Around the NHL 2023-24 - offseason part II

[NJDevs26]

I'm sorry, didn't Duclair just sign with the Islanders as a FA? Not like he was traded there in-season. And Lou's been in the NHL for two freaking generations, anyone in hockey knows about the hair thing going in.

 

[njdevils1982]

i worked for UPS back in 2000....after a few weeks i stopped shaving only to have the manager remind me to be razor shaved every day before work.....and that was maybe 3 days of growth....

bullshit standard. i didnt last 6 months at the job.....just didnt show up one day after a ween concert. the phone rang off the hook when they realized my route was not being done that day.

i've had facial hair since.


and the 'hilarious' thing now in 2024 is no one gives a f*** anymore, people all over drive for them with beards or or longer hair and tattoos showing .....


ya, no one cares.

f*** UPS.... i was an 'Under Paid Slave'... 11 bucks an hour and only 25 hours a week.....

thank the teamsters union! (sarcasm)

 

[Bleedred]

i worked for UPS back in 2000....after a few weeks i stopped shaving only to have the manager remind me to be razor shaved every day before work.....and that was maybe 3 days of growth....

bullshit standard. i didnt last 6 months at the job.....just didnt show up one day after a ween concert. the phone rang off the hook when they realized my route was not being done that day.

i've had facial hair since.


and the 'hilarious' thing now in 2024 is no one gives a f*** anymore, people all over drive for them with beards or or longer hair and tattoos showing .....


ya, no one cares.

f*** UPS.... i was an 'Under Paid Slave'... 11 bucks an hour and only 25 hours a week.....

thank the teamsters union! (sarcasm)

Razor shaved for me is 1-2 days max. Maybe even never. I'm one of those guys that has a permanent five o clock shadow. I've had it since my teens and started growing facial hair at a young age. I was regularly going without shaving for a week these days, just out of laziness. But the thing got so damn gray that I don't let it go more than a couple of days. I mostly would just shave my face in the shower, but it's a long process when I do it in there. So I do it a lot just with an electric shaver when I'm sitting around the house or even sometimes when I'm driving. I still shave in the shower once a week, mostly because I like the shave you get from a razor more than the buzzer.

My friend down here has worked for UPS for 30 years or maybe a little more now. I think he may have even had a goatee back in the 90s when he started working for them. He makes me think I got into the wrong business. I want nothing to do with the warehouse, so I'm fine with now working there. I think you have to go through suffering in that first. He gets paid really good and has retirement benefits. I'm not sure if he has to wait until 55 in a few years or if he can retire now if he really wanted to?

The warehouse jobs are BRUTAL. They pay shit, it's too hot in there and everybody quits before long. I think he probably started out in the warehouse back in the day. I guess if you survive the warehouse for however long you can get in one of the trucks and start delivering.

 

[Desert Devil]

I don’t really agree with Lou on the whole grooming thing but trying to make this a racial thing is blatantly dishonest. Are we going to be that naive to think Duclair didn’t know or it wasn’t discussed prior to him signing?

 

[Bleedred]

Duclair is not the first player to join a Lou team, who posted about having to cut either their hair or/and beard.

I think even Jagr put something about it on Twitter (remember when Twitter wasn’t allowed? Even though multiple players had one, they just weren’t very active) or somewhere after he signed.

I remember Robin Lehner took a picture of his shaved beard hair in the sink or something like that after he signed with the Islanders.

 

[MadDevil]

Am I alone in not being bothered by the whole clean shaven, no long hair thing?

It's Lou's thing, guys know it going there, whether signing or getting traded. I know you don't have a choice when traded, but I would rather play in Long Island and be told what my hair style is instead of being sent to Winnipeg. So it could be worse.

Lou is 81 years old. Let the old man have his dumb rules. If it's not a big deal for the players who really gives a shit?

 

[devilsfan950003]

Shit, if you pay me $3,500,000 a year for four years, I'd shave my balls every day.

 

[NjDevsRR]

Shit, if you pay me $3,500,000 a year for four years, I'd shave my balls every day.

 

[Guadana]

Shit, if you pay me $3,500,000 a year for four years, I'd shave my balls every day.

