#you’re the goalie when your team gets relegated

[altschmerzes]

I do follow hockey, but definitely not enough for this thing with Thierry because all I’m coming up with is Fleury and I don’t think he’s from Montreal and I don’t think he played there either so can you explain? Google informed me that Carey Price exists which like yes thank you google I am aware

LOREAUX. YES. WHEEZE. THANK YOU.

just- okay. bear with me for a moment here where i wax on a bit about the huge potential for A Big Interesting Internal Landscape in thierry zoreaux, a canadian goalie from montréal. (if i get anything wrong in the process forgive me, this is all off the dome based on My Personal Experience And Perspective as a longtime sports fan. also it got.... long lmaooo sorry for that. i simply think goalies are fascinating and thierry specifically has such an interesting context for Being A Goalie. also no season 3 spoilers in here!.)

you're correct that fleury isn't from mtl, no! he's from another city in the province, and he never played for the habs. and you're also right, carey price does exist sldkfjs and he's CONSTANTLY on my mind when i think about thierry and about the role of goalies in sports that have them - whenever there's a team sport that has One person who is uniquely different and has a radically different role (goalie, pitcher) compared to the rest of the team (whose roles are pretty similar even if they're first baseman, outfielder, midfielder, fullback) there's gonna be a Lot going on there. goalies have a reputation for being Really Fucking Weird. like. those guys are Odd and everyone knows it. (pitchers are the same way. known for superstitions, habits, Generally Being An Absolute Oddball.) they have a different kind of attention, a different kind of pressure. at the end of the day it always is going to come down to them on their own, in one way or another. goalie characters in sports fiction obsess me because of all the Baggage and all of the Stuff that goes into Being A Goalie and man. that was enough to make thierry really compelling to me, as the goalie we see the most of. and then specifically being a goalie From Montréal? ohohohohoho.

i watch football/soccer a lot these days and have for a couple years but i've been a hockey fan for much longer and i can't help see things through that pov sometimes, and as soon as they intro'd a character from mtl, my background as a habs fan perked right up. a goalie from mtl. that was the first hockey team i ever followed and boy does it have mountains of history that make it a fascinating team to follow/learn about/think about especially as a narrative background/parallel/foil/whatever.

obviously thierry's a soccer player, he's a soccer goalie, but in the words of someone i spoke to yesterday, "hockey suffocates every other sport in this country." it's always around, always present. your average torontonian can probably name the last year the leafs won the cup even if they hate sports. the canadian viewership numbers during playoffs is nuts. i've seen a few percentages come up - in the 70s-80s. i also have had some fun daydream thoughts about thierry being a multi-sport player growing up. there's a hockey player i can think of who pretty much got all the way to the point of draft eligibility before deciding whether he was gonna play hockey or baseball. that's a headcanon i have about thierry too, that he spent a while playing hockey when he was younger and was pretty damn good at it, probably could've gone pro, but decided to stick with soccer in the long term because he liked it more.

anyways, so. the sport is huge, it's unavoidable, and one of the biggest teams is the canadiens. especially if you live in mtl. it's hard to overstate the extent to which they are an institution, practically a religion. and one of the things that's important to understand about the context of thierry specifically rather than if like- if any other player had grown up in québéc, is that the habs have an...... intense history with goalies. like a VERY specifically intense history with goalies. they've had some of the biggest names in hockey goaltending history in their nets and the combination of the team's history, the goalies who've been there, and the media market of montréal means that being the habs goalie is one of the most heavily scrutinized, highly public roles in the sport.

the whole...... sports fabric of montréal is steeped in goalies. jaques plante, patrick roy, carey price. so many more enormous names, names everyone who's into hockey knows immediately, names that left permanent marks on not only the habs and mtl but on the sport as a whole. every year the league awards the best goalie of the regular season the vezina trophy, named for georges vézina, who played his entire career for the canadiens. (these days, the likes of sam montembeault. québéc born and raised goalie who now plays in the habs organization, heir apparent to carey price's net. monty, with goalie masks depicting jaques plante and the torch that is literally passed every year at the beginning of the habs season at their first home game, that is mentioned in the motto in their dressing room, inside the collars of their jerseys. it's a quote from a poem about the first world war - to you from falling hands we throw the torch be yours to hold it high.)

for thierry this would've been just.... all around him. when i think of him i think of him growing up in a habs watching household, because most families are in one way or another in that region, and having this idea of like. the role of a goalie. the pressure of being a goalie, watching particularly the way that carey price, one of the best goalies who's ever played, was completely wasted by the catastrophic mismanagement of the habs during his prime. i think all the time of this screencap from either the behind the scenes videos the habs produced for PR stuff or some feature on tv or documentary thing, a shot of carey price with his iconic thousand yard stare, the subtitles from the voiceover saying if he could score, he would play alone. i have to think that'd do something to a person, you know. seeing how important the goalie is, how revered and respected they can be, and that it can still not make a difference in the end. not enough of one. there will still be people who hate you because you're not the guy who came before you, because you can't just do it all yourself. and then choosing to be one anyway.

so you know. you're thierry zoreaux. you grow up in montréal. you can't avoid the habs if you tried, it's baked into the city. it's in the air. and you're a goalie. it doesn't matter whether you play hockey or soccer, the role of a goalie is a different thing, a unique experience. you are involved in everything, and you are alone. you are so, so visible, and so, so overlooked. you never appear on the goal sheets, but some media outlet will blame you for every loss. you're a little weird, a little wired. a little in your head, a little in another world. your teammates adore you but everyone knows there's something about you that's different, that sets you apart. every one of them sees it as their job to protect you, but at the end of the day, none of them can help you do what you do.

also, as an aside, i checked his wiki page real quick, and have learned the actor is jewish and sees his character that way too to which i say: ONE OF US. ONE OF US. ONE OF US. also i am about to write fic about this IMMEDIATELY. thierry zoreaux, quebecois goalie and jewish king. i've always been a little extra attached to him - minor character enjoyer that i am and enthralled by the potential in him, and also just finding him. very funny, and his actor a delight in his scenes. i love him and i need to write way more about him Right Now. it just occurred to me earlier, when i made that first post about him, and realized the line i'd jotted down wasn't half as good if you didn't have the story that exists around him in my mind, around his role and his experiences and cultural context about his role. and well! here we are now.

[scribbleranger93-blog]

Prayers and Wishes (One-Shot)

Fandom: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Words: Approx. 6,021

Rating: T

Genre: Friendship/Drama

Summary: Homura made her wish to protect Madoka because Madoka was one of the few people she could call her best friend. What happened in her past that made her desperate enough that she'd rather give up her soul than accept a friend's death? One-shot.

Author’s Note: Thank you to @takerfoxx for giving me some advice on writing this story; it really helped! 

Fanfiction.net Link

--

“Over here, Yuki!”

“Got it!”

Homura watched from the goal as the girls kicked the soccer ball around, wondering if they knew just how lucky they were to be so agile and fast, to not have to worry about overexerting themselves and having heart attacks. It must have been nice, to not have to think about those kinds of things, to actually be part of the crowd… To be normal… With her heart condition, she had been relegated to simply being the goalie. It was the easiest position during the game, maybe, but for Homura it was just another reminder that she was always a girl on the sidelines, never actually involved in anything.

“Kick it in the goal, Akemi won’t get it!” one girl cried.

“Don’t blow it, Akemi, get it!”

She saw a group of girls rushing towards her, one kicking the ball along the way. Homura readied herself, getting in position. This was it, her moment to prove that she wasn’t just the weakling in the class; she focused intently on the ball…

And suddenly imagined the blue sky turning into a red, pastel-like one glaring down at her, misshapen, humanoid figures slowly making their way towards her with menacing intent…

Her chest suddenly felt tight, her heart beating a mile a minute; knees buckling, she clutched her chest, and began ventilating, sweat falling from her forehead…

At the last minute, Homura snapped back to the present...

Just as the ball went sailing past her, hitting the net.

“Ugh, Akemi!” a few of the girls groaned.

“We’ll never win with her on the team,” someone moaned.

“It’d be better if she just didn’t even try to be in the class…”

Homura looked at all the girls glaring at her, feeling like she had been pierced by a thousand arrows like Saint Sebastian. An airy, inhuman voice seemed to whisper in her ear: “Maybe it would be better if you did just die…”

The bell rang, and all the girls began to make their way to the lockers, walking past Homura, ignoring her.

Well, not all of them. One slapped her on the forehead, which caught her off guard, and another stopped to utter a few words to the brunette.

“You. Damn. Freak.”

Homura trailed behind the other girls, dragging her feet along. She didn’t even bother to look up when she heard footsteps walking next to her.

“Homura-chan?”

That voice; Homura looked up and saw Madoka Kaname standing next to her, a concerned look on her face. There were bags under her friend’s pink eyes; she was out hunting again last night, Homura realized.

“K-Kaname-san,” she said.

“You were remembering again, weren’t you?” the pink-haired girl asked.

Homura nodded, frowning. It had been days since she had wandered into that Witch’s Labyrinth while walking home; days since she had been saved by Madoka and upperclassman Mami Tomoe, days since Homura had met Kyubey and learned of the existence of Magical Girls and Witches… And yet she couldn’t shake the memory of the fear she had felt when she found herself trapped in that Labyrinth, at the mercy of the Witch and her Familiars, her legs freezing up and refusing to let her run somewhere, anywhere…

“Don’t let them get to you,” her pink-haired friend said, placing her hand on her shoulder. “They don’t know what you had to go through; you were doing your best, and that’s all that matters.”

She gave Homura a small smile, and the bespectacled brunette couldn’t help but smile back at her. They began to walk back to the locker room in step with each other, the birds chirping in the distance.

“Kaname-san?” Homura piped up.

“Hm? What is it, Homura-chan?”

“… Thank you,” she said. “For not being like the other girls.”

“No problem, Homura-chan, that’s what friends are for, right?”

Friends. The word stung in the transfer student’s chest. It was such an alien concept to her at this point, after spending most of the last year in the hospital. She had just met Madoka, but the girl had seemed to really take a liking to her; in fact, Homura owed her life to her, and she was enjoying having another person to talk to. It made her feel less lonely.

But, the idea that she had a new friend, someone who would be there for her, who would protect her and keep her from being sad… Homura was almost afraid to acknowledge it, for fear of having it taken away from her… Again.

“Homura-chan?”

“What…?”

“Are you okay?” Madoka asked, looking concerned. They were now close to the locker room. “You seem preoccupied with something.”

“Oh, it’s, it’s nothing, Kaname-san.”  

--

“Please,” Homura said, “Give her back…!”

She tried to move towards the other girl, but the latter’s friends held her tightly by the arms, stopping her in her tracks. The girl in question, Eriko, stood before Homura, towering over her like a queen before a slave. Eriko was one of the many older girls in Saint Anthony’s Home, where Homura had spent the last year. From their first meeting, Homura had a feeling Eriko didn’t like her that much. And at the tender age of eight, she was in no position to fight back against a ten-year-old.

Eriko held up one hand, Homura’s doll held in it. It was a simple doll, with a pale face and a black dress, something that had been with her for many years. “You want her back?” she said mockingly, holding it up. “If you want your precious Clara-chan back, then take her from me!”

Homura tried her hardest to break free from the other girls—Mai and Shiri, their names were. They were all in one of the many rooms of the orphanage that had been set aside for the children to play in. As hard as she tried, she was unable to break free. “P-please… Stop,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“Look at her, she’s crying!” Mai said, sounding more amused than sympathetic. “She isn’t even going to try to fight back!”

“What a wimp,” Shiri said.

“Just leave me alone!” Homura finally screamed. “I haven’t done anything to any of you!” She tried to force herself forward; in her movement, she hadn’t anticipated Mai and Shiri letting go, and she came crashing down at Eriko’s feet, her glasses falling off her face.

The girls laughed at that, while Homura scrambled to her knees.

“You’re a freak, Homura Akemi,” Eriko said. “You’re no better than the rest of us in this damn orphanage. Never forget that.”

“What’s going on here?” another voice cut into the scene. The other girls stopped what they were doing.

“Fukui-san,” Eriko said, turning to the doorway. There was a tone of resentment in her voice. “It’s just you.”

“Ono-san, what are you doing with Akemi-san?” the other girl asked, sounding cross. “Do I have to report you three?”

There was a brief pause; then, Eriko tossed Homura’s doll onto the floor. “Let’s get out of here,” she said to Mai and Shiri.

“No one likes a tattle-tale, Fukui-san,” Mai muttered as they walked away.

“Don’t listen to them, Akemi-san. Here, let me help you,” Fukui said, taking the glasses and placing them back onto Homura. “There, better,” she said, smiling. She handed her doll back to the brunette. “Your doll is so pretty, and I love her dress.”

Homura perked up a bit.  She looked into the other girl’s eyes. They were dark gray, matching her hair; Aiko Fukui was also one of the girls Homura had met when she first arrived at the orphanage. Unlike the others, she had given Homura a warm welcome.

“Y-you shouldn’t help me,” Homura said. “If you do, they might pick on you, too…” A lot of the kids had avoided Homura as much as possible, for fear of raising the ire of Eriko and her followers.

“Ono-san? Ah, I wouldn’t worry too much about her,” Aiko said, helping Homura back on her feet. “She talks a big game, but she’s only brave when picking on kids who are afraid of her. If you don’t let her get to you, she’ll leave you alone…”  Just as she was about to finish her words, she bent over, letting out a loud cough.

“Are you okay?” Homura asked, concern in her voice. The coughing went on for a while, before Aiko stood upright again.

“I’m fine,” she said, smiling. “Nothing to worry about. Now, how about we go get some snacks from the kitchen?”

“I-is that allowed?” Homura asked.

“We’ll worry about that later,” Aiko said, extending her hand. “Come on, it’ll be fun!”

Homura looked at Aiko’s hand, then at Aiko. “O-okay, Fukui-san” she said, giving a small smile.

“You can call me ‘Aiko’ if you want,” Aiko said, holding back a laugh when her comment made the girl self-conscious.

--

“Are you really not afraid for when Walpurgisnacht comes?” Homura asked Madoka as they walked out from the mall. They had gone after school for some food and to just hang out; Sayaka had gone to visit Kyousuke at the hospital, Hitomi had another lesson, and Mami was also busy taking care of some things, so it had just been the two of them.  

“A little,” Madoka said, turning to look at her. “But with Mami leading, we should be able to beat it!” She looked up wistfully at the sky; the city lights made it hard to see any stars. Homura gave a small smile; she had to admit that she found Madoka’s enthusiasm endearing. The other girls’ cruel remarks during PE had been forgotten for the past few hours; spending time with Madoka always managed to lift Homura’s spirits.

The sun had set over Mitakihara, casting long, black shadows over the street. Homura clutched her chest, her eyes darting back and forth at the splotches of darkness that were slowly growing. She still couldn’t get the memory of being trapped in the Witch’s labyrinth out of her head. To think that there were unspeakable horrors like that, just hidden in the corners and crevices of the city! After her experience, she couldn’t even think about willingly going into one ever again; whenever her friends went on their hunts, she stayed outside or far away. She even thought about all the people in the city, unaware of the existence of Magical Girls, of Witches, and wondered if it was good or bad that they had no idea of the war brewing beneath the glamour of the city.

“Oh, no, I didn’t realize it was getting late,” Madoka said. “I guess we lost track of time.”

“Well, it was a lot of fun,” Homura said, smiling softly.

“I even forgot to call my mom and tell her I wouldn’t be home early,” Madoka said, facepalming.

“I’m sure they’ll just be happy to have you home,” Homura said. She looked down. “You’re lucky to have them.”

The tone in her voice seemed to catch Madoka’s attention. “Oh, what I meant was—“ the pink-haired girl began to say, realizing she may have been a bit insensitive to her parentless friend.

“It’s okay,” Homura said, flashing her friend a smile. “Really.” Maybe someday soon she would tell Madoka about what she knew about her parents—about her mother who died in childbirth, or her affluent father who had perished in a fatal car accident when she was seven. After being on her own for so long, Homura had accepted what had happened to her parents; it still hurt, but she was used to the pain.

“It’s getting really dark,” Homura said, trying to change the subject. “Could a Witch be out right now?”

It was hardly a cheerful subject, but it did the trick. “I’m sure of it,” Madoka said, her tone turning serious. “Witches are everywhere; for every one we defeat, there’s probably another one somewhere preying on humans.” She shrugged. “But, even so, we have to do our best to save as many people as we can; it’s what Magical Girls do, after all.��

“Just thinking about it makes me freeze up,” Homura said, looking shiftily around at every dark corner she could find. “I really want to help you and Tomoe-san when Walpurgisnacht comes, but I think I’d be terrible at fighting Witches.” She had to admit, however, that the prospect of having a wish granted had its appeal; she had wished many times for things as a child, after all.

“You don’t know that,” Madoka said, smiling again. “Who knows? You might become the best out of all of us.”

“Even if I could, I’m not sure what to wish for; there’s so much I could pick from…”

“Well, there’s no pressure for you to make one,” Madoka said, as they began to round a corner. “And besides, I’m fine with us just being friends; you’re fun to hang out with.”

