#edmonton voice lessons classical

[deannacleemusic]

Website: https://www.deannacleemusic.com

Address: Edmonton, AB, Canada

Deanna Clee Music, led by Deanna Joy Clee, a Canadian music educator and entertainer, specializes in voice and piano lessons. With a rich background in musical theatre, jazz, and pop, Deanna has performed across Western Canada and appeared in children's TV series. She directs choirs and offers musical theatre workshops, catering to a diverse range of students and audiences.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094126715371

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@deannaclee

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[theseadagiodays]

April 20, 2020

No more muzzling my words

OK, so I’m just going to say it.  There are times when this really stinks.  And it actually feels good to give myself permission to admit that.  

One of my favorite novelists, Anne Patchett, author of Bel Canto, also wrote a memoir called Truth & Beauty about her lifelong best friendship with someone who struggled with cancer since childhood.  What I remember most is her friend’s very unusual way of enduring horrific hardships that included having her jaw surgically removed, (no less in the middle of self-conscious adolescence).  To feel better about her own situation, she would regularly re-read The Diary of Anne Frank in a sort of schadenfreude effort to remember that there were people who’d had it far worse than herself.    However, these contrived gestures only took her so far.

I guess the truth is, there is only so much glass-half-full thinking any of us can exercise.  Realizing this, I was relieved to hear Brene Brown’s recent podcast about Comparitive Suffering,

https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-on-comparative-suffering-the-50-50-myth-and-settling-the-ball/  

Here, she recognizes that while the daily news barrages us with crises much greater than our own (lost jobs, health, and even loved ones), many of us feel guilty for bemoaning our own losses at this time, because we think we should be grateful for what we have.  Certainly, this universal suffering has allowed us to gain some clearer perspective on our lives and our blessings.  And the fact that the entire world is experiencing some similar aspects of this reality has enabled us to build real global empathy.  However, it is also true that each micro-loss deserves its own relative mouring period.  So, I am going to give myself a little license to acknowledge what I am grieving at this time.  But I wanted to find a creative way to do this.  So, I am going to write a love letter to the time before COVID, identifying the things I truly miss. This idea came out of an exercise we led with my non-profit’s Women Rock group.  They are co-writing songs to express the myriad of feelings they are having during this period. In one song, they plan to write about the solace that nature brings them right now.  But they also want a vehicle to communicate their challenges.  In other words, they want somewhere to “deposit the negative,” because this can actually be very healing: to name what’s wrong, genuinely feel the impact of it in your life, and then let it go.  The etymological root of the word de-posit means to put (poner), away (-de).   Ironically, this is similar to the origin of the word positive, which is to formally lay down (or to state absolutely).   So, perhaps by absoluting stating what we feel bad about, we leave room to feel good about what’s left.

But in case this is just a little too sad for some people to read, try imagining the theme song to Jimmy Fallon’s regular Thank You Notes segment, for a bit of comic relief while you read.  Here he is in his At-Home Edition, writing some with his daughters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6x2UgPVYJs

Vancouver Mural Festival on Main St 

Dear pre-COVID days,

I remember how good it felt to walk down Main St and hug everyone from my neighbor, to my colleague, to the barista.  You were so open in the way you invited human touch on a daily basis.

I was so grateful that you allowed me the opportunity to interact with people from all different walks of life.  You let me work in so many different environments, from elementary schools, to prisons, to seniors centres, where I was privileged to hear people’s stories as they found their own creative voices.  

I loved being free to spend time with my family even though they live far away. You made it possible to see my parents in Arizona, and my brother in NY, and my uncle in Colorado, and my in-laws in Ontario, every year, despite the distance.

I enjoyed all of the opportunities you gave me to experience live art.  You animated my world and made it technicolor, with concerts, dance clubs, galleries, theatre performances, and different arts festivals every week.

I loved how healthy I felt running around the tennis courts at Queen Elizabeth Park.  You made it so easy to exercise my lungs, my legs, my arms, my focus, my flexibility and my stamina all at the same time.  

I felt so much passion for the adventures that you brought me to.  You generously satisfied my infinite curiosities with music projects in Zambia, and holidays in Hawaii, and cultural immersions in Guatemala.  

I miss all of the the ways you let me love and live and work and play freely.  And I long for the day you return,

Laura

April 21, 2020

Neighborhood Art

There are so many signs that we are all missing connection and stimulation during quarantine. But the human spirit is extremely buoyant.  So, we’ve found remarkable ways to share artistic moments through the walls of COVID.  

In Rome, locals are projecting classic films against their apartment building facades: https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/lockdown-rome-lights-up-with-cinema-by-night.html

In Berlin, neighbors are displaying art installations from their balconies:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/berlin-artists-turn-their-balconies-mini-galleries-180974677/

An art installation by Raul Walch, created for the “Life, art, pandemic and proximity” project

In Ohio, kids play cello duets for an elderly neighbor:

And right here in Vancouver, people lead streetside Zumba classes as seniors home residents dance along:

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1716406851557

April 22, 2020

Earth Day in Isolation

I am hardly the first to note that while this virus has taken so much from mankind, it has also given Mother Earth the long-awaited rest she so deserves.  There have been plenty of photos of Himalayan mountain tops viewed from Indian cities for the first time in decades, or Orcas returning to Vancouver’s shores to prove this.    

In another gift to our planet, appropriately on Earth Day here in BC, where it has oddly not rained for 30 days, it appears that Gaia is being showered with much needed rain for her day of celebration.  And even a sun-worshipper like me has been doing rain dances lately, to ensure that our city will not be shrouded in smoke from a fire-ravaged province, as we have been for the past two summers.

On a different note, a more distorted personification of nature has been touted by many a cynical observer in recent weeks, citing Covid as retribution against humans from a vengeful Mother Earth. I do not subscribe to such punitive thinking.  But I do believe there are environmental lessons to be learned from this crisis if we listen closely enough.

Writer Kristin Flyntz makes this point more beautifully than I ever could, in her Greatful Web post: https://www.gratefulweb.com/articles/imagined-letter-covid-19-humans  Here, instead of a love letter to pre-Covid days, she has imagined the letter that Covid might write to humans.  The tone is intentional and generous but also insistent.   It is spoken as if from a friend not an enemy.  And it proposes that we ask the hard questions:  “As the health of a tree, a river, the sky tells you about the quality of your own health, what might the quality of your health tell you about the health of the rivers, the trees, the sky, and all of us who share this planet with you?”

Another letter, falsely attributed to Bill Gates, whose proven himself to be a true leader of responsiveness in this critical time, also had similar things to say.  The anonymous writer claims that this time: “is reminding us that this Earth is sick. It is reminding us that we need to look at the rate of deforestation just as urgently as we look at the speed at which toilet rolls are disappearing off of shelves. We are sick because our home is sick.”