I really don't understand the cry. Players have huge money. And "the dumb rule" is hair cut? People around the world in different organizations are working in suits or even in stupid uniform, should shave their face, etc for less less money. And poor millionaire cry about his hair when he literally made a sign by himself on a paper.
Would I prefer to have beard and long hair? Yes, thats what I have in my real life. If my administration asking me to shave and cut it? If I won't to work here I'm a part of the organization. Especially for nice payments.

Its childish.

 

[My3Sons]

I really don't understand the cry. Players have huge money. And "the dumb rule" is hair cut? People around the world in different organizations are working in suits or even in stupid uniform, should shave their face, etc for less less money. And poor millionaire cry about his hair when he literally made a sign by himself on a paper.
Would I prefer to have beard and long hair? Yes, thats what I have in my real life. If my administration asking me to shave and cut it? If I won't to work here I'm a part of the organization. Especially for nice payments.

Its childish.

I can understand a draft pick or guy who gets traded to the Islanders being upset. You didn’t ask for it. But a UFA who chooses to sign there? Seems pretty obvious.

 

[MasterofGrond]

I think it's a stupid thing to require. My policy with any of my engineers or operators is if you do the job well, I don't care if you look like Billy Gibbons.

But ultimately is it worth caring about? Not really. I will make fun of Lou for it, though.

 

[Triumph]

I really don't understand the cry. Players have huge money. And "the dumb rule" is hair cut? People around the world in different organizations are working in suits or even in stupid uniform, should shave their face, etc for less less money. And poor millionaire cry about his hair when he literally made a sign by himself on a paper.
Would I prefer to have beard and long hair? Yes, thats what I have in my real life. If my administration asking me to shave and cut it? If I won't to work here I'm a part of the organization. Especially for nice payments.

Its childish.

This is one thing I'll never understand around here and elsewhere - money makes something like this feel worse, not better. A person who makes a lot of money believes themselves to be of high status and they have more freedoms in the rest of their life - they can purchase a lot more things, and they can pay people to do things in their life that they themselves don't want to do. It's no consolation to understand that sure, plenty of people have it a lot worse, and for worse reasons, and for much less money.

Lou's rule is dumb and like a lot of his rules, they're either contradictory or arbitrary. Lou used to allow long hair, now he doesn't. He doesn't let players pick their own number, unless they're really good, in which case, fine. Players can have beards in the playoffs but not in the regular season. Players can't have bonuses, until Auston Matthews comes along. He's much more of a pragmatist than he lets on - the staying in the hotel for home games rule has long since gone away - but these sorts of rules are silly.

 

[Guadana]

I can understand a draft pick or guy who gets traded to the Islanders being upset. You didn’t ask for it. But a UFA who chooses to sign there? Seems pretty obvious.

Yap. And even if you was drafted. You are ex kid and now you are a millionaire. May be one or two tears. NHLer who was traded? Different teams have different rules. Most teams still ask for suits. overall I really cant live with this "problem", It is not problem. And if we are talking about professional work - it still help for people to start doing thing after thing after thing to focus on the job. I would take phones out from game day if I would be lead manager but I understand that we cant do such a thing in today reality. But I would. I would take my phone away from myself.

 

[Guadana]

This is one thing I'll never understand around here and elsewhere - money makes something like this feel worse, not better. A person who makes a lot of money believes themselves to be of high status and they have more freedoms in the rest of their life - they can purchase a lot more things, and they can pay people to do things in their life that they themselves don't want to do. It's no consolation to understand that sure, plenty of people have it a lot worse, and for worse reasons, and for much less money.

Lou's rule is dumb and like a lot of his rules, they're either contradictory or arbitrary. Lou used to allow long hair, now he doesn't. He doesn't let players pick their own number, unless they're really good, in which case, fine. Players can have beards in the playoffs but not in the regular season. Players can't have bonuses, until Auston Matthews comes along. He's much more of a pragmatist than he lets on - the staying in the hotel for home games rule has long since gone away - but these sorts of rules are silly.

The rules help you focus on the action. They help to build a routine. Which eventually changes the attitude. It sounds like a small thing, but at this level, even small things - especially psychological ones-matter. As for the exception for the special ones, that's why they are special. Having a special player helps you win more than not having a special player because of a number discrepancy or a bonus issue. Regarding the beard in the season and in the playoffs, look at it differently. In the season, EVERYONE shaves, and in the playoffs, EVERYONE grows a beard. This is a unifying moment.

