PLUS: No more Pierre McGuire

MINUS: No more Nick Kypreos

PLUS: The NHL preseason actually starts today. The Coyotes will play the Knights. I refuse to watch pre-season games, but I am still happy we're getting close.

PLUS: I am not generally a Jeff O'Neil fan - and he once added me on Twitter only to DM me a long winded rant about my criticism of him in this column, which, to be honest, he was probably right about - but he was awesome this week as the only mainstream media voice taking on the ridiculous Mitch Marner contract negotiation team.

MINUS: The Provorov contract. The stats suggest that Provorov is massively overrated. I am sure Bill will pop into lecture me about why this isn't true, but seriously, how can someone suck so bad on the power-play?

And why does someone putting up so many bad numbers get so many minutes? You might love Provorov, but I love charts, and charts don't love him.

PLUS: The Jared Spurgeon Contract. That guy is massively underrated. Again, charts!

PLUS: The Mitch Marner contract. I think it will eventually make Leafs GM Kyle Dubas into a legend for signing all three of the Leafs franchise players and John Tavares. It seems like a lot now, but will eventually be a bargain.

PLUS: The return of Michael Stuart to Hockeybuzz.

PLUS: If you love charts like I love charts, check out Evolving-hockey.com

PLUS: Canadian legends the Flashing Lights. They really should have been huge!

MINUS: When people do a countdown to something - say the beginning of the hockey season - and they use a player's number and they say something like "Patrice Bergeron days until..."

It makes me want to punch them.

PLUS: Going into the season, I'm in the best shape of my life.

MINUS: Here's hoping I'm wrong about the Flyers cause my fantasy team is built around Carter Hart not being a typical Flyers goalie.

MINUS: Suspending Evgeni Kuznetsov. I guess you'd prefer your players weren't on camera doing drugs, but I don't really think he should have to miss games for it.

If you think a league that makes millionaires out of 20 year old jocks doesn't have a wide spread culture of cocaine usage, I don't know what to tell you. The message here seems to be don't be stupid about being caught on camera.

What is far more scary is that in the midst of a world-wide opiate epidemic, no one talks about pain killers being used in the NHL, which are almost certainly a far bigger problem.

PLUS: I really enjoyed the long winded anti-Chappelle reviews, only to see him get a 100% audience rating. I think it's instructive that there is such a divide between what offends the 2% of people that rabidly comment and tweet (and the writers that cater to them), and the rest of the normals.

MINUS: Ken Holland is really killing it in Edmonton. What a great hire!

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