#Artemi Panarin Sun

[natbarzal]

hey guys! so I already said a few times that I have an imagine book on Wattpad and I already wrote a few imagines, but I don't want to publish imagines here right now; I think my imagines wouldn't fit in with all those amazing stories here on Tumblr

today, however, I decided that since it's Valentine's Day, I'd publish one here

it's an Artemi Panarin imagine and I think it's my best one yet, so I decided I'd try to share it with you :)

I hope you'll like it😊

word count: 1891

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Artemi Panarin - Surprises

The morning sun shining brightly through the windows of our bedroom woke me up.

I closed my eyes again and smiled to myself, thankful to be waking up to yet another beautiful day. I reached to Artemi's side of the bed to say good morning to my Russian boyfriend, but all I was met with were cold, empty sheets.

I opened my eyes and looked around, confused, before I smelt something burning. My eyes widened a little and I got up from the bed and wrapped myself up in my robe before going to look what was happening.

As I got closer to the kitchen, I heard my boyfriend swear a little in his native language and it made me giggle.

When I arrived to our kitchen, I leaned against the wall and enjoyed the view that was given to me. A shirtless Artemi stood facing the stove and was trying to save whatever he was trying to make from burning even more, his grey sweatpants hanging low on his hips.

I looked at his muscular back and those golden messy curls that I loved to play with before deciding to make my presence known to my man.

"Are you trying to set our apartment on fire or what?" I asked with a light playful smirk on my lips. I laughed as Artemi jumped a little before turning around and looking at me with wide eyes.

"You are up?" he asked and stood in front of the stove as if to hide whatever he created from me.

"Yeah, I am. And I'll tell you it wasn't very nice waking up to an empty, cold bed and a smell of food burning." I said but smiled after to let him know that I wasn't mad. "You should've woken me up, I would've made us something." I said and tried to go closer.

"No!" Artemi said and went to stop me. He turned me around by my shoulders and started to lead me out of the kitchen. "You always cook. Today I cook. You go to bed. I surprise you today."

"But-" "No. You go to bed, I be there soon." he said, pushed me lightly into the hallway and went back to work.

"I don't even get a good morning kiss from my loving boyfriend?" I called and in seconds he came back, pecked my lips and then went back into the kitchen.

I went back into our bedroom and laid in our bed, trying to think of the best way to give Artemi my present for him.

Ten minutes later, I heard a light knock on the door.

"Can you pretend you sleep my love? I want wake you up with breakfast." Artemi said behind the door. I smiled at how sweet he was and closed my eyes, pretending I'm asleep.

"Okay, I'm asleep, you can come in." I called with a smile on my lips.

I heard him open the door and a few seconds later a felt the bed dip beside me. Then I felt his hand brush my hair out of my face and a soft kiss landed on my forehead.

"Wake up, my love." he whispered in soft voice with his strong Russian accent and butterflies erupted in my stomach. 3 years together and he still made me feel like on our first date.

I slowly opened my eyes, trying to act as if I just woke up. I looked into his blue eyes, smiling up at the love of my life. "Good morning." I whispered back and leaned up to press a gentle kiss to his soft lips.

It wasn't until we separated that I noticed the tray with grilled cheese on one side and waffles with chocolate topping and strawberries on the other and some orange juice and coffee on the side.

The grilled cheese was a little darker than it was supposed to be, but just the fact that Artemi got out of bed early to do this for me was immensely sweet. And I didn't mind anyway, I like it crunchy.

"I don't know if you want sweet or sour, so I made both. And wait, I have more surprise." he said, got up from the bed and walked out the door.

A minute later he walked holding a giant bouquet of red roses in front of his face.

I gasped and one of my hands flew up to my mouth. Tears started to form in my eyes, no one has ever done anything like this for me.

"Artemi.. I.. you didn't have to! I feel like a princess right now!" I said, taking the flowers from him while trying not to let the tears escape my eyes.

"That not good. Because you are my queen." he said and smiled softly at me. "Now eat. I have more surprise after breakfast." he said and picked up one of the strawberries.

"Honey are you kidding me? I only have one present for you!" I said. I knew the one present I had is probably be the best one he I could ever give him, but that didn't stop me from feeling bad.

"I don't need presents. I already have you. Now eat." he said and motioned for me to open my mouth so he could feed me the strawberry.

I put the flowers on the bed beside me and we ate together. We shared a few laughs here and there, enjoying each other's presence and the breakfast that was unexpectedly delicious.

After 20 minutes, the tray was empty and our stomachs were full. Artemi took the tray and got up from the bed.

"You wait. I bring the surprise." he said and then he was out the door.

I took a moment to think about how lucky I was. I never thought I'd have someone who make me feel like a princess to be honest, but boy I was wrong.

I wasn't looking for anyone when I met Artemi, though I must admit I've always thought he was very cute. We met through one of our mutual friends, then we became friends and eventually Artemi asked me out on a date and I'm very happy he did.

I love the way he makes me feel. He knows that I'm sometimes insecure, but he always knows exactly what to say to make me feel better. He always puts my happiness before his own. He's the best thing that ever happened to me and I'll never stop being grateful for him.

I was pulled out of my thoughts when I saw Artemi come into the bedroom with his hands holding something behind his back.

"Close your eyes, moya lyubov'" he said and I did as I was told and my heart flattered at the nickname he likes to call me in his native language.

I felt the bed beside me dip again.

"You can look." he said and I opened my eyes to be met with a box from my favorite bakery.

They have the best cupcakes, but since I'm trying to remain fit and they're quite expensive, I don't buy them often, but Valentine's day is only once a year after all. But again I couldn't help but feel a little bad, because this meant he got up really early and went to the bakery before I even woke up.

"Artemi thank you. You really didn't have to do all this." I said, leaning closer to him to give him a short kiss and hug him.

"Look inside." he said and looked at the box.

I opened the box and when I saw what was inside, my hands flew up to cover my mouth and tears started to fill my eyes for the second time that morning, but this time I didn't even try to stop them.

Inside the box was my that favorite cupcake that I was talking about, but on top of it sat the most beautiful ring I have ever seen.

Artemi looked at my face for a minute before taking my hands into his. I could tell he was nervous from the way his hands were slightly shaking and the nervous sigh he let out before starting to talk.

"Y/n.. I love you. I want to spend my life with you. I want to fall asleep next to you every evening and wake up next to you every morning. Will you please make me the happiest person alive and marry me?" he asked and I couldn't help but start crying even harder. I didn't trust my voice so I just nodded.

Artemi slipped the right on my finger and I immediately jumped into his arms, hugging him tight. We just sat like that hugging for a few moments before I remembered something.

"Oh my god, I almost forgot! Now it's time for my surprise!" I said after I pulled away. "Close your eyes baby." I told him and when he did, I reached into my bedside table for the little box.

"You can open them now." I said after I put the present into his hands.

"You got me watches?" he asked me when he saw that the little box I put into his hands was a Rolex box. "They cost a lot of money my love, you-"

"You didn't even open it! Look inside!" I cut him off and excitedly waited for him to see what I had for him.

He took of the lid and just stared into the box for a few moments. Then he looked up at me as if he wanted me to confirm. I nodded my head and waited for his reaction.

He took the little stick out of the box and looked at it closely. Then he looked at me again.

"We have a baby?" he asked quietly.

"Yes Artemi. We're going to have a baby." I answered and I couldn't help but grin because I already knew he would be happy about the news.

Before I knew it, he threw the positive pregnancy test somewhere onto the floor, got out of the bed and then picked me up so he could spin me around.

After he put me back on my feet, he took my face in his hands and kissed me repeatedly.

"A BABY!!" he shouted and I couldn't help but laugh. I loved this man so much and now we were about to start a family together. I'm truly living my dream.

Artemi then suddenly got onto his knees and put his hands on my stomach.

"Hi baby. I am your daddy. I know you don't hear yet, but I love you. And mommy love you too. I want have you here already." he talked to my still unnoticeable belly. My heart almost burst out of joy at the sight.

He then stood back up and gave me one more sweet kiss before holding me close to him. I put my head on his chest so I could hear his heart beat and wrapped my arms around his torso, holding him tightly.

"Best Valentine day ever." Artemi said and kissed my hair lightly.

"Yeah." I agreed quietly and let myself enjoy the moment.

I just got engaged to the love of my life and we are having a baby together. This is certainly a day I'm going to remember forever.

_________________________________________

I hope it's okay. sorry for repeating the word 'said' a lot. I'm aware I do it, but my vocabulary still isn't the best at the moment, but I'll do my best to improve it

it would be great if you could give me some feedback😊

[newlyacquiredbois]

What’s happening with Artemi Panarin?

For everyone confused, I tried to do a quick rundown: (further sources under the cut)

On Jan 21 Panarin posted this on Instagram. 

(Caption translates to: Freedom for Navalny)

Navalny is a prominent and outspoken Putin and Kremlin critic. He returned to Russia (after being poisoned and recuperating in Germany) on Sun, 17th Jan and was immediately detained under sketchy circumstances/accusations. A movement in support of him swept the country and thousand of people were on the streets (in freezing temperatures). With his post in support of Navalny, Panari kinda made clear his political stance regarding the whole affair.

Now, his old trainer from the KHL (Andrei Nazarov) made accusations against Panari, that he allegedly physically assaulted an 18-year-old girl. What is fishy here, is that this trainer is a big Putin supporter and apparently, he had already repeatedly reprimanded Panari for the NY Ranger’s outspoken criticism of Russian leadership and Putin while he was training him. The girl did not come forward, which would be understandable, and the trainer has been called “mentally unstable” by Russian journalist (Slava Malamud).

