Around The League 24/25. Parity, blessed parity.

The West is weird this season, Vancouver currently in WC2 is on pace for just 89 points to make the playoffs.

They can pathetically thank their juicy Bettman OT points. I still think Utah or the Blues will jump up ahead of both the flames and canucks.

Flames can remain where they always are. Good enough not to draft a high pick, but mediocre enough to stay out of a playoffs spot. As for nucks? f*** their fans. Their fans don't deserve any happiness.
 
Morgan Frost: 2G 3A 5pts in 16 games
Joel Farabee: 3A 1A 4pts in 16 games

sick trade Craig Conroy

With the added benefit of Farabee sucking up $5M per for the next 5 and Frost about to take about a $3M/yr qualifier. Flames have a ton of cap space so it doesn't hurt them THAT bad, but the trade narrative followed the normal course of everyone declaring them brilliant only for it to flop.

The smart team is the Flyers. Dump two mid roster players making too much money while someone is out there that thinks they still have potential.
 
Morgan Frost: 2G 3A 5pts in 16 games
Joel Farabee: 3A 1A 4pts in 16 games

sick trade Craig Conroy

Lol, they also didn't want to be a seller this season also because dumb ass Conroy thinks his team's good enough for the playoffs. If anything, they're only where they are in the standings because of rookie Dustin Wolf's goaltending.

Even a lot of flame fans I know wanted their team to sell this season and for Conroy to sell players like Andersson to gain assets and retool, but Conroy's gonna Conroy. Mediocre flames remain mediocre.
As dry as day.
 
Lol, they also didn't want to be a seller this season also because dumb ass Conroy thinks his team's good enough for the playoffs. If anything, they're only where they are in the standings because of rookie Dustin Wolf's goaltending.

Even a lot of flame fans I know wanted their team to sell this season and for Conroy to sell players like Andersson to gain assets and retool, but Conroy's gonna Conroy. Mediocre flames remain mediocre.
As dry as day.

The Flames making the playoffs is a great scenario because they'll think they've arrived already and will blow all their assets trying to bring it home now.
 
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League is full of shit.

A team that has McDrai being ranked this low is pathetic of the officials and even more so of the league dinosaurs every year trying to defend their garbage officials.


I can't stand Stephen Walkolm. "To me, nobody is really talking about missed calls in a game." Walkolm's theory that the players have figured it out isn't wrong, but it's likely just misplaced because it doesn't apply across the board to all penalties.

I have a theory - players know which calls officials will call black and white almost all of the time regardless of what's happening in the game and they dutifully try to not take them because they know they won't get away with it. Tripping, slashing (to hands primarily), high sticks, too many men, puck over glass, cross checks (much less black and white than the others). Refs LOVE making these calls because there is little room to look bad on any of them, so they get called religiously.

Conversely, the judgment call penalties that typically impact the game much more than those in the black and white category, either don't get called, or get called inconsistently or sporadically. Interference, hooking, boarding, roughing, etc. This is where the problem lies because the refs don't like calling them. Forces them into a standard they have to chase the rest of the game that they have to work harder to maintain.

It's unfortunate that there was no break down of which penalties are being called. I would bet that if you looked at the distribution of calls over the years, it gradually becomes more and more stratified to the "black and white" category of calls and moves away from the calls the officials actually have to work for. The game suffers as a result. There is nothing worse than watching a game where the officials are "letting them play" only for one of those morons to enthusiastically throw their hand in the air because of a completely irrelevant incidental trip or high stick somewhere on the ice.
 

League is full of shit.

A team that has McDrai being ranked this low is pathetic of the officials and even more so of the league dinosaurs every year trying to defend their garbage officials.

Steven Walken defending the league, saying they're not missing more calls. What a joke.
 
Steven Walken defending the league, saying they're not missing more calls. What a joke.
Yeah it’s very silly I agree.

Feels like as PPs have gotten better refs have called less penalties because they don’t want to be seen as “deciding the game.”

For years the best PPs in the league operated at around 21-22%. Now that percentage would have you around the mid point in the league.
 
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League is full of shit.

A team that has McDrai being ranked this low is pathetic of the officials and even more so of the league dinosaurs every year trying to defend their garbage officials.


Just for once, I would like to hear someone employed by the league say that something they do, anything, isn’t perfect and isn’t all sunshine and roses. They will take every single negative thing about the game and come up with some bullshit answer. And shocking that the Refalanche have more than 30 more PP’s than we do. Pretty much everybody in the west has way more. Need to put Mario’s garbage league clip on repeat.
 
Landeskog is back practicing with the Avs and will travel with them but will not play until the playoffs. If Kane is healthy enough to start practicing and the Oilers are in any way challenged by the League it would be 100% proof that rules are not applied equally.