 

[Triumph]

The rules help you focus on the action. They help to build a routine. Which eventually changes the attitude. It sounds like a small thing, but at this level, even small things - especially psychological ones-matter. As for the exception for the special ones, that's why they are special. Having a special player helps you win more than not having a special player because of a number discrepancy or a bonus issue. Regarding the beard in the season and in the playoffs, look at it differently. In the season, EVERYONE shaves, and in the playoffs, EVERYONE grows a beard. This is a unifying moment.

Again, you can invent all the reasons you want, 31 franchises function just fine without these rules.

The rules make a lot more sense to me in the 1980s and 1990s when hockey players were not paid all that well and consequently weren't all that well-conditioned - the stories from those days about breaking curfew and whatnot are just completely alien to today's athletes. It's a totally different world now. The level of discipline they've had to maintain to make it to this level is different.

 

[Guadana]

Again, you can invent all the reasons you want, 31 franchises function just fine without these rules.

The rules make a lot more sense to me in the 1980s and 1990s when hockey players were not paid all that well and consequently weren't all that well-conditioned - the stories from those days about breaking curfew and whatnot are just completely alien to today's athletes. It's a totally different world now. The level of discipline they've had to maintain to make it to this level is different.

Again - I dont care how other franchises works. Some of them cant crack play off with much better roster, New York Louslanders are playing regularly there.
And they still paying 80+ mil for their employees. This players can play for other organisations if they want... for example beard in december. Ask for a trade or determinate their deals. Or live with it if they cant for one or other reasons because its just a beard or hair. There are tonns of rules and tonns of attributes that pro athletes are wearing because their teams asking them to wear it regularly or for some special days. Beard and hair isnt something special.

Hockey is a professional sport of high achievements. McDavid and Dreisaitl are great hockey players, but for some reason they haven't won their Stanley Cup yet. And it's not about the beard or the hair, but other things being importnat, any little things are solved. Including the time and mood level before the game. And so far, if we evaluate the level of the roster and the results, Islanders consistently do it better than other teams. Perhaps if Lou had been in a really talented team, he would have been able to trade the right people and set the rules that would help win the cup. Oh, wait-that's how it was. The Devils won their three Cups, frankly speaking, having not the best lineups for this. And in the subsequent period, Lou's team went to the playoffs for a very long time, not always operating with a sufficiently good squad for this.

Not saying Lou is overall great - Im not a fan of his today roster management. But his discipline rules are quite easy enough to live with it. And mostly disciple helped people EVER. So Im okay with discipline. Between two talented teams - well trained, well talented, there will be one team only that will win. Discipline will help with it.

 

[AfroThunder396]

How much success did his "professionalism" and "focusing on the action" generate for the Leafs and Islanders over the past decade?

Maybe he's just an out of touch old man who insists on being a control freak?

 

[Triumph]

Again - I dont care how other franchises works. Some of them cant crack play off with much better roster, New York Louslanders are playing regularly there.
And they still paying 80+ mil for their employees. This players can play for other organisations if they want... for example beard in december. Ask for a trade or determinate their deals. Or live with it if they cant for one or other reasons because its just a beard or hair. There are tonns of rules and tonns of attributes that pro athletes are wearing because their teams asking them to wear it regularly or for some special days. Beard and hair isnt something special.

Hockey is a professional sport of high achievements. McDavid and Dreisaitl are great hockey players, but for some reason they haven't won their Stanley Cup yet. And it's not about the beard or the hair, but other things being importnat, any little things are solved. Including the time and mood level before the game. And so far, if we evaluate the level of the roster and the results, Islanders consistently do it better than other teams. Perhaps if Lou had been in a really talented team, he would have been able to trade the right people and set the rules that would help win the cup. Oh, wait-that's how it was. The Devils won their three Cups, frankly speaking, having not the best lineups for this. And in the subsequent period, Lou's team went to the playoffs for a very long time, not always operating with a sufficiently good squad for this.

Not saying Lou is overall great - Im not a fan of his today roster management. But his discipline rules are quite easy enough to live with it. And mostly disciple helped people EVER. So Im okay with discipline. Between two talented teams - well trained, well talented, there will be one team only that will win. Discipline will help with it.

The problem here is that you've conflated my opinion with that of other people. I never said Duclair shouldn't cut his hair - those are the rules, he knows the rules. He should be sad about it because it's a stupid rule. It's fine for him to be sad about it.