And as usual, artists are responding too.  The NY-based NGO, Earth Celebrations has postponed their Virtual Earth Day Pageant for May 9th in the interest of garnering more public participation, with a callout for anyone who wants to craft a costume, mask, puppet, etc.  All are welcome.  And more details can be found here: https://earthcelebrations.com/?fbclid=IwAR30nj7NtS52E-RLjpvz739L-3fcp-DtnJ1YeVE8Roln4vJXPC7bzBLxew0

April 23

Virtual Festivals

If you’re looking for an alternative to Netflix and chillin’, there are endless arts festivals that have moved content online, for your streaming pleasure.   So, I thought I’d recommend a few interesting ones here.  

If it’s efficiency you’re after, when browsing thru infinite entertainment options, the Social Distancing Festival does all the work for you, by scouring the globe to curate the best livestreamed events they can find.  Links include everything from modern dance to virtual gallery tours to musical theatre:

https://www.socialdistancingfestival.com

Myseum of Toronto’s Art in the Time of Covid - work by Evgeni Tcherkassk

For some lighter fare, this Edmonton Series hosts nightly cabaret, music, and comedy acts performed by local artists from their homes.

https://www.citadeltheatre.com/2019-2020/stuckinthehouse?utm_source=Citadel+Theatre&utm_campaign=67600c620f-Stuck-in-the-House&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_482a5c3fca-67600c620f-80741247

And if you’re looking for a bit more sophistication, Toronto’s Festival of Literary Diversity has managed to move online, and it starts next Thursday. Their line-up features many of Canada’s finest emerging and established voices.  My personal favorite, Mona Awad will be reading from her new novel, Bunny, which was the funniest read I’ve had in ages.  In this high art version of Mean Girls, she nails the pretentious banter of grad school writing cliques with a dash of magical realism.   https://thefoldcanada.org

April 23

Creative Gratitude

Florida police thank-you

Our shared appreciation for front line workers has become a true muse for collective community creativity.

Clockwise: Navajo muralist Ivan Lee; local Vancouver sidewalk; Long Island artist, Kara Hoblin

But this one takes the cake for audacity!

https://gfycat.com/magnificentabsolutegosling-health-workers-coronavirus-thank-you-meme

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Penguins Controversy, New Stats Galore, and a Terrible Hype Vid

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Whatever this is. The KHL is weird, man.

The second star: Angry (former) Olympians. Passive-aggressive hockey stars are my favorite hockey stars.

The first star: Jack Eichel gets some pointers. Yeah, it's these guys again. Honestly, it was kind of slim pickings this week and I didn't feel like seeing who the Golden Knights' Twitter was murdering this week, so let's just go with this.

Outrage of the Week

The issue: On Sunday morning, as the sports world reacted to President Donald Trump attacking Steph Curry and the Warriors while urging NFL owners to fire "son of a bitch" players for protesting, the Penguins announced that they would still be making the White House visit.

The outrage: You have very strong feelings about whether they should go or not.

Is it justified: There have been plenty of takes about the issue—like this and this and this—and you've probably read them all. Or you haven't read any, because you're in the "stick to sports" camp, in which case you've already scrolled past this section. I have my views on Donald Trump and what's left of the political discourse in the United States right now, and if you care about them then you're free to ask. But you probably don't. You're here for hockey talk and jokes and YouTube clips of awkwardly lip-synching players. I get it. Ideally, we could skip the politics altogether. Except that, thanks to the Penguins, doing that this week would also mean skipping the biggest story in the league.

It's hard not to have at least a little sympathy for the team here. They know what a trip to the White House means these days, and they realize that by going they'll be used as a prop in smiling photo ops with a president many see as an embarrassment. They also understand that by not going, they'd be making a statement that would get them sucked into the never-ending culture wars, applauded by the left for a few days and then forgotten while the right harbors a grudge forever. They tried to find a middle ground, but there isn't one. It's a yes-or-no question, and so the team defaulted to doing what every other team before them has done. But right now, the things we always used to do don't feel like they matter much anymore.

The Penguins didn't ask for any of this, and it's fair to assume that they're profoundly uncomfortable with the entire situation. That's how hockey people work. With few exceptions, they don't want to be front and center when it comes to politics because they don't want to be front and center for anything at all. Show up, do your job, mumble about getting pucks in deep, and go home. Hockey players barely want to be on ESPN, let alone CNN or Fox News.

So the Penguins were stuck, knowing they'd be attacked no matter what they said, and there didn't seem to be a right answer available to them. Except that there was.

What they should have said was nothing.

That's it. Just nothing at all. We didn't need to hear from the Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday morning.

Yes, that would have meant ignoring questions they were no doubt already fielding from the media. Sure, it goes against the old P.R. rule about getting out ahead of the story instead of letting someone else control it for you. And yeah, it would have just delayed the inevitable for a few days, because eventually you're going to have to answer the question.

But there's a time and a place for that. And Sunday morning wasn't it.

All across the country, NFL players were getting ready to make a statement. They have been protesting racial inequality—not against the anthem, or the flag, or Trump, and certainly not for "unity," despite the league's best efforts to rebrand it that way. That's a topic that doesn't touch the NHL as much as it does other leagues, for obvious reasons, and that's a big part of why the Penguins' response bothered so many people. This wasn't their fight. They didn't need to be the kid in the front row, frantically waving his arm to make sure everyone knew he handed in the assignment.

The Penguins gave us a teachable moment on Sunday, and the lesson is this: Sometimes it's OK to let somebody else have the floor. Especially these days, if you see that somebody else is angry, or hurting, or asking for change, and they're willing to stand up—or take a knee—to make themselves heard, and you can't fully understand exactly why because maybe it's an issue that doesn't impact you in the same way it does them, then maybe you don't need to jump right into the conversation. You don't have to add your voice to the mix right away, and you certainly don't need to make it about you. Sometimes the best choice is to just step back and listen.

It's quite literally the least you can do. It's basic courtesy. And that's the test the Penguins failed on Sunday.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

A few weeks ago, we made a passing reference to Lee Fogolin being obscure. That seems like it should be enough to earn a guy Obscure Player honors, so here we are.

Fogolin was the Sabres' first-round pick, 11th overall, in 1974. That draft wasn't very good, and is probably best known for A) the Islanders setting themselves up for a dynasty by finding Clark Gillies and Bryan Trottier while the rest of the league basically found nobody at all, and B) the Sabres getting annoyed at how long it was taking and drafting a fictional player just to mess with everyone.

Still, Fogolin was a decent pick. The son of Original Six era defenseman Lee Fogolin Sr., he was a stay-at-home blue-liner in an era when that was still a valuable thing to be and could also play a bit of forward on the penalty kill. He cracked the Sabres lineup pretty much right away, and spent five seasons in Buffalo. While he scored only eight goals that entire time, he became a fan favorite with his defensive play and willingness to stick up for his teammates.

