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The Angel, in Contemplation

Cut paper, 2024

for @yabagofmilfs

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yohe really out there writing sid/ovi a/b/o fic on main

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“that was fresh, eh boys?” 💀💀

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🥺❤

(x)

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Wayne "...just let me squeeze by you there..." Gretzky

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"That was a good one. We had a dream team that year. Sid came over. We were in Vienna for pre-comp and we had Burnsie, we had Seguin, you know, we had Giroux.

We had a really good team and then Sid lost out, I don't know who it was to, maybe the Islanders or something and I got a phone call saying "Hey, Sid wants to come over" and I said "You guys are joking, right? Why would Sid want to come over?" like we're going to Prague and he goes "No, he wants to come over and complete the triple gold club. He doesn't have a world championship yet." And we're like okay, so sure enough, Sid comes over.

I roomed him with Giroux just because I wanted to see them after those battles. I picked him up at the airport and I said "You're rooming with G", he goes "Really?" I'm like "Oh yeah." "

Quote from Bayne Pettinger (worked for Hockey Canada)

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Elton John called Luke Prokop????

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I can confirm the Gritty story is true and that the players still don't know who Gritty is. I know this because in the most philly thing you'll hear today, I fucked Grittys handler and ended up meeting the person in Gritty. There's technically 2 people because 1 is slightly better at stunts, so like Lake Tahoe for snowboard gritty, was not the main person.

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Vegas with the jokes 😂😂😂

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other nhl players talking about why they wear their number: "it's my birth year" "the coaching staff gave it to me at camp" "jesus" "infinity" "it's the number my dad/uncle/a famous player i liked wore"

leon draisaitl: "this guy i had a crush on when i was 13 wore it when he played for my dad"

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NHL prospect Luke Prokop announces he’s gay, ESPN, 19 July 2021

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‘This is who I am’: Predators prospect Luke Prokop comes out by Pierre LeBrun, 19 July 2021

Luke Prokop was driving his car, so he couldn’t totally freak out.

But man, what he was feeling at the moment.

The 2020 third-round draft pick of the Nashville Predators was on a call with the NHL club’s key front office people including GM David Poile.

Their message to Prokop? They were all proud of him. They had his back. He didn’t have to worry about anything.

“When I think about the feeling of being free, that was the closest I think I’ve been to it so far,” Prokop, 19, said.

“I turned up the music as loud as I could. I was wearing sunglasses, I started to cry, tears of joy, I didn’t want anyone to see me crying while I was driving. But I was blasting the tunes and slamming on my steering wheel. It was amazing.’’

No doubt Prokop had wondered for nearly a year how that call with the Predators would go ever since they drafted him 73rd last fall.

“I can’t thank them enough for supporting me,’’ Prokop said.

He had just taken his next important step in a process that began in March 2020.

Telling people in his own world that he’s gay.

Now, with this interview in The Athletic, he is ready to tell the entire world.

“Very brave young man,’’ Poile said. “It took a lot of courage. I’m proud that he did that. It’s got to be exciting for him to be taking this step. This is a big story and hopefully it helps and encourages others in similar situations. It’s a big deal.’’

There has never been an openly gay active player in the NHL. Amazingly, this 6-foot-5, 221-pound defenceman is coming out before his first pro camp.

And yes, part of the reason Prokop is coming out is to help others. But first and foremost, it was to lift a 100-pound anvil off his back.

Just being able to tell people around him over the past year has been freeing.

“It’s been very special, talking to my friends, my family, my coaches, my agents,’’ Prokop said. “And them being very supportive, me coming out and being OK with who I was. I think it’s been translating a lot into my summer and my summer training. I’ve noticed myself being a lot more confident on the ice.

“Being able to truly be who I am. This is the best I’ve ever felt in the summer and I think a large part of that is due to this process of me coming out.’’

Why now?

Prokop doesn’t want to wonder anymore.

“I don’t want to have to walk into the gym or to the arena or just to practice, and keep thinking, ‘Who knows? Who doesn’t?’ This is who I am,” Prokop said.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a big topic of conversation, that’s not what I want it to be. It’s just, ‘Hey, here’s who I am.’ It gets it off my chest. So I don’t have to worry and wonder about other people.”

Keep reading

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1. It seemed that they were born to meet

The Petrov line—Valeri Kharlamov, Vladimir Petrov, and Boris Mikhailov—played on the world stage throughout the 1970s, and pretty much crushed it.

In World Championships alone, their line scored the most points in the tournament in:

1969

1973

1974

1975

1977

and 1979.

1973 was the year that they scored 86 points, which still stands as the record for a single line. If you want to know how close anyone is to passing it, the second most points by any line is only 56—them again, in 1977.

Their total works out to about 5 points per game on the national team in the World Championships. During the regular season, all three of them played for CSKA Moscow in the Soviet League, where each member of the line brought in about 1.2 points a game (the top scorer of the group was worth a bit under a goal per game). In recorded international play they scored 539 total goals (plus an incalculable number in exhibition games and discontinued tournaments). In the Soviet League, they scored 1086.

Now, the wildest statistic might be this: they did that over thirteen years together.

Most lines are lucky to last a year or three.

Their records are unbeatable now because World Championship goaltending has probably gotten better, but also because the way the game is not just played, but made, has changed. For better or for worse, I don’t think we’ll see three athletes who know each other so well again.

In the ‘80s the Soviet style would come to be exemplified by the mechanical precision of the Green Unit forwards, who besides being the same size were all equally skilled skaters and all shot in the same direction, so they could pull into tight formations and any player could pass or reposition seemingly interchangeably. Kharlamov, Petrov, and Mikhailov were not like that. Each was the very best version of a very different physical style.

