tas

dude, your argument doesn't work. demko is 12th in the nhl with 3.5 goals saved above expected. ullmark is 29th in the league with -3.6 goals saved above expected. I'm not a fancy stats guy usually, but that's a wide gap and pretty cut and dry.

nah, it really sucks. bury it, pretend it never existed.

imagine when they're actually spending the $20 to go to a game though.

johnny canuck needs to fade back into obscurity.

also, nice statement from esche. cool and interesting to read the specific call out to chris gear. makes you wonder if he's next in line when benning gets the axe. edit: also, has anyone thrown aviators out there yet? it's gotta be the abbotsford aviators.

predictions: 1. benji and frank didn't see eye to eye on this. francesco saw a revenue stream, benning saw pissing away a better hockey situation. I have no basis for this theory aside from hunch. 2. it'll be hugely successful, at least financially, and at least for the first while. 3. it will become the cool thing to be the hockey hipster that trashes the canucks while insisting he's a better, more knowledgeable fan because he goes to ahl games to watch the prospects instead. we'll have 5000 jd burkes.

what's cole cassels up to these days?

man, how many of these have we got left? bring on the offseason!

I'd argue any time this guy opens his mouth honestly.

wait, is this a hockey forum?

I'm a trivia guy, but that wasn't fun at all.

could be that he'd been repeatedly exonerated as opposed to repeatedly convicted, imprisoned, and deported from several countries?

the whole child rape thing is a tough stigma to shake.

good to know. thanks Deb. I've been thinking about buying his book, maybe I will.

ken dryden wrote an excellent piece a few years back about bettman, and the things about him that don't come through on camera.

do you have a cute little trumpian nickname for him too to go with the rest of your schtick? guilty gary? greasy gary?

I bet it's more the mannerisms than the man.

-1, not -7. and I should have said bottom six plus extras. michaelis, graovac, bailey (obviously not current), highmore, hawryluk are all essentially just jayson megnas. none of their characters would even get names in the movie version.

I honestly don't think that edge comes from injecting a specific player or two. I think it comes from having a tight knit, competitiive, determined team that battles for each other and genuinely care about one another, with a take no prisoners culture and a pack mentality.

i didnt know I was giving off the impression that I didn't like the current state of hockey? I think the league is better than its ever been. I'm the only person I know who likes gary bettman.

mcmcsorely.

I'd say he's no worse than anyone in the Canucks bottom 6 not named motte.

ugh. embarrassing take.

I don't care. seriously, like at all. there are no qualifiers in the record books. or would you rather we bring up the 5 guys on every roster back then who were effectively just club-wielding neanderthals on skates, whose sole purpose was to bash guys to bits? mcdavid doesn't have to deal with any of those.

not at all. it just gets tiresome seeing people mindlessly pile on guys who did their absolute best, as professional athletes to help their team win, even years after they've moved along, and when they were never any worse than anyone else who plays the same role in the first place.