The Oilers claimed him in the 1979 quasi-expansion draft held when four WHA teams were absorbed into the league. He had some of his best years as an Oiler, including a 13-goal season in 1980-81, and was the team's captain until Wayne Gretzky took over the duties in 1983. Fogolin won two Cups as an Oiler and was picked as an All-Star by Edmonton coach Glen Sather in 1986, before being traded back to Buffalo at the 1987 deadline. He played the last few games of his career there before retiring.

Here's my favorite Lee Fogolin fact: In the 1970s, the Sabres gave out a Most Improved Player award, and Fogolin won it…twice. In a three-year span. That seems like it shouldn't be possible, but he took home the honors in 1976 and 1978. I don't know if he just regressed really badly in 1977 or if voters figured they'd stick with the familiar, but it's fair to say that not many NHL players can lay claim to being multi-time Most Improved Player winners.

The NHL Actually Got Something Right

On Wednesday, the NHL put out what at first glance seemed like a pretty boring press release: they'd added updated information dating back to 1917 to the stats section of their website.

This announcement didn't seem all that new; the league told us it was working on this back in 2015, and the full project had been going on for years before that. Previous rollouts were largely met with a shrug. This one seems to have been, too. The announcement of the offside review change being finalized, which came out 15 minutes later, overshadowed the stats announcement easily, and most of the reactions I saw were some variation on the same jokes about how poorly the league's stats site works in the first place.

That's fair—the site is still a mess. It's clunky and slow, and seems to have been put together by somebody who doesn't really understand what kind of information hockey fans would be looking for. Virtually nobody in the media seems to use it, which is why you always hear so much complaining when one of the amateur sites goes dark.

But take a closer look at this week's news, and it's clear that this is a big deal. The NHL didn't just revamp its stats, or get around to uploading information that was already available somewhere else. They literally just dropped a ton of new numbers on us, stuff that we've never seen before. They've updated and corrected the numbers on several players, giving us new tidbits like Wayne Gretzky now joining Bobby Orr and Larry Robinson as the only +100 players in league history. (For the last three decades, he'd been incorrectly listed at +98.) More important, they've now filled out the history of stats like shooting and save percentage that had been tracked in some form for years but weren't widely available.

This is huge. Until now, you couldn't look up Ken Dryden's save percentage on a site like Hockey-Reference. Now we have it on the NHL site. Mix in the detailed box scores for individual games and game logs for players, and this is a gold mine for stats geeks.

The site itself is still a pain to use, and it's hard not to hope that Hockey-Reference or whoever else just grabs all the data and drops it into their far more user-friendly interface. But even if that happens, the NHL deserves plenty of credit here. This couldn't have been a small project. And it's not one that's ever going to put any cash directly into the league's pocket.

But they did it anyway, because for once they seem to have remembered that there's value in making fans happy. It's a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but kudos to the league for making it happen.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

The regular season is almost here, which is good news for just about everyone other than the Colorado Avalanche. On the heels of one of the worst seasons of the salary cap era, the Avs are expected to struggle again, and virtually nobody thinks they'll even get close to the playoff hunt. What's worse, they managed to somehow make the whole Matt Duchene situation even more volatile. A bad team, an unhappy star, and little in the way of hope. That's not a great package.

Could it get any worse? Yes. Yes it could. At least nobody is singing shirtless.

It's March 2014, and times are good in Colorado. After missing the playoffs for three straight years, the Avalanche are good again, and well on their way to what will turn out to be a 112-point season. New coach Patrick Roy has turned the team around, and all that losing is clearly a thing of the past. It feels like it's time for a song.

Wait, we're not ready yet. Gabriel Landeskog is still sleeping. Rest up, little cowboy, you've got a big day ahead of you.

We get a few more dramatic shots of players, including Nathan MacKinnon walking down the street and nodding. We can't hear what's being said to him, but it's safe to assume it's "Is this a terrible idea?"

We also get a look at Matt Duchene, who is WAY TOO CLOSE TO US RIGHT NOW. Seriously Matt, back up a few steps and try again. Is this how you ask Joe Sakic for a trade? Because if so, I think I might understand why he's not listening to you.

We're 30 seconds in and I already feel like I need a shower. Oh, cool, thanks Paul Stastny, perfect timing.

Oh look, Landeskog is awake. At, uh, 3 PM. He's either just had his game-day nap, or he's doing an impression of me in college.

I'll be honest, I spent a little too much time trying to figure out which player was lip-synching next to the big drum. That is, of course, the lead singer of Imagine Dragons, whose song this is. Apparently we're going to get a few shots from the real video, which is, believe it or not, even weirder than this version. Really. There's muppet cage-fighting and everything.

Meanwhile, we get Avalanche players lip-synching lyrics like "checking out on the prison bus" and "this is it, the apocalypse." Um, are we sure this video isn't from this year?

We get some shots of game action, mixed in with angry Paul, shirtless Gabe, and Matt Duchene's tonsils. I feel like MacKinnon got off easy in all this. All he has to do is stand on a bridge and look like he's thinking of jumping, which doesn't even really count as acting at this point.

"We'll paint it red, to fit right in." I'm guessing that "it" is Semyon Varlamov's goal light.

Can we just point out that Landeskog looks roughly 37 years old? Are we sure the NHL isn't a bad TV series about high school kids and they just cast a bunch of middle-aged actors to play Landeskog and Aaron Ekblad?

Hey Gabe, how are you feeling about the 2017-18 season?

We make it two minutes in before our first shot of Roy. Seriously, you couldn't have got a giant drum and let him beat on it for a while? You could put a Red Wing goalie's face on it and just let him do what comes naturally.

At 2:20 we get a quick cameo from George Parros. Hey George, congrats on the new job, do you have the power to retroactively suspend marketing departments?

We conclude with Landeskog turning to the camera and dramatically asking "Why not us?" The follow-up video, in which a bunch of shirtless analytics geeks lip-synch the words "because your success is driven by PDO and is completely unsustainable," did not prove as popular.

It won't shock you to learn that this video wasn't exactly well received; it was called "bizarre" and "dumb" and "the ickiest thing ever." To this day, the team hasn't been allowed to forget it.

Oh, and the 2013-14 Avalanche were upset in the first round by the Minnesota Wild. Stastny left as a free agent that summer, Roy quit on the team last summer, Duchene wants out, and they haven't been back to the playoffs since. At this point, the whole franchise seems like it's...contaminated? Toxic? I feel like there's a better word here, but I can't quite find it. I'm going to strip down and go sing into my mirror until it comes to me.

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: Penguins Controversy, New Stats Galore, and a Terrible Hype Vid published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

DGB Grab Bag: Penguins Controversy, New Stats Galore, and a Terrible Hype Vid

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Whatever this is. The KHL is weird, man.

