Follow @james_tanner123 "PLUS/MINUS is the NHL's best stat, and the only one I use" - John Shannon*
PLUS: The NHL Trade Deadline for teaching me that the journey and not the destination is important. Just kidding. ____ stupid cliches, and ____ the trade deadline. What a boring rip off.
MINUS: For the second straight year, the St.Louis Blues traded one of their best players, for no reason, at the trade deadline, punting the season while in or near a playoff spot. Their fans should revolt. Their players should have just quit. Braden Schenn, in his comments, was obviously disgusted. I would have loved to see some of these guys just go home, what an absolute disgrace to their fans, players and the league too, really.
MINUS: The Karlsson side-show. If you're gonna tease me like that, you best come through. It was like being promised a steak dinner but then being served Kraft Dinner.
PLUS: Jamie Benn scoring an OT winner and then snapping his $700 stick over his knee.
PLUS: I just read a book about how cameras and technology are really dangerous - and it was written in the 70s. It's called Running Dog, by Don Delillo, and it is about the search for Hitler's sex tape. It's hilarious and definitely worthy of my weekly book recommendation.
MINUS: The Vancouver Canucks whining about how mean their fans are. You suck. You squandered the last five years of the Sedins, you make terrible trades, you re-sign players everyone knows are garbage (Ol' Grundy) and you re-sign the only guy who makes Peter Chiarelli look competent to a multi year deal, which he, upon signing, immediately shows why it was so terribly received (Once again, Ol' Grundy).
Whoever owns the Canucks, you need to fire Trevor Linden, and everyone associated with him.
PLUS: The defending champions in all four sports leagues are teams who are known to have gone heavily into analytics, meanwhile, Dale Tallon.......
MINUS: I don't know what was going on with that outdoor game, but the players looked giant, the ice looked small (which, obviously, is just an optical illusion) and the Leafs looked like storm troopers in perhaps the worst jerseys an NHL team has ever worn.
PLUS: Old School New Jersey Devils jerseys with the green.
MINUS: Celebrating David Poile as the winningest GM of all time. What are you talking about? There have been no ties for the last decade, thus rendering records like this meaningless.
PLUS: I've been reading Meet Me in the Bathroom, which is about the New York music scene in the early 2000s. It's a good book, but what I've really been enjoying is reading it with a tablet open on Spotify and adding any bands they mention (and they mention a million) to a play list and learning about cool new bands. Some highlights of cool bands I'd never heard before include Jonathan Fire Eater, Liquid Liquid and Chrome.
PLUS: Best broadcasting team: Bob Cole and Harry Neale. No one even comes close.
MINUS: The worst broadcasting team is on TSN, which makes no sense. I have NHL Centre Ice and have been watching games from every single market, and for some reason, the channel that styles itself one of the most important in the NHL is almost unwatchable.
The broadcast team of Paul Romanuk and Greg Millen would be improved if they hired Glen Healy - that's how bad it is. It's unlistenable. And the intermissions are even worse, which shouldn't even be possible, but is.
PLUS: The Dundies.
PLUS: I believe if you account for the success of their teams and the players they play with, the Hart Trophy should be awarded to Taylor Hall. Everyone else who has scored in 24 straight games over the last 30 years is in the Hall of Fame. Hall will be too. You know who won't be in the Hall of Fame, ever? Adam Larsson.
PLUS: I just found this, something I wrote hours before Hall was traded, when the rumours will swirling in a subtle piece I titled Only an Idiot Would Trade Taylor Hall "Well not just an idiot, some examples of who might trade him also include a crackhead, someone who has had 30 + concussions or Jim Bennning."
Gold!
Thanks for reading