I just don't believe this kind of rule does anything for anybody. It is a way to micromanage people. Plenty of other organizations focus on the little details and have players playing above what their skill level says without having to control their hair length or whether or not they grow a beard. And again, Lou has walked back lots of his little rules over the years, so which of those rules leads to success and which ones don't?

And don't get me started on the actual Islanders, a team that merely scrapes into the playoffs even though they have traded their 1st round pick in each of the previous 4 drafts and has an All-Star level goalie not drafted by Lou. It's a sad state of affairs over there on the Island overall. Lou did the most with what he had, and it's remarkable that that team won as many rounds of the playoffs as they did. That's probably all done now.

 

[MartyOwns]

And don't get me started on the actual Islanders, a team that merely scrapes into the playoffs even though they have traded their 1st round pick in each of the previous 4 drafts and has an All-Star level goalie not drafted by Lou. It's a sad state of affairs over there on the Island overall. Lou did the most with what he had, and it's remarkable that that team won as many rounds of the playoffs as they did. That's probably all done now.

 

[Guadana]

The problem here is that you've conflated my opinion with that of other people. I never said Duclair shouldn't cut his hair - those are the rules, he knows the rules. He should be sad about it because it's a stupid rule. It's fine for him to be sad about it.

I just don't believe this kind of rule does anything for anybody. It is a way to micromanage people. Plenty of other organizations focus on the little details and have players playing above what their skill level says without having to control their hair length or whether or not they grow a beard. And again, Lou has walked back lots of his little rules over the years, so which of those rules leads to success and which ones don't?

And don't get me started on the actual Islanders, a team that merely scrapes into the playoffs even though they have traded their 1st round pick in each of the previous 4 drafts and has an All-Star level goalie not drafted by Lou. It's a sad state of affairs over there on the Island overall. Lou did the most with what he had, and it's remarkable that that team won as many rounds of the playoffs as they did. That's probably all done now.

Everybody are trying to micromanage players but from what Islanders have it looks like they are doing it better in the last 5-6 years. May be hair and beard is a part of it. At least Islanders still have better outcome than some more talented roster.

Again, like I said I dont think that Lou is doing everything fine. Im far away from it. Things are not black and white for me. They should not be for others. His drafting and assets management are not good overall on my taste. From the beginning we dont know where is a borderline. If owners are okay with play-off appearances - may be thats all what they want. If they will decide to start rebuild after a couple of years - they will have enough pieces to trade. Its better to make by other GM.

 

[tailfins]

The reason it's being brought up with respect to Duclair is that there is a difference in being asked to conform to "white society" vs being asked to conform to a "team identity".

This book review also is a reasonably good article on the issue:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/twisted-locks-fraught-with-meaning/2015/06/10/72949b8c-f595-11e4-bcc4-e8141e5eb0c9_story.html

It’s really just hair, but it also represents something much deeper for people who are marginalized.

This isn't to say that there is necessarily a problem here. Duclair may be sad but totally ok cutting his hair. Lou may have gotten input on his rules from some of the number of black players that have been on his teams over the years. We don't know any of that.

But, the image of an older white guy telling a young black man how he should look so that he can advance in his career is why there's this issue.

 

[tailfins]

Everybody are trying to micromanage players but from what Islanders have it looks like they are doing it better in the last 5-6 years. May be hair and beard is a part of it. At least Islanders still have better outcome than some more talented roster.

Again, like I said I dont think that Lou is doing everything fine. Im far away from it. Things are not black and white for me. They should not be for others. His drafting and assets management are not good overall on my taste. From the beginning we dont know where is a borderline. If owners are okay with play-off appearances - may be thats all what they want. If they will decide to start rebuild after a couple of years - they will have enough pieces to trade. Its better to make by other GM.

It's a good point on ownership. We need to factor in that there was new ownership, the awful Barclays Center experiment, the unveiling of the new UBS arena. No telling what the internal discussions were like around that.

My personal opinion is that this is Lou's MO now regardless of what internal pressures there are. I don't think he's ever ok with planned tanking.

Maybe the Devils will have a better run over the next 10 years, but we've made the playoffs twice in twelve years, and have won only one round. That's a remarkable amount of losing. Will it be worth it? As we saw with San Jose recently, winning a Cup isn't guaranteed even if you have a good team. I hope the Devils can make it over the hump, but Lou getting the Isles to back-to-back ECFs (and making the playoffs five of the past six years) without requiring a tank is nothing to sneeze at.