The second star: Angry (former) Olympians. Passive-aggressive hockey stars are my favorite hockey stars.

The first star: Jack Eichel gets some pointers. Yeah, it’s these guys again. Honestly, it was kind of slim pickings this week and I didn’t feel like seeing who the Golden Knights’ Twitter was murdering this week, so let’s just go with this.

Outrage of the Week

The issue: On Sunday morning, as the sports world reacted to President Donald Trump attacking Steph Curry and the Warriors while urging NFL owners to fire “son of a bitch” players for protesting, the Penguins announced that they would still be making the White House visit.

The outrage: You have very strong feelings about whether they should go or not.

Is it justified: There have been plenty of takes about the issue—like this and this and this—and you’ve probably read them all. Or you haven’t read any, because you’re in the “stick to sports” camp, in which case you’ve already scrolled past this section. I have my views on Donald Trump and what’s left of the political discourse in the United States right now, and if you care about them then you’re free to ask. But you probably don’t. You’re here for hockey talk and jokes and YouTube clips of awkwardly lip-synching players. I get it. Ideally, we could skip the politics altogether. Except that, thanks to the Penguins, doing that this week would also mean skipping the biggest story in the league.

It’s hard not to have at least a little sympathy for the team here. They know what a trip to the White House means these days, and they realize that by going they’ll be used as a prop in smiling photo ops with a president many see as an embarrassment. They also understand that by not going, they’d be making a statement that would get them sucked into the never-ending culture wars, applauded by the left for a few days and then forgotten while the right harbors a grudge forever. They tried to find a middle ground, but there isn’t one. It’s a yes-or-no question, and so the team defaulted to doing what every other team before them has done. But right now, the things we always used to do don’t feel like they matter much anymore.

The Penguins didn’t ask for any of this, and it’s fair to assume that they’re profoundly uncomfortable with the entire situation. That’s how hockey people work. With few exceptions, they don’t want to be front and center when it comes to politics because they don’t want to be front and center for anything at all. Show up, do your job, mumble about getting pucks in deep, and go home. Hockey players barely want to be on ESPN, let alone CNN or Fox News.

So the Penguins were stuck, knowing they’d be attacked no matter what they said, and there didn’t seem to be a right answer available to them. Except that there was.

What they should have said was nothing.

That’s it. Just nothing at all. We didn’t need to hear from the Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday morning.

Yes, that would have meant ignoring questions they were no doubt already fielding from the media. Sure, it goes against the old P.R. rule about getting out ahead of the story instead of letting someone else control it for you. And yeah, it would have just delayed the inevitable for a few days, because eventually you’re going to have to answer the question.

But there’s a time and a place for that. And Sunday morning wasn’t it.

All across the country, NFL players were getting ready to make a statement. They have been protesting racial inequality—not against the anthem, or the flag, or Trump, and certainly not for “unity,” despite the league’s best efforts to rebrand it that way. That’s a topic that doesn’t touch the NHL as much as it does other leagues, for obvious reasons, and that’s a big part of why the Penguins’ response bothered so many people. This wasn’t their fight. They didn’t need to be the kid in the front row, frantically waving his arm to make sure everyone knew he handed in the assignment.

The Penguins gave us a teachable moment on Sunday, and the lesson is this: Sometimes it’s OK to let somebody else have the floor. Especially these days, if you see that somebody else is angry, or hurting, or asking for change, and they’re willing to stand up—or take a knee—to make themselves heard, and you can’t fully understand exactly why because maybe it’s an issue that doesn’t impact you in the same way it does them, then maybe you don’t need to jump right into the conversation. You don’t have to add your voice to the mix right away, and you certainly don’t need to make it about you. Sometimes the best choice is to just step back and listen.

It’s quite literally the least you can do. It’s basic courtesy. And that’s the test the Penguins failed on Sunday.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

A few weeks ago, we made a passing reference to Lee Fogolin being obscure. That seems like it should be enough to earn a guy Obscure Player honors, so here we are.

Fogolin was the Sabres’ first-round pick, 11th overall, in 1974. That draft wasn’t very good, and is probably best known for A) the Islanders setting themselves up for a dynasty by finding Clark Gillies and Bryan Trottier while the rest of the league basically found nobody at all, and B) the Sabres getting annoyed at how long it was taking and drafting a fictional player just to mess with everyone.

Still, Fogolin was a decent pick. The son of Original Six era defenseman Lee Fogolin Sr., he was a stay-at-home blue-liner in an era when that was still a valuable thing to be and could also play a bit of forward on the penalty kill. He cracked the Sabres lineup pretty much right away, and spent five seasons in Buffalo. While he scored only eight goals that entire time, he became a fan favorite with his defensive play and willingness to stick up for his teammates.

The Oilers claimed him in the 1979 quasi-expansion draft held when four WHA teams were absorbed into the league. He had some of his best years as an Oiler, including a 13-goal season in 1980-81, and was the team’s captain until Wayne Gretzky took over the duties in 1983. Fogolin won two Cups as an Oiler and was picked as an All-Star by Edmonton coach Glen Sather in 1986, before being traded back to Buffalo at the 1987 deadline. He played the last few games of his career there before retiring.

Here’s my favorite Lee Fogolin fact: In the 1970s, the Sabres gave out a Most Improved Player award, and Fogolin won it…twice. In a three-year span. That seems like it shouldn’t be possible, but he took home the honors in 1976 and 1978. I don’t know if he just regressed really badly in 1977 or if voters figured they’d stick with the familiar, but it’s fair to say that not many NHL players can lay claim to being multi-time Most Improved Player winners.

The NHL Actually Got Something Right

On Wednesday, the NHL put out what at first glance seemed like a pretty boring press release: they’d added updated information dating back to 1917 to the stats section of their website.

This announcement didn’t seem all that new; the league told us it was working on this back in 2015, and the full project had been going on for years before that. Previous rollouts were largely met with a shrug. This one seems to have been, too. The announcement of the offside review change being finalized, which came out 15 minutes later, overshadowed the stats announcement easily, and most of the reactions I saw were some variation on the same jokes about how poorly the league’s stats site works in the first place.

That’s fair—the site is still a mess. It’s clunky and slow, and seems to have been put together by somebody who doesn’t really understand what kind of information hockey fans would be looking for. Virtually nobody in the media seems to use it, which is why you always hear so much complaining when one of the amateur sites goes dark.

But take a closer look at this week’s news, and it’s clear that this is a big deal. The NHL didn’t just revamp its stats, or get around to uploading information that was already available somewhere else. They literally just dropped a ton of new numbers on us, stuff that we’ve never seen before. They’ve updated and corrected the numbers on several players, giving us new tidbits like Wayne Gretzky now joining Bobby Orr and Larry Robinson as the only +100 players in league history. (For the last three decades, he’d been incorrectly listed at +98.) More important, they’ve now filled out the history of stats like shooting and save percentage that had been tracked in some form for years but weren’t widely available.