Kog has been out since playoffs 2022. He missed all the 2022/2023, 2023/2024 and over 60 games of this season. Kane has not been out that long
 
Just for once, I would like to hear someone employed by the league say that something they do, anything, isn’t perfect and isn’t all sunshine and roses. They will take every single negative thing about the game and come up with some bullshit answer. And shocking that the Refalanche have more than 30 more PP’s than we do. Pretty much everybody in the west has way more. Need to put Mario’s garbage league clip on repeat.
It is also interesting to see the guys who lead the league in penalties drawn: B. Tkachuk, Marchand, Wilson, Hathaway. These guys are not leading the league because of their offensive prowess but rather because they draw a lot of retaliation calls from their physical play or their own tendency to push the envelop on the rules. The league cares more about that sort of thing than they do about players trying to suppress the advantage that the most skilled players have.
 

League is full of shit.

A team that has McDrai being ranked this low is pathetic of the officials and even more so of the league dinosaurs every year trying to defend their garbage officials.

Money quote for why things are so bad right now

Walkom declined to share the rate at which the NHL believes its referees are missing calls, but he believes as a whole, the sharp decline in power play opportunities this year is a factor of both players adjusting to rule standards and teams being afraid to give lethal power plays a chance.
It's not "teams" that are afraid to give lethal powerplays a chance, it's referees that don't want to impact games. Clutch and grab is becoming far more pronounced in the last few years as they back off on the calls, and things like crosschecks and slashes once again become the norm despite some half hearted attempts to crackdown on them a few years ago. They even fall back on the tired old excuse of "letting them play" even in the article, an antiquated mentality the NHL refuses to shake that just makes hockey worse to watch, not better.

The problem is that their desire to "not impact the game" is in fact, impacting the game by neutering talented players while enabling unregulated hockey under the assumption that penalties and powerplays somehow disruptive and undesirable to the flow of the game. In an ideal world where ref interference is actually minimized, undisciplined teams and slow players would be punished for infractions, having a dominant hockey player on your roster is an advantage due to how many more powerplays you get, and powerplays are weapons that decide games even when the stakes are at their highest.

The "missed calls" stuff is just a red herring. The problem has always been NHL's managed games mandate in combination with their complete unwillingness to enforce the rules on or off the ice with any consistency.
 
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Money quote for why things are so bad right now


It's not "teams" that are afraid to give lethal powerplays a chance, it's referees that don't want to impact games. Clutch and grab is becoming far more pronounced in the last few years as they back off on the calls, and things like crosschecks and slashes once again become the norm despite some half hearted attempts to crackdown on them a few years ago. They even fall back on the tired old excuse of "letting them play" even in the article, an antiquated mentality the NHL refuses to shake that just makes hockey worse to watch, not better.

The problem is that their desire to "not impact the game" is in fact, impacting the game by neutering talented players while enabling unregulated hockey under the assumption that penalties and powerplays somehow disruptive and undesirable to the flow of the game. In an ideal world where ref interference is actually minimized, undisciplined teams and slow players would be punished for infractions, having a dominant hockey player on your roster is an advantage due to how many more powerplays you get, and powerplays be weapons that decide games even when the stakes are at their highest.

The "missed calls" stuff is just a red herring. The problem has always been NHL's managed games mandate in combination with their complete unwillingness to enforce the rules on or off the ice with any consistency.
The irony is and always has been that by "not wanting to impact the game" they actually impact the game in a very profound way. Forget about the actual impact of denying the most skilled players the ability to do their thing has on their teams for a moment. What this also does is significantly impacts the quality of the product on the ice. Pretty much every other league has figured out that by showcasing the stars you increase fan interest. The NHL is the only league I know the intentionally stifles their stars so as to give weaker teams a chance.
 
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The irony is and always has been that by "not wanting to impact the game" they actually impact the game in a very profound way. Forget about the actual impact of denying the most skilled players the ability to do their thing has on their teams for a moment. What this also does is significantly impacts the quality of the product on the ice. Pretty much every other league has figured out that by showcasing the stars you increase fan interest. The NHL is the only league I know the intentionally stifles their stars so as to give weaker teams a chance.
Gregor?

But yes what you said and what Gregor has been really been talking about heavily as of late is bang on.

It's funny the NHL is all about money, but do they not realize letting their most skilled players showcase their skills will actually generate more interest in the game?

The league for whatever reason is too concerned with parity and giving any team on any given night a chance to win the game.

I also do not blame the officials at all. I mean sure what happened to Sutherland he can be blamed for lol. But the NHL has the power to change the way the officials are officiating the games. They went through drastic changes after the 04-05 lockout with rule changes and enforcing the rules, so it's clearly possible that if the NHL actually told the refs to start calling by the rulebook that the could. Yes it would suck for the players, but like 05-06 and like the NFL with the changes they made over the years the players will slowly learn what is allowed and what isn't.
 
adding hide avatars option

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