him back to the lineup by scratching Jakub Vrana is almost as bad. The Capitals have ten +50% possession players - Burakovsky is first and Vrana is sixth.
2. A person capable of becoming a coach in the NHL should be able to understand that goals and points are random and that - ignoring the 2% of players capable of scoring a point per game - it's way more important if a player has good possession stats than whether or not he's producing actual points in a short sample size.
3. Waiving Cody Franson is the NHL executive equivalent to whatever you think the dumbest thing I've ever written in this column is - only about 10 x dumber.
The Blackhawks are a terrible team that allows a ton of shots and they just cut their best shot-suppressor.
4. When you're wrong you're wrong - Tom Wilson is way better than I thought.
5. The band Orange Juice may be the most criminally under-appreciate band that has ever existed.
7. Without hyperbolizing anything, here are the four dumbest things I've heard recently:
a) The argument that because the Oilers have a lot of recently fired GMs and Coaches that they should stick with the worst management group in the NHL. You'd think this argument and literacy would be mutually exclusive, but I guess not!
b) The New U2 is not good. Don't be so cynical. It's a very nice record and all your friends will think you're cool if you listen to it.
c) The Golden Knights are a contender. Just look at their home record. Anything that far off from the NHL's standard parity is a misnomer. It's a fluke, a mirage and it's funny how badly people are being duped.
This isn't to say they are total crap, they're a legitimately decent sixth or seventh place team. Nothing more.
8.
Cody Franson is in the 36th percentile of Quality of Competition this year. Here's a list of defencemen who have a better CF%Rel while facing similar competition:
— Ian Tulloch (@regressIan) January 8, 2018
...
No one.
9. The Capitals should definitely be claiming Franson. But so should the Leafs, Coyotes, essentially 100% of NHL teams should be adding this guy.
10. Braden Holtby gets no love. Just like last year when the objectively bad (due a blueline decimated by injuries and an injury to their starting goalie) Pittsburgh Penguins won the Cup but no one noticed how lucky they got because of their recent elite team status, no one is recognizing how much Holtby is propping up a pretty bad team.
People just expect the Caps to be good and the standings say they are so Holtby propping them up has gone largely unnoticed.
Notice it now.
11. The new Jonathan Franzen book Purity is fantastic. It's best enjoyed while sipping a nine dollar latte and discussing indie rock, but _____ it, it's amazing.
Also, that LCD Soundsystem.......