Around the League Thread | Marching to the Trade Deadline

[Pastor Of Muppetz]

I bet that Treliving has Conroys # on speed dial.

 

[thekernel]

Tons of Eastern teams playing West teams near the playoff bubble today. I know we've got a nice lead on the cutoff but I just want us to secure a playoff berth so badly lol

LAK vs BUF
STL vs TOR
SEA vs NYI
NJD vs NSH
DET vs EDM

Cheering for the bolded teams tonight

 

[Slapshot_11]

Listening to jack edwards call games is painful.. guy needs to retire

It literally sounds like hes having a stroke as hes calling the game rn

 

[Just A Bit Outside]

5 Games for Rielly.

Why the NHL decided on a five-game suspension for Maple Leafs' Rielly

Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Morgan Rielly was suspended five games Tuesday for cross-checking Ottawa Senators forward Ridly Greig in the head on Saturday, the NHL's Department of Player Safety announced.

www.sportsnet.ca

Should have been more IMO.

 

[andora]

Actually come to think of it regarding the suspension we rarely get one that can be directly compared to another one and especially a recent one. I don't understand how this was not minimum six games

 

[MS]

Actually come to think of it regarding the suspension we rarely get one that can be directly compared to another one and especially a recent one. I don't understand how this was not minimum six games

1) Toronto bias and huge pro-Rielly media push.

2) The guy handing out the suspension is an old-school useless goon prone to having his decisions dictated by 'the code'.

 

[Orr4Norris]

Seems weird Perron got 6 and this gets 5 but then again, it’s exactly how the NHL always operates.

Rielly is really lucky Greig was not injured though.

 

[nucks88]

Seems weird Perron got 6 and this gets 5 but then again, it’s exactly how the NHL always operates.

Rielly is really lucky Greig was not injured though.

Well any appeal for 5 or fewer games goes directly to Uncle Gary so it will be interesting if there are any more “developments”…

 

[Bojack Horvatman]

1) Toronto bias and huge pro-Rielly media push.

2) The guy handing out the suspension is an old-school useless goon prone to having his decisions dictated by 'the code'.

Yeah. If I were other teams I would be asking what the f*** is up with Reilly getting a game less than Perron. Especially Detroit who Perron plays for and is in a very close playoff race with Toronto right now. Leafs centric media is just getting worse and worse.

George Parros being the head of player safety is like Walter White/Heisenberg being in charge of the FDA

 

[PG Canuck]

LA is not a good hockey team.

 

[racerjoe]

Yeah. If I were other teams I would be asking what the f*** is up with Reilly getting a game less than Perron. Especially Detroit who Perron plays for and is in a very close playoff race with Toronto right now. Leafs centric media is just getting worse and worse.

George Parros being the head of player safety is like Walter White/Heisenberg being in charge of the FDA

To be fair I think Walter would actually be really good at this...

But just another spin of the wheel on the wheel of justice...

 

[fergo]

It used to be sudden death which made no sense in football. At best the NFL should just play straight time until the score for one team is higher at the end of it.

Heck, Gary should eliminate Sudden Death if he's going to have other gimmicks in OT like 3x3 and even the shootout.
3x3 has been a serious failure in OT and at this point all they are talking about it is tweaking the rules again to stop the worst abuse of it, which is dumb. Maybe we can't go back to 4x4 OT again because of this kind of play so put it back to 5x5.

I had to look up why they wanted to make modifications to 3-on-3 OT in the first place and came up with this link:

OT rule changes, face-off clarity discussed at GM meetings | NHL.com

Aim to enhance excitement on ice with potential improvements

www.nhl.com

Apparently the issue is that some teams aren't aggressive enough, so they think that teams shouldn't be able to take the puck out of the offensive zone once they enter it...oh, and they also want to consider adding a shot clock. Might as well add a three-point line while they're at it.

The funny thing is that since the NHL went to 3-on-3 OT, the number of games decided in overtime went up:

2005-2015: 43.14% decided in OT, 56.86% decided in a shootout.
2015-2023: 66.90% decided in OT, 33.10% decided in a shootout.