Friends. The word made Homura’s heart skip a beat. Madoka really did think of her as a friend; she had forgotten how warm and fuzzy it felt to be liked by someone. She wanted so badly to be friends with her forever, to always be by her side. In her heart of hearts, she always hoped to have a fiend like Madoka again, even though she was afraid of somehow losing her. “I like being your friend, too, Kaname-san.”

“Homura-chan…” Madoka said, half-whining. “You can just call me ‘Madoka,’ it’s perfectly alright.”

Before Homura could respond, a familiar voice beamed itself into both their minds.

“Madoka-chan!” Mami’s voice cried out. “There’s a Witch in the industrial area! We have to go there now!”

“I’m on my way, Mami-san!” Madoka thought in return. She turned to Homura.

“Homura,-chan, I’m sorry, but I have to deal with this,” she said. “You’ll have to go home on your own now, okay?”

“No,” Homura said. “I want to come with you.”

Madoka blinked and stared back at her.

“I want to be there when you fight,” the brunette went on. “I don’t want to be afraid of Witches; and, and… I can’t just stay home knowing that you’re out there fighting with your life on the line, Kaname-san!”

“Homura-chan,” Madoka said, bewilderment in her voice. “Are you sure that’s what you want? It’s dangerous, you know.”

Homura clenched her fist. “If my friends can face monsters like that, I could at least try to do the same.” She stared intently at Madoka.

Then, the pink-haired girl smiled and took her hand in hers. “Okay, if you say so,” she said. “Let’s go hunt a Witch!”

--

“Having a hard time sleeping, Homura-chan?”

Homura turned to see Aiko sit next to her on her bed, the springs creaking as she did so. Next to her she placed a lantern, its dull glow illuminating the two of them. Homura had been staring out the window, out into the night sky, at the stars. She had thought all the other girls had been asleep by now.

Homura shifted in place, hugging her knees to her chest, leaning forward. “Just been thinking about stuff, Aiko-chan.”

“Is it about Naoko-chan?”

After a brief pause, Homura nodded. Naoko had been in the orphanage for less than a year, and had already been adopted; she had left the orphanage earlier this afternoon. Homura had seen girls like Naoko leave with happy adults, off to their new lives in better homes. For the past two years she had seen adults come and go—none had seemed interested in her. Probably, she suspected, because of the hassle her heart problems would cause. It didn’t matter if she was sweet or well-behaved, they probably wanted to just avoid getting close to a girl who might drop dead very soon. And so Homura had gotten used to being passed over again, and again, and again.

“Don’t worry about it,” Aiko said, patting the brunette on the shoulder. “I’ve been passed over many times, too; you get used to it. And think of it this way: you’re at least getting closer to the people who will adopt you someday.”

“How can you be so easy-going about it?” Homura asked. “I keep thinking about it, and it just makes me feel more and more like there’s something wrong with me…” Even when her dad was still alive, she had felt that he didn’t want to spend time with her; he was always busy at work, and never seemed to take much time off. She suspected, deep down, that he had blamed her for her mother’s death.

“Well,” Aiko said after a bit, “Remember what Sister Hanako told us during our lesson?”

“Don’t sneak in snacks while we study?”

Aiko playfully nudged Homura on the shoulder. “No, silly,” she said, though she couldn’t hide the smirk on her lips. “The other thing, you know, about how God closes some doors so that others will open?”

“…”

“What I’m trying to say is, just because things aren’t working out now, it doesn’t mean that they won’t get better later. You just have to have faith that God knows what He’s doing. He’s got a plan, you know.”

“You really think so?” Homura asked.

“Don’t you?”

“… I don’t know.” They had had many lessons, teaching about God’s love and how nothing happened without His knowledge, but Homura was not so convinced. She had gone to confession numerous times, admitted to the priest the doubt that was in her heart, and had done all the Hail Marys and everything else that was demanded of her to earn forgiveness, but it all felt empty. Hollow, to her.  

“Well, just don’t let today get to you,” Aiko said, smiling. “Besides, look at it this way: there’s still a lot of time for us to spend together, until we get adopted.”

Homura smiled at this. If there was one ray of sunshine in her time at the orphanage, it was having Aiko to keep her company. The two did nearly everything together—played games, studied lessons, all of that—and it made Homura feel less lonely, even as other kids still found her weird. “Yeah,” she said, “That’s true.” Just as she said that, something in the night sky caught her eye.

“A shooting star!”

Homura rushed to the windowsill just as the celestial object in question blazed across the heavens. She closed her eyes immediately.

“Making a wish?”

Homura opened one eye and smiled at Aiko. “Uh-huh,” she said, smiling.

“What’d you wish for?” Aiko asked.

“If I tell you, it won’t come true!”

Aiko playfully rolled her eyes. “Fine, you win.”

The two of them said good-night to each other shortly after that. Homura silently prayed, more as a routine than out of actual conviction, but it was what the nuns wanted, so she did it anyway. As Homura tucked herself into her bed and held tightly onto her Clara-chan, her wish was still fresh in her mind:

I wish Aiko and I would get adopted by the same family, and be together forever. 

--

Black and white. Inside the Witch’s labyrinth, all other colors appeared to have faded. Far off in the distance, the Witch’s lifeless body lay on the ground, dark liquid pouring out of its corpse. Homura clutched her chest, half-afraid that the shock of what she had just witnessed would cause her heart to give out, and half in horror of the possibility of losing someone close to her.

As the labyrinth warped and faded back into the familiar evening air of the city, she rushed towards her friend, who was currently lying on the ground. “Kaname-san!” she screamed.

She knelt by Madoka’s side and helped her back upright. “What were you thinking!?” the brunette said, her voice a mixture of fear, concern, and anger. “You shouldn’t have gotten too close to the Witch, it nearly killed you!”

“I’m alright, Homura-chan,” Madoka said, her voice groggy. “Don’t worry…”

She looked down at Madoka’s Soul Gem, and her eyes widened.

“Your Gem…” Homura said, horrified. “It’s turning black. Tomoe-san! Kaname-san needs a Grief Seed!”

“Hang on, I’m coming,” Mami said, and Homura could hear the sound of her feet running up to them. Within moments, Madoka had taken the Grief Seed and purified her Soul Gem, which now shone a bright, pure pink once again.

Homura hugged Madoka tightly. “I was so worried,” she said, “I thought I was going to lose you…”

The Witch had been ferocious, attacking with a legion of vines that stabbed and wrapped around any who dared oppose her. The Witch herself remained in the distance, silently praying in the shadow of an enormous monstrance. Both Mami and Madoka were long-range fighters, relying on their muskets and arrows, respectively. It had been difficult to get through the vines, to get a good shot of the Witch and deliver the killing blow. In the end, Madoka had rushed into the fray, while Mami dealt with the vines, and fired the final shot to kill the Witch, but not before sustaining a few blows herself.

And all this time, Homura had watched the battle from the sidelines. She had potential, Mami and Kyubey had told her earlier that night. Mami had decided that tagging along would help acclimate her to what the life of a Magical Girl would entail. “Besides,” the blonde upperclassman said, “The more the merrier, after all.” Homura had thought that her time trapped in a Labyrinth would prepare her for another one, but it had not. She looked on in fear as her friends battled the inhuman beast, getting tossed around and jabbed at by its numerous Familiars. It was Madoka that Homura was the most worried about; back when she had first seen her friend fight, she had thought she was the most amazing Magical Girl ever. Now, seeing this battle, she realized just how inexperienced Madoka was, especially compared to a seasoned Magical Girl like Mami Tomoe.  

Kaname-san can’t go on like this, Homura thought to herself as they headed to Mami’s apartment for tea and cake. Even if she wants to help others by being a Magical Girl, she’ll die soon enough if she keeps on fighting! It wasn’t right! Why did she have to keep putting herself on the line like this, risking her life battling such monstrous creatures? There had to be a way for her to stop; some way to free her from this burden!

Homura froze; a thought came to her head: What if she wished for Madoka to no longer be a Magical Girl? That would work, couldn’t it? It didn’t matter if Homura had to be the one to fight Witches, she didn’t have family that waited for her at home, and as for friends—deep down, she knew that she wasn’t worth much in the long run; there would probably come a time when even those close to her drifted away. Such was what she was used to; she had learned to enjoy what she could, and to try to hold onto what she had, as much as possible.

“Tomoe-san,” Homura said later on while they were enjoying their after-battle food. “I... Think I know what to wish for.”

Madoka had excused herself to talk to her mother; they had decided on having a sleepover at Mami’s this evening, as it was too late already, and she had to tell her parents about their plans.

The blonde upperclassman finished sipping her tea and placed the small cup on her equally small plate.

“Really now?” her senpai responded, giving her an encouraging smile. “That’s interesting, Homura-chan; tell me more!”

“Well…” Homura said. “It’s not for me, though… It’s for someone else.”

Mami’s smile shrunk a bit. “Someone else?”

Homura nodded, unsure of whether or not to continue, feeling she was crossing some sort of line.

“That’s interesting!”

The two girls turned to where the voice was coming from; Kyubey scurried on the ground with his white paws, jumping onto Homura’s shoulder. It looked at Homura with his beady, red eyes. “It’s perfectly okay to make a wish for someone else, Homura Akemi,” it chirped. “There’s no rule against it; in fact, it’s been done, many times before.”

“R-Really?” Homura said.

“Thing is, though, you have to be careful about those kinds of wishes,” Mami said, a serious look on her face. “It can be a little tricky when it comes to wishes like that.”

“What do you mean?” Homura asked, her heart suddenly feeling heavy.

“Well, the thing is,” Mami started to explain, “When you make a wish like that for someone, is it because you really want that person to be happy, or something else?”

“S-something else…?”

“What I mean is, are you sure you just don’t want that person to be grateful to you?”

It was just a rhetorical question, just Mami posing a hypothetical, yet Homura immediately piped up from it.

“N-No, that’s not it at all…!” she said, louder than she intended. “I-I just want her to be safe…”

“Her?” Mami asked, raising an eyebrow.

Homura felt her cheeks suddenly redden. “Um, I-I mean…” she said quickly, before dropping the sentence completely.

There was an awkward silence between the two of them, and Kyubey didn’t seem like it wanted to add anything else.

“Sorry I took a while, guys!” Madoka said as she ran up to meet them. “What did I miss?”

Homura felt like the tension in the room was slowly lifting.

“Um, nothing,” Homura said, glancing at Mami.

“We were just talking,” Mami said. It seemed their previous conversation was done for the time being.

--

“She’ll see you now.”

Homura rushed into the hospital room, Clara-chan in hand, up to the bed where Aiko lay. Her friend had become scarily thin in the past few weeks, her skin pale as well. Her long hair was now gone, too, the result of the chemotherapy she had gone through. As Homura looked on, Aiko stirred, her eyes slowly opening to look at Homura. “Homura-chan…” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

“Aiko-chan,” Homura said, her hands gripping the metal handles of the bed. “I came here to visit you.”

“Thank you, Homura-chan,” she said, giving a small smile.

Homura spent the next few minutes telling Aiko about what had happened at the orphanage since she had been admitted to the hospital. She told her about the meals they had had, the activities they did, and the lessons they learned in school and at Mass.

“It’s not the same without you, though,” Homura added. “We really miss you, you know.”

“Sorry,” Aiko said. “I wish I could be there with you and the others; well, maybe not with Eriko and her friends.”

Her laughter at the end of that sentence was noticeably weaker than usual.

“Yeah, you need to come back soon,” Homura said, smiling at her. “When are they letting you out?”

At that question, Aiko’s smile vanished. She seemed to be searching for the right words to say.

“Oh,” Homura said, feeling like she said something wrong. “S-sorry, I guess it’s going to be a while…”

“I’m not leaving the hospital.”

Homura froze. “What? What do you mean?”

“Homura…” Aiko said tentatively, “The doctors, they came to me. They told me…” She looked down.

She didn’t have to finish her sentence. Homura tensed up, grasping onto the blankets on the bed. “No,” she said. “You don’t mean…”

Aiko turned to face her. “I’m… Not going to last much longer.”

“Aiko-chan, no!” Homura pulled her friend into a tight hug, tears beginning to form in her eyes. “Why…?” she squeaked out. “Why is this happening…?” Homura had known Aiko was sick for a while now; she had prayed constantly that God would let her friend be healed, and not let her be in so much pain. She hoped—deep down—that it would work. It had to work. So why wasn’t it?

She felt Aiko embrace her. “I know,” Aiko said, her words choked out as well. “They said it’s only a matter of time before I…”

“Don’t say that!” Homura nearly screamed. “You can’t die, not you; I can’t...” Her throat felt like it was full of cement. “I can’t lose you, too,” she finally managed.

They held each other for a few minutes, tears falling as they cried together, finally, Aiko spoke up.

“It’s okay, Homura-chan,” she said, letting go of her friend and wiping her tears. “It’s okay… Remember what Sister Hanako told us?”

Homura stared at her, streaks of tears still pouring down her cheeks; she said nothing, not in the mood to crack a joke.

“Our time here is only temporary,” Aiko said. “And death isn’t the end for us… When we die, we go to Heaven to be with everyone else we know. That’s where I’m going.”

“But, you’ll be there,” Homura said. “And I’ll be…!”

She clenched her fists. “It’s not fair!” she said. “This can’t be happening… I won’t let it happen…!” She had no idea how she would prevent it, but she just knew she couldn’t let this happen.

Aiko gave her a weak smile. “Things will get better for you,” she said. “If you’ve gone on this long, then that must mean God has something bigger for you.”

“The same God that let my Mom and Dad die, that gave me my heart condition?” Homura rambled, unable to hide the bile in her voice. “The same God that’s… That’s letting you suffer?!” She remembered the lessons they learned in class, and on Sunday Mass, but she couldn’t accept it. Couldn’t imagine that this was part of a bigger plan, not after all that she had been through.

“You’re upset, I get it,” Aiko said. “I don’t blame you; I couldn’t stop crying when they told me what was going on.” She adjusted slightly in her bed. “But I’ve thought a lot about it, and… I think I’ll be okay. Before I know it, I’ll be with God, and maybe I’ll see my parents, too.”

“But I don’t understand it; I don’t think I’ll ever understand it,” Homura said.

“You will someday,” Aiko said. She reached out and wiped the tears from Homura’s eyes. “Just, promise me that you’ll try to make more friends.”

“I don’t want other friends, I want you!”

“I know, but our time together is coming to an end, Homura-chan,” Aiko replied, a sad smile on her lips. “Thank  you for being my friend; it was fun the past couple of years… While it lasted.”

She took hold of Homura’s hand. “Just… Try to make other friends,” she said. “For me?”

Homura sniffled a bit. “O-Okay,” she said. “I’ll try.”

They parted not too long after that, Homura having to practically be dragged out by Sister Hanako, all the while silently wishing for Aiko to not leave her. Her last image of Aiko alive was her friend waving at her, holding Clara-chan in one hand.

--

“Why?!”

Tears fell down Homura’s face as she stared at Madoka’s lifeless body. “Even if you  were going to get killed all along…!”

Today was the day that Walpurgisnacht had descended upon the city. It rode on a storm, a fierce supercell, without a care for the destruction it caused; it was a force of nature, and Mitakihara didn’t stand a chance against its wrath. The city’s only hope had been in two Magical Girls, one of which now lay half-submerged in the watery waste, her eyes shut permanently. Mitakihara was in ruins, destroyed buildings and debris everywhere. Water flooded through the city, and rain poured from the sky; the remnants of a terrible storm. The world hadn’t ended, but by the looks of things, it may as well have.

She had begged Madoka to run away with her, after seeing the Witch effortlessly kill Mami, but the pink-haired girl had refused, determined to do her best to save the city. And now here she was, dead.

“It wasn’t worth saving me, if you’re not alive!” Homura screamed, before another bout of sobbing overwhelmed her. “I want you back…!”

Her mind was in a whirl, a mix of sadness and rage. First Aiko, and now Madoka… She cursed God for dangling the chance of having a new friend in front of her, before snatching her away. She cursed Madoka for being selfless to a fault, to the point of giving her life, before immediately hating herself for being angry at her now deceased friend. Above all, she cursed herself, for being such a useless waste, for not being there to fight by Madoka and Mami’s side.

She was so busy crying over Madoka’s body that she almost didn’t notice the voice talking to her.

“Is that really what you want, Homura Akemi? Would you trade your soul to have a wish like that come true?”

That voice; she recognized it. It was one that she had grown accustomed to in the past few weeks. Still she couldn’t stop herself from crying, and didn’t bother looking up. That didn’t seem to matter to the creature, though.

“If there’s something you want badly and you’re willing to accept a destiny of battling Witches,” Kyubey continued, “Then I can help you get what you want.”

Now she looked up, her eyes meeting Kyubey as it sat atop some leftover debris, staring down at her with that permanent smile on its face. Her mind began to whir at its words, at what it offered. “If I make a contract with you, would you really grant me any wish?” she asked.

“Absolutely! You have more than enough potential,” the white creature said, its voice as chipper as any other day, as if nothing that had just happened had affected its outlook on the world. Homura envied its indifference to things. “So tell me, what is the one wish you’ll have that will make your Soul Gem shine?”