Panarin said he’s gonna take a leave of absence for a while, and the Rangers said they fully support him:  “Artemi vehemently and unequivocally denies any and all allegations in this fabricated story. This is clearly an intimidation tactic being used against him for being outspoken on recent political events. Artemi is obviously shaken and concerned and will take some time away from the team. The Rangers fully support Artemi and will work with him to identify the source of these unfounded allegations.”

Artemi Panarin still has family living in Russia and there is a lot of speculation of whether the accussations were ordered from the Kremlin to undermine his authority and Panari is taking the leave of absence to not further endanger his family. I can’t tell you about any of that, but this is a good twitter thread trying to look at all possible angles.

This is a nice article on Artemi Panarin’s stance on Russia. In it he says that there are a lot of things wrong with Putin and Russia and that this wasn’t always his opinion and that he learned a lot in the past few years. It’s based on a Russian interview (a summary/translation can be found here and here). Fun fact, just for me and my prejudices: While he was still playing with the H*wks, he sometimes supported Putin publicly and seemed to be somewhat unhappy meeting President Obama. Then he went to Columbus and started learning (a little bit) but the big interview only came after his time there. (Take from that what you will about those two teams, I know what I’m taking from that)

further sources under the cut 

Further sources: 

Navalny:  https://theconversation.com/navalny-returns-to-russia-and-brings-anti-putin-politics-with-him-153964

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/02/russian-opposition-leader-alexei-navalny-jailed

The Rangers + the current situation: https://nypost.com/2021/02/22/rangers-showing-full-support-of-artemi-panarin-amid-absence/

https://nypost.com/2021/02/22/artemi-panarin-taking-rangers-leave-of-absence-after-russian-hit-piece/

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/feb/22/artemi-panarin-new-york-rangers-leave-putin-navalny-nhl

I could go on, there’s thousand articles out there but I trust some of you know how to use google. 

[daddyseggy]

can we talk about how pat looks at temi in this picture like hes the fucking SUN !!!

[fromthe-point]

Columbus Blue Jackets Projected Lineup - Apr. 12

Artemi Panarin -- Pierre-Luc Dubois -- Oliver Bjorkstrand

Ryan Dzingel -- Matt Duchene -- Cam Atkinson

Alexandre Texier -- Nick Foligno -- Josh Anderson

Riley Nash -- Boone Jenner -- Brandon Dubinsky

Zach Weresnki -- Seth Jones

Markus Nutivaara -- David Savard

Scott Harrington -- Dean Kukan

Sergei Bobrovsky

Joonas Korpisalo

Scratched: Adam Clendening, Markus Hannikainen, Keith Kinkaid, Adam McQuaid, Elvis Merzlikins, Andrew Peeke, Eric Robinson, Lukas Sedlak, Alexander Wennberg

Injured: Ryan Murray (upper body)

BLUE JACKETS at LIGHTNING, Game 2

7 p.m. ET; CNBC, SN360, TVAS, SUN, FS-O

[tyson-berry-blog]

Artemi Panarin #1 - Chicago Outing

Anon asked: Please oh please!!! Write an Artemi Panarin imagine/one-shot....I love that dude so much!!! It can be anything as long as you don't break my heart with the story I'lo be eternally grateful. Thank you in advance!!!

Wow anon I am so sorry how long this took me to get to. I just wrapped up finals week so it’s been somewhat (very) stressful. You said anything as long as it wasn’t heart breaking so have some fluff disguised as jealousy?? Anthony Rizzo makes a guest appearance because I personally love him too much. There is a very good chance I will write a follow up to this imagine because the end leaves me with a lot of wiggle room. I hope you enjoy this! 

In the two years that your boyfriend had been living in Chicago he had never been to a Cubs game and after their 2016 World Series win you figured it was time to change that. Artemi didn’t have the slightest clue on how the game worked but he knew that it would make you happy so he agreed. The two sports’ seasons only slightly overlapped and with the unfortunate defeat in the first round of the playoffs it meant Artemi’s season was over sooner. You were packing the game day necessities into your purse when he finally joined you after his morning post-workout shower. As a Chicago native and born and raised Cubs fan you had enough merchandise to last you at least two weeks without a repeat, Artemi not so much. He walked out of the bedroom in head to toe Blackhawks gear to which you immediately shook your head.

“Temi you cannot wear that.”

He looked down at his team issued shirt, “no?”

“This is a baseball game; you wear a baseball shirt,” you gestured to your beloved Rizzo jersey.

His brow furrowed, “Not own one.”

You grabbed his hand and pulled him towards your room. You had a drawer dedicated to baseball shirts, there had to be one that fit him. Rifling through you found one you had stolen from your dad years ago that would surely fit on Artemi’s 5’11” frame. You pushed it in his direction and motioned for him to put it on. He sighed, not understanding why it mattered what Chicago shirt he wore but obliged. You let him keep the Blackhawks basketball shorts on but insisted he wear a Cubs hat. You were a sucker for him in hats.

The drive wasn’t a long one but with the amount of people milling around outside of the stadium it took ten minutes longer than it should have. As the two of you walked towards the stadium you had to sidestep several tailgaters who were already a few beers in. The seats you bought were by no means the best but by sitting on the home team’s side you had a perfect view of first base. Your boyfriend was silent by your side which was not unusual but you turned to look at him. He was looking around wide eyed and clearly out of place. He glanced down to meet your eyes, slung his arm around your shoulder and gave you a reassuring smile before looking around again. The game wasn’t supposed to start for another twenty minutes so you figured now was the time to go get something to eat before the lines got too long.

“Temi,” you poked his cheek.

He raised an eyebrow but didn’t look at you.

“Temi,” you tried to poke his cheek again but this time he was ready and caught your hand before you could touch him.

He threaded your fingers together and looked at you, “da?”

“Pitaniye?” you asked. Food was one of the few words you knew how to properly pronounce in Russian.

“Da,” he stood up and followed you up the steps to the food stands.

By the time you got back to your seats the first pitch was getting ready to be thrown out. After that the game was underway. You usually prided yourself in being a calm and rational person but at a baseball game all bets were off. When the game was tied going into the bottom of the ninth you were more anxious than you should have been. Anthony Rizzo’s two run walk off home run caused you and everyone in the stadium to jump to their feet. Your boyfriend stood next to you clapping but was otherwise indifferent.

His nose had begun to turn pink in the sun despite the hat and you couldn’t help but smile at him. He looked down at you and pointed at your shirt then back out at the field where Anthony was crossing home plate and into the excited arms of his teammates. You nodded to confirm it was the same guy and he narrowed his eyes but didn’t say anything. You brushed the action off as nothing and continued to cheer with the crowd.

On the way back to the car Artemi was stopped by a few fans who recognized him and asked for autographs. One of them was wearing a Blackhawks shirt which he signed happily and gave you a pointed look.

“Good taste,” he told the girl who proceeded to blush and stammer out a thank you.

You rolled your eyes fondly and offered to take a group photo for them. They thanked you and waved good bye before heading back to their own car.

Artemi was relatively quiet on the drive back and in an attempt to quell the silence you asked, “did you have fun?”

He nodded and continued to look out his window. You weren’t sure what was up with him but it soon became apparent when your apartment door swung shut behind you and he tried to slyly pull the open jersey off your shoulders. You had a shirt on underneath so you let it go easily but were confused by his actions. When he chucked the shirt behind him and leaned in to kiss you, you understood what was going on.

You pushed gently on his chest, “Temi? Are you jealous?”

You weren’t sure what was a blush and what was a sunburn. His eyes were cast downward which you took as a yes and began laughing. He scowled, assuming you were making fun of him.

You ran your thumb across his forehead until the crease smoothed out, “I promise I’m not laughing at you, just at the situation.”

It didn’t seem to help so you continued, “Rizzo may be my favorite baseball player but you are my favorite person.”

He finally looked up at you, “you cheer loud for him. You not cheer loud for me.”

Your face softened, “I do cheer for you but I can’t help that I am also so worried for your safety that I am on edge all game.”

He showed a hint of a smile, “no worry. I handle myself.”

“I know you can handle yourself; you’re tough and terrifying on the ice but I’m your girlfriend, I’m allowed to worry.”  

He puffed up a bit at the compliment. You liked the look of confidence on him.

You kissed him on the cheek, “c’mon let’s go eat dinner and watch something. I’ll let you pick.”

“No baseball,” he replied quickly.                                                                                                      

You looked at him and saw a serious face looking back.

You raised your hands placating in front of you, “yeah fine, no baseball.”

                               __________________________________ 

A few months down the line when the Cubs and Blackhawks are paired for a promotional event you will have to nearly drag your man-child of a boyfriend away from a potential stare down with the Cubs’ first baseman.

Jonathan Toews will clap him on the shoulder and turn to you, “what’s up with Bread Man here?”

You will roll your eyes and respond, “he thinks if I get within eyesight of Rizzo I’m going to end up leaving him.”

Jonathan will laugh lightly, “that sounds like something you two need to work out. I’ll leave you to it.”

[mizbabygirl]

Blackhawks’ Ryan Hartman: Five Things to Know (from the Hockey Writers.com) [01\17\2017]

After Artemi Panarin’s outstanding rookie year won him the Calder Trophy in the 2015-16 season, expectations were sky-high for the Blackhawks’ rookies in the 2016-17 season. 