This is huge. Until now, you couldn’t look up Ken Dryden’s save percentage on a site like Hockey-Reference. Now we have it on the NHL site. Mix in the detailed box scores for individual games and game logs for players, and this is a gold mine for stats geeks.

The site itself is still a pain to use, and it’s hard not to hope that Hockey-Reference or whoever else just grabs all the data and drops it into their far more user-friendly interface. But even if that happens, the NHL deserves plenty of credit here. This couldn’t have been a small project. And it’s not one that’s ever going to put any cash directly into the league’s pocket.

But they did it anyway, because for once they seem to have remembered that there’s value in making fans happy. It’s a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but kudos to the league for making it happen.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

The regular season is almost here, which is good news for just about everyone other than the Colorado Avalanche. On the heels of one of the worst seasons of the salary cap era, the Avs are expected to struggle again, and virtually nobody thinks they’ll even get close to the playoff hunt. What’s worse, they managed to somehow make the whole Matt Duchene situation even more volatile. A bad team, an unhappy star, and little in the way of hope. That’s not a great package.

Could it get any worse? Yes. Yes it could. At least nobody is singing shirtless.

It’s March 2014, and times are good in Colorado. After missing the playoffs for three straight years, the Avalanche are good again, and well on their way to what will turn out to be a 112-point season. New coach Patrick Roy has turned the team around, and all that losing is clearly a thing of the past. It feels like it’s time for a song.

Wait, we’re not ready yet. Gabriel Landeskog is still sleeping. Rest up, little cowboy, you’ve got a big day ahead of you.

We get a few more dramatic shots of players, including Nathan MacKinnon walking down the street and nodding. We can’t hear what’s being said to him, but it’s safe to assume it’s “Is this a terrible idea?”

We also get a look at Matt Duchene, who is WAY TOO CLOSE TO US RIGHT NOW. Seriously Matt, back up a few steps and try again. Is this how you ask Joe Sakic for a trade? Because if so, I think I might understand why he’s not listening to you.

We’re 30 seconds in and I already feel like I need a shower. Oh, cool, thanks Paul Stastny, perfect timing.

Oh look, Landeskog is awake. At, uh, 3 PM. He’s either just had his game-day nap, or he’s doing an impression of me in college.

I’ll be honest, I spent a little too much time trying to figure out which player was lip-synching next to the big drum. That is, of course, the lead singer of Imagine Dragons, whose song this is. Apparently we’re going to get a few shots from the real video, which is, believe it or not, even weirder than this version. Really. There’s muppet cage-fighting and everything.

Meanwhile, we get Avalanche players lip-synching lyrics like “checking out on the prison bus” and “this is it, the apocalypse.” Um, are we sure this video isn’t from this year?

We get some shots of game action, mixed in with angry Paul, shirtless Gabe, and Matt Duchene’s tonsils. I feel like MacKinnon got off easy in all this. All he has to do is stand on a bridge and look like he’s thinking of jumping, which doesn’t even really count as acting at this point.

“We’ll paint it red, to fit right in.” I’m guessing that “it” is Semyon Varlamov’s goal light.

Can we just point out that Landeskog looks roughly 37 years old? Are we sure the NHL isn’t a bad TV series about high school kids and they just cast a bunch of middle-aged actors to play Landeskog and Aaron Ekblad?

Hey Gabe, how are you feeling about the 2017-18 season?

We make it two minutes in before our first shot of Roy. Seriously, you couldn’t have got a giant drum and let him beat on it for a while? You could put a Red Wing goalie’s face on it and just let him do what comes naturally.

At 2:20 we get a quick cameo from George Parros. Hey George, congrats on the new job, do you have the power to retroactively suspend marketing departments?

We conclude with Landeskog turning to the camera and dramatically asking “Why not us?” The follow-up video, in which a bunch of shirtless analytics geeks lip-synch the words “because your success is driven by PDO and is completely unsustainable,” did not prove as popular.

It won’t shock you to learn that this video wasn’t exactly well received; it was called “bizarre” and “dumb” and “the ickiest thing ever.” To this day, the team hasn’t been allowed to forget it.

Oh, and the 2013-14 Avalanche were upset in the first round by the Minnesota Wild. Stastny left as a free agent that summer, Roy quit on the team last summer, Duchene wants out, and they haven’t been back to the playoffs since. At this point, the whole franchise seems like it’s…contaminated? Toxic? I feel like there’s a better word here, but I can’t quite find it. I’m going to strip down and go sing into my mirror until it comes to me.

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: Penguins Controversy, New Stats Galore, and a Terrible Hype Vid syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

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DGB Grab Bag: Penguins Controversy, New Stats Galore, and a Terrible Hype Vid

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Whatever this is. The KHL is weird, man.

The second star: Angry (former) Olympians. Passive-aggressive hockey stars are my favorite hockey stars.

The first star: Jack Eichel gets some pointers. Yeah, it's these guys again. Honestly, it was kind of slim pickings this week and I didn't feel like seeing who the Golden Knights' Twitter was murdering this week, so let's just go with this.

Outrage of the Week

The issue: On Sunday morning, as the sports world reacted to President Donald Trump attacking Steph Curry and the Warriors while urging NFL owners to fire "son of a bitch" players for protesting, the Penguins announced that they would still be making the White House visit.

The outrage: You have very strong feelings about whether they should go or not.

Is it justified: There have been plenty of takes about the issue—like this and this and this—and you've probably read them all. Or you haven't read any, because you're in the "stick to sports" camp, in which case you've already scrolled past this section. I have my views on Donald Trump and what's left of the political discourse in the United States right now, and if you care about them then you're free to ask. But you probably don't. You're here for hockey talk and jokes and YouTube clips of awkwardly lip-synching players. I get it. Ideally, we could skip the politics altogether. Except that, thanks to the Penguins, doing that this week would also mean skipping the biggest story in the league.

It's hard not to have at least a little sympathy for the team here. They know what a trip to the White House means these days, and they realize that by going they'll be used as a prop in smiling photo ops with a president many see as an embarrassment. They also understand that by not going, they'd be making a statement that would get them sucked into the never-ending culture wars, applauded by the left for a few days and then forgotten while the right harbors a grudge forever. They tried to find a middle ground, but there isn't one. It's a yes-or-no question, and so the team defaulted to doing what every other team before them has done. But right now, the things we always used to do don't feel like they matter much anymore.

The Penguins didn't ask for any of this, and it's fair to assume that they're profoundly uncomfortable with the entire situation. That's how hockey people work. With few exceptions, they don't want to be front and center when it comes to politics because they don't want to be front and center for anything at all. Show up, do your job, mumble about getting pucks in deep, and go home. Hockey players barely want to be on ESPN, let alone CNN or Fox News.