“I wish…” Homura began, before pausing to glance at Madoka’s corpse. She was at a crossroads, one of those moments where one’s life would change forever. Here she had the chance to have her friend back; she thought about her original wish—she could make it so Madoka was no longer a Magical Girl, and no longer had to take on the burden of fighting Witches. But deep down, she knew that that wouldn’t be what her best friend would want; Madoka seemed to be happy helping out by fighting Witches, it didn’t seem right to take that from her. No, if she was going to have Madoka back, it would have to be different—if anyone was going to change, it would have to be her.

Taking off her glasses and wiping her tears away before putting them back on, she stood up to face Kyubey. “I wish that I could meet Kaname-san all over again,” she said, determination rising within her. “But this time, instead of her protecting me, I want to be strong enough to protect her!”

What followed next happened so fast; first, she felt a pain in her chest, like something trying to burst out of her body. She closed her eyes and clutched at her chest, her knees buckling, but she refused to be forced down; she had to be strong, to be able to endure pain just like Madoka had—and would once again. A bright, purple light appeared before her, and Kyubey spoke again.

“The contract is complete,” it said. “Your wish has overcome entropy. Go now, go and unleash your new magical power!”

She opened her eyes and held her new Soul Gem in her hands… The energy it radiated was unlike anything she had ever felt before; now, she knew, she had the power to fight back against fate, to change things for the better… Could she also defy God as well? Time would only tell, she supposed.

I’ll get it right this time, Homura thought as a circular shield appeared on her arm. I’ll do what I couldn’t do before; I’ll save my friend, no matter what.

[andrebearakovsky]

Thank you notes to the 2016-17 Washington Capitals

With the expansion draft looming and the realization that our team would be no longer becoming imminent, I started getting a little emotional and nostalgic. So I wanted to do something as a final wrap-up to put a final bow on the season. And I know I’ve done a couple of posts that could fit into this category (the top 10 post, the end of season thanks to my mutuals, etc.), but I’m going to do one last thing while the gang is still officially together. I’m going to be writing quick thank-you notes to each of the players. This is going to end up totally cheesy, but I don’t care. I need to do this. It’s closure for me. So without further ado, I’d like to thank the 2016-17 Washington Capitals for being my favorite group of teammates and for giving me so much to love during a very tumultuous year of my life.

Thank you, Taylor Chorney, for being the best press box resident there ever was. I could probably count all the games you played on one hand. I’m not sure how much effect you had on the ice, but I loved you off the ice. You’re a great person and you mesh with the rest of the team wonderfully. Your friendship with Schmidty give me life, and I loved that one time you two played video games with Burky and Willy. If we could keep you on as like a personal cheerleader to just hang out and be friends with the team, I would give you that job in a heartbeat.

Thank you, Brooks Orpik, for giving me something to bond with each and every other Caps fan about, no matter our differences. The coaching staff and Kuzy and co. may love you, but we’re not entirely fond. Thank you for making me realize we deserve so much better than you and for making it clear how much better than you Schmidty is. I sincerely hope you find a nice home somewhere else.

Thank you, Kevin Shattenkirk, for giving us all heart attacks at the trade deadline. You sent my son Zach Sanford to St. Louis, but I was okay with it because I thought you’d help us go all the way. Obviously that didn’t happen, but I enjoyed having you around. And your friendship with Oshbabe is goals. But I know how desperately you want to be a Ranger, so I wish you the best of luck in New York.

Thank you, Daniel Winnik, for giving us the best fourth line in hockey. You along with Beags and Willy (which I’m pretty sure you dubbed as the “Lunch Pail Line”) were one of hockey’s most lethal fourth lines, and you meshed so well together and had amazing chemistry. Thanks for also being one of our best penalty killers, and for making me love your dogs and your family. When you were traded to us last year I didn’t know a lot about you, but after a year and a half I feel your personality has shone and you fit in perfectly with the team. I simply don’t know if we’ll have the funds to keep you around, but if this is the end of the line, I want to thank you for making it a good one.

Thank you, Brett Connolly, for showing the world that you were an absolute fucking steal. You were worth way more than your asking price. I’m so glad you decided to have the best year of your career with us. I wholeheartedly enjoyed watching you constantly give up your body for the game, get into the gritty areas, and just mesh with the team so damn well, even when you were getting sat at the beginning of the year. I don’t know if you’ll be with us again, but if this was just a one-year thing, it was a good one.

Thank you, Lars Eller, for being a solid third center. No, you didn’t fulfill your prophecy and defeat Pittsburgh, but throughout the year you centered the line with Burky and Conno that just flourished and it was beautiful to watch. Also you have a pretty face, which I appreciate.

Thank you, Justin Williams, for veteran experience and amazing hair. Throughout the year I have loved your sassiness, your goal-scoring punch, and your veteran leadership. You had amazing line chemistry with Kuzy and Mojo and it was beautiful. And all your teammates love you. The kids look up to you. Andre even did crazy hair day with you. And I sincerely hope this isn’t the end. But thank you for helping to anchor us.

Thank you, Matt Niskanen, for being probably our best defenseman throughout the course of the season. You consistently give us solid defense, and I never have a complaint about you. Thank you for being a solid pair along with Dima, and thank you for giving us the best smiles whenever you score (I’m pretty sure those smiles are what make flowers grow).

Thank you, Philipp Grubauer, for being the best backup goalie the world has ever seen. You’re good enough to be a starter somewhere, and for the past half a year I’ve braced myself for that becoming a reality. You’re too good to stay with us forever, which breaks my heart. You’re such a pure, good soul who deserves better. You strike me as the quiet type, but I know you have teammates and fans out there who love you, including me. So thank you for the absolutely amazing year you had, and know that I will support you no matter where you end up.

Thank you, Dmitry Orlov, for having the best year of your life and proving to everyone that you deserve to be here. Everyone last year doubted that you could have a good year, and you proved them all wrong. I mean, look at you. You played all 82 games, you scored your first career power play goal, had your first NHL fight, and you literally almost murdered Matt Duchene in the best hockey hit I’ve ever seen (and think about daily). Thank you for your excellent defense, and I hope to see that smile again someday soon.

Thank you, Jay Beagle, for having the best year of your career and being a giant meme in the process. You are truly iconic, and even though the rest of the league doesn’t know you exist, I feel truly blessed to have you on our team. Thank you for being so entertaining and such a sweetheart. Thank you for being a faceoff king and one of our best forward penalty killers. You’re the real MVP (no seriously, look at the record whenever you get a point), and thanks for just creaming the central division this year. It’s been a pleasure.

Thank you, Karl Alzner, for everything you’ve done for this organization. You’ve been one of our most consistent and reliable defensemen, a leader and friend in the clubhouse, and went so so long without missing a game. The team and everyone I know loves you so much. You’re so funny, incredibly likeable, and your hockey marriage to Carlson literally gives me life. Washington will always be your home. And this isn’t fair. I’m not ready to say goodbye. Thank you for being you, and I promised myself I wouldn’t cry until it was official; I still have time before the waterworks.

Thank you, John Carlson, for making me fall head-over-heels for you. By this point everyone knows how much I love and appreciate you. I love your flow (when you have it RIP), you play some awesome defense, have a wicked shot, have one of the most epic bromances of all time, and have an adorable son. But most of all, you’re an underrated leader who needs to be rightly recognized. You’ve been with the Caps for so long, and everyone trusts and respects you, and I strongly believe you should be rewarded with an alternate captaincy. I squeal whenever I see you with that A, and if you get it permanently I know I’ll bawl my eyes out. So here’s to you, and I’m crossing my fingers for you, my beanie sloth son.

Thank you, Marcus Johansson, for being one of the most underrated snipers in the league. When teams are preparing to face the Caps, they think about Ovi, Nicky, Oshie, and Kuzy, but sometimes you slip to the side and get forgotten about. But not to me. You’re quiet, and you strike when people least expect it. Mojo appears out of nowhere, a silent Swedish sniper. You absolutely do not get talked about enough, and I really want that to change. Thank you for blessing us with your laugh and your pranks, especially on your fellow Swedes. I love you so much, and I look forward to more of you next year.

Thank you, Evgeny Kuznetsov, for making hockey fun again. There are few players in the NHL who are more entertaining than you. I love your enthusiasm and your silliness and your wit, I love how hilarious and clever you are. And of course, your cellies are second to none. Your play this year was amazing, and you did us all a favor by giving us the world’s greatest celly: the bird celly. I love you and your ridiculousness so so much, and I want to thank you for being you.

Thank you, Nate Schmidt, for proving to everyone that you’re worth so much more than what they gave you. You were in the bottom defensive pairing and relegated to the bench with the arrival of Shatty. But throughout the whole thing, you kept a smile, as you always do. You’re an amazing defenseman, and you deserve to get that playing time (methinks I smell a pairing with Carly in the future?). And know that if you leave us, I will absolutely bawl my eyes out. You’re one of the best things to ever happen to this team, you’re so loved, and you have such a bright future ahead of you. Thank you for all the energy you bring.

Thank you, Braden Holtby, for constantly saving our asses yet again. We do not deserve you, and we are not worthy. Thanks for being an amazing person off the ice, as we all need someone like that. And thanks for being a fashion icon, we all aspire to be as beautiful as you. It’s been a pleasure to watch the best goalie in the league, and I’m crossing my fingers for you for that Vezina. 

Thank you, Tom Wilson, for maturing and growing your game so much. We all love you for the brobean fun and the hard hits, but this year you increased your game offensively (god bless you for the Toronto series), and most importantly your defensive game. You were an important part of the gritty fourth line and were one of our best penalty killers. You took less penalties and definitely less stupid ones. No one outside of DC will admit it, but you’ve come a long way and you’re a better all-around player. And I’m so so proud of you. Thank you for that, and also thank you for your abs. AND thank you for meeting me at meet and greets twice this year; you were so sweet to me and I will treasure those pictures til the end of time.

Thank you, Andre Burakovsky, for reminding me why you’re the love of my life. You are so so important to both me and to the team. When you went down this season the team had trouble keeping afloat. You’re more important on he ice than people realize. I think we’ve just seen a hint of what you can do on the ice, and I can’t wait for when you just explode and become a goal-scoring fiend. I love you so so much. You’re such an absolute sweetheart, the best human being in the world. You’re so full of love. And you’re so attractive like damn. I will always be thankful for Mojo making that bet with you and you growing out those curls, for that we are #blessed. I love you, and thank you for that.

Thank you, TJ Oshie, for getting me into hockey. You’re the reason I sit here today typing this. Thank you for getting me into this wonderful sport that has given me so much joy and so much pain. You were my first hockey love and still retain that title, eclipsed only by Burky. I cried when I learned you were coming to my hometown team, and you were one of the main reasons I started following them closely. And from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for everything you’ve given us over the past few two years, from electric goal-scoring to shootout prowess to your beautiful smile. And I beg, please don’t leave us. We need you. I need you. You mean so much to me and I don’t know how I’ll handle it if you don’t come back. Please come back, for me and for all of us.

Thank you, Nicklas Backstrom, for making me fall in love with you. I didn’t mean to, but you sucked me right in. And, looking back, how could I not? You’re utterly amazing. Your prowess on the ice and playmaking abilities are second to none, you’re an amazing leader whom everyone loves and respects, and you’re an amazing human being. You’re shy, sassy, and wouldn’t hesitate to kill a man for your teammates. You have the most epic hockey romance/bromance of all time. You’re such a dad. I love your smile, your curls, your laugh. You absolutely do not get the recognition you deserve and you utterly deserve the world. I cried when you guys won Worlds, because you deserve everything. We’re so damn lucky to have you, and I feel lucky to be able to watch you for the entire season. You deserve so much more. I love you, and thank you for making me see that.

Thank you, Alex Ovechkin, for absolutely everything. Once again, everyone gave you so much shit that you absolutely do not deserve. You are the best hockey player in the world, and anyone who can’t see that is blind. Anyone who says a damn thing about you is wrong. Anyone who thinks about giving you up is a fool and a fucking idiot. You’re an exciting player, a player of a generation unlike any other. You’re an amazing person so full of love, both for yourself and for others. You shouldn’t have to apologize for being you just because other people are dicks. You’re amazing and you’re an unparalled leader. You deserve the entire world, so much more than you’ve gotten. I want you to have it all just so you can shove it back in the faces of everyone. You’ve given us your everything, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s been a pleasure to watch one of the greatest of all time for the past decade. I love you and everything about you. Never change, but hopefully circumstances will. Thank you for everything.

[fanaste]

Eats, shites and leaves

Title: Eats, shites and leaves

Fandom: OMGCheckplease

Pairing:  Larissa Lardo duan / Shitty Knight

Rating: Teen

Word Count: 1162

Part 6 of The Lardo and Shitty Chronicles ////  Also on AO3

“Dude just ask her out already!”

Shitty smacks the puck into the bar of the goal and Johnson taunts him, “The puck represents your blocked thought process.  This is gonna illustrate your frustration Shitty!”

“Shut up Johnson!” Shitty takes another puck from the pile and shoots it into the pipe again. Goalies are weird.

“Serious what’s stopping you?” Holster takes aim and shoots the puck, it goes wide and slides into the wall.

“Can you see the crease or do I gotta come out of it?” Johnson taunts.

“Shut up Johnson!” He hollers.

Johnson laughs.  “The guy after me is gonna be so much more involved.”

Shitty and Holster share a look, take aim and shoot at the same time.  Johnson blocks both.

“Alright guys that’s it!” Coach yells across the ice, “Peewee game is on in thirty minutes clean up and get out!”

Rans shouts for Holster. “Holtz!” He has two hockey sticks crossed over in his hands and he bends in half low to the ice, “Come push me!”

Holster skates over and starts to push Ransom across the ice using the v of the sticks to collect the pucks. Ransom makes zooming noises as Holster pushes him around.

“Jesus Christ! What are you two doing? Quit dicking around I’m not being chewed out by middle school mom’s again!”

Holster straightens up without warning and Ransom falls flat on the ice.

Shitty ‘shoots’ a puck at Ransom’s dick.

“Fuck you nugget balls!” Ransom grouses and it’s hard to tell whether he’s insulting Holster or Shitty or both.

“I’m serious what’s the worst that can happen? She says no?” Holster still won’t drop it.  After helping Ransom clear up the pucks- ‘You drop a bro, you help a bro.  Bro code!’ everyone files into the locker room to strip off, wave their dicks about, shower, rat tail one another then get dressed and go eat a mountain of food.

As Shitty walks past he hears someone say to Jack, “Dude do you think they have chicken tenders in the dining hall?”

Jack replies, “I dunno man.” But shitty knows he’s really saying, “I fucking hope so.”

Jack Zimmermann chicken tender King.

Shitty rips off his jersey and gets to work unstrapping and peeling down sweat sodden layers of foam and plastic.  He doesn’t even want to think about what his lycra’s gonna smell like.

“Jock!”

A white jock comes flying over their heads and hits Mazzy in the face.  “Bro that’s nasty!”

Shitty wipes a hand through his hair, he’s working up more of a sweat trying to get his gear off than he did running suicides in it.  “I dunno man.” He says when he finally gets down to his shorts.

“Bro tell him to go for it with Larissa.” Holster doesn’t even have to turn to Ransom for Ransom to know he’s talking to him.

“Nah man don’t shit where you eat.”

Holster turns on him so fast Shitty hears the whip of wind past his face.  “Are you fucking serious?”

“He’s right.” Shitty sighs slumping down and peeling down his gross socks.  They reek and being the ultra-tidy individual he is he shoves them in the bottom of his kit bag and tells himself not to forget to take them out and wash them.

“You’ll regret it if you don’t.  It could be the start of a beautiful relationship.”

“Or the beginning of one with a terrible end which will result in super awkward meetings and one or both of them quitting.”

“Shitty wouldn’t quit.”

“Which,” Shitty points out, “Would assume that Larissa had to quit because the women always have to quit when it comes to work relationships gone sour because apparently men’s lives mean more and it would be much more disruptive for them to have to give up as a result of facing up to consequences of a choice they made.” He takes a breath, “It’d be punishing her for my mistake.”

“Dude.”

“Also she could say no and it could still be awkward.”

“Bro you wouldn’t make it awkward you’d be super respectful of her decision.” Holster says.

“Well of course I would but she doesn’t know that.  We barely even know each other.  I just know she’s hot!”

“Uh guys?”

All three boys look round to see said manager and hot girl standing in the doorway.  Shitty hopes she hasn’t heard their conversation, there’s a lot of noise and even more now that some of the squeamish boys on their team have all run to the showers moaning about how their dicks were out when the lady swooped in.  It takes the aversion of Larissa’s eyes from Shitty’s though to confirm his fear.

She heard them.

“Make sure to pick up all your jocks before you leave and replace all the cups.  Mazzy was free balling and he just chewed me out for it.”

Shitty throws a glare at Mazzy who is in turn glaring at Larissa.  Shitty glares harder at him for it.

“Sure thing Larissa.”

“You can just call me Lars or something.”

“You should probably get a nickname seeing as your technically part of the team.” Holster points out.

