Follow @james_tanner123 Since +/- is the NHL's worst stat, I thought it would make sense to appropriate it and make it useful as we review the best and worst of the past week in the NHL.
PLUS: The Calgary Flames. People act like I hate this team because I said they wouldn't make the Playoffs. They shouldn't have - they defied probability because the amount of times they are out-shot means they should lose more.
But they win, and good for them. But stop acting like this somehow proves analytics are stupid or going to go away. The thing is, probability, by definition, is going to be wrong sometimes.
Remember, I called their first round victory, so by the same logic that says I hated them before: I now love them! (Seriously though, how could anyone cheer against this team?)
The improbable happens. Ask anyone who's met my wife.
PLUS: The Chicago Blackhawks who have now advanced to at least the second round for the fifth time in seven seasons. Over this time they've won two Cups and gone to two other Conference Finals. They had the most stacked Salary Cap team of all-time and not enough is made about the fact that you could literally build a competing team with players they had to move out for Cap reasons.
MINUS: Hockey Twitter, where jokes go to die.
MINUS: I'll happily wear the title of "Buffoon" if you want (the go-to insult against all free-speaking people who don't care if the things they say are politically correct), but political correctness just subverts real liberalism and I don't care if people are offensive, I find the Thought Police one-million times worse. I don't care about forced apologies and I will - except in extreme circumstances - take the side of the person being shamed on Twitter. Fake Outrage: It's just all so excessive and whiny.
Why not get mad about a real thing for once? Bill Cosby deserves it. Gary Bettman is a politician trying to spin things for a group of billionaires. Let's get a little perspective; all I'm saying.
And for the record, I think Gary was wrong, I just don't think that makes him the Devil.
MINUS: Brian Williams. Come on, the guy is a pro. Did he embellish the truth? Who cares? It's hardly the worst of his crimes. The job of the News is to keep politicians honest and citizens informed, not show me cat-rescued-from-tree stories. So, the media fails overall as an entity because nearly every person I know is massively and scarily uninformed. The leader of Canada is seen as the worst Climate villain on earth, while the party in charge of the U.S acts like children with no repercussions - shutting down the government, defaulting on debt and slashing the I.R.S budget in a fit of pique.
I learned this week (thanks to actual living saint John Oliver who reminded me what David Foster Wallace told me in his massively underappreaciated Pale King) that every dollar invested in the IRS yields six dollars to the government, making it quite literally the safest investment on earth. Regardless of your political viewpoints, how can anyone support such childish behavior?
And yet, people are enraged by Brian Williams because he's a liar?
So Brian Williams can lie or he can not lie - hell, he might have even changed his name in an attempt to identity theft the Canadian Brian Williams (so honest, that one) but maybe what we should care about is that the news is broken and failing either way. Who cares if he lied? Do your job.
MINUS:Dave Nonis. Even after he's fired, he still shows you why he was the worst GM in hockey. Here's a great quote he gives about Jonathan Bernier to Steve Simmons:
He has shown flashes of being great. But he hasn’t maintained that. If he wants to be that (No. 1) guy, he has to be more consistent. He has to do it regularly. I think he can do that. He has to show it.
Just saying, but if Bernier was consistent on the Leafs over the last two seasons he'd be the equivalent of Dominick Hasek. I don't know how much evidence is needed before people realize that besides the occasional outlier, goalies play to their team.
The Leafs have been a possession black-hole and allowed close to 40 shots per game the entire time under Randy Carlyle - if Bernier was consistent under that he'd have a Vezina Trophy and Nonis would still have a job.
PLUS: Steve Simmons. Even though I don't like him on T.V and find his opinions often ridiculous to the point of insanity a great deal of the time, the first thing I usually do on Sundays after I put on tunes and get a coffee is read his Sunday Notes column. It is perhaps the most entertaining read in all of sports. I've read it every week since I was about nine years old and we used to get subscription to the Sun, just for the sports though, because we found the rest of the paper abhorrent.
Example of why I love Simmons: Today he mocked the GM's for "getting it right" for once, on the Vezina voting. A touching burn, considering the Professional Hockey Writers Association votes on the league's worst awarded trophy, the Norris.
PLUS: Built to Spill. Forever underrated and still releasing great albums twenty years into a career that should see them put into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, assuming such an institution existed.
PLUS: The Man, Eklund. He gave me this job and he has never once told me what to write or how to write it. That friends, is how you build something. He's one of, if not the most entertaining writer/personality in hockey. People are always crapping on the guy and it pisses me off.
There are too many regular, professional, corporate hockey sites, writers and analysts. Most of them are boring and predictable.
Mr. Eklund provides something they don't and I think they're just jealous: ENTERTAINMENT.
Did he give me my start? Does he sign my paychecks? Am I biased?
Of course, but hopefully if you read me regularly you would know I would never kiss-ass with an agenda. I say what I think is important and I think this is. Entertainment is underrated.
Rumours are fun. This is the best hockey site in the world. Give the guy a hand.
PLUS: Oh look at that, I just got a raise. Boo-ya!
MINUS: The Raptors in the Playoffs. The Blue Jays Bullpen. Toronto Sports peaking with Vincanity in 2001. Man could we ever have used McDavid, just the lottery win itself would have been the biggest Toronto Sports highlight since Joe Cater "touched 'em all."
PLUS: In his mid-season 30 Best Affiliated Prospects list, TSN's Craig Button listed Max Domi as #1 and Sam Bennett as #3. Please, please, please let that be true.
PLUS: I would leave my wife for Vladimir Tarasenko. That is how awesome that guy is. Sorry to my man Tony Dean, but I need the Wild to blow this lead, cause I need more Tarasenko.
MINUS: Stop saying the Canadiens are "in panic mode." If they lose four games in a row and blow a three-nothing lead, then I am the _________ (insert cool reference of thing I most certainly am not).
It's not going to happen, I don't care how many Satanic rituals the Senators perform to keep their season alive. Never. Going. To. Happen.
PLUS: The Oilers hiring of Peter Chiarelli. Genius move, just for hiring a guy who's never played for the team.
MINUS: To anyone who keeps suggesting the Oilers will trade Taylor Hall. Jeez, Ottawa has a better chance of coming back to win their series than that does of happening. Where's the logic? "Hey, we just got potentially the best Centre in the NHL, let's trade the second best left-winger."
The Oilers were on the verge of becoming a dominant team before they got McDavid. Once their young defensemen like Nurse and Klefbom catch up to their forwards, they'll be insane. It's not like they won't get a goalie.
Now that they have McDavid, they are a lock for the Playoffs and an instant contender. Nuts to anyone who says different.
They don't even need to trade anyone, all they need to do is move draft picks for what they need. Step one: Trade next years first while people still think there's a chance it could be a lottery pick.
MINUS: Crosby playing in the World Championships. The amount of money the NHL and the Penguins have wrapped up in him, I can't believe they'd allow it.
Then again, the amount of money he's made for them, hard to tell him he can't do what he wants.
PLUS The movie Step Brothers specifically: "Does your son know anything about carpentry?" "No. Did I just hear a drill?"
Maybe the funniest movie ever made.
PLUS: The Coyotes and Mikeal Boedker are supposedly working amicably towards an extension. He is also supposedly 100% recovered from his Spleen Removal Surgery. This is all great news. Boedker still has a chance to be something very, very special.
PLUS:Brendan Shanahan. Just the fact that he is running hockey's premier franchise and doing it the way he wants, saying publicially that he's not into doing it "the way it's always been done."
Already he's doing things differently and already people are complaining. Good.
Fresh ideas? In hockey?
Who knew.
Thanks for reading.