The Swamp

mister d wrote: ↑Fri May 12, 2023 10:50 am No, its definitely more upsetting to know who these people are. One is a housewife, one is some cake guy who I think had a show, one is from Jersey Shore, one seemed Italian so I imagine Bayonne ...

I think multiple other of the older dudes were from The Sopranos.

A potpourri of the local glitterati!

I’ve been to all of those places!

sancarlos wrote: ↑Fri May 12, 2023 7:32 pm

don't jinx it, i want that to happen

sancarlos wrote: ↑Fri May 12, 2023 7:32 pm

My wife is a Senior Sales Rep at the company that airs the playoffs in Canada. When the Leafs made it to the 2nd round, she and her entire team saw their bonuses go up. Oddly, the Oilers are the 2nd most commercially popular team (in terms of English language viewership) in Canada.

An Oilers-Leafs cup would have been very nice indeed. Knights-Panthers, not so much.

Surprised the Oilers only scored one goal on the major.

These TNT announcers are fucking horrible. Legit not sure they’re watching the game in person.

The NHL clearly is trying to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Brian is learning about McReffing

Thanks to the NHL for giving our oldest best D-man a rest despite trying to give Edmonton 100 power plays.

At some point playing McDavid and Draisaitl 30 mins a game seems to be a net losing bargain but I’m not teen genius like Woodcroft.

Over/under on how many PPs Toronto calls in for McDavid in the 3rd period? 4?

Oilers pull Skinner AGAIN for the 3rd.

Well gotta eat some crow. Surprised they didn’t call that stick on Ekholm especially after he went down like a Spanish soccer player.

Now I can actually enjoy the playoffs

If Dallas wins Vegas will be the furthest north team left in the playoffs

Bad night for a prospect at the world championship
https://russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2 ... ship-game/

Eichel +4, Barbashev 2 points and +2. Nurse -3, Draisaitl - 4. Tells you everything.

Barbashev was such a great pick-up, those are the guys the top teams should target at the deadline instead of "loading up".

degenerasian wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 12:03 pmBarbashev was such a great pick-up, those are the guys the top teams should target at the deadline instead of "loading up".

I will die wondering what would have happened if the Rangers could have applied their 2021-22 deadline to their 2022-23 team.

degenerasian wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 12:03 pm Eichel +4, Barbashev 2 points and +2. Nurse -3, Draisaitl - 4. Tells you everything.

Barbashev was such a great pick-up, those are the guys the top teams should target at the deadline instead of "loading up".

Messier actually had a useful bit during 2nd int on ESPN about how shambolic Leon’s D was on those 2nd period goals.

The hot take from Rush and countless other idiots on social media that the VGK were “gifted” a winning team because of favorable expansion draft rules is the dumbest of takes because the Internet exists and even as revisionist history you can’t find a single person who thought Vegas was going to anything other than suck Year 1. Seattle sucked Year 1 with the same rules and managed to leap to only 7th in the conference Year 2 thanks to better GK and Beniers.

Only 6 players still exist from the initial VGK team including a 4th line center and 3rd pairing D. I can’t tell if Rush is trolling or serious but a lot of people somehow still actually think that expansion teams are supposed to suck for 20 years.

Tampa and San Jose took their lumps under the previous expansion rules then were good for a long time because they’re well-run organizations. The reason any expansion team sucks after Year 4 or 5 is because it’s poorly-run.

If Rush has a problem with peeps rooting for their adopted hometown teams, he’d want to strangle me for my nomadic NHL fandom.

That said, go Stars!

Giff wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 8:58 pm If Rush has a problem with peeps rooting for their adopted hometown teams, he’d want to strangle me for my nomadic NHL fandom.

That said, go Stars!

I won’t bother giving much credence to that idiocy except to say I bought my VGK season tickets 2 years before any supposedly advantageous expansion draft rules and with every expectation VGK would suck for at least a couple years.

Watching the new team in your new city is fine, shifting your super fandom from a team to that new team is another.

I "root" for all of the local Denver teams aside from the Broncos, but in no way have I shifted my fandom.

brian wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 9:16 pmI won’t bother giving much credence to that idiocy except to say I bought my VGK season tickets 2 years before any supposedly advantageous expansion draft rules and with every expectation VGK would suck for at least a couple years.