The qualifier with that is that the number of games that went to overtime didn't change much:

2005-2015: 76.39% decided in regulation, 10.19% decided in OT, 13.43% decided in a shootout.
2015-2023: 76.42% decided in regulation, 15.77% decided in OT, 7.80% decided in a shootout.

If the point was to end more games in OT and less in the shootout, then mission accomplished.

The 3x3 shows us that the coach will find a way to play it safe in the end (remember 3x3 was good at first), I believe the only solution is a 3pts system. regular / OT winner - 3 pts, SO winner - 2 pts, Loser in OT / SO - 1 pt.

My opinion is they should ditch the shootout and bring back ties. I never understood why they got a rid of ties in the first place. I guess penalty shots are exciting or something? I mean, they are...but it also helped that (a) they were rare and (b) they didn't come in the form of a skill competition to decide a tie game after overtime.

I admit I'm biased. I've hated the shootout ever since I first saw it in the early 1990s, hated it even more when I saw one in person when the first version of the Manitoba Moose played here, and even more so when the NHL decided to add it for whatever reason. I'm not sure which I hate more, the shootout or the loser point.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, right...the points system.

I don't know if there's a perfect points system. In my opinion, they should at the very least get a rid of the loser point. I feel it causes teams to sit back too much to get the game to OT, knowing they'll get at minimum one point either way. It could even be argued that history bears this out:

1942-1983: 82.91% ended with a winner, 17.09% ended in a tie (no OT).

1983-1999: 81.57% ended in regulation, 6.07% ended with an OT winner, 12.36% ended in a tie. (five-minute OT added)

1999-2004: 77.36% ended in regulation, 9.89% ended with an OT winner, 12.75% ended in a tie. (loser point & 4-on-4 OT added)

2005-2015: 76.39% decided in regulation, 10.19% decided in OT, 13.43% decided in a shootout. (shootout added)

2015-2023: 76.42% decided in regulation, 15.77% decided in OT, 7.80% decided in a shootout. (3-on-3 OT added)

I would accept going back to the system used for decades (two points for a win, one point for a tie, no points for a loss). Why fix something that I didn't think was broken in the first place? Hell, if you want to emphasize wins a little more, make them three points and keep everything else the same.

Want to keep shootouts? Fine! I think they should be deemphasized in some way in the standings. I could see something like three points for a regulation or OT win, and one point for a shootout. No points for a loss. Screw the loser point. If you want to make a regulation win mean more, make a regulation win counts for three or four points, an overtime win two points, a shootout win/tie one point, and nothing for a loss.

I don't see anything that radical happening, especially when the NHL wants to artifically keep the standings and playoff races tight deep into the season. Hence the reason for the loser point, in my opnion.

Tangentially related to the NHL but it's good to know that Fanatics is also producing a terrible product for other leagues.

Ick! My experience with Fanatics is in the form of two Canucks shirts I got for Christmas in separate years. Both started getting holes in them just over a year after getting them, and a big part of that is because the material they use to make the shirts is so thin. Meanwhile, I have some Denver Hayes shirts I got from Marks pre-pandemic, and they're just now starting to fray on the inside of the sleeves. Otherwise, they're fine. Suffice to say, I would never buy anything Fanatics-related.

Honestly, someone should do an over/under on when the first Fanatics-made uniform in MLB and/or NHL falls apart during a game. I don't imagine it would take that long.

 

[calnuck]

Bruins feed is really weird. Interviewing Bergeron while the game is on for the whole period so far.

 

[nucks88]

Welcome to Abbotsford Phil….

 

[F A N]

1) Toronto bias and huge pro-Rielly media push.

2) The guy handing out the suspension is an old-school useless goon prone to having his decisions dictated by 'the code'.

What’s hilarious is that the pro-Leafs media is lashing out against the old-school goon for being biased against the Leafs

 

[Jerry the great]

View attachment 819098
Welcome to Abbotsford Phil….

looks more like a high performance mathlete.

 

[Vector]

How’s it going in Los Angelohmygod.

 

[PG Canuck]

Kopitar is -6

 

[GranvilleIsland]

Oilers PDOing the Wings right now, their fans must be pissed.