Twenty-two year old Ryan Hartman has stood out among the Blackhawks’ rookies this year as the highest scoring rookie on the team. 

Here are five quick things to know about Chicago’s newest star.

1. Living the Chicago Dream It is the dream of every kid playing a sport growing up in Chicago and the Chicago suburbs to one day play for a hometown team. For Hartman, whose hometown is West Dundee, Illinois, this dream came true when he was drafted 30th overall by Chicago in the 2013 NHL Draft. 

Three years before his draft day, Hartman was one of the many in attendance at the 2010 Blackhawks Stanley Cup victory parade. His dream will come full circle if he wins a Stanley Cup with the Blackhawks.

2. Compared to Andrew Shaw Many Blackhawks fans were frustrated when Andrew Shaw was traded to Montreal in late June 2016 out of fear that the absence of his gritty style of play would be detrimental to Chicago’s success. Fortunately for Chicago, this was a short-lived fear thanks to Hartman.

Before the 2016-17 season began, Hartman spoke of his excitement to take on the gritty role on the team with Mark Lazerus of the Chicago Sun-Times:

“That style is how I’ve played my whole life,” Hartman said. “I still need to prove myself, and go out and play every night like he did and do everything I can to make this team. He came here and obviously did plenty of good things. He had a really good stint here. Now that he’s gone, there’s a space to fill. We’re different players, and we’ve done different things in our careers. But there are definitely similarities.”

With his immense success so far in his rookie season, it is safe to say he has lived up to expectations.

3. Gritty Style Comes from Difficult Times Luck hasn’t always been on Hartman’s side, and the same goes for his family. Shortly after he moved to Michigan at 15 to become a member of the U.S. National Development Team (NDP), his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. 

Hartman’s mother encouraged him to focus on hockey as she recovered (she is currently six years cancer-free) and Hartman’s gritty style of play can be attributed to this time in his life. Shortly after his mother’s diagnosis, he was drafted into the OHL by the Plymouth Whalers and was later drafted by the Blackhawks.

4. First NHL Hat Trick One to Remember Hartman scored his first career NHL hat trick against the Nashville Predators on Jan. 8. All three goals were scored in the third period; one was off his hip and two were empty-net goals, making it rather unique. Despite the unusual nature of his fist NHL hat trick, Hartman found it rather uneventful as he told the Chicago Tribune, “I don’t think anyone is really going to remember them in a couple days.”

5. Two Gold Medals for Team USA Despite never playing in the Olympics, Hartman’s resume on Team USA is rather impressive. He won gold with Team USA at the 2012 IIHF U18 Championships as well as the 2013 World Junior Championships. Shortly before Team USA won the gold at the 2017 World Junior Championships, Hartman wished the team good luck on Instagram and included a photo of himself when he played four years prior.

[winterolympicssports2018-blog]

During an otherwise trying season, the Chicago Blackhawks have gotten younger and faster

Click here for More Olympics Updates https://www.winterolympian.com/during-an-otherwise-trying-season-the-chicago-blackhawks-have-gotten-younger-and-faster/

During an otherwise trying season, the Chicago Blackhawks have gotten younger and faster

8:20 AM ET

Emily KaplanESPN

CHICAGO — For much of the season, conversation surrounding the Chicago Blackhawks has been filtered through the lens of what they are not. They are not the team we have become used to seeing over the past decade: ruling the Central Division and storming their way to the postseason.

In fact, with each passing day, it’s increasingly likely that the Blackhawks will miss the playoffs altogether. They are not winning at home; their current six-game losing streak at the United Center is the longest since 2005. They are not getting enough goals from captain Jonathan Toews. They are not getting a steady defensive presence from Brent Seabrook. They are not being bailed out by goalie Corey Crawford, who has been sidelined since Christmas with what is vaguely described as an “upper-body injury” and no clear timetable to return. They are not the outright winners of the Artemi Panarin-for-Brandon Saad swap. They do not have a dominant first line. They do not even have a consistent first line. They are not rebuilding, and they are not contending.

The Central is stacked with playoff teams that will be shopping for goal-scoring wingers. Could St. Louis native Patrick Maroon land with the Blues, or will the Predators — who are going all-in on winning a Stanley Cup this season — pounce first?

Coaching changes are ubiquitous in the NHL; over the past 11 years, teams have canned 34 bench bosses in-season. But this season — the first that has gone this far without a switch since 1966-67 — has been marked by an intriguing new trend: stability.

Which NHL teams will be wheelin’ and dealin’ at the deadline? Which are loading up the trading block? Victoria Matiash analyzes potential fantasy fallout from all 31 teams’ trade deadline plans.

2 Related

So it is probably more productive to assess the Blackhawks for what they are, 57 games into the season. If you divorce the drama from the day-to-day minutiae, you’ll notice a team that has transformed before our very eyes. The Blackhawks have become younger and faster since the season began, transitioning on the fly so they don’t have to pull a complete reset this offseason. “We notice the speed,” Calgary Flames coach Glen Gulutzan said last week. “When you get on the ice, you’re not sure who they are the first time you play them. Then you certainly have to prepare for them. They’ve done a good job of bringing some of these young guys along.”

Although they have not waved the white flag yet, there are signs that the Blackhawks are beginning to understand that this might not be their season — GM Stan Bowman said on NBC Sports Chicago last week that he did not expect to be a deadline buyer. But if the Blackhawks play their cards right from now through the offseason, they can squeeze another run out of the core that already won three Cups.

But there’s another thing you need to understand about these Blackhawks: They aren’t asking for pity, and they’re certainly not getting any around the league. Last week, before the Dallas Stars completed their first season sweep of Chicago in 11 years, Dallas coach Ken Hitchcock was asked if he could empathize with Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville. Hitchcock was incredulous.

“Empathize with Joel Quenneville?” Hitchcock said. “He can give me his rings all he wants. I don’t give a damn. Competition is competition. He’s had his day in the sun. He’s a great coach, but you can’t feel for anybody. Those are the things you can do in the summer, when you get together, you talk to a guy on the phone, when he’s facing personal adversity. But during competition, you’re in your own group, and you hope the other group fails like crazy.”

When Crawford last played on Dec. 23, the Blackhawks were well within playoff striking distance. Crawford, who has begun skating only recently after being away from the team with post-concussion symptoms, was having a Vezina-caliber season (16-9-2, .929 save percentage, 2.27 GAA). Chicago has yet to find a replacement who can fill his pads. The Blackhawks turned to Jeff Glass, a 32-year-old rookie who toiled for nine years in the KHL, and 25-year-old Anton Forsberg, another return from the Panarin trade, who still needs seasoning. Glass and Forsberg have posted .898 and .907 save percentages, respectively, which, among goalies with at least 10 starts, rank 53rd and 46th in the league.

In truth, the Blackhawks’ roster had a lot of holes that Crawford’s stellar play masked. The team misses Marian Hossa, a stalwart on the three Cup teams who scored 26 goals last season, but is on long-term injury reserve with a potentially career-ending skin condition. Seabrook, who carries the league’s 10th-highest cap hit among blueliners, at $6.85 million, is having an off season. He was benched for a game on Jan. 9. On offense, Saad was brought back to recapture chemistry with Toews, but the top-line trio of Saad, Toews and a slumping Richard Panik fizzled early.

Rookie Alex DeBrincat has been a bright spot for the Blackhawks this season. The winger is second on the team in scoring — behind only Patrick Kane — and fourth in total points. Patrick Gorski/Icon Sportswire

This triggered change. The Blackhawks unloaded their Panik problem on Arizona, trading the winger for 22-year-old Anthony Duclair, a once-touted prospect with tremendous speed. They gave up on the Saad-Toews pairing (for now), promoting scrappy rookie Alex DeBrincat to the top line, where he thrived, with five goals in his six games, before being shuffled again. DeBrincat tends to elevate his play when he is surrounded by elite players. Vinnie Hinostroza, known mainly for his speed, also earned a regular lineup spot.

Midway through the season, the Blackhawks found themselves with a logjam of defensemen. Management was pleased with how youngsters such as Gustav Forsling, Jordan Oesterle and Jan Rutta were coming along. That pushed venerable veteran Cody Franson to the AHL. Even when the 21-year-old Forsling hit a wall and needed to be sent down to Rockford, the Blackhawks remained committed to the youth plan. Forsling’s replacement has been 25-year-old Erik Gustafsson. When Rutta was placed on injured reserve last week with an undisclosed injury, Chicago promoted 23-year-old Carl Dahlstrom.

During one recent stretch, 14 consecutive Blackhawks goals were scored by players under the age of 23.

“When you’ve got the leadership and the core there, they can bring in people and fit them in and develop,” Gulutzan said. “When you’ve won as much as they have and have as much character as they have, you can bring those guys in, and now they’re contributing. We think they’re a really fast team to play.”

The Blackhawks are really fast? That probably isn’t something you would have heard when their season started on Oct. 5.

It’s impossible to talk about the Blackhawks without mentioning the two players most associated with their turnaround from bottom-dwellers to three-time champions: Patrick Kane and Toews. They are both 29 and under contract through 2022-23. Kane is having another strong statistical season (53 points in 57 games); he has not missed Panarin as a sidekick, instead developing chemistry with Nick Schmaltz. Toews’ season has been a bit trickier. The scoring hasn’t been there (36 points), but the captain’s presence goes beyond stats — and his 58 percent faceoff win rate is significant.