“Dude she picks up our jocks and cups, that makes her part of the team officially.  She needs a nickname.” Ransom declares.

Larissa grins.

“What’s the rule again?” Holster asks but it’s said in a way that shows it’s more for Larissa’s benefit than because he can’t remember.  This is Hockey shit, Holster always remembers Hockey shit.

“First syllable of the last name, or first, and anything s, er, or y.” Ransom tells him in a scholarly tone.

“My last name is Duan.” She reminds them.

Shitty watches their exchange not daring to speak in case she remembers what she heard and doesn’t get to experience this moment in favour of feeling like she has to duck out and avoid the awkward.

“Duans? Du-er? Duy?” Holster screws up his mouth to make the sounds but none of them appeal.

“Larsy? Lary? Lardy”

“How about Lardo?” Shitty can’t help himself it just comes out.

“Lardo!” Ransom and Holster say in unison and high five.

“Lardo is good.”

“Oh and it also sounds like lard ass which is extra hilarious because you’re like super tiny.”

“I am not that tiny, you guys are just giants.”

“Yeah but Shitty ain’t.  He’s short.”

“5”10 is a perfectly respectable height.  I defy your masculine standards that dictate I must be six foot or else find myself relegated to the back of the line when it comes to mates, dates and hockey.”

“5”10 is kind of short for a guy though.” Larissa – no- Lardo snickers.

“Bro burn!”

Shitty grins wryly at her and she winks at him before turning back out of the locker room.

“Nah you’re right man.” Holster says when they finally get up to head to the showers, “You can’t ask her out now.”

Shitty nods and mourns his loss underneath the hot spray.

[nabateann]

to all the horrible people on my gc who need to chill and give me time to proofread for capitalization, this is for you.

my askbox is open and depleted so maybe consider dropping a request in?

kid!flintwood with a treehouse, which was made into a muggle au because reasons and ended up having very little treehouse, regrettably

Marcus and Oliver live in a backwater town called Green Billows

there was this kid named Tom years ago who was obsessed with (but bad at) french, so the town was immortalized as “Gonfler Vert” which modulated to “Goinfrer Verrue” which mean “Hog Wart” and damn if the children didn’t find that hilarious

and so the town is called Hogwarts, now, at least by the kids

the grown ups hate it so much but what can they do

the teenagers are too “cool” for that, but they ironically call is “Hogs Mead” because they are lit as shit man they’re Grown Up and Too Cool

they think they’re original & edgy

(no one corrects them)

teenagers, am I right

there are 4 schools in the town, they’re all very small

Small Town Drama happened and no one would talk about it

and everyone involved is now dead but they keep the drama Alive bc honestly their lives are kinda boring

Oliver goes to Godric’s Primary, the elementary school for Gryffindor’s Academy of Excellence

he’s on the little league soccer team as the goalie

it’s his favorite thing to do

little 6 year old Oliver is toddling around with his soccer ball when suddenly a boy grabs it from him

Oliver is stunned

instead of a rational response, he turns to the boy and goes, “do you know how to play?!?” really excited because he wants to play with someone and he thought no one would play with him but now there is someone who wants to play and this is so cool

and Marcus just

“you… want me to play with you?”

he’s ready to scorn Oliver on the first sign of rejection

Oliver just blinks up, wide-eyed, and nods enthusiastically

of course, Oliver’s mother sees him be pushed over, and is slightly worried, but Oliver and Marcus play “soccer” for a good 2 hours, until they really should be heading home for dinner

and she goes over and Oliver’s so excited because he made a new friend, and “where are your parents, Marcus?“

he bites his lip and shuffles his feet and "well, they’re Out Of Town on a Very Important Trip”

and she looks at him and says “well, who brought you here, then?” and looks around and realizes, there is no one else at the field. it’s just the three of them

he explains that his nanny stays at their house but lets him run around while she does the chores, and she let him go to the park today

Mrs. Wood looks at Oliver and decides that this boy is not walking back to his house alone so the three of them go together

Marcus ends up going to Oliver’s for dinner and they have such a Time and it’s wonderful

they play against each other in little league and they’re best friends

when they are like 8 they build a treehouse with Oliver’s father

the Woods kind of surrogate Marcus, who’s a little abrupt, a little brash, and a lot angry, but a genuinely good kid

it makes coming home to an empty house slightly better

because when Catherine had quit his parents hadn’t bothered to find a new nanny, just made sure the groundskeeper would check in with Marcus every few days

they have sleepovers in the treehouse and they are so close

when Oliver’s 11 (Marcus is 12) Oliver realizes that he’s never met Marcus’s parents and–oh God, does Marcus even have a home?

so Marcus takes Oliver over to his for a “play date”

the house is huge and imposing and spotless and dead

Oliver hates it so much

Marcus’s room isn’t much better

it’s sterile, all freshly pressed, with neat corners and white walls and not a thing out of place

Oliver almost makes a joke about ocd until he looks at Marcus, who looks like he’s about to be sick, right there on the pristine hardwood that probably cost more than Olivers entire house

Oliver decides “fuck this” and drags Marcus out of there with his soccer gear

they play until Oliver forgets that horrible house and that horrible silence and sterility and that look on Marcus’s face that he never wants to see again

Marcus hits puberty first, and shoots up

Oliver is pissed because damn it, Flint, I liked looking at your face when we had conversations

to which Marcus looms over him or exaggeratedly crouches with a smirk and his shoulders shake when he laughs and his eyes crinkle in such a cute way and Oliver must be going crazy because Marcus is terrifying and there is nothing cute about his penalty shots

when Oliver hits puberty he gets taller but not as broad and boom! hormones come in and Fuck Up his life and Flint is really weirdly attractive and–shit, Oliver might be gay shit fuck damn he

gay?

cue crisis. his parents aren’t homophobic, neither are his classmates. he doesn’t think.

he starts hanging out less with Marcus, starts hugging him a little less, because damn, what if someone (Marcus) found out that would ruin everything

meanwhile Marcus is on the team at Slytherin Secondary School (SSS, pronounced “(hisses like snake)”) and trying to convince his friends he’s Cool

he starts being a little meaner, a little rougher, starts pushing Oliver away more

and even though they’re both pushing the other away they also are hurt

because the other is pushing them away, and God, are they no longer the most important people in each other’s lives?

Oliver’s freshman year, his first match on Gryffindor’s varsity team against Marcus, they do what they’ve always done

go out for cheap, greasy food after the match, what they’ve been doing since they were 7/8 and playing little league against each other

but talking about this game is dangerous they’re both sooo defensive about it

and worried about what their teammates would say walking in on them like this, eating together, on what looks suspiciously like a date

they explode. right there. in the fucking 5 guys and

its nasty

Oliver says things like “I can’t solve your abandonment issues, Flint, it’s not my fault your parents didn’t love you enough to stick around”

and Marcus says shit like “at least I’m not an annoying little twit who can only talk about one fucking thing. God, you’re such a boring person, Oliver, is anything in your brain not soccer” and

that’s not all but its where each of them hurts most from and they

they’re fierce to each other after that

but not only did Marcus lose Oliver, he also lost any sort of parental figure he may have had

the Woods still invite him over to dinner and Mr. Wood takes him out to baseball games

he and Oliver’s dad got really close bc Mr. Wood was always around the house when Marcus stopped in and stuck around because he had nowhere to go

and so Oliver feels betrayed by his parents and Marcus feels betrayed by his friend and alone

he starts pushing the Woods away and, well, there’s not a whole lot they can do, and as long as he’s happy then it should work out

it doesn’t work out, at all

Marcus and Oliver are vicious to each other during that time

absolutely horrible

until Marcus’s junior year

Marcus’s dad has a heart attack and has to recover

so he’s at home

it’s what Marcus has always wanted, except it’s

it’s horrible

his dad yells and is violent and completely out of control and Marcus has no idea how to deal with that

Marcus is a very confrontational person

eventually they get into a fight so bad that Marcus ends up in the ER with 2 broken ribs and a bruised jawbone and a broken nose after his father pushed him down the stairs and Marcus,,

Marcus swings into a depressive episode

because he’s disappointed his dad when his dad came home to see him, finally cared about him and all he could do was disappoint him

like he’s disappointed Oliver

he stops doing his homework, stops going to practice, even long after his ribs heal

after he spends a week in bed, staring listlessly at the wall, Oliver marches in, shoves soccer gear at him, and says “get up, loser, we’re going running”

Marcus cracks an eye open

“in cleats?”

it takes three hours for Oliver to get Marcus showered and dressed, but they finally make their way down to the soccer field and Oliver plops a ball down at the edge of the penalty box and says “when you get it in 5 times we’ll go home” and Marcus

Marcus is so confident. he’s the starting striker, en route to an ivy probably, he can do this easily

but he hasn’t worked out in a month and a half, and his feet are not listening to his head

it’s fucking brutal, and it takes him two hours to score the required five goals

once he does, he falls down into the dirt

Oliver leaves him there, saying “same time tomorrow, don’t be late” over his shoulder as he leaves

Marcus does not get up the next day, and Oliver comes and drags him out again

and again

and again

until Marcus is getting up on his own and to the pitch

he even starts to look forward to these practice sessions with Oliver

he doesn’t think about the stack of work on his desk getting steadily bigger

(he does, and he starts to work through that, too, but damned if he was going to tell anyone)

eventually he goes back to school, back from “medical leave,” but shooting with Oliver continues

it’s just relegated to the weekends

they’re not fixed

they don’t talk to each other, for one

but it’s an improvement

anythings an improvement to the radio static that had been driving Marcus crazy

and it works

Oliver realized last year that he was hella gay

he tried messing around with his lab partner, Percy, but nothing had come of that

Percy really wasn’t his type anyway

broad shoulders came to mind, but were quickly shoved out

he’s not out, but he’s dealing with the fear, trying to bring it up to his parents slowly, because it’s

it’s hard and anyways it’s not like there’s a reason to at the moment, he’s not exactly dating anyone

Marcus is just trying to avoid his dad but he’s so upset

there must be something wrong with him if the people in his life keep leaving

we all know about what happens to gay men who feel alone

hookup apps in strange cities and high-risk behavior

at the away games during the tournament, Marcus goes completely off the rails

he tries to drown this loneliness in meaningless grindr hookups and alcohol but its not working and he can’t handle this

and then he gets home to find his father in the hospital after another heart attack

the man dies that night and Marcus is selfishly slightly relieved and not much else

and he’s spiraling fast

so is Oliver

nothing in his life is working out

he’s gay

his stats are not where they need to be for recruiters

none of his teammates like him

his grades are subpar

he has like one friend

two if you count Marcus, who still hasn’t forgiven him about the stupid fight his freshman year

and so Oliver is just so alone he throws himself into soccer and ends up almost bowing out his knee

he gets a stern talking-to by his coach

because a blown-out knee is the end of any shot he has at a career and he can’t afford that

the team can’t afford that, not with championships so close

he goes out to their treehouse to sit and look at the stars and think about why

why he’s here, why he’s doing this

it’s intense he gets vvv existential and it kinda hits him that holy shit he’s in love with Marcus

like my boy Oliver goes all the way with all his self-examination and he just realizes it out of nowhere

he doesn’t really do anything about it, but it’s kinda nice to know

their teams play each other in semis and Harry, Oliver’s new midfielder, manages to score the winning goal and they knock Marcus’s team out of the running

Marcus wants to be pissed but honestly? Oliver deserved it

anyways they start patching things up now that it’s the off season and they’re back to their regular off season practices

it’s really lowkey and Marcus stops trying to lose himself in far away cities and starts focusing on the now

and a week after semifinals Marcus gets a call, from Washington can you believe it Oliver they want me

and Oliver’s so happy for him but

he’s not good enough yet for washington, or anything like that, so he throws himself into practice

they become practically inseparable again

everyone on Marcus’s team either hates him or fondly thinks he’s an aloof, avoidant asshole so him not socializing doesn’t do much to morale

one night they’re in Marcus’s house’s kitchen and Marcus is trying to teach Oliver how to cook chicken and all Oliver can see is how good Marcus’s shoulders look in that shirt and shit that’s Oliver’s shirt shit shit and on the one hand it’s so warmingly domestic and on the other hand it’s possibly the most erotic thing Oliver’s ever seen in his 16 years of being on this earth

damn its Flint in a shirt and sweatpants get it together

but he can’t because he’s so Goddamn sappy

then he thinks about how someday there’ll be a woman who gets to see Marcus like this every day, the way he looked when it was just the two of them or at the dinner table, when the weight of the world falls off his shoulders and he lets himself want to be happy

there’s a woman who will get to sit at the counter like Oliver is doing and watch the shifting muscles in Marcus’s back as he cooks

maybe a little girl will run down the stairs laughing with bouncing pigtails and her father’s dimples and Oliver

Oliver wants with an aching that leaves him breathless and hollow and he thinks he chokes something out about the bathroom but he has honestly no idea and he gets the fuck out of there

because it hits him, suddenly, that Marcus is going to have this happy future without him and

Oliver takes the fuck off, runs out of there, and sprints to the soccer field, realizing when he gets there that he’s barefoot, wearing jeans, and phoneless

he sits there and just sobs, and then it starts raining, and he’s miserably sobbing in the rain and damn if that’s not the perfect accompaniment to his thoughts at the moment

after some amount of time a door is flung open next to him and he is bodily hauled into the backseat of a car

Marcus, looking intently forward and very noticeably not at him, grinds out “strip” and what the fuck

this is hardly the most appropriate situation but Oliver gives no shits at that point he’s exhausted

so he does as he’s told and Marcus shoves blankest back at him and he cocoons himself in them, still sniffling as they drive home

he falls asleep on the way back, probably, because the next thing he knows is that he’s waking up in Marcus’s bed and Marcus is reading a book on the sofa with the light streaming in behind him and that really didn’t help anything did it

why was Marcus so unfairly attractive it was, frankly, inconsiderate

anyways they stay at Marcus’s house for a while because “soccer, mom! soccer” and well

soccer

they practice but it’s domestic bliss and hell and Oliver is letting himself hope and it’s so painful and so hard and how the fuck is he supposed to deal with this

meanwhile Marcus is just Shook that Oliver hasn’t left yet, that his sunshine boy (the second he thinks this he decides to never use the term again, and to possibly rinse his brain with bleach) actually wants to spend time with him

Marcus is a puppy underneath all those layers of angst and they gripe at each other all the time and they’re grouchy but

they also have stupid inside jokes and they laugh about dumb cat videos online (although neither will admit to watching them) and they watch shitty action movies to critique them together

Marcus is just so enamored and terrified

he cares about Oliver so much and he knows that Oliver will leave him, just like everyone else, just like he did before

but he’s ignoring that and trying to enjoy the time he has with Oliver right now

anyways their spring break is disgustingly couple-y and the way they act is so gross and it’s just nasty and sweet and all those good things and they just decide to take what they can

they take walks and hold hands and they go to a carnival

they only go on the terrifying roller coasters though because they’re adrenaline junkies and hardcore men who Aren’t Gay

ok maybe not but if anyone says anything then they vehemently deny it

when they get back to school very little changes and no one really mentions anything but??

Marcus picks up Oliver every day???? so theres gotta be something right??????

Oliver looks at them blankly. “yes, we practice soccer together, I told you that.” “right, soccer” “yes, that is the sport I play”

no one’s stupid enough to say anything to Marcus

except Malfoy, the twat, but Marcus knows Oliver knows Potter, so it’s all good

but there’s a $467 pot riding on when they’ll admit they’re dating (winner-takes-all)

Oliver gets shitfaced and confesses to Angelina, Katie, and Alicia one night, and then his entire soccer team knows

they’re creepily good at keeping their mouths shut, but he suspects that’s because Harry’s still too busy with his legal issues to notice anything

one day he’s complaining to Angelina about how unfair it is that Marcus has attractive abs and an attractive personality, because what the fuck Ang that’s so unfair

and Marcus overhears their phone call and is like “ok that’s definitely platonic I mean he’s jealous obv no need to get my hopes up” and

it gets progressively gayer and gayer

they probably end up saying “I love you” to each other or something

every time this happens they think to themselves “I know I mean it romantically but Straight Man McHeteroson does not so don’t make it gay dammit”

and it gets so, so bad that all of their teams are so fed up

cue Operation: Bonfire

Ginny came up with the name. it was the best thing they didn’t all hate, so they kept it

their teams try to get them together, obsessively, and they’re just taking it the wrong way

honestly the Slytherins get in on it because God damn it it’s getting kinda pathetic and it’s not good to have a pathetic loser as your team captain

nothing works

school lets out, and preseason starts in a month

Oliver’s family (his parents and younger siblings) go to Scotland to visit relatives, but Oliver stays behind for soccer

of course, Mrs. Wood sighs, before kissing Oliver’s head and giving Marcus a hug

and Marcus and Oliver are living together again and it’s so disgusting and domestic

Angelina comes over for breakfast and she’s appalled at these two oblivious idiots and gives up on them

she texts Oliver “jesus this is nasty u 2 better work ur shit out”

Oliver sends back a string of emoji that she’s fairly sure were just a keyboard smash

Oliver cracks halfway through week 3

after two and a half weeks of this he’s so fucking done he can’t do this anymore

it might ruin everything but he can’t stand the constant picturing of this woman and their daughter and a happy, middle-aged Marcus being an attentive father and a doting husband and–God, he’s gay

so he kinda blurts it out one day

he still has no idea what he said

Marcus kinda blinks at him

and Oliver runs

but only upstairs. he learned his lesson last time

Marcus stares at the doorway for a good 5 minutes, processing

the first coherent thought he has is “damn, Montague’s going to lord this win over Malfoy for a good year. serves the prick right”

before he realizes what just happened and

why did Oliver run? what??

he’s too tired/hungry for this, so he goes back to sleep like the clueless asshole he is

Oliver tries to avoid Marcus, but he doesn’t have his license yet and he doesn’t want to run the 30 miles home so he just sulks around the house all day

finally Marcus catches him in the kitchen, crowding him from behind and sinking his nose into the crook of Oliver’s neck

Oliver freezes, his finger hovering over the buttons on the microwave, and how do microwaves work, again?

more importantly, why was Marcus????