So the Penguins were stuck, knowing they'd be attacked no matter what they said, and there didn't seem to be a right answer available to them. Except that there was.

What they should have said was nothing.

That's it. Just nothing at all. We didn't need to hear from the Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday morning.

Yes, that would have meant ignoring questions they were no doubt already fielding from the media. Sure, it goes against the old P.R. rule about getting out ahead of the story instead of letting someone else control it for you. And yeah, it would have just delayed the inevitable for a few days, because eventually you're going to have to answer the question.

But there's a time and a place for that. And Sunday morning wasn't it.

All across the country, NFL players were getting ready to make a statement. They have been protesting racial inequality—not against the anthem, or the flag, or Trump, and certainly not for "unity," despite the league's best efforts to rebrand it that way. That's a topic that doesn't touch the NHL as much as it does other leagues, for obvious reasons, and that's a big part of why the Penguins' response bothered so many people. This wasn't their fight. They didn't need to be the kid in the front row, frantically waving his arm to make sure everyone knew he handed in the assignment.

The Penguins gave us a teachable moment on Sunday, and the lesson is this: Sometimes it's OK to let somebody else have the floor. Especially these days, if you see that somebody else is angry, or hurting, or asking for change, and they're willing to stand up—or take a knee—to make themselves heard, and you can't fully understand exactly why because maybe it's an issue that doesn't impact you in the same way it does them, then maybe you don't need to jump right into the conversation. You don't have to add your voice to the mix right away, and you certainly don't need to make it about you. Sometimes the best choice is to just step back and listen.

It's quite literally the least you can do. It's basic courtesy. And that's the test the Penguins failed on Sunday.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

A few weeks ago, we made a passing reference to Lee Fogolin being obscure. That seems like it should be enough to earn a guy Obscure Player honors, so here we are.

Fogolin was the Sabres' first-round pick, 11th overall, in 1974. That draft wasn't very good, and is probably best known for A) the Islanders setting themselves up for a dynasty by finding Clark Gillies and Bryan Trottier while the rest of the league basically found nobody at all, and B) the Sabres getting annoyed at how long it was taking and drafting a fictional player just to mess with everyone.

Still, Fogolin was a decent pick. The son of Original Six era defenseman Lee Fogolin Sr., he was a stay-at-home blue-liner in an era when that was still a valuable thing to be and could also play a bit of forward on the penalty kill. He cracked the Sabres lineup pretty much right away, and spent five seasons in Buffalo. While he scored only eight goals that entire time, he became a fan favorite with his defensive play and willingness to stick up for his teammates.

The Oilers claimed him in the 1979 quasi-expansion draft held when four WHA teams were absorbed into the league. He had some of his best years as an Oiler, including a 13-goal season in 1980-81, and was the team's captain until Wayne Gretzky took over the duties in 1983. Fogolin won two Cups as an Oiler and was picked as an All-Star by Edmonton coach Glen Sather in 1986, before being traded back to Buffalo at the 1987 deadline. He played the last few games of his career there before retiring.

Here's my favorite Lee Fogolin fact: In the 1970s, the Sabres gave out a Most Improved Player award, and Fogolin won it…twice. In a three-year span. That seems like it shouldn't be possible, but he took home the honors in 1976 and 1978. I don't know if he just regressed really badly in 1977 or if voters figured they'd stick with the familiar, but it's fair to say that not many NHL players can lay claim to being multi-time Most Improved Player winners.

The NHL Actually Got Something Right

On Wednesday, the NHL put out what at first glance seemed like a pretty boring press release: they'd added updated information dating back to 1917 to the stats section of their website.

This announcement didn't seem all that new; the league told us it was working on this back in 2015, and the full project had been going on for years before that. Previous rollouts were largely met with a shrug. This one seems to have been, too. The announcement of the offside review change being finalized, which came out 15 minutes later, overshadowed the stats announcement easily, and most of the reactions I saw were some variation on the same jokes about how poorly the league's stats site works in the first place.

That's fair—the site is still a mess. It's clunky and slow, and seems to have been put together by somebody who doesn't really understand what kind of information hockey fans would be looking for. Virtually nobody in the media seems to use it, which is why you always hear so much complaining when one of the amateur sites goes dark.

But take a closer look at this week's news, and it's clear that this is a big deal. The NHL didn't just revamp its stats, or get around to uploading information that was already available somewhere else. They literally just dropped a ton of new numbers on us, stuff that we've never seen before. They've updated and corrected the numbers on several players, giving us new tidbits like Wayne Gretzky now joining Bobby Orr and Larry Robinson as the only +100 players in league history. (For the last three decades, he'd been incorrectly listed at +98.) More important, they've now filled out the history of stats like shooting and save percentage that had been tracked in some form for years but weren't widely available.

This is huge. Until now, you couldn't look up Ken Dryden's save percentage on a site like Hockey-Reference. Now we have it on the NHL site. Mix in the detailed box scores for individual games and game logs for players, and this is a gold mine for stats geeks.

The site itself is still a pain to use, and it's hard not to hope that Hockey-Reference or whoever else just grabs all the data and drops it into their far more user-friendly interface. But even if that happens, the NHL deserves plenty of credit here. This couldn't have been a small project. And it's not one that's ever going to put any cash directly into the league's pocket.

But they did it anyway, because for once they seem to have remembered that there's value in making fans happy. It's a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but kudos to the league for making it happen.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

The regular season is almost here, which is good news for just about everyone other than the Colorado Avalanche. On the heels of one of the worst seasons of the salary cap era, the Avs are expected to struggle again, and virtually nobody thinks they'll even get close to the playoff hunt. What's worse, they managed to somehow make the whole Matt Duchene situation even more volatile. A bad team, an unhappy star, and little in the way of hope. That's not a great package.

Could it get any worse? Yes. Yes it could. At least nobody is singing shirtless.

It's March 2014, and times are good in Colorado. After missing the playoffs for three straight years, the Avalanche are good again, and well on their way to what will turn out to be a 112-point season. New coach Patrick Roy has turned the team around, and all that losing is clearly a thing of the past. It feels like it's time for a song.

Wait, we're not ready yet. Gabriel Landeskog is still sleeping. Rest up, little cowboy, you've got a big day ahead of you.

We get a few more dramatic shots of players, including Nathan MacKinnon walking down the street and nodding. We can't hear what's being said to him, but it's safe to assume it's "Is this a terrible idea?"

We also get a look at Matt Duchene, who is WAY TOO CLOSE TO US RIGHT NOW. Seriously Matt, back up a few steps and try again. Is this how you ask Joe Sakic for a trade? Because if so, I think I might understand why he's not listening to you.

We're 30 seconds in and I already feel like I need a shower. Oh, cool, thanks Paul Stastny, perfect timing.