They weren't supposedly advantageous, they were explicitly advantageous. The last expansion protection rules were G/D/F of 1/5/9 or 2/3/7, Vegas got 1/3/7 or 1/4/4.

Rush2112 wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 1:24 am Watching the new team in your new city is fine, shifting your super fandom from a team to that new team is another.

I "root" for all of the local Denver teams aside from the Broncos, but in no way have I shifted my fandom.

I used to be a hardliner on this. Now? Who cares? It's generally easier to watch your local teams and get invested that way unless Bally Sports are a bunch of fucking dickasses.

brian wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 6:45 pmOnly 6 players still exist from the initial VGK team including a 4th line center and 3rd pairing D.

1. Tuch included in the trade, was only in Vegas because Minnesota wanted to protect add'l defensemen (Dumba + Scandella)
2. One of the best trades of the last __ years ... draft didn't affect this at all
3/4. Only in Vegas because Florida wanted to protect add'l defensemen (Demers + Weegar)
5. UFA.
6. Ate David Clarkson's contract, got Karlsson, a 1st and a 2nd.
7. Only in Vegas because Anaheim wanted to protect add'l defensemen (Manson + Vatanen + Montour)
8. Ate Grabovski's contract, got a 1st and 2nd to pass on Strome + Nelson + de Haan + Bailey, that 1st was Brannstrom who was the key piece in the Stone trade

In this era of salary cap, it’s awfully hard to keep the gang together. And, if your team hands out some bad long-term contracts, it’s hard to rebuild, too*.

* example: San Jose Sharks

A_B wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 9:56 am

Rush2112 wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 1:24 am Watching the new team in your new city is fine, shifting your super fandom from a team to that new team is another.

I "root" for all of the local Denver teams aside from the Broncos, but in no way have I shifted my fandom.

I used to be a hardliner on this. Now? Who cares? It's generally easier to watch your local teams and get invested that way unless Bally Sports are a bunch of fucking dickasses.

Look at the old Swamp and Brian was MR. REDWING. He's got the means to follow them even if he lives in a new city. I mean, I don't follow the Red Sox as much as I did when I was in Boston, but if there's an opportunity for me to watch a game I watch.

I understand he's a hockey fan, so getting VGK tix was the way to see a lot of hockey. Hell, if I had the means I'd probably get Avs season tickets as I like hockey and I can get to watch it live. That doesn't mean that I become Avs fan #1.

(I'm not even a fanatic about the hockey teams I root for. I just root at different levels. I am an Edmonton fan first and foremost, but I also root for the Habs because they were sort of local and the team I got to see when I went to games, I also root for Toronto because I believe the franchise deserves some recent success. I do follow the Avs and I'd put them here. Then I'm rooting for a Canadian team to win the cup, then probably the original 6 aside from the Bruins (because fuck the Bruins) and then the team that's most "hockey" (Islanders over Ducks.)

All that said, I'm rooting for Edmonton then sliding down that scale as the teams are out of it.)

Getting "invested" and being a card-carrying fanatic are two different things, especially when someone was previously a fanatic about a different team.

I dunno man, it's not like someone that wakes up one day and decides they are a ManCity fan. Or that same person "decides" that their favorite team is the Yankees and their favorite college football team is Alabama. (Frontrunner bandwagon fans suck, IOW.)

When I moved from MI to MD, I slowly morphed from a "hardcore" Tigers and Pistons fan to following the O's and the Bullets/Wizards. With the Orioles, a huge part of that was living down the street from Memorial and "sneaking" into the bleachers for dozens of games. Also, my future wife's BIL was a huge fan and I enjoyed taking him to games. With the Buzzards, it didn't hurt that they brought in CWeb and Juwan. That was a pretty fun team to follow.

Anyways, the point is that especially given that Wings and the Knights are in different conferences, and the fact that they caught lightning in a bottle... I just don't see it as egregious bandwagon behavior.

(My buddy is a big proponent of finding a team in the opposite conference to root for... He's been a Tigers and Padres fan for as long as I've known him.)

Nonlinear FC wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 3:20 pm I dunno man, it's not like someone that wakes up one day and decides they are a ManCity fan. Or that same person "decides" that their favorite team is the Yankees and their favorite college football team is Alabama. (Frontrunner bandwagon fans suck, IOW.)