Marcus mutters, “is this okay?” into the crook of Oliver’s neck and Oliver lets out this super embarrassing, breathy moan

it gets kinda nsfw and I’m too lazy to write that now but I totally will

they don’t fuck then though because it felt kinda like,,, rushing it? and they really didn’t need to

they spend so long at the beginning of their relationship making out and just learning each other’s bodies

neither of them ever thought that they’d get this, so they savor it

honestly they don’t really have sex for like a good 2 years because there are so many other interesting things to do together

like soccer

its gross & nasty just like them

anyways they go to the same college and are gay & happy

Oliver does end up blowing out his knee halfway through his professional career and they adopt a little girl

then another kid

then another

wow suddenly they have like 5 where did they all come from?

then it becomes dogs, and cats, and Oliver never knew what it was like to not live with a loud, happy family and Marcus never wants his children to know a silent house

but he still complains, because dammit Wood we’re not a walking, talking, adopting machine!

thx for listening to this radio broadcast brought to you by me, an independant au machine supported from contributions from readers like you

[laurasfox-originals]

The Big Match (FSALA Bonus Story, Patreon Exclusive) - excerpt

This is a bonus story I wrote for my patrons on Friends, Sexcapades, And Love Affairs. Adrian, Jared, and Mike now live happily with their husbands and children in the suburbs. Everything is fine and dandy until a challenge appears. They must play soccer against another team of dads, just like their boys. This is the story of how they respond to that challenge!

The Big Match - excerpt

Adrian sauntered toward Mike and Jared who were standing at a fair distance from the soccer field. “So, none of your rascals came home, either?” he asked.

Jared grunted and pushed his hands into his jacket. He sported a much shorter hairstyle now, but it looked good on him. “Auggie is bent on trying my patience today.”

Adrian grinned. “At least, we get to share the pain.”

Their firstborns were the same age since they had wanted to have them the same year, and it had made them all happy when their kids became close friends even without their parents’ encouragements. Mike had been blessed with twins, Patrick and Liam, and by the shouts on the soccer field, they were at the heart of all the ruckus.

“Armstrong!” The coach blew his whistle. “Not you, the other Armstrong!”

Mike puffed his cheeks and exhaled. “I really wonder if Coach Patterson knows who’s who.”

“Do you know?” Adrian punched his friend’s shoulder playfully.

They followed with their eyes the two redheads running toward the coach. If Coach Patterson hoped he could yell at only one of them, he had to think again. Pat and Lee, as they went by, were like peas in a pod and never one without the other.

“Do I have to explain to you what a foul is, again?” The coach continued to yell at the two miscreants.

“Do you know what a foul is, Mike?” Adrian asked.

They all snickered.

“I have a feeling Lee is going to explain it to me in detail,” Mike said, feigning resignation.

“Does that mean that he will kick you in the shin again?”

“Could be,” Mike said with a philosophical shrug. “Seeing how Ryan is keeping them in line all the time, they take it out on me. All their energy, I mean.”

“Then I should be happy Auggie is just a goalie,” Jared said.

“Just a goalie?” Mike asked and wiggled his eyebrows.

Jared’s face fell. “Don’t let him know I said that. I mean it.”

Auggie was the quietest of the group, and he had a way of doing things in a measured manner that surprised all the grownups. Shane often took him to his folks’ ranch to teach him how to ride a horse, and he had taken to it like a natural. Jared was very proud of his son, but he tried not to boast too much.

After all those years, Jared still cared about everyone’s feelings just the same. But he was entitled to be proud of his son.

“The coach should know to let them go home by now,” Jared said. “I wonder why they’re still training.”

As if the man had heard them, he turned his head and waved. Then he dismissed Pat and Lee who returned to the field looking no more chastised than before, and approached the fence.

“Gentlemen,” he said.

“Coach.” Adrian nodded. “What’s with the long hours?”

Mr. Patterson wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “Didn’t your kids tell you? We have a big match coming up. The boys from Barring Grove have a bone to pick with us.”

Adrian quirked an eyebrow. Mikey had somehow forgotten to mention it. “So, it’s like the battle of the suburbs or something?”

The coach didn’t seem to get the joke. “Dads will be on it, too,” he said and pointed a finger at them. “You’ll go against Barring Grove.”

“What?” Jared intervened. “Why?”

Mr. Patterson was a man with a heart of gold but a short fuse. He was getting red in the face, and Adrian wondered if his heart was capable of taking it for long. “It’s kids versus kids, and dads versus dads. South Crest versus Barring Grove. Is this the first time you hear about it? Someone should have told you.”

Adrian had an idea now who that someone was supposed to be, and there was a possibility that the coach had relegated that information to the wrong messengers. “Are we supposed to play soccer?” He checked with his friends for confirmation of how ludicrous the idea sounded.

“We only know about it from what kids tells us and a bit from TV,” Jared added. “I mean, Auggie talks about it all the time, but it’s not like I have any idea about being there, on the field.”

The coach bounced on the back of his heels and threw them a cursory look. “You’ll learn,” he said matter-of-factly. “And we’re lucky that we have so many dads in good shape.”

He turned to yell at the kids again, and finally, the group gathered around him. “Why didn’t you tell your parents about the match?”

The group shifted and looked down.

“Caleb doesn’t have a dad,” Mikey blurted out. “And his mom is disabled.”

“Michael!” Adrian said sternly. “That’s not nice.”

Caleb, a scrawny boy with a lisp, intervened. “She is,” he confirmed while wiping his nose with his forearm. “She cannot play soccer with one leg.”

Jared ran one hand over his eyes, and Mike let out a sigh.

“And Johnny’s dad is old,” Mikey added.

“That’s it. You stop talking right now, young man,” Adrian said. It was usually Edward’s role to be the stern one, but his son was just saying whatever crossed his mind without realizing that he could be hurting the other kids.

“Did you guys think that it wouldn’t be fair toward your mates to let us know about the match?” Jared asked.

Multiple pairs of eyes stared at them.

“Yes,” Auggie said. “It’s all of us, and all of our dads, or no one.”

“We could play,” Pat or Lee – Adrian was, after all, the one who couldn’t tell the twins apart – said while hooking one arm around his brother’s shoulders. “We’ll wreck Barring Grove. Just us.”

“You can’t. You need a goalie,” Auggie explained.

Adrian thought of Auggie as a mini-Shane, but a sterner one.

“Then you’ll come with us,” Pat or Lee said. “And we’ll wreck them.”

“Boys,” Mike intervened, “you’re not wrecking anyone.”

“Do we have to ask permission?” Pat or Lee cocked his head. “Can we wreck Barring Grove, dad, please?”

Adrian wasn’t entirely sure whether Mike’s twins were sly like foxes, or they just found it completely normal to address everything standing in their way head on.

“I basically just said ‘no’,” Mike said with a voice full of resignation.

“Do I have to explain what ‘fair play’ is, again?” Mr. Patterson asked the two troublemakers.

Pat or Lee puffed out his chest. “It would be more than fair. Three against eleven.”

“What is the problem, coach?” Adrian asked. “Kids, go play a little.”

The boys didn’t wait to be told twice and hurried back to the field.

“We might not have enough dads,” the coach admitted. “Your boy’s not wrong, Mr. Rossi.”

Although they had agreed to have their names turned to Rossi-Hastings on their IDs, to keep things simple, Adrian and Edward had agreed on using only Adrian’s last name in their day by day dealings. The same went for Mikey who liked having Rossi written on the back of his soccer t-shirt despite his legal name, but the Hastings had been adamant about Sophia. She was the one they showered mostly in gifts, anyway. Any effort to impress Mikey had proven fruitless. The boy loved his grandparents, but he found hanging out with them pretty boring.

“Some of them are not in that good shape or are too busy,” the coach continued. “And, of course, there’s the boy without a dad.”

“And a mom with only one leg,” Mike added.

“Mike, seriously,” Adrian said. “You too?”

“Sorry. These guys are rubbing on me,” Mike replied.

“Yeah,” the coach said. “Talk to your husbands. We need all men on deck for this.”

Jared let out a small weird sound. “Is it really that important?”

“It’s for charity,” Mr. Patterson explained. “All the tickets proceeds will go to funding a school for underprivileged kids.”

“Oh,” Jared replied. “But who’s going to come see a soccer match between two suburbs? We’re eons away from pros. I mean, we’ll all come to watch our children, but --”

“Barring Grove made soccer into a religion down there.” The coach nodded vaguely, and they all looked in that direction only to reconsider one second later. “So far, they’ve beaten everyone.”

Mike grimaced. “Ugh, is it wise of us to go against them, then? If they’re that good? We could just forfeit.”

“That won’t sell tickets,” Mr. Patterson said matter-of-factly.

Adrian frowned for a second. A bit of a competitive ambition began to rise inside him. “I think we could play. As long as you talk us through.”

“Adrian, are you sure?” Jared asked.

“Hey, it’s a sport. How hard can it be? And we already know the general rules since our boys cared to explain them.”

“Yeah, my shins remember,” Mike said with a sigh.

“You’ll have to go through a medical,” the coach continued, now invigorated with the prospect of having to train a grownups’ team.

“When is this match scheduled?” Jared asked.

“In a month’s time,” the coach replied.

“Is that enough to turn us into soccer players?” Mike expressed his doubts.

The coach gave them a cursory look. “You look like fit lads to me.”

Mike threw Jared a silent plea. The only answer back was a shrug.

“All right. So together with our better halves, we’ll be six. That means that there are five positions waiting to be filled, right?” Adrian asked.