Corey Crawford’s brilliance masked some of the Blackhawks’ flaws, and Chicago has missed having its No. 1 goalie in net. Patrick Gorski/Icon Sportswire

Toews has been hampered by some bad puck luck. It’s not an excuse, just an observation. You can feel his exasperation especially after he hits iron twice, like he did in a game last week against the Calgary Flames. “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what to say right now,” Toews said after that game. “I mean, it’s pretty frustrating that we played pretty good hockey at times. Had a lot of good chances, should be able to find ways to win games, even if we give up two or three.”

That’s the thing. The Blackhawks haven’t been terrible this season — just not their dominant selves. Opposing players continually tell me that Chicago is one of the toughest teams to face. It’s a great possession team (53.3 percent Corsi rating, third-highest in the league) and has the most offensive zone starts in the league. The Blackhawks are hovering around the league average in goals per game, with 2.81. Things just haven’t gone their way. For example, Duncan Keith leads the league with the most shots taken (137) without actually scoring a goal.

Greg Wyshynski and Emily Kaplan give matchmaking a try for free-agents-to-be in the spirit of Valentine’s Day and wonder why no coaches have been fired yet. Plus, they are joined by “Miracle on Ice” captain Mike Eruzione to talk Winter Olympics and Mark Lazerus of the Chicago Sun-Times to cover the Blackhawks’ tough season. Listen »

If a miracle run this season doesn’t pan out, Chicago will shift its focus to 2018-19. With so many young players gaining experience this season, the Blackhawks might need only to tweak their roster this offseason. Chicago’s prospect with the most upside is 2017 first-round pick Henri Jokiharju. ESPN’s prospect expert Chris Peters told me it might be asking a lot of the 18-year-old defenseman to be NHL-ready next season, but the Blackhawks could ease him in like they did with Nick Leddy in 2010.

Regardless, Chicago is not in the same dire situation as the Rangers, who admitted last week that they likely need to overhaul their roster before they contend again.

Earlier this season, I talked with Bowman about how far the Blackhawks had come, from league cellar-dwellers to three-time Cup champions. The theme of our conversation, however, quickly turned to what happens when a franchise finds success and must figure out how to sustain it.

“It’s not easy,” Bowman said. “You have to have some good fortune, no question. Things have to go your way. You also have to do a good job of identifying talent, developing talent and making hard decisions. In our case, we’ve had to move a lot of good players along, [guys] who maybe weren’t superstars but who we’d love to keep. But in the system we’re in, you can’t get married to, like, 15 players. You can pick your five, six or seven guys and be all-in on those guys. And then you have to move other guys when you don’t want to. If you’re willing to do that and have a good pipeline of talent coming, then you have a chance to sustain it — a chance.”

The Blackhawks are not a lot of things this season. But it does feel like they are a team with a plan.

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[scottbcrowley2]

NHL Capsules - Sun, 19 Mar 2017 PST

Jonathan Toews scored twice and Richard Panik and Artemi Panarin each had one in a span of 3:02 in the third period to erase Colorado’s two-goal lead and rally the Chicago Blackhawks past the Avalanche 6-3 on Sunday night for their fifth straight win. NHL Capsules - Sun, 19 Mar 2017 PST

[coolsandy8800]

NHL, players closing in on deal for new CBA, sources say - ESPN

NHL, players closing in on deal for new CBA, sources say – ESPN

NHL, players closing in on deal for new CBA, sources say  ESPN

New York Rangers’ Artemi Panarin and fellow NHLers: Get a clue  Bluelinestation.com

Rangers’ Artemi Panarin suggests players stay home over escrow payments amid potential return  Fox News

Former Blackhawks player Artemi Panarin expresses concern over NHL’s return, finances  Chicago Sun-Times

NHL and players close to new CBA deal, per…

[actutrends]

NHL Talking Points: Free agency and John Tavares, James van Riemsdyk sagas

NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 30: James van Riemsdyk #25 of the Toronto Maple Leafs and John Tavares #91 of the New York Islanders battle for the puck during their game at the Barclays Center on October 30, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

NHL Talking Points is a weekly column highlighting 10 stories that have been circulating around the league. This week, we take a look at speculation surrounding the John Tavares sweepstakes, James van Riemsdyk’s future, trades, contracts and more.

The past week in the NHL has seen countless stories come and go, as the talk circuit of the hockey world was flooded with information. Future stars were drafted, trades were made and speculative assertions loomed larger than ever.

Let’s explore 10 stories that have been circulating around the National Hockey League.

1. Barry Trotz has been announced as the next coach of the New York Islanders.

The former recipient of the Jack Adams Award (2016) and the pilot of the NHL’s most recent Stanley Cup victory (2018), Trotz is an established winner who shall aim to maintain success heading into Long Island. His new contract is reportedly worth approximately $4 million on an annual basis and he’s set to hold the position for five years.

Naturally, the move is heavily speculated to have been a major stepping stone in the ongoing John Tavares saga. Trotz had the opportunity to speak with the Islanders’ captain about the future of the franchise, remarking, “John has been a big piece for a long time, right? He wants to be a part of that as well.”

2. Artemi Panarin’s future in Columbus is becoming a tricky topic.

The 26-year-old, who led the Blue Jackets in scoring in 2017-18, is apparently reluctant to sign a long-term extension at the moment. Nonetheless, the team’s administrators remain confident in their ability to extend the Russian winger.

Said GM Jarmo Kekäläinen:

Artemi has done everything right for us, is a great player. We love him. We want to have him for eight years, have made it clear to him that we want him to be a big part of our future, we want build our team around him. That doesn’t change.

We will keep trying until it’s too late, if it is too late. Hopefully not.

3. Could Craig Anderson be on his way out of Ottawa?

These are certainly crazy times to be a member of the Ottawa Senators, aren’t they?

According to a report from the Ottawa Sun, the story surrounding the future of the Senators’ netminder is complicated. Bruce Garrioch writes:

[Anderson’s agent, Justin] Duberman wouldn’t confirm Anderson, who has been with the Senators for eight seasons, had asked for a trade, but the goalie has been around long enough to know the club is in a difficult position to fulfill such a request.

There was a report that Duberman had been asked by general manager Pierre Dorion to help facilitate a trade, but Duberman indicated that wasn’t so and he hasn’t had any discussions with any teams regarding Anderson.

“Ottawa has never asked me for help,” Duberman said. “They’re going to do whatever they can to improve their team. If that means they’ll trade Craig Anderson, they’ll trade Craig Anderson.”

4. Tyler Bozak is a subject of interest heading into free agency.

According to TSN’s Darren Dreger, a wide range of calls have already been made about the possibility of signing the veteran forward, with the Toronto Maple Leafs remaining in the running to extend the fan favorite.

Strong interest in Tyler Bozak with the interview period now open. Newport Sports fielding several calls on the vet centre.

— Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) June 24, 2018

5. Philipp Grubauer has a new home in Colorado.

The Washington Capitals traded their backup goaltender, along with veteran defender Brooks Orpik, to the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for a second-round pick in the 2018 NHL Draft. Grubauer has since signed a contract extension, worth $10 million over a period of three seasons.

The move is surely a bit of a gamble, but nevertheless serves as a sign that Joe Sakic’s men have faith in the 26-year-old, who amassed 15 wins, three shutouts, a 2.35 goals against average and a .923 save percentage in 35 contests this past season.

6. Ilya Kovalchuk is officially set to return to the NHL.

And he’ll do so as a member of the Los Angeles Kings.

The 35-year-old and the Kings’ administration have agreed to a three-year deal — reportedly with a cap hit of $6.25 million.

What does this mean for both the forward and the organization?

On the one hand, Kovalchuk sees himself as a player who warrants Patrick Marleau-esque money. On the other, the Kings regard themselves as legitimate contenders for Lord Stanley’s trophy. They’ve shown that they’re willing to bite, so expect Kovalchuk & Co. to put up a heck of a fight in the 2018-19 campaign.

7. The Calgary Flames and the Carolina Hurricanes made a trade for the books.

It’s tough to predict at the present moment, but the aforementioned deal may wind up being the trade of the summer. Even more difficult to ruminate on is the question of who shall end up winning the exchange.

What will the fallout of the trade look like? Is this a sure sign that Justin Faulk is on the move? By extension, which of the Flames’ up and coming talents shall be required to step up on the blue line?

8. John Carlson has agreed to a deal with the Washington Capitals.

The talented defender finally got what he was looking for, locking up an eight-year deal that shall allow him to stay with the Stanley Cup winners. Throughout this period, the 28-year-old will make $64 million — fitting, as he outperformed his last contract, which paid him slightly below $4 million.

9. Where will James van Riemsdyk end up?

For a player who is rated so highly on various “best of” UFA boards, the future of van Riemsdyk, known for being one of the league’s finest net-front threats, has certainly been a relatively quiet subject over the course of the summer. But some pundits have recently claimed that the Boston Bruins are interested in the 29-year-old winger, whose penchant for goal scoring has been central to the Toronto Maple Leafs’ recent success.

Maple Leafs’ GM Kyle Dubas has already stated that he is not opposed to entertaining an offer for the veteran forward. Whether van Riemsdyk has priced himself out of Toronto, however, is another matter altogether.

Look for his name to gain traction as we get closer to July 1.

10. The John Tavares sweepstakes are about to get interesting.

Far and away, the most discussed player of the 2018 free agency period is the Islanders’ 27-year-old captain. The veteran center is the face of his franchise — a special talent whose two-way gifts promise to bring his future club straight to the edges of legitimate contention.