 

[Triumph]

It's a good point on ownership. We need to factor in that there was new ownership, the awful Barclays Center experiment, the unveiling of the new UBS arena. No telling what the internal discussions were like around that.

My personal opinion is that this is Lou's MO now regardless of what internal pressures there are. I don't think he's ever ok with planned tanking.

Maybe the Devils will have a better run over the next 10 years, but we've made the playoffs twice in twelve years, and have won only one round. That's a remarkable amount of losing. Will it be worth it? As we saw with San Jose recently, winning a Cup isn't guaranteed even if you have a good team. I hope the Devils can make it over the hump, but Lou getting the Isles to back-to-back ECFs (and making the playoffs five of the past six years) without requiring a tank is nothing to sneeze at.

Lou got them there after a long period of the Islanders being quite bad. The Islanders made the playoffs in 2006 and 2007, and from there embarked on a long stretch of losing. Here's their draft selections from 2008 on -

2008: 9th
2009: 1st
2010: 4th
2011: 5th
2012: 4th
2013: 15th
2014: 5th

Now let's look at the Islanders in 2018 when Lou arrived. Josh Bailey was still there. Tavares left when Lou got there. Niederreiter turned into Clutterbuck, Strome turned into Eberle, Reinhart into Barzal and Beauvillier, Pulock is a solid top 4 D, and Dal Colle was a bust. Still, we're talking about 5 top 9 forwards all of whom were on the Islanders roster when Lou got there, plus Pulock. Throw in Sorokin and Pelech and Lee and almost everything the Islanders had was from the previous regime. That's how these things work, and it's the same reason why the Devils have made the playoffs twice in 12 years, and why the Islanders might be looking at a similar stretch in the next decade. They have absolutely not drafted well enough to fill their holes on their roster year after year.

 

[Goptor]

Again - I dont care how other franchises works. Some of them cant crack play off with much better roster, New York Louslanders are playing regularly there.
And they still paying 80+ mil for their employees. This players can play for other organisations if they want... for example beard in december. Ask for a trade or determinate their deals. Or live with it if they cant for one or other reasons because its just a beard or hair. There are tonns of rules and tonns of attributes that pro athletes are wearing because their teams asking them to wear it regularly or for some special days. Beard and hair isnt something special.

Hockey is a professional sport of high achievements. McDavid and Dreisaitl are great hockey players, but for some reason they haven't won their Stanley Cup yet. And it's not about the beard or the hair, but other things being importnat, any little things are solved. Including the time and mood level before the game. And so far, if we evaluate the level of the roster and the results, Islanders consistently do it better than other teams. Perhaps if Lou had been in a really talented team, he would have been able to trade the right people and set the rules that would help win the cup. Oh, wait-that's how it was. The Devils won their three Cups, frankly speaking, having not the best lineups for this. And in the subsequent period, Lou's team went to the playoffs for a very long time, not always operating with a sufficiently good squad for this.

Not saying Lou is overall great - Im not a fan of his today roster management. But his discipline rules are quite easy enough to live with it. And mostly disciple helped people EVER. So Im okay with discipline. Between two talented teams - well trained, well talented, there will be one team only that will win. Discipline will help with it.

Just wait until these hockey media members find out that the players are required to wear specific clothes to work. On top of that, the management tells them the color those clothes have to be.

They'll go crazy when they find out the players have very rigid rules on the size their clothes have to be at work. If something is too long or big, the player gets kicked out of work.

They'll be completely dumbfounded when they realize that if the players do not have their shirts tucked in at work, they get penalized.

(sports media is lowest common denominator. I found it funny that they comment on this while having their profile picture being them in work mandated shirt and tie.)

 

[Guadana]

Just wait until these hockey media members find out that the players are required to wear specific clothes to work. On top of that, the management tells them the color those clothes have to be.

They'll go crazy when they find out the players have very rigid rules on the size their clothes have to be at work. If something is too long or big, the player gets kicked out of work.

They'll be completely dumbfounded when they realize that if the players do not have their shirts tucked in at work, they get penalized.

(sports media is lowest common denominator. I found it funny that they comment on this while having their profile picture being them in work mandated shirt and tie.)

Yap. THIS rules are so dumb and untihumanistic but let's not talk about 20 rules players can't act in other way even if this rules are not effect on the game.