“Not only. We should have some people on the bench. But, at this point, I’d be happy if you brought a couple of fit fellows like you. The dads in this town are pretty busy. I mean, those with kids on the team. Now, I’ll have to check on those boys and call it a day. I bet you want to take them home to dinner,” the coach hurried to say.

~~~

Read the entire thing on my Patreon.

[thrashermaxey]

Ramblings: Updates on Hedman, Raanta, Tkachuk; Line Shuffling; Early Shot Rates – November 8

  The Edmonton Oilers will retain the services of Milan Lucic as the forward was fined, not suspended, for his, let’s call it “play,” on Tampa Bay’s Mathieu Joseph on Tuesday night. If you’re in a league with hits and PIMs, Lucic won’t miss a minute. If you’re in a league without hits and PIMs, why do you still have Lucic on your roster?

*

The Florida Panthers have juggled their lines in their last couple practices. Frank Vatrano has moved up while Nick Bjugstad has moved down:

  #FlaPanthers practice lines

Dadonov – Barkov – Hoffman Huberdeau – Trocheck – Vatrano Malgin – McCann – Bjugstad Mamin – Lammikko – Brouwer

Sceviour not out there.

— Jameson Olive (@JamesonCoop) November 6, 2018

  That Bjugstad is seeing a demotion to the third line isn’t a surprise given his performance so far this year – you’ll see his name later. But seeing Vatrano on the second line is a beautiful thing. He’s kind of a favourite of some people (present company included) ‘round these parts.

*

Brady Tkachuk has been skating in a regular jersey for Ottawa in their last couple of practices, including yesterday. It appears he’s on the verge of returning. Let’s hope he can pick up where he left off, at least to some degree.

*

The Coyotes placed goalie Antti Raanta on the injured reserve. He will miss at least the next three games as a result. Expect two of those starts to go to Darcy Kuemper with the third to whomever they recall because they have a back-to-back this weekend.

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The Red Wings welcomed Andrea Athanasiou back to practice yesterday. He had skated a couple days ago on his own recovering from a lower-body injury but now seems on the verge of returning. He had four goals and six points in 11 games before the injury.

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The return of Victor Hedman inches closer as he participated in non-contact drills with the Lightning in practice on Wednesday. Up next would be contact drills and then the return to the lineup.  

*

As I mentioned in my piece on Joel Quenneville’s firing, the power play would be the first area Jeremy Colliton would need to address, and he’s at least changing things up:

  Colliton going into the power play work early into practice. First unit: Seabrook, Schmaltz, DeBrincat, Kane & Toews Second unit: Gustafsson, Keith, Kahun, Saad & Anisimov

— Scott Powers (@ByScottPowers) November 7, 2018

  With those forwards on that first unit, I would assume it’ll be a heavily-used top unit. We shall see.

In that same practice, Brandon Saad was skating on the third line then this happened:

  Saad catches shot in face & goes straight to locker room #Blackhawks

— Chris Boden (@BodenTweets) November 7, 2018

  Just when he was turning his season around. Nothing further after practice other than he went to the dentist.

*

Both Tyson Jost and Sven Andrighetto are close to returning for the Avs. It’ll be interesting to see if either gets a spot on the top PP unit where both had spent some time this season. Samuel Girard, by the way, took over the top PP spot from Tyson Barrie.

*

TJ Oshie had a rough Wednesday night for the Capitals. Early in the third period, he took an uncalled high stick from Penguins defenceman Olli Maatta that went under his visor and cut him on the inside of the nose. The cut looked literally an inch away from his eye. He missed the rest of the period but returned for the second.

Near the mid-point of the third period, Oshie took a hit from Evgeni Malkin that got Malkin a five-minute for head contact and ejected from the game. There’s no doubt about head contact, but it kind of looked like Oshie just ran into Malkin:

  Evgeni Malkin gets ejected for this hit to the head of T.J. Oshie pic.twitter.com/o52QJPwKmQ

— Brady Trettenero (@BradyTrett) November 8, 2018

  Anyway, Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin both scored for their respective teams and that’s what led to a 1-1 tie heading to overtime.

Or so we thought. 

With 74 seconds left in the game, Oshie got a pass cutting through the seam and put it in the cage to seasl the 2-1 win for Washington. Almost poetic, in a way. 

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Updates on the late games in the morning. 

*

A couple days ago in these Ramblings I discussed a few players whose shot rates had increased significant from last year. Of course, we’re still *just* five weeks into the season so some things could change, however it’s worth pointing out certain players to see whether their production is something that could be sustained or not.

For this season, I’m limiting players with at least 125 minutes played at all strengths, with the time on ice limit for 2017-18 being 750 minutes. All data from Natural Stat Trick.

Here are the 20 biggest declines:

As we did on Tuesday, let’s discuss a few of these names.

  Ryan Pulock

That Nick Leddy is also on this list is not a huge surprise. The Islanders, as a team, has seen their shot rate decline by nearly 20 percent from last year. This is the effect of losing John Tavares and bringing in Barry Trotz. Seeing both blue liners in decline should be expected given the changes with the team.

All the same, despite exceeding five minutes per game in TOI in addition to last year’s number, Pulock’s shots per game are down nearly a full shot from last year (0.85 to be exact). That is a huge disappointment for anyone who bought into his progression in 2017-18 (present company included).

And here’s the final nail in the coffin: despite an on-ice shooting percentage of 11.7 percent (it was 9.3 percent last year), Pulock is on pace to barely crack the 30-point plateau. That’s how bad the Islanders are at generating shots.

Now, because of how bad his team is and how many minutes he plays, Pulock will be in line for big hits and shot block totals. He could easily crack triple-digits in both categories so he’s still valuable in leagues that count those peripherals. In leagues without real-time stats, though, he can probably be dropped. As always, explore trade avenues first but I imagine he won’t bring much back at this point.

  Pavel Buchnevich

I thought a new coach would help settle the role of Buchnevich after being moved up and down (and out) of the lineup so much by Alain Vigneault. Once again, it has been proven that I need to stop thinking.

David Quinn hasn’t been any better with Buchnevich’s role on the team, having used him, quite literally, on all four lines so far this year, as well as relegating him to the press box. The crash in shots per game, despite roughly the same amount of ice time per game as last year, has led him to landing 1.25 shots per game on target. That’s what we would have expected from Joe Thornton or Henrik Sedin a couple years ago, not Pavel Buchnevich in the year 2018.

(Apologies to the guy I told like three weeks ago to hold Buchnevich over Kevin Labanc. That one isn’t working out well.)

This was supposed to be the year of some stability with the Rangers but that’s been far from the case. Basically, other than Mika Zibanejad centering the top line and Henrik Lundqvist getting the majority of starts, nothing has been a constant. Everyone from Mats Zuccarello to Chris Kreider to Jesper Fast to Neal Pionk to Kevin Shattenkirk has seen their roles fluctuate, sometime significantly, and we’re just over a month into the season. This kind of uncertainty is awful for fantasy and Buchnevich has been a casualty because of it. He’s a bench option in 12-team leagues at best right now.

  Jeff Skinner

Not all declines are created equal! Despite his shot rate being considerably lower than last year, a rise in ice time of about a minute per game (most have which has been additional PP time) has meant pretty much a constant shots/game rate from last year (3.33 vs. 3.38). Given that he has 9 goals and 16 points in 15 games, I’m guessing fantasy owners are not complaining about a tiny decline in shot rate.

Skinner is shooting 18 percent, which would be a career-high for him. But he does have seasons over 12 percent, 13 percent, and 14 percent to his name. Does he score 50 this year? Probably not. Does he cruise past 30? Barring injury, I would think so.

Remember that just because a player’s shot rate is declining that it’s not inherently bad. An increase in ice time or change in deployment can change mitigate a lot of issues arising from a dropping shot rate. Skinner is the exception.

  Kevin Fiala

On the other hand, the start to Fiala’s season is a concern. His ice time has been constant from last year but his shot rates have declined to the point where his 82-game pace is under 150 shots on goal. That’s very bad for a guy some people pegged for a breakout (myself included).

Nashville, as a team, is shooting a little under 10 percent less often than they did last year. That’s why there are multiple Predators on this list, including Ryan Ellis. Fiala, though, is a bigger problem because his issues have led to his playing on the fourth line and being threatened with a healthy scratch. He’s essentially getting the Buchnevich treatment.

The silver lining from Viktor Arvidsson’s injury is that it has opened the door for Fiala to play his way to a more prominent role. It’s why I’m not giving up on him yet. He still should be relegated to bench duties in 12-team roto leagues, though.

  Brent Burns

I just wanted to casually mention Brent Burns because even as his individual shot rate has cratered – over 4 shots per game last year to under 2.7 so far this year – his production has been as good as could be hoped for. Maybe he doesn’t push 30 goals again, but if he managed 15 goals and 65 assists, will anyone really be angry with that?

It’s fascinating because his 5v5 shot and TOI rates have declined and yet because of the potency of the Sharks, his production has increased. His IPP is normal and his on-ice shooting percentage is normal. In other words, even if he sees a small power play point decline for the rest of the season, his five-on-five production rates should remain fairly constant as long as the Sharks keep shooting and scoring as they are with him on the ice right now, which is a distinct possibility.

All this is to say that even with Burns’s shot decline, he’s a very real threat to be a point-per-game player this year. That’s about as much as we can ask for from any fantasy defenceman.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-updates-on-hedman-raanta-tkachuk-line-shuffling-early-shot-rates-november-8/

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Players' Weekend for the NHL, Salty Blue Jackets, and Buckets

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: The Columbus Blue Jackets – Somebody's feeling a little salty about going all the way from one game to two on NBC's new schedule. (More on the new schedule in a bit.) It's the eyeroll emoji that really sells it

The second star: I has a bucket – Not sure what was funnier, the original photo or the fact that literally everyone Twitter made the same joke about the bucket getting signed by the Oilers.

The first star: This SHL video about rule changes – I can't stop watching this. It's the fist pump that gets me every time. If Tom Wilson starts working in this move every time he blindsides somebody a half hour after they touched the puck I'll admit he's worth every penny.

Be It Resolved

We're closing in on one of the weirder moments on the MLB calendar, as the annual "Players' Weekend" is almost here. The event debuted last year, and its main highlight is that players get to wear their nicknames on their jerseys.

That's… different. You have to give MLB some credit here, as they're basically offering up an open invitation for players to cut loose and show a little personality. It's fun for the players, and everyone gets to sit back and try to figure out what some of the nicknames even mean.

If you've been reading this column all summer, and god bless you if you have, then you're probably figuring that this is the part where we play our weekly round of "the NHL should steal this cool idea from another sport." That's been kind of a theme all offseason, and this feels like a great time to break it out..

But here's the thing. Ultimately, we try to be realists around here. Sure, we'll propose things like radically changing the way powerplays work, or having a special draft where everyone picks Jaromir Jagr, or letting every champion legally kidnap somebody for their Cup parade. But those are things that could actually happen someday.

NHL players volunteering to put cool nicknames on their own jerseys? Never. Zero chance. There's no point even thinking about it. Every player would just use their regular name, while old-school types swooned about how winners don't have personalities. A few players would probably insist that they didn't have a name back there at all, because the team is the only thing that matters, dammit. It would be awful.

Besides, even if the NHL stole baseball's idea and forced the players to take part, the result would just be depressing. Can you imagine an entire weekend of guys skating around with names like "Smither" and "Jonesy" and "Other Jonesy" on their back? It would be embarrassing.

So here's my proposal: We steal MLB's good idea, but then we improve on it. Be it resolved that once a season, we have a player's weekend where every team gets to force one player from another team to wear a specific nickname on their back.

Which player? That would be up to them. They could take a vote on who the victim would be. And then they'd get to choose the nickname that the player had to wear. If I know hockey players, they'd probably spend more time figuring this out than they do on special teams.

Admittedly, we'd have to iron out a few kinks. For example, we'd need some sort of tie-breaking system for when 30 teams all submitted different insults for Matthew Tkachuk as their first choice. And there would probably be some team every year that would use their pick to say something nice about some veteran opponent because they wanted to be "classy" or whatever. We'd deal with that by immediately relegating that team to the ECHL.

Still, how much fun would it be to see who each team in the league decided to target with an embarrassing nickname? And how quickly would you line up to buy an officially licensed Bruins No. 63 jersey with "Rat Face" or whatever on the back?

Maybe we can't steal most of baseball's good ideas, like "not having a salary cap" or "interesting free agency" or "replay that mostly works" or "actually noticing when defensive strategies are out of control." But we can steal this one. After we're done improving it.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

This week's Obscure Player honors go to Swedish goaltender Tommy Soderstrom, for no other reason than reader Nate wrote in to suggest him. Thanks Nate.

If you're like me, the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Soderstrom is the brutal game-winning goal from center ice that sent Belarus to a stunning upset over Sweden in the 2002 Olympics. That's unfair, for a couple of reasons. First, even the best goaltenders gives up the occasional bad goal, and it's wrong to remember any athlete for their lowest moment. But more importantly, that wasn't Soderstrom—that was Tommy Salo. What can I say, Sweden produced too many 1990s goalies named Tommy S.

In addition to not being Tommy Salo, Soderstrom was picked way down in the 11th round of the 1990 draft by the Flyers. He played for Team Sweden at the 1991 Canada Cup, then made his NHL debut in 1992, splitting the Flyers' starting duties with Dominic Roussel. He played reasonably well, but struggled badly as a sophomore, winning just six times in 34 appearances while posting a GAA of 4.01. It didn't help his numbers that his own teammates occasionally scored on him.

Somehow, that made him worthy of being dealt to the Islanders straight up for Ron Hextall in a trade that probably happened mainly because nobody has any recollection of Hextall being an Islander in the first place. Soderstrom would spend two years as the Islanders' starter and wasn't bad, and to this day many fans probably remember his big white Jofa facemask. He once got into a fight with Corey Schwab.

As you can see, he didn't do all that well. But for the record, he didn't get destroyed by Dan Cloutier. That was also Tommy Salo.

Soderstrom would play a single game for the Islanders during the 1996-97 season—according to hockey-reference.com, his appearance lasted all of ten seconds—and that was it for his NHL career. He'd head to the IHL, and then back home to Sweden for several seasons.

According to his Wikipedia page, he apparently appeared on a Swedish reality show in 2014. I don't read Swedish so I don't know what the show is about, but I'm going to just assume it featured him and Tommy Salo living together while doing the Spiderman pointing meme and trying to figure out which one of them it was that Mike Milbury made cry during an arbitration hearing.

Outrage of the Week

The issue: NBC released their 2018-19 schedule. The outrage: Your team isn't on it enough. Is it justified: Kind of, in the sense that fans are fans, and you're supposed to want your team to get as much airtime as possible. Even if it doesn't really affect you—and let's face it, it doesn't, because you still have your local broadcast—it feels like a respect thing. Your team is great, or at least better than everyone thinks, and NBC should love them as much as you do.

Of course, in the real world it can't work that way. There are only so many games to go around. And while it would be nice if the games were handed out based on merit, ratings still matter and some teams do better than others. So sure, the Blackhawks are the most heavily featured team, as always, even though they missed the playoffs last year. And no, you won't see struggling Canadian teams like the Canucks or Senators at all. That's not fair, but life's not fair, and hockey fans know that better than anyone.

Still, the overall schedule is… not bad? I'm going to go with not bad. NBC made some smart moves, including the decision to scrap the Wednesday Night Rivalry that sounded great in theory but never really worked in reality because there hasn't been a good NHL rivalry since 2012. And while they're still giving you the Blackhawks out of a firehose, they've done a better job of spreading the love around. We've even got a game between two Canadian teams on the schedule, as the Leafs and Jets face off in October. That's the sort of matchup the league should want to see promoted, since it features two teams packed with young stars who should be good, and could even end up playing in a Stanley Cup final someday.

We're also getting more of fun teams like the Capitals, Predators, Golden Knights, and Lightning, and less of traditional teams like the Red Wings and Canadiens who figure to be iffy or worse. It doesn't all make sense, and nobody can quite figure out what's going on with the Kings, but it's a decent effort. So yeah, not bad.

Will "not bad" be enough to keep hockey fans from complaining? Of course not, because it's August and the only other things to talk about are Andrej Sekera's achilles tendon and Max Pacioretty's golf tournament. So we squabble about the TV schedule, if only to remind ourselves that meaningful hockey will return some day. That's as it should be. At least until the Senators and Canucks are playing in the Stanley Cup final and NBC can't figure out why the ratings are so low.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Hey, who wants to close things out with a bizarre short film about hockey, made by a Canadian celebrity, and aired at a late-night talk show hosts film festival? Why not. Let's get weird.

I'll be honest, I don't have a really strong grasp on what exactly this is or why it exists. Let's cover the basics. This is a short film that was produced by Michael J. Fox for David Letterman's 2nd Annual Holiday Film Festival, which aired in 1986. The film is called The Ice Man Hummeth. And yeah, it's going to get strange.

Why yes, David Letterman apparently did have his own film festival, or at least a TV special that was presented that way. He had two, in fact. The first aired in 1985, and this one followed in 1986. You can watch the full thing here.

So on to the film. We start things off with Fox arriving at a rink, looking suitably badass given he's fresh off of Back To The Future and is pretty much one of the biggest movie stars in the world at this point. But that doesn't last long, because once he gets to the door he's suddenly a mild-mannered guy in a suit. But he's in a hockey dressing room. But he's not. We've got some sort of Westworld-style dueling timelines deal going here, with Fox as both a hockey tough guy and a classical musician. He's basically David Schultz with slightly more high-brow tastes.

We cut back and forth between the two scenes, including a shot of Hockey Fox's locker, complete with an autographed Letterman photo. That gets the first laugh from the audience, albeit a confused one, as they're clearly waiting for some of that Alex P. Keaton magic. Where's Uncle Ned and his maraschino cherries when you need him?

The next joke gets a better reaction, as Fox has to return a jock strap for something larger. Because the other didn't fit his oversized junk, you see. Look, it's his movie and Back To The Future made $210 million, he can write himself a big package if he wants to.

We get more juxtaposition, until we finally arrive at game time. That leads to a reasonably clever transition from pucks on ice into musical notes on paper as the orchestra warms up. Then it's back to the rink, where Fox's team has been joined by their opponent, who are very clearly wearing Winnipeg Jets uniforms with just enough strategically applied tape to prevent a lawsuit. Players from both teams are constantly threatening to kill each other in that way that happens in 100 percent of 1980s hockey movies, but only like 80 percent of actual 1980s hockey games. OK, fine, 95 percent if it was the Norris.

Also, a mid-80s goaltender makes a save, which is the least realistic part of this whole film.

One note about all of this that's kind of neat—in the comment section from the video, someone shows up who claims to have done the music for the film and explains that he actually had to compose a song that switched back and forth from classical to heavy metal and time it exactly to the final cut. That's kind of cool, and I'm going to assume it's true because I'm pretty sure it's illegal to lie on YouTube.

The referee, who is like eight inches taller than any of the players, drops the puck to start the game, and we instantly go full Rangers/Devils.