Now, we finally have an answer regarding the way in which the Tavares proceedings shall work.

According to Islanders reporter Arthur Staple, Tavares shall meet with five to six teams as of Monday. The Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins, Dallas Stars, San Jose Sharks and New York Islanders are believed to be among his shortlist. The Tampa Bay Lightning and/or Nashville Predators may enter into the ranks of competition, too.

Tavares list just about finalized, it appears.

Leafs, Sharks, Stars are in, as mentioned a couple days ago. Believe the Bruins are in as well.

Canadiens and Vegas not on the list as of now.#Isles will get in there too, of course.

— Arthur Staple (@StapeAthletic) June 25, 2018

Sounds like Tampa and/or Nashville could round out Tavares’ list of visitors starting Monday. Might end up being six teams instead of five, plus #Isles.

— Arthur Staple (@StapeAthletic) June 25, 2018

Whatever the case, Tavares’ eventual destination promises to be one of the most important stories of the summer. Expect to learn more in the days to come.

The post NHL Talking Points: Free agency and John Tavares, James van Riemsdyk sagas appeared first on Actu Trends.

[princeashy]

Artemi Panarin wows Blackhawks anew, but can they get him back? - Chicago Sun-Times

Artemi Panarin wows Blackhawks anew, but can they get him back? – Chicago Sun-Times

[ad_1]

Hey there. You’d look good in our shirt.

The Blackhawks can’t be quite that forward with Artemi Panarin since he still plays for the Blue Jackets, but they’re not hiding what they think about him and his upcoming free agency. Panarin is the one who got away, by their own fault, and his visit to the United Center brought out all their wistful feelings.

Panarin was the only opposing player…

[thrashermaxey]

Ramblings: Z and Z in NYC, Off Nights Over the Next Fortnight (Feb 1)

Thursday featured just three games, although it was finally the last “bye week” day. The schedule is back to normal (or so we think – more on that later) on Friday with eight games, so you’ll need to make sure that your lineup is really ready.

Travis Sanheim scored a power-play goal with just over two minutes left in overtime to give the Flyers a 3-2 win over the Bruins. Sanheim also recorded an assist to give him his first multipoint game in nearly two months. Because of Shayne Gostisbehere’s injury, Sanheim has logged at least 21 minutes of icetime in each of the Flyers’ three games this week, up from his season average of 18 minutes. Over his past two games, Sanheim has averaged 24 minutes.

Speaking of which, I added Ivan Provorov as a speculative grab in one league this week because of the Ghost injury news combined with the Flyers’ games played total. In spite of the resulting first-unit power-play time, Provorov has not recorded a single point this week. There has been no lack of opportunity, as Provorov was on the ice for nearly half of Thursday’s game (30:20 in icetime). Provorov will have at least one more shot to impress on the first-unit power play, as Ghost is expected to be out of the lineup for Saturday as well.

In picking up the victory, Carter Hart now has five consecutive wins. It might make more sense for his development to keep him in the AHL, but what if he’s the Flyers’ best goalie right now? That includes the injured goalies Brian Elliott and Michal Neuvirth. Just a thought, but maybe the Flyers could try trading UFA-to-be Elliott at the deadline and try to get by with a Hart/Anthony Stolarz tandem the rest of the way? If the playoffs are out of reach, then why not? Stolarz, by the way, pitched a shutout on Tuesday.

In a losing cause, David Pastrnak scored both Bruins’ goals, reaching the 30-goal mark and the 60-point mark for the third consecutive season. Pasta has had a great week with three goals and two assists over two games.

*

Mika Zibanejad scored a hat trick and added an assist with a plus-2 and five shots in 22 minutes of icetime in the Rangers’ 4-3 win over the Devils. It’s been a true bounce-back season for Zibanejad, who with 48 points has already exceeded his point total from last season in just 50 games. I can say with certainty that he’s been one of my top waiver-wire pickups this season. In being drafted in just 25 percent of Yahoo leagues, chances are he was available in yours. His shot total and shooting percentage aren’t much different from last season, but the difference has been his assist total (28 this season compared to 20 last season).

Zibanejad likely won’t be traded by the deadline, but you may have heard that his linemate Mats Zuccarello is a strong candidate to be dealt. Zuccarello recorded three assists on Thursday, giving him a six-game point streak in which he has 12 points (4g-8a). This recent run should be helping Zuccarello’s trade value in what has otherwise been a down year, but keep in mind that a Zuccarello trade could really hurt Zibanejad’s fantasy value. Zibanejad has 13 points, including eight goals, over his last seven games.

The Zibanejad-Zuccarello-Chris Kreider line might be under the radar the league’s hottest line over the last handful of games:  

The Kreider-Zibanejad-Zuccarello line tallied 8 points (4 G, 4 A) tonight. Kreider, Zibanejad, and Zuccarello have recorded 31 points (15 G, 16 A) in the last 6 games which all three played, including 25 points (11 G, 14 A) in the last 4 games which all three played. #NYR

— NYR Stats & Info (@NYRStatsInfo) February 1, 2019

*

Thursday’s other game involved a mightily struggling player (Patrik Laine) facing a mightily struggling team (the Columbus Blue Jackets).

Unfortunately for Laine owners, he was held without a goal and point yet again. That’s two goals over his past 19 games for a player that you were expecting a lot more from. Laine simply isn’t shooting often enough from high-danger areas, and when you combine that with a meager assist total (just nine assists to 25 goals), he’s sucking wind for fantasy teams at the moment. One positive was that his icetime was back up to a more normal 16:22 after being benched during much of the second period on Tuesday. At his peak, Laine can literally score at will, so this is simply a case of fantasy owners needing to be patient. Maybe even a buy low from the owner that is already giving up hope?

Maybe for starters, Laine could ask Kyle Connor what he’s eating for breakfast. Connor has scored game-winning goals in back-to-back games and now has nine goals in his past 11 games. So maybe Laine’s struggles aren’t as much of a big deal to the Jets when a guy like Connor is picking up the slack. Connor has filled in for Nikolaj Ehlers on the top line, so I’d have to think Ehlers is in real danger of losing that spot once he’s back in the lineup.

The Blue Jackets lost again (their fourth consecutive game), and they clearly didn’t have luck on their side. Already dealing with the Artemi Panarin trade rumors, the Jackets were without Cam Atkinson for this game after a puck hit him in the face during the pregame warmup. Although this injury wouldn’t be any fun, it doesn’t sound as though he’ll be sidelined for too long.  

Cam Atkinson required four stitches to close cut in mouth. He also had a tooth pushed back in his mouth from the force of the deflected puck.

— Tom Reed (@treed1919) February 1, 2019

With Atkinson’s injury, Josh Anderson was moved up to the top line with Panarin and Pierre-Luc Dubois (the only center on the Jackets, according to John Tortorella). Anderson scored a goal in 20:34 of icetime, one of his highest icetime totals of the season. If Atkinson happens to be out for any length of time, Anderson’s significant value in multicategory leagues just got even higher.  

Here’s Torts’ “one center” clip, which has to be added to his greatest hits collection:  

John Tortorella ahead of tonight's game vs @NHLJets: "I've got one centre playing…. ONE!" pic.twitter.com/x2hJGsXV0x

— Robert Söderlind (@HockeyWebCast) January 31, 2019

Torts must have been some kind of pissed at Anthony Duclair. He played one shift in the first period, failing to clear the puck out of his zone in the play that led to the Jets’ first goal, then he was never heard from again in this game. So his boxscore was a minus-1 in 24 seconds of icetime. Ouch.

*

Today represents the day in which NHL scheduling is finally back to normal after this week’s mini-tournament involving 10 teams, right? Not exactly. There’s some odd scheduling ahead that fantasy owners should pay attention to.  

it would be nice to get back to the normal-sized NHL slates, but Feb 2 – Feb 16 has just one night of between 4-12 games. It's gonna be trash for a while.

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) January 29, 2019

Here’s the breakdown of games over that stretch, starting with tomorrow (February 2):

   Date

 # of Games

 Sat Feb 2

13 

 Sun Feb 3

3 

 Mon Feb 4

4 

 Tue Feb 5

12 

 Wed Feb 6

2 

 Thu Feb 7

14 

 Fri Feb 8

1 

 Sat Feb 9

14 

 Sun Feb 10

8 

 Mon Feb 11

3 

 Tue Feb 12

12 

 Wed Feb 13

2 

 Thu Feb 14

11 

 Fri Feb 15

4 

 Sat Feb 16

12 

  Although I think Cliffy meant to say that there is only one night of more than four games and less than 12 games, his statement rings true and hints at some planning if you wish to maximize your games played total over the next two weeks. So over the next two weeks, the smart play would be to target players playing on the so-called “off nights,” as it’s probable that you’ll be forced to bench players who happen to be playing that night.

Let’s take a look at which teams offer the most off nights over the next two weeks. I’ll include the medium-sized Sunday February 10 in the mix, along with the light days of February 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, and 15.

5 games: NY Rangers

4 games: Boston, Carolina

3 games: Anaheim, Edmonton, Toronto, Vancouver

2 games: Buffalo, Los Angeles, Minnesota, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington

1 game: Arizona, Calgary, Chicago, Colorado, Dallas, Detroit, Florida, Montreal, Nashville, NY Islanders, Ottawa, San Jose, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Winnipeg

0 games: Columbus, Vegas

This is not to say you have to grab a player from a team that has more off nights. But if choosing between two or more equal players, preference should be given to the player whose team has more off nights. A perfect example would be if you were choosing between a Rangers player and someone from either the Blue Jackets or Golden Knights (especially the Blue Jackets, the way their season is taking a nosedive). A player such as the aforementioned Zuccarello (25 percent owned in Yahoo leagues) comes to mind, provided he is not traded over the next couple weeks.