When I moved from MI to MD, I slowly morphed from a "hardcore" Tigers and Pistons fan to following the O's and the Bullets/Wizards. With the Orioles, a huge part of that was living down the street from Memorial and "sneaking" into the bleachers for dozens of games. Also, my future wife's BIL was a huge fan and I enjoyed taking him to games. With the Buzzards, it didn't hurt that they brought in CWeb and Juwan. That was a pretty fun team to follow.

Anyways, the point is that especially given that Wings and the Knights are in different conferences, and the fact that they caught lightning in a bottle... I just don't see it as egregious bandwagon behavior.

(My buddy is a big proponent of finding a team in the opposite conference to root for... He's been a Tigers and Padres fan for as long as I've known him.)

It wasn't one day, and it wasn't that fucking Blue, but I chose Man U as my team because they offered free radio calls of their games at the time. It was a great thing to have on in the background on a work afternoon. Didn't hurt that was around the time Giggs/beckham/Scholes et al were winning a bunch, but it was just so much easier to get into them because their online presence was so much better than what others had.

(My first ever post (and bad take) here was talking about Ruud van Nistelrooy being the best striker in the world. He was good, but that really wasn't all that true.)

Still obviously a Red Wings fan but they’ve obviously mostly sucked for the last seven years and worse than that haven’t done anything noteworthy like winning the draft lottery, etc.

I don’t discuss the Tigers much in the MLB threads or the Pistons in the NBA for much the same reason

A_B wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 3:24 pm

Nonlinear FC wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 3:20 pm I dunno man, it's not like someone that wakes up one day and decides they are a ManCity fan.

It wasn't one day, and it wasn't that fucking Blue, but I chose Man U as my team because they offered free radio calls of their games at the time. It was a great thing to have on in the background on a work afternoon. Didn't hurt that was around the time Giggs/beckham/Scholes et al were winning a bunch, but it was just so much easier to get into them because their online presence was so much better than what others had.

Assuming this was more about someone who isn't AB, mine was, more or less, one day and it was because they invested in NYCFC. Before that I was scheduled to be a Tottenham fan but then the sale to the Yankees consortium didn't happen. Like I decided "ok, I guess this is my team* now" without any idea about Aguero and 93:20 and all that. I likely didn't even know who Aguero unless he featured in the prior World Cup. I am simply blessed by coincidence and a love of baby blue uniforms.

* I now say "club". Progress.

(But also as someone who grew up an Eagles fan and was a Mets fan until 06-18-89, I don't give much of a shit about people ceasing to follow or changing teams beyond "this is something useful to use to antagonize".)

mister d wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 9:33 am

brian wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 9:16 pmI won’t bother giving much credence to that idiocy except to say I bought my VGK season tickets 2 years before any supposedly advantageous expansion draft rules and with every expectation VGK would suck for at least a couple years.

They weren't supposedly advantageous, they were explicitly advantageous. The last expansion protection rules were G/D/F of 1/5/9 or 2/3/7, Vegas got 1/3/7 or 1/4/4.

Literally no one felt that way at the time and even with revisionist history and success Vegas had was through shrewd deal making (as you kind of admitted). Some moron like Keith Jones wouldn’t have been able to do it.

Nonlinear FC wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 3:20 pm (My buddy is a big proponent of finding a team in the opposite conference to root for... He's been a Tigers and Padres fan for as long as I've known him.)

Otherwise known as a "sports Goomar"...

mister d wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 3:58 pm (But also as someone who grew up an Eagles fan and was a Mets fan until 06-18-89, I don't give much of a shit about people ceasing to follow or changing teams beyond "this is something useful to use to antagonize".)

Big Roger McDowell fan?

brian wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 4:02 pmLiterally no one felt that way at the time and even with revisionist history and success Vegas had was through shrewd deal making (as you kind of admitted). Some moron like Keith Jones wouldn’t have been able to do it.

Are you saying that no one recognized that the protection rules had tightened by 4 skaters per team?

They came in at the right time (relative to Seattle) and took advantage. Vegas getting 1/3 of the league to attempt symbiotic trades is to their credit, but the reason they were able to do that is very clearly because of the reduced protection slots.