The benches empty because it's 1986, and at one point Fox seems to take a swing at the referee. More importantly, careful viewers will have noticed that we've now got a fully classical soundtrack, meaning the clean separation between timelines is starting to break down.

Sure enough, Hockey Fox looks up and realizes that Violin Fox and the rest of the orchestra is now in the stands. That somehow turns our bench-clearing brawl into an ice-dancing spectacle. There's a joke here about going from mid-80s hockey to the 2018 version, but I'm too mature to make it.

Meanwhile, Violin Fox is getting crowded by a fellow musician, and you can probably guess where that's headed. Soon enough, the orchestra is brawling while the hockey players tut-tut about unnecessary violence. Up is down, left is right, Harold Ballard does something nice, and we're done.

In the full version of the show, Fox gives a little more information about how this was all made. The entire project took four weeks, the shooting lasted just two nights, and it all cost less than $40,000. And best of all, he tells a great story about how the musicians couldn't wait to fight each other. It's well worth a watch.

And there you have it: Quite possibly the best artistic interpretation of the marriage between hockey and music every filmed that didn't involve Neil Sheehy.

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: Players' Weekend for the NHL, Salty Blue Jackets, and Buckets published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[andongaustin]

All football fans are scared of something. Be it fate, habit, man or beast. For some, there is the annual spectre of relegation looming in their thoughts; others are constantly afraid of snatching failure from the jaws of success – even after Wenger has left. At United, the fans are in most fear of an inanimate object. No, not Daley Blind, but the fax machine. They dread the beep and whir of an official communication from Real Madrid Club de Futbol, pertaining to the purchase of David de Gea. The ineffectiveness of such an arcane form of communication famously (and fortuitously) put pay to a previous attempted coup, but it has since felt like a glitchy delay of the inevitable: the Spaniard’s return. In their heart of hearts, even the most biased red would concede that for most of his seven year stint at the club, United have been punching with Dave. He has been far too good for the players around him, and deserves better in every respect. Undisputedly the best goalkeeper in the world, he has never had the merest sniff at a Champions League medal. Allied to this, the Madrid native has made no secret of his desire to return home. A product of the Atletico Juvenil, it is obvious he’d have zero qualms about joining their local rivals at the Bernabeu – quite the opposite in fact. Real Madrid is a special draw to anyone of Iberian blood, never mind a son of their streets. Alas, there’s no place like home. Everything calls him back: the sun, the glamour, the culture, the food, the very real prospect of European glory, and proximity to his long-term girlfriend Edurne Garcia – Manchester may be wonderful, but it can’t possibly compete with all of that. Thankfully for everyone associated with United, the stars — and fax toners — have failed to align…just yet. Dave is 27 now, and more than served his time. He has remained extremely patient and serene in spite of the perma-transition going on before him. It would be extremely harsh for anyone of Old Trafford allegiance to do anything other than thank him wholeheartedly and wish him the very best were he to return to the city that reared him. That said, perhaps it needn’t end that way. More so, perhaps it shouldn’t end that way. Everyone has a story, but until the words are written – prior to the jets of ink hitting the fax roll – perspective can shift in a way that causes all future plans to jam and recalibrate. None of us are hostages to fortune forever; we eventually arrive at a point that allows us to push for what we most determinedly want. The only thing that can stop us is a change of mind. De Gea arrived at the World Cup as the universally accepted number one number one, playing for the expert’s choice team to reign supreme. His neck may have been barren of ribbons, barring an FA Cup losers’ medal, but his chest was swollen from rave reviews and platitudes. If nothing else, Manchester always lets its heroes know they’re ace and appreciated. Sadly, things in Russia did not pan out quite as he would have hoped. Real Madrid, in their infinite and arrogant wisdom, chose to derail all of Spain’s best-laid plans by swooping for Julen Lopetegui – leading to his untimely sacking. This directly contributed to a disjointed and all-too-brief campaign under Fernando Hierro. They topped their group, but only managed a single victory – against Iran – before losing to the hosts on penalties. Of course such failure demanded a scapegoat, with Florentino Perez the obvious candidate. But no, the Spanish media rounded rather bizarrely on De Gea. He was condemned as ineffectual and weak – and the prime reason why his country only lasted a fortnight. So much so that Edurne received online abuse for her partner’s perceived failures. Foremost in their criticism were Marca – famed for being Real’s media mouthpiece. Having identified De Gea as the convenient stooge to distract from Florentino’s sabotage, they got to work on building a negative narrative. Rating him the very lowest of all of Spain’s performers in Russia, they concluded that the United man had “lost his position as the country’s undisputed number one.” Understandably, Dave was miffed. He succinctly and pointedly responded: “To whom supported, suffered and criticised us with respect, thanks. We’re f****d but we’ll get up again and never give up.” The apology was sincere, but so was the obvious irritation. United fans, old hands at providing sanctuary to World Cup bête noires, advised he ‘fuck ’em and come home’. That word again: home. There is nothing nice about being labelled a national failure. It is not a positive thing. We certainly didn’t want one of our own to be subjected to such torment. However, if there’s a silver lining to the cloud, it is that the greatest goalie in the world may now have a different sense of where he truly belongs — and where he can be most happy. Dave did not deserve the very focused criticism he received. He was essentially thrown under the bus for the sins of others. In the process, he got a small taste of what he could face were he to swap Manchester for Madrid. Old Trafford enveloped him with love and support during his most vulnerable moments; Spain spat on his name for not stopping penalties. You don’t need me to tell you how good our boy is – you already know. I could wax lyrical about how he has saved our skins time and time again. I could waste paragraphs expanding on the obvious — that he is quite possibly the closest that any of us will get to witnessing a real life superhero. But why try to articulate what you’ve seen with your own eyes? We absolutely know and appreciate that we have a rare gem in our possession. And we never fail to let him and world know that. Each stunning save is celebrated like a winning goal, whilst the rare fumble is forgiven in an instant. You won’t find a bad word said of the man when he fails to reach a goal-bound effort — there’s no white hankies here. In targeting De Gea as an outlet for their pent up frustrations, perhaps the Spanish and Madrid-based media have done us a massive favour. Maybe they’ve caused our number one to reassess where he feels most comfortable and accepted. To use a quote often attributed to one of Manchester’s finest sons, it’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at. Fuck ’em and come home, Dave. You’re safe with us just as much as we’re safe with you. Republik of Mancunia

http://austinakwa.blogspot.com/2018/08/theres-no-place-like-home-for-de-gea.html

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DGB Grab Bag: Players' Weekend for the NHL, Salty Blue Jackets, and Buckets

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: The Columbus Blue Jackets – Somebody's feeling a little salty about going all the way from one game to two on NBC's new schedule. (More on the new schedule in a bit.) It's the eyeroll emoji that really sells it

The second star: I has a bucket – Not sure what was funnier, the original photo or the fact that literally everyone Twitter made the same joke about the bucket getting signed by the Oilers.

The first star: This SHL video about rule changes – I can't stop watching this. It's the fist pump that gets me every time. If Tom Wilson starts working in this move every time he blindsides somebody a half hour after they touched the puck I'll admit he's worth every penny.

Be It Resolved

We're closing in on one of the weirder moments on the MLB calendar, as the annual "Players' Weekend" is almost here. The event debuted last year, and its main highlight is that players get to wear their nicknames on their jerseys.

That's… different. You have to give MLB some credit here, as they're basically offering up an open invitation for players to cut loose and show a little personality. It's fun for the players, and everyone gets to sit back and try to figure out what some of the nicknames even mean.

If you've been reading this column all summer, and god bless you if you have, then you're probably figuring that this is the part where we play our weekly round of "the NHL should steal this cool idea from another sport." That's been kind of a theme all offseason, and this feels like a great time to break it out..

But here's the thing. Ultimately, we try to be realists around here. Sure, we'll propose things like radically changing the way powerplays work, or having a special draft where everyone picks Jaromir Jagr, or letting every champion legally kidnap somebody for their Cup parade. But those are things that could actually happen someday.

NHL players volunteering to put cool nicknames on their own jerseys? Never. Zero chance. There's no point even thinking about it. Every player would just use their regular name, while old-school types swooned about how winners don't have personalities. A few players would probably insist that they didn't have a name back there at all, because the team is the only thing that matters, dammit. It would be awful.

Besides, even if the NHL stole baseball's idea and forced the players to take part, the result would just be depressing. Can you imagine an entire weekend of guys skating around with names like "Smither" and "Jonesy" and "Other Jonesy" on their back? It would be embarrassing.

So here's my proposal: We steal MLB's good idea, but then we improve on it. Be it resolved that once a season, we have a player's weekend where every team gets to force one player from another team to wear a specific nickname on their back.

Which player? That would be up to them. They could take a vote on who the victim would be. And then they'd get to choose the nickname that the player had to wear. If I know hockey players, they'd probably spend more time figuring this out than they do on special teams.

Admittedly, we'd have to iron out a few kinks. For example, we'd need some sort of tie-breaking system for when 30 teams all submitted different insults for Matthew Tkachuk as their first choice. And there would probably be some team every year that would use their pick to say something nice about some veteran opponent because they wanted to be "classy" or whatever. We'd deal with that by immediately relegating that team to the ECHL.

Still, how much fun would it be to see who each team in the league decided to target with an embarrassing nickname? And how quickly would you line up to buy an officially licensed Bruins No. 63 jersey with "Rat Face" or whatever on the back?

Maybe we can't steal most of baseball's good ideas, like "not having a salary cap" or "interesting free agency" or "replay that mostly works" or "actually noticing when defensive strategies are out of control." But we can steal this one. After we're done improving it.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

This week's Obscure Player honors go to Swedish goaltender Tommy Soderstrom, for no other reason than reader Nate wrote in to suggest him. Thanks Nate.

If you're like me, the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Soderstrom is the brutal game-winning goal from center ice that sent Belarus to a stunning upset over Sweden in the 2002 Olympics. That's unfair, for a couple of reasons. First, even the best goaltenders gives up the occasional bad goal, and it's wrong to remember any athlete for their lowest moment. But more importantly, that wasn't Soderstrom—that was Tommy Salo. What can I say, Sweden produced too many 1990s goalies named Tommy S.

In addition to not being Tommy Salo, Soderstrom was picked way down in the 11th round of the 1990 draft by the Flyers. He played for Team Sweden at the 1991 Canada Cup, then made his NHL debut in 1992, splitting the Flyers' starting duties with Dominic Roussel. He played reasonably well, but struggled badly as a sophomore, winning just six times in 34 appearances while posting a GAA of 4.01. It didn't help his numbers that his own teammates occasionally scored on him.

Somehow, that made him worthy of being dealt to the Islanders straight up for Ron Hextall in a trade that probably happened mainly because nobody has any recollection of Hextall being an Islander in the first place. Soderstrom would spend two years as the Islanders' starter and wasn't bad, and to this day many fans probably remember his big white Jofa facemask. He once got into a fight with Corey Schwab.

As you can see, he didn't do all that well. But for the record, he didn't get destroyed by Dan Cloutier. That was also Tommy Salo.

Soderstrom would play a single game for the Islanders during the 1996-97 season—according to hockey-reference.com, his appearance lasted all of ten seconds—and that was it for his NHL career. He'd head to the IHL, and then back home to Sweden for several seasons.

According to his Wikipedia page, he apparently appeared on a Swedish reality show in 2014. I don't read Swedish so I don't know what the show is about, but I'm going to just assume it featured him and Tommy Salo living together while doing the Spiderman pointing meme and trying to figure out which one of them it was that Mike Milbury made cry during an arbitration hearing.

Outrage of the Week

The issue: NBC released their 2018-19 schedule. The outrage: Your team isn't on it enough. Is it justified: Kind of, in the sense that fans are fans, and you're supposed to want your team to get as much airtime as possible. Even if it doesn't really affect you—and let's face it, it doesn't, because you still have your local broadcast—it feels like a respect thing. Your team is great, or at least better than everyone thinks, and NBC should love them as much as you do.

Of course, in the real world it can't work that way. There are only so many games to go around. And while it would be nice if the games were handed out based on merit, ratings still matter and some teams do better than others. So sure, the Blackhawks are the most heavily featured team, as always, even though they missed the playoffs last year. And no, you won't see struggling Canadian teams like the Canucks or Senators at all. That's not fair, but life's not fair, and hockey fans know that better than anyone.

Still, the overall schedule is… not bad? I'm going to go with not bad. NBC made some smart moves, including the decision to scrap the Wednesday Night Rivalry that sounded great in theory but never really worked in reality because there hasn't been a good NHL rivalry since 2012. And while they're still giving you the Blackhawks out of a firehose, they've done a better job of spreading the love around. We've even got a game between two Canadian teams on the schedule, as the Leafs and Jets face off in October. That's the sort of matchup the league should want to see promoted, since it features two teams packed with young stars who should be good, and could even end up playing in a Stanley Cup final someday.

We're also getting more of fun teams like the Capitals, Predators, Golden Knights, and Lightning, and less of traditional teams like the Red Wings and Canadiens who figure to be iffy or worse. It doesn't all make sense, and nobody can quite figure out what's going on with the Kings, but it's a decent effort. So yeah, not bad.

Will "not bad" be enough to keep hockey fans from complaining? Of course not, because it's August and the only other things to talk about are Andrej Sekera's achilles tendon and Max Pacioretty's golf tournament. So we squabble about the TV schedule, if only to remind ourselves that meaningful hockey will return some day. That's as it should be. At least until the Senators and Canucks are playing in the Stanley Cup final and NBC can't figure out why the ratings are so low.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Hey, who wants to close things out with a bizarre short film about hockey, made by a Canadian celebrity, and aired at a late-night talk show hosts film festival? Why not. Let's get weird.

I'll be honest, I don't have a really strong grasp on what exactly this is or why it exists. Let's cover the basics. This is a short film that was produced by Michael J. Fox for David Letterman's 2nd Annual Holiday Film Festival, which aired in 1986. The film is called The Ice Man Hummeth. And yeah, it's going to get strange.

Why yes, David Letterman apparently did have his own film festival, or at least a TV special that was presented that way. He had two, in fact. The first aired in 1985, and this one followed in 1986. You can watch the full thing here.

So on to the film. We start things off with Fox arriving at a rink, looking suitably badass given he's fresh off of Back To The Future and is pretty much one of the biggest movie stars in the world at this point. But that doesn't last long, because once he gets to the door he's suddenly a mild-mannered guy in a suit. But he's in a hockey dressing room. But he's not. We've got some sort of Westworld-style dueling timelines deal going here, with Fox as both a hockey tough guy and a classical musician. He's basically David Schultz with slightly more high-brow tastes.

We cut back and forth between the two scenes, including a shot of Hockey Fox's locker, complete with an autographed Letterman photo. That gets the first laugh from the audience, albeit a confused one, as they're clearly waiting for some of that Alex P. Keaton magic. Where's Uncle Ned and his maraschino cherries when you need him?

The next joke gets a better reaction, as Fox has to return a jock strap for something larger. Because the other didn't fit his oversized junk, you see. Look, it's his movie and Back To The Future made $210 million, he can write himself a big package if he wants to.

We get more juxtaposition, until we finally arrive at game time. That leads to a reasonably clever transition from pucks on ice into musical notes on paper as the orchestra warms up. Then it's back to the rink, where Fox's team has been joined by their opponent, who are very clearly wearing Winnipeg Jets uniforms with just enough strategically applied tape to prevent a lawsuit. Players from both teams are constantly threatening to kill each other in that way that happens in 100 percent of 1980s hockey movies, but only like 80 percent of actual 1980s hockey games. OK, fine, 95 percent if it was the Norris.

Also, a mid-80s goaltender makes a save, which is the least realistic part of this whole film.

One note about all of this that's kind of neat—in the comment section from the video, someone shows up who claims to have done the music for the film and explains that he actually had to compose a song that switched back and forth from classical to heavy metal and time it exactly to the final cut. That's kind of cool, and I'm going to assume it's true because I'm pretty sure it's illegal to lie on YouTube.

The referee, who is like eight inches taller than any of the players, drops the puck to start the game, and we instantly go full Rangers/Devils.

The benches empty because it's 1986, and at one point Fox seems to take a swing at the referee. More importantly, careful viewers will have noticed that we've now got a fully classical soundtrack, meaning the clean separation between timelines is starting to break down.

Sure enough, Hockey Fox looks up and realizes that Violin Fox and the rest of the orchestra is now in the stands. That somehow turns our bench-clearing brawl into an ice-dancing spectacle. There's a joke here about going from mid-80s hockey to the 2018 version, but I'm too mature to make it.

Meanwhile, Violin Fox is getting crowded by a fellow musician, and you can probably guess where that's headed. Soon enough, the orchestra is brawling while the hockey players tut-tut about unnecessary violence. Up is down, left is right, Harold Ballard does something nice, and we're done.

In the full version of the show, Fox gives a little more information about how this was all made. The entire project took four weeks, the shooting lasted just two nights, and it all cost less than $40,000. And best of all, he tells a great story about how the musicians couldn't wait to fight each other. It's well worth a watch.

And there you have it: Quite possibly the best artistic interpretation of the marriage between hockey and music every filmed that didn't involve Neil Sheehy.

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: Players' Weekend for the NHL, Salty Blue Jackets, and Buckets published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[thrashermaxey]

20 Fantasy Hockey Thoughts

Every Sunday until the start of the 2018-19 regular season, we'll share 20 Fantasy Thoughts from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week's "Daily Ramblings".

Writers: Michael Clifford, Ian Gooding, Cam Robinson, and Dobber

  1. The Blues got a steal of a deal by signing Robby Fabbri to a one-year contract worth less than a million dollars. Just goes to show how much an injury can cost you, in this case financially. It was Fabbri’s second ACL injury and he hasn’t played a game for the Blues in 17 months. So, the risk is obvious. But, we all know how good he is and every one of us fantasy owners have him written – in permanent marker – into St. Louis’ top-six.

If he plays 80 games, he should flirt with 65 points. But, therein lies the problem – will he play 20, 40, 60 or 80 games? The Fantasy Guide that picks the correct amount of games will have the most accurate Fabbri projection. And there is no formula on earth that can do that, it’s just blind luck but that’s how us prognosticators get graded! That’s why I push the other features of my Guide – more than just projections. Anyway, with Fabbri you know what you’re getting, and I think his points-per-game in this improved St. Louis lineup will be around 0.8. He’ll start slow and finish strong. (july4)

  2. The Chicago Blackhawks most recent first-round selection, Adam Boqvist, has signed with the London Knights of the OHL for next season. Boqvist was a high selection for the Knights in the 2017 Import Draft but decided to stay in Sweden last season. There, he ended up bouncing around between the top junior league (SuperElit), the second tier (Allsvenskan), and the top professional circuit (SHL). Boqvist struggled to gain traction in the pro ranks but dominated his age group at international events.