Looking to make the most of the schedule over your fantasy playoff weeks? Pick up a copy of the Midseason Guide today!

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For more fantasy hockey information, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding.

  from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-z-and-z-in-nyc-off-nights-over-the-next-fortnight-feb-1/

[fromthe-point]

Columbus Blue Jackets Projected Lineup - Apr. 16

Artemi Panarin -- Pierre-Luc Dubios -- Oliver Bjorkstrand

Ryan Dzingel -- Matt Duchene -- Cam Atkinson

Alexandre Texier -- Nick Foligno -- Josh Anderson

Riley Nash -- Boone Jenner -- Brandon Dubinsky

Zach Werenski -- Seth Jones

Markus Nutivaara -- Davis Savard

Scott Harrington -- Dean Kukan

Sergei Bobrovsky

Joonas Korpisalo

Scratched: Adam Clendening, Zac Dalpe, Vladislav Garikov, Markus Hannikainen, Keith Kinkaid, Elvis Merzlikins, Andrew Peeke, Eric Robinson, Lukas Sedlak, Alexander Wennberg

Injured: Adam McQuaid (upper body), Ryan Murray (upper body)

LIGHTNING at BLUE JACKETS, Game 4

7 p.m. ET; CNBC, SN360, TVAS, FS-O, SUN

Columbus leads best-of-7 series 3-0

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take

Three stars of comedy

The third star: Kris Versteeg's ongoing Instagram war against Jonathan Toews – It's been going on for months now—you can get caught up here—and honestly at this point it's just short of outright bullying. But when you're one of the best 100 players in NHL history, I'm guessing you can take it.

The second star: Sharks twitter—Hey look, they'd like to make a harmless joke. Jokes are fun, right?

Not bad, guys! But be careful, you're going after the Golden Knights and lately they've been kind of feisty so you might want to watch out for…

Good lord, guys. This was basically the Twitter equivalent of that time Slava Fetisov came after Wendel Clark. It's not even preseason, maybe hold off on the kill shots until camp open.The first star: Artemi Panarin's bread shoes—Absolutely no idea what's happening here, but what the hell.

The NHL actually got something right

This week, we learned that the NHL is making an important change to its video review challenge rules. For offside reviews, an incorrect challenge will now result in a team taking a two-minute penalty. Presumably, the penalty will be for delay of game, the same call that's already on the books for teams that unsuccessfully challenge for an illegal stick.

In other words, they're going to start doing it the way they should have been all along. As listeners to the Biscuits hockey podcast already know, this is the solution I've been suggesting all season. It just makes too much sense. The offside review might be fine in concept, but there are way too many of them. Coaches were calling for reviews on anything remotely close, and rightly so, since the reward for being right dwarfed the cost of being wrong.

The reward still dwarfs the cost—taking a goal off the board is such a big deal in a low-scoring league that there's really no way to change that—and if coaches were purely rational then this might not change much. But pro sports coaches aren't purely rational. If they were, they'd pull goalies earlier, bunt less, and go for it on fourth down more. Coaches like to cover their own behinds, and now they know that if they're wrong on an offisde challenge and it costs their team a power play goal, they'll take the blame. The NHL has basically found a way to turn a league full of conservative coaches' risk-aversion against them. It's beautiful.

Now, maybe you'd have liked to see them go even further. It would have been nice to see them fix those infuriating "skate in the air" calls, and putting some sort of stricter time limit on making challenges would also have been good. The rule change will only impact offside reviews and not goalie interference, so maybe it doesn't go far enough. Or maybe you'd like to see them just scrap offside review altogether, because as we've covered here before, the "just get it right at all costs" argument is deeply flawed.

But the bigger point is that the league made a genuine improvement to a rule that desperately needed it. These days, we'll take our wins where we can get them.

(And hey NHL, while you're stealing my ideas: About that Jagr draft…)

Obscure former player of the week

Matt Duchene will never be traded. It doesn't matter if he refuses to report to camp, as now seems possible. It doesn't matter if more teams get into the bidding. It doesn't matter if the Avalanche are in or out of the playoff race. We will all live and then we will die and then the sun will explode and consume the earth and then Joe Sakic will still be waiting for the Islanders to throw in another draft pick.

So since nobody will ever be traded for Duchene, today's obscure player is a guy who was once traded for a Duchesne. And also a Dufresne. It's as close as we're ever going to get, people. This week's player is Igor Kravchuk.

Kravchuk was a Soviet defenseman who was picked by the Blackhawks in the fourth round of the 1991 draft. He was already 24 at the time, and had won gold at the 1988 Olympics; he would arrive in Chicago shortly after winning another gold as part of the Unified Team at the 1992 tournament. He scored a goal in his first NHL game by stealing the puck from Bob Probert, and somehow lived to tell the tale.

He lasted about a year in Chicago before he was dealt to Edmonton for Joe Murphy, whose name does not sound like Duchene. But after three years with the Oilers, including a 50-point season 1993-94, he was traded to St. Louis for Donald Dufresne. And a year after that the Blues flipped him to the Senators for Steve Duchesne.

He made his only all-star appearance for Ottawa in 1998, and later that year he scored the empty net goal that sealed the Senators' upset playoff win over the Devils. He'd have quick stints with the Flames and Panthers before ending his NHL run in 2003, at the age of 36.

All in all, he had a pretty solid career. And yet his most famous hockey moment came long before he ever arrived on the NHL scene. In 1987, he was a 20-year-old youngster on the powerhouse Soviet team at the Canada Cup when coach Viktor Tikhonov decided to send him out to face the Wayne Gretzky/Mario Lemieux line in the deciding game's final minutes. You probably remember how that turned out. That's Kravchuk making one of the worst pinches in hockey history to set up the 3-on-1 that ends with Lemieux's winning goal.

And yet he still went on to a long and successful career. See? People make sometimes mistakes, and it's not the end of the world. Somebody send that clip to Joe Sakic.

Outrage of the week

The issue: This week, the NHL (along with the NHLPA and several other hockey organizations) unveiled what they're calling a Declaration of Principles.

The outrage: [everyone's eyes instantly roll into the back of their heads while making slot machine noises] Is it justified: You can find the entire list of principles here. It's basically a laundry list of things the league claims to believe are fundamental concepts for the hockey community, including delivering "a positive family experience" while providing "a safe, positive and inclusive environment".

Those sounds like good things, because they are. And even though there's clearly a healthy dose of public relations behind all this—the league even included a letter of endorsement from the pope—the league deserves some credit here. These days, we could apparently all use the occasional reminder not to be completely horrible to each other, so seeing the NHL put its name on this sort of initiative is a positive. That entitles them to some goodwill.

What it doesn't entitle them to is any sort of benefit of the doubt that they'll actually deliver on any of this, and that's where the rest of us come in. It's no secret that the NHL has been decidedly hit-and-miss over the years in living up to the sort of standards they laid out this week. They're certainly not alone in that regard, but the fact remains that there's plenty of room for improvement on the part of the NHL, its teams, and just about everyone involved with the league, including the media. Declaring your principles is nice, but it would be foolish for fans to pat the NHL on the back and call it mission accomplished based on a slick media event and a press release.

That said, that doesn't mean we write this off as one big public relations charade and ignore it. Even if most of the principles read as merely aspirational right now, that still has value. There's something to be said for putting your goals out there in writing for the world to see.

At the very least, if the NHL and its clubs go right back to business as usual, fans will no longer have to resort to vague complaints about how the league should do better. They'll have something concrete to point to.

That's worth something. Exactly how much remains to be seen, and nobody should go into this with unrealistic expectations. But the league made progress this week, even if all they did was make it easier to hold them to a higher standard.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

he Edmonton Oilers have had a busy summer, one that saw them sign two players to massive extensions: Connor McDavid's $100-million extension, and a $68-million deal for Leon Draisaitl. Both contracts spurred plenty of debate, with some seeing the deals as the cost of doing business in today's NHL while others argued that McDavid or (especially) Draisaitl would be overpaid.

Time will tell whether either player can earn their paychecks. But in the meantime, let's travel back to 1982 for an old-school salary debate featuring an Edmonton Oilers star. And I do mean old school…

So it's January 21, 1982, and there's big news in the hockey world. Wayne Gretzky has just torn up his contract with Peter Pocklington and the Edmonton Oilers to sign a brand new deal, and it's a doozy. Gretzky has just become the highest-paid player in NHL history, thanks to a 21-year contract that will pay him more than $20 million. With bonus clauses, he could make that much in just the first 15 years of the deal.

Yes, that's right, Wayne Gretzky is going to make a little over $1 million a year, and we're not sure he's worth it. He's in the middle of a 92-goal, 212-point season, in case you're wondering. Hockey economics were a little bit different in the early 80s.

We're watching the CBC nightly news, and we get a truncated introduction to the story, at which point we cut to the debate portion of the program. Our clip features three giants of Canadian media: CBC newscaster Barbara Frum, journalist Peter Gzowski, and the undisputed star of the piece: legendary curmudgeon Dick Beddoes.