Oh look, Landeskog is awake. At, uh, 3 PM. He's either just had his game-day nap, or he's doing an impression of me in college.

I'll be honest, I spent a little too much time trying to figure out which player was lip-synching next to the big drum. That is, of course, the lead singer of Imagine Dragons, whose song this is. Apparently we're going to get a few shots from the real video, which is, believe it or not, even weirder than this version. Really. There's muppet cage-fighting and everything.

Meanwhile, we get Avalanche players lip-synching lyrics like "checking out on the prison bus" and "this is it, the apocalypse." Um, are we sure this video isn't from this year?

We get some shots of game action, mixed in with angry Paul, shirtless Gabe, and Matt Duchene's tonsils. I feel like MacKinnon got off easy in all this. All he has to do is stand on a bridge and look like he's thinking of jumping, which doesn't even really count as acting at this point.

"We'll paint it red, to fit right in." I'm guessing that "it" is Semyon Varlamov's goal light.

Can we just point out that Landeskog looks roughly 37 years old? Are we sure the NHL isn't a bad TV series about high school kids and they just cast a bunch of middle-aged actors to play Landeskog and Aaron Ekblad?

Hey Gabe, how are you feeling about the 2017-18 season?

We make it two minutes in before our first shot of Roy. Seriously, you couldn't have got a giant drum and let him beat on it for a while? You could put a Red Wing goalie's face on it and just let him do what comes naturally.

At 2:20 we get a quick cameo from George Parros. Hey George, congrats on the new job, do you have the power to retroactively suspend marketing departments?

We conclude with Landeskog turning to the camera and dramatically asking "Why not us?" The follow-up video, in which a bunch of shirtless analytics geeks lip-synch the words "because your success is driven by PDO and is completely unsustainable," did not prove as popular.

It won't shock you to learn that this video wasn't exactly well received; it was called "bizarre" and "dumb" and "the ickiest thing ever." To this day, the team hasn't been allowed to forget it.

Oh, and the 2013-14 Avalanche were upset in the first round by the Minnesota Wild. Stastny left as a free agent that summer, Roy quit on the team last summer, Duchene wants out, and they haven't been back to the playoffs since. At this point, the whole franchise seems like it's...contaminated? Toxic? I feel like there's a better word here, but I can't quite find it. I'm going to strip down and go sing into my mirror until it comes to me.

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: Penguins Controversy, New Stats Galore, and a Terrible Hype Vid published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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DGB Grab Bag: More Price Is Right, the Sedins, and Kovalev's Shift

Welcome to Sean McIndoe's weekly grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter. Check out the Biscuits podcast with Sean and Dave Lozo as they discuss the events of the week.

Three stars of comedy

The third star: Evgeni Malkin and Roberto Luongo. Forget about MMA star Connor McGregor crossing over to fight Floyd Mayweather in a boxing ring. What happens when Instagram legend Malkin crosses over to take on reigning NHL Twitter champ Luongo? Well, not much. They basically trade highlight clips.

That was kind of disappointing. They're probably just building to the rematch.

The second star: Erik Johnson. The veteran defenseman dropped in on some golf talk with a nice call back.

The first star: Alexander Ovechkin. The Capitals star celebrated his wedding reception in the traditional way: by getting up on stage and belting out a few shirtless bars of Rasputin.

I know, I know, people are going to say he looks like he's had a few too many. But remember, this is Ovechkin. We know he always heads home after two rounds.

Outrage of the week

The issue: Last week in this column, we suggested that all new contracts should be announced using the little mountain climber guy from The Price Is Right.

The outrage: That's a brilliant idea and it's an outrage that the NHL didn't immediately implement it.

Is it justified: OK, maybe nobody came out and said that specifically, but I think I'm capturing the gist of it. People seemed to like the idea, so here's hoping somebody in the NHL sees fit to steal it. I won't even be mad—they can consider it a gift.

Plenty of you had a follow-up question: If the NHL is going to steal the Cliff Hanger game to unveil contracts, then surely there are more Price Is Right games that could be used for other announcements. But which ones?

The whole idea is bizarre and kind of pointless, which is to say that it's pretty much the perfect off-season discussion topic. I don't claim to have come up with a definitive list, and I'm open to any ideas you may have, but I think I've got a solid start with the games below.

Department of Player Safety suspension decisions: This one is Plinko. I mean, it's almost too obvious, right? You decide what kind of suspension the play actually warrants, then put that in the middle of the board and invite the offending player to come drop a chip. Then we all watch as it bounces down and winds up on "one game," "small fine," or "nothing at all" instead. Wait, come to think of it, they may be using this system already.

Arbitration hearings: The game where the player has to punch out holes in a wall to reveal dollar amounts, which I always thought was called "Punch Out" but is apparently called "Punch-a-Bunch". Either way, it would be an improvement on the current system, in which every young player in the league files for arbitration, only one or two cases actually make it to a hearing, and the arbitrator just splits the difference because that's what they do every time.

Trade negotiations: We'll use Three Strikes. The GM pushing to make a trade will have to draw discs out of a bag, hoping to come up with a combination that gets a deal done before they pull three strikes and the other GM hangs up. For a bit of added realism, all the discs in Kevin Chevaldayoff's bag are strikes.

Award voting: In a modified version of the Race Game, members of the PHWA will rush around a stage trying to match the names of players with where they place on a ballot. Once all the names are in place, the contestant races back and pulls a level to find out how many of the players' positions they managed to get right.

The next CBA talks: Following in the footsteps of the infamous Clock Game, the NHLPA will shout out guesses for their next share of hockey-related revenue while Gary Bettman responds "higher" or "lower." It will be essentially the same as the TV version, with two key changes: Bettman says "lower" every time, and instead of 30 seconds the whole process takes half a season.

The Washington Capitals in the playoffs: Too easy.

Obscure former player of the week

Rick Tocchet left his assistant's job in Pittsburgh this week to take over as the head coach in Arizona. The Penguins replaced him with Mark Recchi, which is kind of neat, because the two were once traded for each other in a 1992 blockbuster. So for this week's obscure player, let's go with another forward who was once dealt for Recchi: big center Krys Kolanos.

Kolanos was the Coyotes' first-round pick in the 2000 draft, going one pick after Brooks Orpik. The next year, he scored the national championship-winning goal in overtime for Boston College on a beautiful solo effort. He made the Coyotes for the 2001-02 season, playing 57 games and scoring 11 goals.

By far the most memorable of those goals came against Patrick Roy on a penalty shot, after which Roy had an epic meltdown and got himself kicked out of the game. That goal was named the fourth greatest moment in franchise history earlier this year, which probably tells you all you need to know about how the first two decades in Arizona have gone for the Coyotes.