This move is terrific for London and OHL fans in general and for the Hawks. They get to have their top prospect marinate on the small ice, in a tremendous program, and close to the organization where they can have more influence. The 2018 eighth overall selection has infinite potential as a point-producing defender. He’s the type of player that Chicago is desperately searching for now that Duncan Keith’s tooth has gone long.

  3. Whichever team Erik Karlsson ends up on (including Ottawa), the forward corps will all see a major boon. Just insert the top forwards from whatever team and assume they’ll each see a healthy uptick.

The same should go for the goaltenders, as well. While Karlsson gets tabbed as an offensive defenseman, that shouldn’t indicate that his defensive prowess is troubled. He possesses the puck at an extreme rate. The more your team has the puck, the fewer opportunities the opposition will have against. The 28-year-old has never posted a negative relative CorsiFor percentage at even-strength. In his previous four seasons, he’s clicked at three percent or higher. He’s also pretty good with some other possession metrics, too. The real kicker comes via the top fantasy defenders. This is where it may get ugly … Read on here … (july7)

  4. Anyone who reads my Ramblings knows I’m a fan of Anaheim’s Ondrej Kase. He put up solid underlying numbers in limited minutes as a rookie in 2016-17. His 2017-18 season saw him pop 20 goals in just 66 games, playing fewer than 14 minutes a game. In fact, he was the only player to score at least 20 goals with fewer than 1000 total minutes of ice time in 2017-18. And he didn’t do it with a sky-high shooting percentage either, coming in at 13.7 percent.

Just how good has Kase been over the last two years in doing the little things to help generate offense? He’s been, uh, all-world good … Read on here … (july6)

  5. Perhaps why Colin Miller seems like such a bargain for a 40-point defenseman is that prior to 2017-18, he had never scored more than 16 points in a season over his previous two seasons (only 61 and 42 games played in those two seasons). If he can maintain this production, then his new contract (four-year, $15.5 million) could be a steal for Vegas as they attempt to build on their unusually successful first season. Upon being selected by the expansion Golden Knights, Miller’s ice time increased about three and a half minutes per game, with a power-play ice time increase of over a minute per game.

Of course, one ongoing concern for Miller owners is the growing presence of Shea Theodore on the first-unit power play. During the playoffs, Theodore averaged more power-play time (3:01 power play TOI/GP) than any other Vegas skater, including Miller. Theodore possesses higher offensive upside, so I’d lean toward him as the blueline option should Vegas go with a 4F-1D format on the first-unit power play. Still, Miller should be a solid option again next season now that he is a fixture on the Vegas defense, particularly in multicategory leagues that count hits. (july8)

  6. Andreas Athanasiou is kind of a special case. He’s great at generating offense, whether it be getting in or out of the zone with control or using his flat-out breakaway speed to elude defenders. He’s not a particularly strong playmaker but given Detroit’s inability to score in recent years, having a guy who can break open a game single-handedly is nice to have.

It’s a matter of how he’s used. Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill, as fantasy owners know, isn’t very kind to young players not named Dylan Larkin, so Athanasiou could be anywhere from the first line to the fourth line on any given night. All the same, Athanasiou saw his shot rate jump into the top-20 across the league last year, just behind names like Kevin Fiala and Evander Kane. Shooting as much as he does with his skill set should bode well for him crossing 20 goals next year. How much further he goes beyond that is up to Blashill. (july6)

  7. In Boone Jenner, the Blue Jackets locked up one of their core forwards but not the one maybe fantasy owners (and Blue Jackets fans) were hoping. There is still the question of the Artemi Panarin contract situation but once Zach Werenski and Oliver Bjorkstrand are extended (the former has one year left on his ELC), the young core of this team will be around for another few years at least.

Jenner has been a fan favorite for fantasy hockey owners for those stout hits totals alone. Four of his five seasons have seen totals of over 200 hits and the fifth season was 102 hits in an injury-shortened 31-game campaign. Add in 15 or so goals with very good shot rates and Jenner has all the tools necessary to be a very valuable multi-category performer.

The question is whether Jenner can get back to the 30-goal plateau, or something close, as he did in 2015-16. Read on here … (july6)

  8. The Montreal Canadiens were dealt a significant blow when the team announced Shea Weber would be undergoing knee surgery, which would keep him off the ice for 5-6 months. Best guess right now is to not expect him in the lineup until Christmas.

While the P.K. Subban-Weber trade has been debated since it occurred, the fact is Weber was still a good defenseman nonetheless. However, after missing four months of games last year and three months this year, the Habs are now looking at Weber not playing a full year again until his age-34 season. At which point they’ll have seven more years with an AAV over $7.8-million. Not great.

Good news for Jeff Petry’s dynasty owners, though. He was really good for fantasy purposes once Weber left the lineup in mid-December, posting 31 points in 49 games (17 of those points on the power play), averaging over 24 minutes a night, and over 2.5 shots per game. He also had 82 hits and 88 blocked shots in that span. I suppose if the Habs want to be bold they can hand those PP minutes to Victor Mete but given how good Petry was, I don’t see that happening. Petry’s average draft position (ADP) will be interesting. Assuming Weber can return sometime around Christmas, he will probably be slotted back on the top PP unit, relegating Petry back to the second unit. Fantasy owners might only get a half-year from Petry in that cushy slotting, and even then, it’s not guaranteed he replicates his success down the stretch in 2017-18. (july6)

  9. The Flyers have signed RFA goalie Alex Lyon to a two-year extension. Because of the team’s issues with injured goalies, Lyon managed to get into 11 games for the Flyers. He figures to start the season in the AHL, although don’t be surprised if you hear from him again in 2018-19. Michal Neuvirth is a Certified Band-Aid Boy and Brian Elliott hasn’t played 50 games since the 2010-11 season. But, before you get too excited about Lyon, remember that the Flyers have Carter Hart, who should get a long look in the AHL this season. (july8)

  10. I really like the Robin Lehner signing for the Islanders (Mike Clifford breaks it down with his thoughts here, which I agree with). The Isles have two of the best goaltending prospects in all of hockey with Ilya Sorokin and Linus Soderstrom, but neither will be available this season and likely not next year either. So, they need a stopgap to get them to 2020. A Thomas Greiss – Robin Lehner tandem is probably just as mediocre as it was last year with Jaroslav Halak instead of Lehner. Except Lehner is clearly signed to be a backup rather than a 1A, and to me that takes the pressure off both goaltenders. And with Lehner’s injury track record, each time he looks to be stealing that No.1 job he’ll pull a groin or something and Greiss’s job becomes safe again.

I think the two of them will enjoy moderate success in a 51-31 split. If Lehner impresses, as he seemed to in the second half last season, then his next contract could be another shot as a No.1. Between January 7 and March 10, over 19 games, Lehner posted a 0.912 SV%, so he is capable of stringing together decent numbers on a bad team. (You can use our fast goalie calculator and set custom dates to get his stats in any of the player profiles – Robin’s is here). (july4)

  11. The Islanders also acquired Matt Martin from the Leafs for nothing. Eamon McAdam went the other way but that was just so the Isles wouldn’t be adding a contract under their allotted 50. So, it was just a free player, giving the Leafs more cap room.

Life isn’t over for Isles fans. I think they were a 14th-talented team last year that underachieved. Losing John Tavares just knocks them down to maybe 20th. Their goalie tandem is okay and under Barry Trotz I think we’ll be shocked by how much Lehner’s and Greiss’s numbers improve. If Ryan Pulock and Josh Ho Sang take the next step towards stardom, they’ll have a good defense corps, and the forwards aren’t horrible:

Anders Lee – Mat Barzal – Josh Bailey Ho Sang – Brock Nelson – Jordan Eberle Andrew Ladd – Valtteri Filppula –Anthony Beauvillier Leo Komarov– Casey Cizikas – Cal Clutterbuck * With Martin and Tom Kuhnhackl as extras

With Top-5 coaching, this team will surprise. It will over-achieve, as I stated above it’s a 20th talented team (just off the top of my head) but I wouldn’t be shocked if they push for a playoff spot just from coaching alone. How many times did Barry Trotz do that with Nashville when they didn’t have much talent? (july4)

  12. Since Ryan O’Reilly became a top-line player for Colorado back in 2011-12, he has posted six straight 82-game seasons of at least 55 points. He is one of just 13 players with six straight 55-point seasons, the others are: Patrick Kane, Alex Ovechkin, Jamie Benn, Sidney Crosby, Ryan Getzlaf, Claude Giroux, Phil Kessel, Evgeni Malkin, Joe Pavelski, Tyler Seguin, John Tavares, and Blake Wheeler. Basically, O’Reilly has been among the consistently elite in fantasy production for several years, though without the upside.

O’Reilly’s fantasy value will come down to role, usage, and power-play time. Assuming O’Reilly stays in the top-six in St. Louis, he’s looking at playing with Vladimir Tarasenko, Jaden Schwartz, Robby Fabbri, David Perron, or Alex Steen. They also have Jordan Kyrou and Klim Kostin knocking on the door. It’s night and day.

It’s hard not to imagine O’Reilly being used in a defensive role, top-line assignments when the team has last change, as well as a bevy of D-zone draws given his faceoff prowess. My concern is that O’Reilly doesn’t skate with Tarasenko or Schwartz, but rather Steen, Dmitrij Jaskin, or Perron, and is used to eat all the tough minutes while allowing Brayden Schenn’s line to be a go-between and Tyler Bozak’s trio is given the sheltered minutes. That last statement is almost assured. Not that defensive assignments are anything new to O’Reilly, he’s built a career off them. Just that there is a difference between playing tweener minutes with Tarasenko or playing tough minutes with Perron.

O’Reilly has never been much of a roto contributor. Outside of leagues that count faceoff wins, there isn’t much to offer. That means few PIMs, hits, or blocked shots. He has started shooting more in recent seasons and that’s not an aberration; his individual shot attempt rate at five-on-five has climbed two straight years. His value lies in either points-only leagues or leagues that count faceoff wins. But, things are looking very bright indeed. He should be able to at least replicate his 2017-18 season provided he plays 80 games and has a realistic chance of cracking 70 points for the first time in his career. (july3)

  13. James Neal signed a five-year deal with the Flames. You can read Dobber’s analysis here. All I’ll say about this for now is that Calgary did a good job bolstering their forward depth (even if it was at the expense of an elite defenseman in Dougie Hamilton) but this could be a headache for lineup combinations all year. It seemed like Elias Lindholm was the guy to slot with Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan, and then quotes came out that Matthew Tkachuk might play the right side. Now, throw Neal into the mix. Outside of Monahan/Gaudreau on the top line, and Mikael Backlund centering the second line, I’m not sure if any particular combination is going to be reliable. (july3)

  14. It was always a near-certainty that Joe Thornton would return to the Sharks. Thornton, now 39 years old, is coming off significant knee problems in each of the last two years. You hate to say this might be it, but it’s a wonder how many years he has left given all these issues.

It’ll be curious to see Thornton’s usage. After the acquisition of Evander Kane, the trio of Kane, Joe Pavelski, and Joonas Donskoi was downright dominant in limited ice time together. The duo of Tomas Hertl and Logan Couture seem like a lock to stay together, so will Thornton be used in a lesser role at five-on-five? Or, will he be right back to the top line, pushing Donskoi down the lineup? Can Thornton play over 18 minutes a night at this point? Questions without answers just yet. (july3)

  15. The Habs turned themselves into possible Cup contenders after … I’m sorry, I can’t keep going and keep a straight face. Habs fans: keep the faith. All big-league teams go through down times like this, just hang in there. Montreal brought back a fan favorite in Tomas Plekanec and added a decent depth winger in Joel Armia. I wouldn’t mind Kenny Agostino as a possible ‘next PA Parenteau’, except the Habs don’t have a John Tavares to turn Agostino into a Parenteau. So, that AHL experiment doesn’t look promising. I do like Montreal’s draft selection of Jesperi Kotkaniemi, and their focus should be on prospects and picks. They should use the Ryan O’Reilly deal as a blueprint for what they should try to get back for Max Pacioretty. (july2)

  16. The Red Wings refuse to go into full rebuild mode, opting instead to tread water. Re-signing Mike Green and bringing back Thomas Vanek strikes me as pointless, though Vanek can be traded at the deadline for some assets. But, Green? As for Jonathan Bernier, I think he makes a sneaky-good add because I think he can become Detroit’s starter by next year. In 2018-19, however, it’s hard to have a good starter when the team doesn’t win many games. But, keeper leaguers take note: I feel that Bernier found his starting job, he’ll just have to outplay Jimmy Howard and prove it. (july2)

  17. I feel like, in order for the Blackhawks to be serious contenders again, then they need to effectively replace the two rocks on defense in Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook. So, I’m not sure why Chris Kunitz was signed. I get bringing in veteran Cam Ward to help stabilize the net, which was a big issue last year. And Brandon Manning is just their usual low-minute defenseman signing that they do every year. But, there’s no magic savior on defense in the free agent market. They’re stuck trading for a solution. It’s a good thing Henri Jokiharju is coming soon – he’ll be a stud worthy of the top pairing. As I write this, Chicago has the least cap room in the NHL at about $2 million. (july2)

  18. Jaroslav Halak is a great backup, and as good as Anton Khudobin was last year, I think Halak is even better. I think Boston’s depth signings were solid (Joakim Nordstrom, Chris Wagner), while adding John Moore gives them five enviable defensemen plus two more good bottom pairing guys. The Bruins didn’t have to do much because their rookies did so well last year and now they have added Ryan Donato. (july2)

  19. Well, what can I say? The Sabres are no longer going to employ a bunch of AHLers to fill out the roster. Casey Mittelstadt has allowed them to trade Ryan O’Reilly, which injects three players into the roster in place of one. If you add in the Conor Sheary acquisition and the Rasmus Dahlin draft pick and I’d say the Sabres get the Gold Medal for most improved team over the past month. I’m not sure Carter Hutton is an upgrade to Robin Lehner but at least he stays healthy – and I really like Linus Ullmark, so I think the team will be covered in net. (july2)

  20. I’ve always liked Anton Rodin as a prospect but his bad luck with injuries derailed his development and the Ducks are too deep for him to crack the lineup, barring a couple of key injuries to top-sixers and disappointing camps from top prospects. They also signed a good depth defenseman in Luke Schenn, and a No.4 goalie in Jared Coreau (I think Kevin Boyle is a promising prospect goalie who is probably a better option than Ryan Miller if he ever gets a chance to show it). (july2)

  Have a good week, folks!!

  from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-home/20-fantasy-hockey-thoughts/20-fantasy-hockey-thoughts-31/

[flauntpage]

The Wayne Train Might Be Leaving the Station and I’m Bummed

Flyers Twitter was abuzz on Tuesday night with trade rumors surrounding fan-favorite Wayne Simmonds. Michael Russo of The Athletic fanned the flames with this blurb about possible NHL trades:

“Multiple sources tell me the Flyers are gearing to potentially trade Wayne Simmonds. He’s a year from free agency and coming off a 24-goal, injury-hindered season. He scored 120 goals the four seasons before that, is big, is tough (the guy caved in Wild winger Eric Nystrom’s face once during a fight as a King), is a leader. He’s a right-shot wing and makes a reasonable $5 million with an even more reasonable $3.975 million cap hit. He has a 12-team no-trade clause, per capfriendly.com.”

While plenty of fans seemed to be caught off-guard by the notion that the Flyers could consider trading such an integral piece of the team, this news is nothing new to listeners of Snow the Goalie. Our Flyers beat writer Anthony SanFilippo and I have been talking about this potential move for weeks, and in our recent exclusive interview with Flyers GM Ron Hextall, we heard a few things that may have alluded to it.

Hextall on the PK, improving from within, and bringing up prospects:

“You got to be careful because you get a roster size at 23 spots in your roster and you got to count your players and you don’t want to box kids out that may be ready for the next step. So it’s a juggling act, you know, you might look at acquisitions. Can we move a player for player to get a little better penalty kill or maybe not as much five-on-five production? We’ll look at all that. I truly believe we can improve from within the last 20, 21, 22, 23 games our penalty kill was much better. So I feel like we can improve from within.”

On trades, contract length, and salary cap implications:

“Well, first of all, that evaluation (making a big splash in FA/trade) is nonstop. Okay. Can we add one player takes us to this level that’s a nonstop evaluation that happens on a certain and a weekly basis. Now in saying that, that doesn’t mean you’re going to have to go out and make the big splash. Sometimes you can just say, “Okay, we got this coming here, he’s going to fill this box, we’ve got this coming and he’s going to fill that box. So you gotta be really careful where you say, “Okay, we need to fill this box,” but yet in a year we got a player coming that’s going to fill that box. Now what are we going to do with the player that’s coming now? So it’s a real juggling act where you’re looking at term, any asset you acquire, term is important. Do you want a guy for five years? You want a guy for, for one year to bridge where we’re going here or you know, player actually assigned to a three year deal because you feel like in two years this kid’s come and then he can, you know, essentially take that box? And again you mentioned the salary cap. That’s a big part of it. So it’s a juggling act. It’s not easy. You try and evaluate as much as you can and be correct as many times as possible.”

The Flyers are entering an off-season with roughly $17 million in cap space they could use on a marquee free agent like the Islanders’ John Tavares or as part of a trade – with a subsequent extension – for Ottawa Senators defenseman Erik Karlsson. Anthony and I have been outlining potential trade scenarios for the latter on Snow the Goalie, including a package of the 14th and/or 19th overall pick in Friday’s NHL Draft along with a veteran such as Simmonds or defenseman Radko Gudas.

As for this most recent development, Anthony had the following to say:

Context: Trading Wayne Simmonds is not going to be popular, but it’s the right thing to do. Simmonds’ primary worth is on the power play. However, with Nolan Patrick emerging as a strong net-front presence on the top PP unit in Simmonds’ absence last year, Simmonds would be relegated to second-PP duty. The Flyers don’t see enough ice for him to get enough ice time to make him relevant. His 5-on-5 play has dropped off some and although he can still kill penalties, that isn’t the role you need Wayne Simmonds to play.

Potential suitors: There are some teams who are on the cusp of contending for a Stanley Cup, or who are already in the conversation, who could view Simmonds as a PP upgrade. Simmonds has an unknown 12-team list he can’t be traded to, so I don’t know if any of these teams are on there, but I can definitely see Nashville, San Jose and, yes, even his former team in L.A. having interest. A surprise team could be St. Louis, who had a down year but could get back in contention with a couple moves like this.

Trade value: What does Simmonds net you? Likely another draft pick and maybe a useable depth player in return. Could he be packaged with one of the first rounders as part of a move up in the draft? That’s a real possibility as well.

Conclusion: Moving Simmonds gives Hextall a lot of flexibility – both with the cap and the roster. Some fans won’t like the idea, but it’s definitely a good one from this perspective.

Simmonds’ blue-collar mentality and willingness to stand up for his teammates has endeared him to the fans of the Orange and Black. Off the ice, Simmonds has contributed to the Philadelphia community with his “Wayne’s Warriors” program:

“For 20 games this season, men and women of the armed forces will be invited to be guests of Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds in his private balcony suite at the Wells Fargo Center. Each military organization will receive 12 game tickets, 3 parking passes, catered food & beverage as well as well as a welcome recognition on the scoreboard declaring them “Wayne’s Warriors” that evening. To nominate a group for Wayne’s Warrior suite, fill out the form below.”

He’s also established an annual charity event to give back to his hometown of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada via his “Wayne’s Road Hockey Warriors” program. Per the NHLPA, “WRHW is committed to helping underprivileged youth pursue their hockey dreams.” Simmonds’ importance to the game as a man of color cannot be understated and his piece on Willie O’Ree for The Players’ Tribune stands as one of the best pieces I’ve read on the pressures and difficulties a minority player faces when attempting to break into the NHL.

If the Flyers choose to move on from Simmonds due to cap reasons or Anthony’s aforementioned on-ice fit issues, I couldn’t blame them. I would, however, be bummed to lose a great player to watch in a Flyers’ sweater and an even better man off the ice.

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