I'm not sure how widely known Beddoes was outside of Ontario, so let me try to prepare you for what you're about to see. OK, imagine Don Cherry. Now imagine he was better dressed, crankier, and the sort of newspaper veteran who did all his interviews next to an old typewriter. That's Dick Beddoes. He was the best.

Frum introduces our two debaters, and we're off to the races. Beddoes comes out strong, playing the "every modern player is terrible" card. It's a strong old-guy opinion, especially when he calls Gretzky a "hairy-legged hockey player from Brantford, Ontario." Let's see how Gzowski responds.

"His legs aren't very hairy, Dick." OK, that's a sentence I didn't think I'd have to type today, but here we are.

Gzowski, playing the role of the bearded voice of reason, makes the seemingly uncontroversial point that Gretzky is the best hockey player in the world, at which point Beddoes interrupts to disagree, throwing some shade at Gzowski's book in the process. So who is the best player? None other than Russian winger Sergei Shepelev, who's coming off a 28-goal season with Moscow Spartak and had recently starred at the 1981 Canada Cup. For what it's worth, Shepelev never made it over to the NHL, but he was good. Not Gretzky-good, but he was fine.

Also, he's currently a coach in the KHL, and I feel pretty safe assuming that he's better than Gretzky was at coaching. Maybe that's what Beddoes meant.

I'm 100 percent going to spend the rest of the day practicing Beddoes's deadpan "You're joking, of course" comeback in the mirror.

Gzowski hasn't exactly shown up to this fight without any ammo, and he calls Beddoes "a well-dressed sourpuss in Hamilton, Ontario.. Man, that phrase started off as kind of a compliment and then got progressively meaner as it went.

Beddoes makes it clear that he just needs to see a little more from Gretzky. How much more? Oh, maybe "15 or 30 years like Gordie Howe". That seems reasonable. What's next, a Phantom Joe Malone take?

Beddoes calls this "a diluted era of hockey", which makes him sounds pretty reasonable, and then mentions being a part-owner of the 1980s Maple Leafs, which does not.

Frum cuts in to try to get things back on track. And yes, if the name sounds familiar to you Americans, she is the mother of that guy you currently have deeply conflicted feelings about on Twitter. She wants to know how the finances are going to work for Peter Pocklington and the Oilers.

Gzowski's answer doesn't include the phrase "Pocklington will just sell him in seven years so none of this will matter," so his answer was wrong. But Beddoes quickly jumps in anyway, pointing out that Gretzky "has got more money than Poland." Is that offensive? I feel like that might have been offensive in 1982, but I'm going to need to go to the replay review to be sure.

We briefly get to the small matter of this whole contract being nonsense, which is why you've never heard of it until just now. Back then, NHL contracts could be renegotiated at any time, and that happened with Gretzky several times over his career. This 21-year deal lasted a few seasons and that was it.

Gzowski lays out the argument for Gretzky's drawing power, including a nice little shot at Detroit as a hockey market. Then we move on to Frum pointing out that Gretzky has just recently scored his infamous 50 goals in 39 games. Surely even Beddoes has to admit that's impressive, right?

"What I want from him, if we're going to make comparisons, is that he might score some year 44 goals in 20 games, like the late Phantom Joe Malone did in 1918…He hasn't done that." I love Dick Beddoes so much.

We close out with Beddoes arguing that Gretzky—who again, is in the middle of a 212-point season—couldn't make third-string center on the 1947 Maple Leafs. Gzowski tries to respond with a quote from Rocket Richard, but Beddoes fires back with a fake French accent that causes Frum to put an end to things with the same "OK you two" rejoinder of a mom who's just walked in on her two children setting the basement on fire.

And that does it for our clip. As it turns out, Gretzky was indeed worth the money, as seven more Hart Trophies and four Stanley Cups would attest. Will McDavid and Draisaitl be able to do the same? It's still early, and old-school Beddoes types won't like to hear it, but there's every indication that the modern Oilers could end up being just as good if not better than they were in Gretzky's years.

I'm joking, of course.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[mizbabygirl]

Ryan Hartman looking to make his own Stanley Cup memories (from Chicago Sun Times) [04\05\2017]

DENVER — Seven years ago, Ryan Hartman was able to partake in the Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup revelry as a fan, a 15-year-old kid who was one of two million people who poured into the streets of downtown Chicago for the championship parade.

Two years ago, Hartman was a whole lot closer to the action as a black ace, a prospect called up after Game 1 of the Western Conference final to travel and practice with the Hawks as they marched to their third Stanley Cup in six seasons.

This year, Hartman will be right in the middle of what the Hawks hope will be another run at a championship.

“Seeing the celebration and how happy [they were], and the joy on some of these guys’ faces was something I enjoyed,” Hartman said. “But I wasn’t necessarily part of it, per se. For the last two years, that’s been a pretty big motivator for me, to be on the other side of it, and be the one who’s there playing and winning it. Hopefully, we’ll make a good push.”

If they do, Hartman is sure to play a big role. While he won’t be in the Calder Trophy discussion with the likes of budding superstars Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine, the 2013 first-round pick out of West Dundee has put together one of the best rookie seasons in Hawks history.

Only seven Hawks have ever scored more even-strength goals as a rookie than Hartman’s 18; an impressive list that includes Steve Larmer, Eric Daze, Darryl Sutter, Denis Savard, Artemi Panarin, Jeremy Roenick and Eddie Olczyk. Patrick Kane had just 14 even-strength goals as a rookie, and Jonathan Toews had 17.

Hartman’s 19 total goals are the 17th most by a Hawks rookie, and he’s done it while playing just 12:44 per game, far less than the likes of Kane (18:21) and Toews (18:40).

Not bad for a guy who’s primary goal at the start of the season was to simply make the team.

“I didn’t really set any number goals,” Hartman said after scoring goal No. 19 on Tuesday in Colorado. “My goal was to make the team, and then stay on the team, and then produce. Those three segments. As the year went on, we kind of knocked one off [at a time].”

One of the reasons the Hawks sit atop the Western Conference standings and are among the favorites to win it all is their scoring depth. If Hartman can tally one more goal in the final two games of the season (at Anaheim on Thursday and at Los Angeles on Saturday),  he’d become the seventh Hawks player to hit the 20-goal mark. Last season, the Hawks had just four, three of whom were on the same line.

But Hartman’s offensive numbers are balanced out by his penalty minutes, which have risen dramatically in the second half of the season and earned him a benching in Tampa last week. Joel Quenneville has been pleased with Hartman’s play, but needs him to toe the line.

“He has been good for us,” Quenneville said. “Gives us a little bite, being an edgy player, knowing the fine line you have to walk, how the referees are going to be watching you. Thats something that he’s growing in, and there’s still some room to improve in that area. The consistency of his game, being around the net, wanting the puck, and coming up with loose pucks is something he’s gotten better at. And he still has room for improvement. He still has upside to his game. He’s had a real nice year, but don’t be satisfied.”

After getting a taste of Stanley Cup success, that shouldn’t be a problem for Hartman.

“It’s been a good year of us all around — we’re first in our division and we got playoffs coming up,” Hartman said. “We’re all pretty excited for that.”

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take

Three stars of comedy

The third star: Kris Versteeg’s ongoing Instagram war against Jonathan Toews – It’s been going on for months now—you can get caught up here—and honestly at this point it’s just short of outright bullying. But when you’re one of the best 100 players in NHL history, I’m guessing you can take it.

The second star: Sharks twitter—Hey look, they’d like to make a harmless joke. Jokes are fun, right?

Not bad, guys! But be careful, you’re going after the Golden Knights and lately they’ve been kind of feisty so you might want to watch out for…

Good lord, guys. This was basically the Twitter equivalent of that time Slava Fetisov came after Wendel Clark. It’s not even preseason, maybe hold off on the kill shots until camp open.The first star: Artemi Panarin’s bread shoes—Absolutely no idea what’s happening here, but what the hell.

The NHL actually got something right

This week, we learned that the NHL is making an important change to its video review challenge rules. For offside reviews, an incorrect challenge will now result in a team taking a two-minute penalty. Presumably, the penalty will be for delay of game, the same call that’s already on the books for teams that unsuccessfully challenge for an illegal stick.

In other words, they’re going to start doing it the way they should have been all along. As listeners to the Biscuits hockey podcast already know, this is the solution I’ve been suggesting all season. It just makes too much sense. The offside review might be fine in concept, but there are way too many of them. Coaches were calling for reviews on anything remotely close, and rightly so, since the reward for being right dwarfed the cost of being wrong.

The reward still dwarfs the cost—taking a goal off the board is such a big deal in a low-scoring league that there’s really no way to change that—and if coaches were purely rational then this might not change much. But pro sports coaches aren’t purely rational. If they were, they’d pull goalies earlier, bunt less, and go for it on fourth down more. Coaches like to cover their own behinds, and now they know that if they’re wrong on an offisde challenge and it costs their team a power play goal, they’ll take the blame. The NHL has basically found a way to turn a league full of conservative coaches’ risk-aversion against them. It’s beautiful.

Now, maybe you’d have liked to see them go even further. It would have been nice to see them fix those infuriating “skate in the air” calls, and putting some sort of stricter time limit on making challenges would also have been good. The rule change will only impact offside reviews and not goalie interference, so maybe it doesn’t go far enough. Or maybe you’d like to see them just scrap offside review altogether, because as we’ve covered here before, the “just get it right at all costs” argument is deeply flawed.

But the bigger point is that the league made a genuine improvement to a rule that desperately needed it. These days, we’ll take our wins where we can get them.

