The Athletic Pittsburgh unveils how incompetent and disliked the Hextall-Burke duo was in PIT

[edog37]

FSG is in an interesting place. Last year Liverpool were close to pulling off a Quadruple for a minute. 4 cup finals. Won 2 lost 2. Chose not to reinvest in the club because, well... who could imagine the wheels would fall off so soon? So, they buy an NHL team while embarking on a major construction project to redevelop the Anfield Road End.

The result is that none of the fans of any of their teams are happy. The Red Sox, Liverpool, and now the Penguins are all in the same exact spot with very similar problems.

FSG has over-extended itself.

FSG didn’t over extend itself, the team aged out.

 

[Faterson]

“They not think I good player,” Malkin wrote in a text message to Crosby.

Why you haff to be so mad?

Malkin texts in pidgin?

Don't overestimate him.

 

[Statto]

FSG is in an interesting place. Last year Liverpool were close to pulling off a Quadruple for a minute. 4 cup finals. Won 2 lost 2. Chose not to reinvest in the club because, well... who could imagine the wheels would fall off so soon? So, they buy an NHL team while embarking on a major construction project to redevelop the Anfield Road End.

The result is that none of the fans of any of their teams are happy. The Red Sox, Liverpool, and now the Penguins are all in the same exact spot with very similar problems.

FSG has over-extended itself.

The construction of the stand is capital investment. It increases the value of the club. LFC fans are sometimes impatient but on the whole, some notable mistakes apart have done a solid job. This year needs some investment certainly but they tend to sign the guys Klopp wants and will wait for them if needed rather than pay over the odds. It was a poor season but injuries and several key players having unexpected poor seasons (burn out?) caught everyone by surprise. The last few months it looked much better as the likes of Fabinho remembered how to play.

They can afford things financially but they don’t like to over leverage their assets. Liverpool are in every way in better shape and if FSG walked away tomorrow they would be able to run without going bust. Most PL teams cannot say that.

I pay no attention to baseball but the measured approach in Pittsburgh doesn’t surprise me (so far). They need to do something meaningful this summer for sure.

 

[Gaylord Q Tinkledink]

Despite this massive evidence of incompetence someone will hire Hextall again.

 

[Sasha Orlov]

Hextall is obviously a Flyer 4 Life going undercover.

View attachment 712198

Hextall is a wild enough dude that this isn’t totally impossible lmfao

 

[KingsFan7824]

When you're talking about a 36 year old Malkin, you shouldn't just hand money over. Now they have 3 more years, and over $16m in cash, on a 35+ contract, with a NMC. While very few franchises would willingly let anyone that was as important as he was to 3 Cups just go away, because no matter how much the extreme hardcore fans always want their favorite team to rebuild at the drop of a hat when they're not an objective top 2% contender, franchises like ticket sales. Not many franchises want to suck for half a decade, and maybe, come out the other end as a legit contender, but with no guarantee of a Cup.

Hextall traded Teddy Blueger during the same trip. In the middle of a dinner with the players’ fathers, arranged by Crosby at Bern’s Steakhouse in Tampa, Blueger learned via social media that he had been dealt to Vegas. He and his dad abruptly left the restaurant. Crosby rushed to console his now former teammate and after a few minutes returned to the dinner. “That’s not how we do things in Pittsburgh,” he said. Crosby remained mostly quiet the rest of the night.

This is a little funny. First, in this day and age, info gets out quickly. At this point, is it that big of a thing if players learn of anything via social media? Your phone is right there.

#2, Blueger was drafted by the Pens in 2012, playing professionally for the organization since 2016, on the Pens in 18-19, and exclusively in Pit since the 19-20 season. On top of that, he's a 28 year old man, who has likely seen many other players come and go in his time as a pro.

The Pens unceremoniously traded Colby Armstrong, who I believe was one of Crosby's boys, back in 2008, to of all places Atlanta.

 

[TLEH]

Rossi is a coward. Writes a hit piece and has his replies turned off.

 

[Spydey629]

And now DK (Yohe’s former employer) is on a Twitter rant, trashing chunks of the article as well.

 

[BillyOcean]

Rossi and Yohe are notorious liars with no real sources with the team.

