ATD Chat Thread XX

[Habsfan18]

Speaking of tanks, who remembers the Russian Bear Evgeny Artukhin? If you took someone who never watched a hockey game in their life and showed them a random Tampa or Atlanta game from like 15-20 years ago and asked them to guess who the star player was, they'd probably pick him.

6'6, 255lbs and could f***ing FLY out there. Skated like Paul Kariya or a similar guy of small stature but in that massive frame. Legitimately looked like a million bucks out there but then you'd look at the score sheet and it was always big fat 0's all around (except for hits). Nothing he ever did amounted to any actual offensive productivity. But visually you'd think this was a 40-40 guy. And man did I see him RUN through guys out there. Couldn't have been fun to play against.

Size and speed is often deceiving. Those guys tend to LOOK great and without stat watching, casual viewers could easily be fooled into thinking they're much better than they actually were. Chad Kilger was another one of those guys. He'd show those flashes where you'd be like holy crap that's shades of Lindros...but then he'd finish the season with 20 points.

This Protas kid passes the eye test but he also is backing it up on the score sheet. The Caps might have a real good one on their hands. And his brother is playing for my Windsor Spitfires. Another big boy who may join his brother on the Caps one day.

 

[VanIslander]

I've never heard of the guy.

The "Russian Bear" is most often the moniker of the ATD'd staple foil of Esposito in the Summit Series.

 

[spitsfan24]

Speaking of tanks, who remembers the Russian Bear Evgeny Artukhin? If you took someone who never watched a hockey game in their life and showed them a random Tampa or Atlanta game from like 15-20 years ago and asked them to guess who the star player was, they'd probably pick him.

6'6, 255lbs and could f***ing FLY out there. Skated like Paul Kariya or a similar guy of small stature but in that massive frame. Legitimately looked like a million bucks out there but then you'd look at the score sheet and it was always big fat 0's all around (except for hits). Nothing he ever did amounted to any actual offensive productivity. But visually you'd think this was a 40-40 guy. And man did I see him RUN through guys out there. Couldn't have been fun to play against.

Size and speed is often deceiving. Those guys tend to LOOK great and without stat watching, casual viewers could easily be fooled into thinking they're much better than they actually were. Chad Kilger was another one of those guys. He'd show those flashes where you'd be like holy crap that's shades of Lindros...but then he'd finish the season with 20 points.

This Protas kid passes the eye test but he also is backing it up on the score sheet. The Caps might have a real good one on their hands. And his brother is playing for my Windsor Spitfires. Another big boy who may join his brother on the Caps one day.

*ahem* My Windsor Spitfires you mean.

But I agree with everything else you said here.

 

[Habsfan18]

*ahem* My Windsor Spitfires you mean.

But I agree with everything else you said here.

Can't they be ours? Actually, if you live IN Windsor, I guess I should concede. I'm like 45 minutes away!

I get to Windsor every now and then. Love going to Devonshire. Less now though that they ripped my heart out of my chest by closing Buffalo Wild Wings.

 

[nabby12]

Ilya Protas is a stud too! 93 points in 51 games as an 18 year old with Windsor is awesome.

Hope they play on a line one day together in Washington.

 

[Habsfan18]

I've never heard of the guy.

The "Russian Bear" is most often the moniker of the ATD'd staple foil of Esposito in the Summit Series.

 

[spitsfan24]

Can't they be ours? Actually, if you live IN Windsor, I guess I should concede. I'm like 45 minutes away!

I get to Windsor every now and then. Love going to Devonshire. Less now though that they ripped my heart out of my chest by closing Buffalo Wild Wings.

I do live in Windsor, yes. I've had season tickets for 12 seasons now. But the team is big enough for the both of us, I guess.

And I had honestly just gotten over BWW closing. I used to go there all the time. You've brought the pain all back now, but nice to know I'm not the only one devastated by its closing.

Ilya Protas is a stud too! 93 points in 51 games as an 18 year old with Windsor is awesome.

Hope they play on a line one day together in Washington.

He really is. Him and Greentree (the LA first rounder) have been incredibly dominant on the same line.

It's funny how with big Protas, he fell in the draft because of the worries about his skating. We've obviously seen how much he's fixed that.

And now, it seems like everybody (except for Washington) made the same mistake once again with Ilya. He's not a great skater by any means, but his talent level is so high, he doesn't even need to be a burner. If his skating improves like his brother? Watch out.

 

[Habsfan18]

It remains to be seen how useful it'll be for the ATD and bio making, but I've just received word that Dale Arnold is working on "The Coaches" for Triumph Books and it's tentatively set for publication in November.

Publishers blurb:

"The Coaches honors the experiences of NHL coaches throughout history. Author and longtime broadcaster Dale Arnold profiles leaders across eras, sharing their journeys, struggles, strategies, and moments of glory."

 

[jigglysquishy]

Trying to do some ATD bio research. The search functions on Sportsnet, TSN, and ESPN are atrocious. The Hockey News is better but still rough.

It should not be easier to find information on Frank Fredrickson than David Pastrnak.

 

[Habsfan18]

Trying to do some ATD bio research. The search functions on Sportsnet, TSN, and ESPN are atrocious. The Hockey News is better but still rough.

It should not be easier to find information on Frank Fredrickson than David Pastrnak.

The Sports Forecaster website used to have useful information and scouting reports on present day players but last time I checked they had a big website revamp maybe a year or two ago and everything was dumbed down and all the useful info was no longer there. It was a huge downgrade.

What I would love, and obviously it would never happen, would be if they brought back the Hockey Scouting Report books. Full pages of quotes and intangibles on all the present day players. Really useful way of getting a player's entire style of play in writing. Sure we have our eyes as we can see these guys play whenever we want, but in terms of bio making all we really have now are random TSN or Sportsnet articles, really.

 

[VanIslander]

Technology has not 'helped' much the last decade.

The golden age of the 'net for info has passed into the hands of marketers.

Smartphones dumbed down websites, monitization, algorythms-turned-AI...

Heck, more than half of google searches nowadays refuses to research the hockey history names i input; instead, some near spelling pop culture icon pops up... what happened to "do you mean...?" in google searches.

Ugh.

 

[ImporterExporter]

I have the publisher's plus membership on newspapers.com and it is by far, the best resource I've found to date, when it comes to researching any player, even those still playing today. It's obviously quite a tool the further back in time you go.

I think it was $75 for 6 months, which isn't bad, considering the amount of time I spend there. I know it's not necessarily "cheap" but trying to do a proper bio on any player without access to newspapers is a tall order to say the least.