(And hey NHL, while you’re stealing my ideas: About that Jagr draft…)

Obscure former player of the week

Matt Duchene will never be traded. It doesn’t matter if he refuses to report to camp, as now seems possible. It doesn’t matter if more teams get into the bidding. It doesn’t matter if the Avalanche are in or out of the playoff race. We will all live and then we will die and then the sun will explode and consume the earth and then Joe Sakic will still be waiting for the Islanders to throw in another draft pick.

So since nobody will ever be traded for Duchene, today’s obscure player is a guy who was once traded for a Duchesne. And also a Dufresne. It’s as close as we’re ever going to get, people. This week’s player is Igor Kravchuk.

Kravchuk was a Soviet defenseman who was picked by the Blackhawks in the fourth round of the 1991 draft. He was already 24 at the time, and had won gold at the 1988 Olympics; he would arrive in Chicago shortly after winning another gold as part of the Unified Team at the 1992 tournament. He scored a goal in his first NHL game by stealing the puck from Bob Probert, and somehow lived to tell the tale.

He lasted about a year in Chicago before he was dealt to Edmonton for Joe Murphy, whose name does not sound like Duchene. But after three years with the Oilers, including a 50-point season 1993-94, he was traded to St. Louis for Donald Dufresne. And a year after that the Blues flipped him to the Senators for Steve Duchesne.

He made his only all-star appearance for Ottawa in 1998, and later that year he scored the empty net goal that sealed the Senators’ upset playoff win over the Devils. He’d have quick stints with the Flames and Panthers before ending his NHL run in 2003, at the age of 36.

All in all, he had a pretty solid career. And yet his most famous hockey moment came long before he ever arrived on the NHL scene. In 1987, he was a 20-year-old youngster on the powerhouse Soviet team at the Canada Cup when coach Viktor Tikhonov decided to send him out to face the Wayne Gretzky/Mario Lemieux line in the deciding game’s final minutes. You probably remember how that turned out. That’s Kravchuk making one of the worst pinches in hockey history to set up the 3-on-1 that ends with Lemieux’s winning goal.

And yet he still went on to a long and successful career. See? People make sometimes mistakes, and it’s not the end of the world. Somebody send that clip to Joe Sakic.

Outrage of the week

The issue: This week, the NHL (along with the NHLPA and several other hockey organizations) unveiled what they’re calling a Declaration of Principles.

The outrage: [everyone’s eyes instantly roll into the back of their heads while making slot machine noises]

Is it justified: You can find the entire list of principles here. It’s basically a laundry list of things the league claims to believe are fundamental concepts for the hockey community, including delivering “a positive family experience” while providing “a safe, positive and inclusive environment”.

Those sounds like good things, because they are. And even though there’s clearly a healthy dose of public relations behind all this—the league even included a letter of endorsement from the pope—the league deserves some credit here. These days, we could apparently all use the occasional reminder not to be completely horrible to each other, so seeing the NHL put its name on this sort of initiative is a positive. That entitles them to some goodwill.

What it doesn’t entitle them to is any sort of benefit of the doubt that they’ll actually deliver on any of this, and that’s where the rest of us come in. It’s no secret that the NHL has been decidedly hit-and-miss over the years in living up to the sort of standards they laid out this week. They’re certainly not alone in that regard, but the fact remains that there’s plenty of room for improvement on the part of the NHL, its teams, and just about everyone involved with the league, including the media. Declaring your principles is nice, but it would be foolish for fans to pat the NHL on the back and call it mission accomplished based on a slick media event and a press release.

That said, that doesn’t mean we write this off as one big public relations charade and ignore it. Even if most of the principles read as merely aspirational right now, that still has value. There’s something to be said for putting your goals out there in writing for the world to see.

At the very least, if the NHL and its clubs go right back to business as usual, fans will no longer have to resort to vague complaints about how the league should do better. They’ll have something concrete to point to.

That’s worth something. Exactly how much remains to be seen, and nobody should go into this with unrealistic expectations. But the league made progress this week, even if all they did was make it easier to hold them to a higher standard.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

he Edmonton Oilers have had a busy summer, one that saw them sign two players to massive extensions: Connor McDavid’s $100-million extension, and a $68-million deal for Leon Draisaitl. Both contracts spurred plenty of debate, with some seeing the deals as the cost of doing business in today’s NHL while others argued that McDavid or (especially) Draisaitl would be overpaid.

Time will tell whether either player can earn their paychecks. But in the meantime, let’s travel back to 1982 for an old-school salary debate featuring an Edmonton Oilers star. And I do mean old school…

So it’s January 21, 1982, and there’s big news in the hockey world. Wayne Gretzky has just torn up his contract with Peter Pocklington and the Edmonton Oilers to sign a brand new deal, and it’s a doozy. Gretzky has just become the highest-paid player in NHL history, thanks to a 21-year contract that will pay him more than $20 million. With bonus clauses, he could make that much in just the first 15 years of the deal.

Yes, that’s right, Wayne Gretzky is going to make a little over $1 million a year, and we’re not sure he’s worth it. He’s in the middle of a 92-goal, 212-point season, in case you’re wondering. Hockey economics were a little bit different in the early 80s.

We’re watching the CBC nightly news, and we get a truncated introduction to the story, at which point we cut to the debate portion of the program. Our clip features three giants of Canadian media: CBC newscaster Barbara Frum, journalist Peter Gzowski, and the undisputed star of the piece: legendary curmudgeon Dick Beddoes.

I’m not sure how widely known Beddoes was outside of Ontario, so let me try to prepare you for what you’re about to see. OK, imagine Don Cherry. Now imagine he was better dressed, crankier, and the sort of newspaper veteran who did all his interviews next to an old typewriter. That’s Dick Beddoes. He was the best.

Frum introduces our two debaters, and we’re off to the races. Beddoes comes out strong, playing the “every modern player is terrible” card. It’s a strong old-guy opinion, especially when he calls Gretzky a “hairy-legged hockey player from Brantford, Ontario.” Let’s see how Gzowski responds.

“His legs aren’t very hairy, Dick.” OK, that’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d have to type today, but here we are.

Gzowski, playing the role of the bearded voice of reason, makes the seemingly uncontroversial point that Gretzky is the best hockey player in the world, at which point Beddoes interrupts to disagree, throwing some shade at Gzowski’s book in the process. So who is the best player? None other than Russian winger Sergei Shepelev, who’s coming off a 28-goal season with Moscow Spartak and had recently starred at the 1981 Canada Cup. For what it’s worth, Shepelev never made it over to the NHL, but he was good. Not Gretzky-good, but he was fine.

Also, he’s currently a coach in the KHL, and I feel pretty safe assuming that he’s better than Gretzky was at coaching. Maybe that’s what Beddoes meant.

I’m 100 percent going to spend the rest of the day practicing Beddoes’s deadpan “You’re joking, of course” comeback in the mirror.

Gzowski hasn’t exactly shown up to this fight without any ammo, and he calls Beddoes “a well-dressed sourpuss in Hamilton, Ontario.. Man, that phrase started off as kind of a compliment and then got progressively meaner as it went.

Beddoes makes it clear that he just needs to see a little more from Gretzky. How much more? Oh, maybe “15 or 30 years like Gordie Howe”. That seems reasonable. What’s next, a Phantom Joe Malone take?

Beddoes calls this “a diluted era of hockey”, which makes him sounds pretty reasonable, and then mentions being a part-owner of the 1980s Maple Leafs, which does not.

Frum cuts in to try to get things back on track. And yes, if the name sounds familiar to you Americans, she is the mother of that guy you currently have deeply conflicted feelings about on Twitter. She wants to know how the finances are going to work for Peter Pocklington and the Oilers.

Gzowski’s answer doesn’t include the phrase “Pocklington will just sell him in seven years so none of this will matter,” so his answer was wrong. But Beddoes quickly jumps in anyway, pointing out that Gretzky “has got more money than Poland.” Is that offensive? I feel like that might have been offensive in 1982, but I’m going to need to go to the replay review to be sure.

We briefly get to the small matter of this whole contract being nonsense, which is why you’ve never heard of it until just now. Back then, NHL contracts could be renegotiated at any time, and that happened with Gretzky several times over his career. This 21-year deal lasted a few seasons and that was it.

Gzowski lays out the argument for Gretzky’s drawing power, including a nice little shot at Detroit as a hockey market. Then we move on to Frum pointing out that Gretzky has just recently scored his infamous 50 goals in 39 games. Surely even Beddoes has to admit that’s impressive, right?

“What I want from him, if we’re going to make comparisons, is that he might score some year 44 goals in 20 games, like the late Phantom Joe Malone did in 1918…He hasn’t done that.” I love Dick Beddoes so much.

We close out with Beddoes arguing that Gretzky—who again, is in the middle of a 212-point season—couldn’t make third-string center on the 1947 Maple Leafs. Gzowski tries to respond with a quote from Rocket Richard, but Beddoes fires back with a fake French accent that causes Frum to put an end to things with the same “OK you two” rejoinder of a mom who’s just walked in on her two children setting the basement on fire.

And that does it for our clip. As it turns out, Gretzky was indeed worth the money, as seven more Hart Trophies and four Stanley Cups would attest. Will McDavid and Draisaitl be able to do the same? It’s still early, and old-school Beddoes types won’t like to hear it, but there’s every indication that the modern Oilers could end up being just as good if not better than they were in Gretzky’s years.

I’m joking, of course.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you’d like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Toews Still getting Trolled, and a Gretzky was Overpaid Take syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6