(And, in Kharlamov's case, fashion style).

As their teammate Tretiak put it, “It is very difficult to talk about [them] separately—and, perhaps, wrong.”

“It seemed,” he felt, “that they were born to meet.”

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PKSubban1: Maybe I got a tad bit carried away…😂

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I ask Subban if there’s anything no one ever thinks to ask him that he wishes they would. At first, he bats the question away, saying if you have a clue what’s going on as a hockey player, you realize people aren’t there to ask what you want to be asked. But then he says: “I’d love people to ask about the marketing of the NHL and why it’s the fourth-best sport. Because I’ve got a great explanation for that.” Suddenly, Subban launches into an impassioned and quite savvy discourse on branding, fan psychology and how his sport may be shooting itself in the foot.

The way the NHL does business—he uses the word “we” here—restricts it from growing, he says, and the league hasn’t fully embraced that things are changing around it. You hear musicians and rappers reference basketball and football players, even baseball and soccer stars once in a while, he notes—but never a hockey player. And why is that? “If 700 players do an interview on TV, not all 700 players should sound the same,” Subban says, practically pleading. “Guys should feel confident going on TV and giving their two cents. We’re not asking them to go on and say inappropriate things, but just go on and be opinionated.” Instead, hockey is about “taking it one day at a time, one shift at a time”—Subban drops into a faux-hoser drawl as he recites the approved lines—and “it’s boring.” But until the culture of the game changes, he believes players with skin thinner than his are going to worry about ruffling feathers with their teammates and never feel like they can be themselves. As he finishes this thought, Subban suddenly flashes a smile, waves and calls, “Hi, guys!” to a couple of kids who are gaping at him through the glass door of the restaurant.

“I’d love people to ask about the marketing of the NHL and why it’s the fourth-best sport. Because I’ve got a great explanation for that.”

There’s this prevailing notion in hockey that if you make a big deal out of your goals or you’re outgoing, you’re not a leader, Subban says, sounding exasperated—and that just doesn’t make sense to him. “Bobby Orr didn’t celebrate because that’s the way he was—he just didn’t feel the need to. Great. Tiger Williams used to go down the ice sitting on his stick. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy—that means he gets excited. There’s nothing wrong with that.” To Subban’s mind, hockey is the one pro sport that eats its own. If you listen to basketball coverage, he says, 90 percent of what they’ll say about the game’s biggest stars is positive, but hockey just isn’t like that—for him or anyone else. “Even Sidney Crosby—look at all the heat he’s been taking. This guy’s the best player in the world, and he’s getting the heat he’s been getting? Really?”

So, has Subban ever been surprised by the blowback he’s gotten for his various supposed missteps? At first, he deflects, insisting that nothing bothers him. But then he says, “There are things in the past where I didn’t know I was offending anybody.” Like celebrating after a goal, for example. He gets why the other team would be mad: “Because I scored.” Here Subban pauses, a dripping morsel of sashimi pinned between his chopsticks, his face an open-mouthed smartass emoji, enjoying himself in a way that’s impossible not to like. But then, his opponents should be upset about the goal, not his reaction to it, he argues. “If you’re mad about the celebration, then you just sound like a big suck. If you don’t want me to celebrate, don’t let me score.” And really, there’s some unassailable logic to that.

I ask what people get wrong about him most often. “Cocky,” Subban says, archly. “I don’t think people know the meaning of cocky. If I asked somebody to give me the meanings of cocky and confident, they might give me the same definition.” (For the record, the Merriam-Webster definition of cocky is “having or showing confidence in a way that is annoying to other people.”) Subban tries not to pay attention to his critics, for the simple reason that he doesn’t get to talk back, to refute their claims by pushing them to give an example he’s sure they can’t, to make them look like idiots. “If I ever get to the point where I’m sitting on a [TV] panel, well, I hope God’s on their side that day.”

Hockey is changing—slowly—he concedes, but it still demands the players who should be its public face function like identical widgets stamped out on an assembly line. “The perception is that in order to be a good team player, you need to be like everybody else. And I don’t understand that.” It seems too obvious to ask if he’s talking about himself, so I ask if he thinks the NHL does a poor job of marketing individual players. “The NHL doesn’t market individual players—they market teams,” he says. “The NFL markets players. NBA? Markets players. The Montreal Canadiens don’t really market players. They market the Montreal Canadiens.” The way he looks at it, people can’t become a fan of you or your sport if they don’t know anything about you as a person. Of course you have to be a good player, but fans also need to feel like they know you a little, like they could come up to you on the street and say hi.

“If I ever get to the point where I’m sitting on a [TV] panel, well, I hope God’s on their side that day.”

[…] Now, this whole savvy sports-marketing seminar doesn’t mean Subban wants to burn the temple of hockey to the ground and rebuild it in his own image. He loves the sport—he can just see so much potential being left on the shelf. As he devours a plate of riceless sushi rolls, the final dish in the enormous parade of food from Park’s kitchen to our table, Subban sounds like a devoted but frustrated parent who sees their kid’s star power but worries they’ll flush it away with silly choices. “There is a culture to the sport that I want to see respected and I don’t want to see change,” he says. “You want to respect the jersey, you want to respect the logo, you want to respect your players—but be yourself! Have fun.”

—Why Hockey Needs P.K. Subban; Shannon Proudfoot, 2015

related: P.K. Subban Joins ESPN as NHL Studio Analyst for Remainder of 2021 Playoffs

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mitch reading mean tweets is the only thing that matters to me