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Around The League - 2024-25 Regular Season

WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
And that's your problem right there. You're satisfied with merely being "entertained". I guess that explains a lot of Leafs history over the past 50 years or so. I remember when Harold Ballard wanted Roger Neilson to wear a paper bag over his head behind the bench. Entertaining as fuck but it did nothing to help the team win and his eventual firing of Neilson did even less. Sold a lot of papers though.

I went to a lot of Habs games during the 85-86 season and they weren't very entertaining. It was a very pedestrian team that didn't even break 90 points and didn't have a 50 goal scorer (50 goal scorers were a lot more common then) But they got real entertaining once the playoffs started and they won the Cup. Then and only then was I able to say that I had been truly "entertained". The Cup parade was pretty fucking entertaining too.
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Sports fandom is not a blood sport for most. You are the exception, not the rule.
 
Arizona beating Florida last night...


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WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
And Hughes is wrong. The Leafs are owned and operated by a board of directors who don't really give a shit about wins and losses anywhere but on a balance sheet. They want the team to succeed on the ice inasmuch as it drives revenues. Otherwise it doesn't care. And because Leafs fans and media are so slavishly devoted and easily placated the franchise is "winning" where it counts before a puck is ever dropped. Win or lose that team is a license to print money. There is no real incentive to make big changes when the current model is working so well.

If and when losing on the ice starts to negatively impact the bottom line, then real changes will happen and then the GM will be in a truly tough spot to win or die. But right now it's just a parlor game. MLSE is flush with cash and there's never an empty seat no matter how well or badly the team performs.

By contrast, and even though there are other owners, Geoff Molson is the face of the franchise in Montreal and when the team doesn't win enough it's not a reflection on "ownership", it's a reflection on Geoff Molson personally. So anyone who has to report to him is on the hot seat from the get-go because both they and he are known quantities among the fan and media base. There's no faceless "Board" to hide behind. And while Habs fans love their team they don't love them in the same unconditional way that Leafs fans love their team. A Habs fan's love is conditional and transactional and based largely on how much and how often the team wins. When that doesn't happen enough, it impacts the bottom line. Seats go unsold and fans get angry, not philosophical, if they perceive that not enough is being done to fix it.

The pressure in Montreal is real. The pressure in Toronto is largely performative. It's the difference between using a stunt man to jump off a bridge versus using CGI to make it appear as though someone jumped off a bridge. In short, Dubas' job looks hard. Hughes' job actually is hard.
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You're living in the past. Habs' fans have been accepting mediocrity for the past 30 years, you're the first one to complain about it. The last GM who's job was hard was Serge, when those standards were still crazy high, the Nordiques existed and the nationalism movement in its peak. It's been a breeze for other GMs since them, they've just been incompetent.
 
GrandWazoo said:
You're living in the past. Habs' fans have been accepting mediocrity for the past 30 years, you're the first one to complain about it. The last GM who's job was hard was Serge, when those standards were still crazy high, the Nordiques existed and the nationalism movement in its peak. It's been a breeze for other GMs since them, they've just been incompetent.
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They hired an INTERIM coach who didn't speak French to shepherd the team through the last 20 games of a lost season and people showed up outside the arena with everything but pitchforks and torches. The last time I saw Leafs fans get that angry was when Ballard traded Lanny McDonald to the Colorado Rockies in 1979.
 
WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
They hired an INTERIM coach who didn't speak French to shepherd the team through the last 20 games of a lost season and people showed up outside the arena with everything but pitchforks and torches. The last time I saw Leafs fans get that angry was when Ballard traded Lanny McDonald to the Colorado Rockies in 1979.
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No they didn't, it was still the same media loudmouths that complains about everything. Fans majorly didn't care.
 
Sal_Butera said:
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That Matthews is a coward and a fraud is not news to anyone outside the 416. Neither is the fact that McDavid is twice the player he will ever be. The only thing keeping Matthews relevant is the jersey on his back. Otherwise he's just another irrelevant prima donna who accumulates goals. Think Pierre Larouche when he was with the Penguins. That team didn't win shit either.
 
Miller-The native of Sylvania, Ohio, returned to the USHL's Tri-City Storm last season, where he’d played prior to being drafted, finishing third in league scoring and top among defencemen, with 39 goals and 83 points in 60 games

39 goals for a Dman? Crazy. He must have played some games as a forward,
 
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