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The Fucking Offseason Thread - Why bother waiting?

Artnes said:
Crosby vs Ovechkin. One figured it out at 16. The other at 32
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I think the biggest thing the series is confirming for me is that even though we hoped Matthews would be a Crosby, that's not who he is mentally. And that was wishful anyway. That blend of focus, dedication, intensity, and competitiveness is rare.

But it has made me realize that as much as I've been onboard with saying superstar athletes should have entertaining personalities, I actually only want that on other teams.

I'll take the the Crosby/MacKinnon personality over making friends with Bieber and being into fashion. The only interesting stories I want to hear about my hockey teams superstar is how they stabbed someone over losing a ping pong game, forced the whole team to stop eating junk food, and assaulted a kid because they were losing to them in a foot race during offseason training.

Anyway, still spoiled to have MM, but they need to man up a bit. Babs was on to something on that.
 
Babcock was on to something, but appears to have done fuck all to actually connect with them and help them grow despite his sports pyschology background.

They're young and don't naturally have "it" that some other elite talents have had. But we've seen tons of examples over the years of those types of players developed the right way by an organization and developing "it" over time.

"it" is a teachable, learnable mindset.
 
I'm also with mbow that Mitch's goofy man-boy schtick feels put on. I always find his little end of game celebrations with the goalie cringey, like he is doing it for the cameras.

7fd38b456e59b494959d8a9596d7225413c8fcdb.gifv


Now I'm being petty. But fuck it, these guys deserve it.
 
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you guys even got me excited about this... but ima gonna skip to the finale — don’t worry you won’t get any spoilers from me
 
WellPlayed said:
I think the biggest thing the series is confirming for me is that even though we hoped Matthews would be a Crosby, that's not who he is mentally. And that was wishful anyway. That blend of focus, dedication, intensity, and competitiveness is rare.

But it has made me realize that as much as I've been onboard with saying superstar athletes should have entertaining personalities, I actually only want that on other teams.

I'll take the the Crosby/MacKinnon personality over making friends with Bieber and being into fashion. The only interesting stories I want to hear about my hockey teams superstar is how they stabbed someone over losing a ping pong game, forced the whole team to stop eating junk food, and assaulted a kid because they were losing to them in a foot race during offseason training.

Anyway, still spoiled to have MM, but they need to man up a bit. Babs was on to something on that.
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true...for the most part you're better off with boring one dimensional superstars who only care about one thing like Tom Brady and his football
 
Holy Jesus. The Leafs were so distraught by the end that it even brought me down. I did not enjoy the finale at all.

Show was even more banal than I anticipated. Old man Foligno eating pizza got more screen time than any actual "playoff hockey" discussion. I thought the Habs getting away with 1268 crosschecks would have merited at least a 4 second soundbite.

Keefe's speeches were the only thing that kept me awake.
 
One little thing that intrigued me was the white board behind Keefe was populated with the entire Habs lineup and had 5 names circled.

Price
Danault
Petry
Josh Anderson
Some guy I couldn’t see
 
The final episode was by far the worst and least revealing regarding the dynamics of the team. You chose the wrong episode! Leafs likely shut it down for playoffs. Very minimal access.

Anyway you're never gonna get strategy talk out of these shows anyway. You kinda got that in the first one or two HBO series but teams shut shit down after that. As a leafs fan I enjoyed the program but otherwise I could see it being dull for some. If this was about any other team there's a 0% chance I'd watch it.
 
They broke the #1 rule in tv. Make the finale interesting and go out with a bang!!!

But I agree with you overall -- the Habs had an ongoing series and the first few episodes were semi-decent -- they had some scenes where a coach sternly shows a player Xs and Os or Therrien chewing out Subban, basically showing players/coaches doing their job, rather than just talking about it. But they quickly stopped showing those slices of reality and it became a non stop parade of "these two rookies are becoming friends" and "this dude's wife has an amazing charity". I'd rather watch Joshua Weissman make hamburger buns for the 87th time -- actually not really, he's become a bore now that he's shilling his book non stop and repeating the same moves over and over.
 
Most telling line in that last ep was a frost boy calling the Tavares situation the “most uncomfortable” thing he’s experienced in hockey.
 
That was kind of obvious tho — not many on ice incidents have hit that level of visceral disturbance
 
CH1 said:
One little thing that intrigued me was the white board behind Keefe was populated with the entire Habs lineup and had 5 names circled.

Price
Danault
Petry
Josh Anderson
Some guy I couldn’t see
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Ooh that would be interesting. What episode? Where's it streaming too? HBO?
 
CH1 said:
They broke the #1 rule in tv. Make the finale interesting and go out with a bang!!!

But I agree with you overall -- the Habs had an ongoing series and the first few episodes were semi-decent -- they had some scenes where a coach sternly shows a player Xs and Os or Therrien chewing out Subban, basically showing players/coaches doing their job, rather than just talking about it. But they quickly stopped showing those slices of reality and it became a non stop parade of "these two rookies are becoming friends" and "this dude's wife has an amazing charity". I'd rather watch Joshua Weissman make hamburger buns for the 87th time -- actually not really, he's become a bore now that he's shilling his book non stop and repeating the same moves over and over.
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Habs 24/7? It wasn't that interesting at all. Cheesy would be the term.
 
MindzEye said:
Babcock was on to something, but appears to have done fuck all to actually connect with them and help them grow despite his sports pyschology background.

They're young and don't naturally have "it" that some other elite talents have had. But we've seen tons of examples over the years of those types of players developed the right way by an organization and developing "it" over time.

"it" is a teachable, learnable mindset.
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Bit too binary for me.

I think our kids got screwed a bit by having 3 super tough series against elite tough veteran teams to start their careers, with a coach who didn't give them a tactical chance. Doesn't help that they play in the toughest market with the biggest drought ever. And man just a few bounces here or there and all those series could end differently. It's not like these guys aren't showing up and getting blown out of the building.

So lots of different little things have snowballed together and now it's clearly in their heads and I hope they can get out of it.
 
I had zero issues with how they've played in the playoffs till the Columbus series. And I was willing to let that one go as a one off. But after the Habs series you can only blame luck for so long. Dubas actually said that exact thing a couple days ago actually. He has always been a presto luck homer but when the sample size of failure increases the odds of it being luck-based decreases!

Tldr: they suck absolute balls in elimination games and/or key moments when they can stomp on necks. The sample size for sucking balls in these moments ain't all that small.
 
Habsy said:
Ooh that would be interesting. What episode? Where's it streaming too? HBO?
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it’s just the a whiteboard that the camera caught in the b/g.... nobody pays attention to it on camera..and btw it’s on Amazon here
 
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