 

[Rodgerwilco]

As many have said here, Rossi is a hack. Nothing he says should ever be taken seriously. I have no idea why the athletic even employs him.

 

[Deep Blue Metallic]

Need a macro for this.

"Hextall is a useless piece of trash GM, but ..."

 

[BillyOcean]

As many have said here, Rossi is a hack. Nothing he says should ever be taken seriously. I have no idea why the athletic even employs him.

People on forums like this who start threads. Clickbait more or less. Some 42 year old Yinzer will stop writing their fan letter to Fleury to subscribe to the Athletic and read of all Rossi's fan fiction.

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

I know we can't post full articles from the Athletic but wow, this is one hell of an article,



Some snippets:





And my favorite:

For the record, anything by Rob Rossi needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt. He fabricates things quite a bit.

The Blueger thing, for example, has been debunked by another Pens writer and by Blueger himself. That's just Rossi taking artistic license in order to throw Hextall and Burke under the bus and to avoid people looking at his precious Mike Sullivan.

Rob Rossi is more of a fanfic writer than an actual hockey journalist. I'm sure there's some truth associate with stuff he writes, but he warps the story so much that it's near impossible to tell. It could be something like "Letang accidentally hit Malkin with a puck in practice" and Rossi would write about how Letang deliberately aimed at Malkin because he felt Malkin cut him off earlier in the day in the team buffet line.

 

[The Hockey Tonk Man]

Well,
Teddy's pretty much headed to the cup final.

I'm sure him and his dad feel alright

 

[BillyOcean]

You wouldn't know unless you held her in your arms. Megan Fox is a kicker. For the last 8 hours I had been taking body shots in my sleep that would probably rival those received by Mike Tyson's opponents in his prime. Beaten and bruised, I picked up my glasses from the nightstand and grabbed my phone. Megan rolled over and fell back asleep. "You've really made it Rob," I smirked. My smile quickly faded when I read the text I had received from my best friend Evgeni Malkin. "Hextall don't think me good at play hockey." The line hit my gut harder than anything Megan dished out the night before.

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

Well,
Teddy's pretty much headed to the cup final.

I'm sure him and his dad feel alright

Like I said, Rossi's a fanfiction writer. Anyone who uses anything he writes as evidence of anything (other than to conclude Rossi's a weirdo) should think otherwise.

 

[BlindWillyMcHurt]

If you guys wanna believe anything that falls out of Rob Rossi's mouth I have the clown makeup and big red nose for ya if you don't already have those at the ready.

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

If you guys wanna believe anything that falls out of Rob Rossi's mouth I have the clown makeup and big red nose for ya if you don't already have those at the ready.

It's hilarious to me how HF is ready to believe anything that comes out of Rossi's mouth. He's the Eklund of reporters. HF views Eklund with nothing but scorn and ridicule, yet apparently Rossi is a Pulitzer prize caliber reporter on the level of Woodward and Bernstein whose word should be taken without question.

 

[Empoleon8771]

Rossi is a coward. Rights a hit piece and has his replies turned off.

Another good Pittsburgh based reporter asked Blueger and he said it was false.

 

[The Hockey Tonk Man]

Like I said, Rossi's a fanfiction writer. Anyone who uses anything he writes as evidence of anything (other than to conclude Rossi's a weirdo) should think otherwise.

Good to know
Why’s he writing at the athletic then?
Isn’t that supposed to be solid reporting?
I assumed so cuz of paywall

 

[HaNotsri]

They made Malkin so mad he started texting in Hollywood russian.

 

[HTFN]

They made Malkin so mad he started texting in Hollywood russian.

pleas pleas don't trad me bro pleas

 

[TLEH]

Another good Pittsburgh based reporter asked Blueger and he said it was false.

Can’t believe I spelled writes like rights

 

[Zen Arcade]

Rossi and Steve Simmons should open a hotdog stand.

 

[Chileiceman]

The problem with subscription based model of reporting is that you are judged by your bosses in large part by how many subscriptions you are able to get. The Athletic is like this on sterioids, that's why there is such large churn of reporters. If you don't have a good story to drive interest, you can always just make up something salacious, get it trending and have curious people subscribe.