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

The Greig thing changes absolutely nothing. Greig did nothing wrong. There is no rule against shooting a puck hard into an empty net. If he scores a goal and then slashes the goalie hard and then Rielly reacts, that's a mitigating factor.

You're stuck on something that doesn't matter at all. It doesn't matter how Greig scored that goal as long as he didn't break any rule or commit any sort of infraction that would be mitigating. And he didn't.

As was mentioned earlier, it's no different than if a Canuck had attacked Walman last night for doing the Griddy. You don't get to attack players because you don't like their goal celebrations.

I guess the difference is that Greig could reasonably expect that someone was going to come after him and do ~something~.

Like, there's no rule against getting down and pantomiming humping the opposing team's logo in center ice while blowing them out 10-0 but if you do it, you're gonna' get jumped.

So with that said, it's not going to be a 21 game suspension because Greig isn't hurt. If he was hurt like Steve Moore this would be a Steve Moore like incident, like it or not that's the way the league works (and to some extent the law since attempted murder is a far different charge than murder).

I think Rielly was correct to go after Greig, but a crosscheck to the face is appalling and needs to be punished. I don't mind Greig doing that because I think the league needs a lot more flavor and animosity, but I also don't mind the other team going after him for doing so.

So if he goes after him with his gloves off and basically says, 'like it or not, we're going'. I'm cool with that. He probably gets suspended 2 or 3 games for jumping him like that so late, but his team is happy that a leader showed up for his team, etc.

The fact that he went after him and cheapshotted him like that in a non-hockey play warrants a longer suspension.

I think he should get (maybe it's already come down as I write this, I literally just got off work) 6-9 games for this.

To me, Perron got 6 games for a cross check on the wrong player whom he thought had cheap shotted his captain. It wasn't 'okay' but I totally get the rationale and I'm okay with it.

This is worse, less okay, stupider, etc. So it absolutely can't be less than 6 and should probably be more. But they're not suspending him for 21 games, so don't bother hoping for that.

 

[Szechwan]

Hilarious that LA's response to PLD getting called out by Roenick is to get lit up by 7 goals to Buffalo. Something rotten down there.

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

This is a sport with 100+ years of history.

You could make all sorts of fun crazy gimmick rules that kids would think were cool for a half-season but it just isn't the sport. Hey, if a guy can pick up the puck behind his own goal line and go end-to-end to score, it counts as 2 goals! That would encourage exciting dekes and crazy goals! But it's not hockey and it's just ... not serious.

The sport has a set of rules and history. The only reason those rules should be changed is to fix a significant problem that has developed or to significantly improve the sport. Not, 'wow, we think this would be kinda fun!'

I think you're drawing a strange line in the sand (on the jailbreak thing, the carryover penalty thing is nonsense).

Like, for ages penalties were two minutes no matter how many goals were scored.

Then for ages 'coincidental' penalties didn't exist and a fast team could utilize that to make it 4 on 4 or 3 on 3.

For ages you could change on an icing.

For ages clearing the puck over the glass wasn't a penalty.

For ages you couldn't make a 2 line pass.

-
Some of these were sold as fixes to problems, but many of them were meant to improve the game because...why not make things better?

I think that incentivizing counter-punch offense on the pk can only make the game more exciting and interesting. It raises the stakes.

So suddenly a d man pinches because if they score here it ends the penalty too, but whoops the puck goes back the other way and now it's a 3 on -1 for the pp.

This isn't some stupid gimmick like giving two goals for a spinorama. This is changing what has been a fairly arbitrarily changed rule (how penalties are served, and how long they last) in the past in order to improve it. I think it's a worthy experiment and I am a traditionalist in general when it comes to hockey.

 

[arttk]

Kopitar is -6

Aging at the perfect time

 

[ephmrl]

Feel like Perron at 50% retained would look great on the Miller line

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

I hate the jailbreak idea. Ultimately, it’ll just make powerplays risk-adverse and thus not about scoring, but defending and killing clock. That’s the way the NHL works. Changes are made, coaches adjust to keep the game boring.