Kolanos suffered through concussion problems during that rookie year, and missed most of the 2002-03 season. He returned to the NHL for half a season in 2003-04, scoring four goals. When the NHL resumed after the lockout, Kolanos endured a bizarre season that saw him switch teams five times in less than a year. The Coyotes lost him on waivers to Edmonton in November, claimed him back a month later, and then dealt him to Carolina for legendary draft bust (and one-time Eric Lindros trade chip) Pavel Brendl. Three months later, the Hurricanes sent him to the Penguins along with Niklas Nordgren and a pick for Recchi. And then in the off-season he signed with Detroit.

After all of that, he never suited up for the Red Wings, and vanished from the NHL entirely until 2008-09, when he played 21 games for the Wild. That was it for two more years, before he had one last run with the Flames in 2011-12.

All in all, Kolanos's NHL career spanned over a decade but included just 149 games. He scored 20 goals, only three of which came after he left the Coyotes. Injuries, including those concussion troubles as a rookie, largely derailed what had been a promising career. At the very least, he can say that he was traded for one Hall of Famer, and made another one flip out and throw his stick at a referee. That's not a bad NHL run.

Trivial annoyance of the week

This week's trivial annoyance is that the Sedins keep screwing up top-ten lists.

Look, stay with me, I said it was trivial.

Earlier this week, I wrote a piece about active players who'd spent their entire career with one team but might not finish that way. I thought it made for an interesting topic, and I figured the easiest way to approach it would be to start with a list of the ten active players with the most games played for one franchise. That's pretty standard stuff on the web these days—everyone likes a nice, easy-to-digest top-ten list.

But then I ran into a problem that pops up on a lot of these lists: the Sedins. Do they count as one entry or two?

On the one hand, they're clearly two different people. On the other, everything you're saying about one almost always applies to the other, so you have to list them together or it just looks weird. You're basically left with three options:

Count them as one entry, in which case angry commenters will snottily point out that your top-ten list has eleven players on it.

Count them as two entries, in which case angry commenters will snottily point out that your top-ten list has only nine entries.

"Accidentally" forget to include them in the list altogether, in which case angry commenters will complain about some minor typo you made three months ago because nobody hugged them when they were a child.

I've tended to lean toward Option No. 1, although I'll be honest, No. 3 is looking better and better as we go. We're another year or two away from the Sedins announcing their retirement, at which point they'll walk off to a standing ovation marred only by one voice angrily yelling, "Boo, you occasionally made my job slightly more difficult" in a heavy Canadian accent.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

Tomorrow marks the 23rd anniversary of one of the stranger coaching transactions in NHL history: Mike Keenan using a contract loophole to bolt the Cup-champion Rangers and join the St. Louis Blues. The resulting ordeal included lawsuits, fines, suspensions, and eventually a forced trade to sort it all out.

So today let's recognize the anniversary by looking back on Keenan's greatest moment as Rangers coach. No, not winning the Stanley Cup—that comes a distant second. No, today we need to look back at The Shift.

It's February 23, 1994, and the Rangers are hosting the Bruins. It's not going well; we're midway through the second period, and Boston is up 5-1. More important, Keenan is angry at Alexei Kovalev for taking long shifts. He's about to teach him a lesson. Or so he thinks.

Fun fact about Alexie Kovalev that I learned from this video: He would periodically glow. Those enigmatic Russians, man, they just can't help showing off.

As our clip starts, the announcers are talking about the Bruins' new defensive system of occasionally clogging up the neutral zone. Other teams, most notably the Devils, were using the same strategy, and it was making it a lot tougher to generate offense. I'm not sure if it ever caught on, but if it did I'm sure the NHL worked something out before scoring plunged for two decades.

After an icing, the Bruins get some extended pressure in the Rangers' end. Kovalev takes care of that with one of the great zone exits of all-time, as he picks up the puck at the top of the circle, heads back behind his own net for some reason, dekes out two Bruins who then slam into each other, and then fights through a hook to get it out. Every now and then, Kovalev was the best.

This all ends with Kovalev drawing a penalty, although in hindsight he just kind of falls over once the puck is gone. But cut him some slack, he'd been out for over two minutes by this point and was probably tired.

We find out that the Rangers power play is 1-for-2 on the night, and are also reminded that this was back when ESPN thought using all-lowercase fonts was cool.

The Rangers can't get much going, as the puck goes up and down the ice without much in the way of action. Hey, is the fact that both goalies are under 5'10" throwing you off as much as it is for me? It wasn't remotely unusual back then, but compared to today's goalies, Glenn Healy and Jon Casey both look like someone rolled a party of halfling clerics. Pekka Rinne could eat both of these guys during a stoppage and then rehinge his jaw in time for the next face-off.

Kovalev is still out there, and his exhaustion shows when he falls over twice in the span of a few seconds. The second one gets called, giving the Rangers a two-man advantage with Kovalev drawing both penalties. And with that, Kovalev finally heads to the bench for a well-deserved… nope, wait, I'm being told that Keenan is sending him back out.

According to Keenan, he didn't just keep ordering Kovalev to stay on the ice—he actually had his players physically shoving him back onto the ice whenever he got near the bench. Why is Keenan not in the Hall of Fame? OK, other than "Coaches apparently have to be dead to make it in"? I can't wait for the "Mike Keenan faked his own death to get in the Hall of Fame and then showed up at the ceremony" story in a few more years.

The Rangers still can't score, but we do get a minor collision between Ray Bourque and Mark Messier that our bored announcers try to turn into a controversial hit. By the way, it's an underrated highlight of this video that the announcers never actually notice what's going on with Kovalev. That's something I would do, except instead of a long shift it would be wasp-infested tool shed and instead of Alexei Kovalev it would be one of my children.

After an extended discussion of a Brian Leetch slump, we arrive at the punchline I think we all knew was coming: Kovalev getting a scoring chance and immediately hammering a slapshot past Casey for a goal, because of course he does. This is just how this story had to end. The lesson, as always, is there are no lessons, and trying to teach one is a waste of time.

Kovalev, of course, is sent right back out for the next shift, and when Messier takes a minor hit to put the Rangers down a man with 15 seconds left in the period, Kovalev even stays out to kill the penalty. We get a replay of Casey getting beat on the perfectly placed slapshot, at which point every Blues fan has a sudden urge to start punching their screen.

The period ends, and with it Kovalev's shift. There's some dispute as to just how long he was out there; this clip from the NHL has it at five minutes, but that starts after the original too-long shift. Most retellings have it topping seven minutes, with some stretching as high as ten. And despite all that, I still can't decide if this was the highlight of Kovalev's entire career, or this was.

The best part of the entire story: According to one version which may not be true but which I choose to believe because it's so perfect, Kovalev never even realized he was being punished. He figured he'd done something right, and Keenan was rewarding him by letting him stay out for as long as he wanted.

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: More Price Is Right, the Sedins, and Kovalev's Shift published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv