2023-24 NHL Season Thread.

[Puupi]

For real. This is like the worst stretch of summer, too. No baseball, NFL isn't worth following for another month or so, NHL news has usually just dried up from July 1st, the NBA is... not something I'm interested in.

Olympics start in 3 weeks or something.

[draynay]

Olympics start in 3 weeks or something.

It just gets more and more bleak.

[VanillaO]

It just gets more and more bleak.

I don't even know anyone in my personal life who gives a fuck about the Olympics outside of hockey (and the odd curling fan... or more women's curling fan... or subjectively attractive women curlers only).

At least baseball started again. Hurray. And it's a west coast game so I can keep watching shit go down in Turkey for 20 minutes! Double hurray.

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Benn extends with Stars for 8 years, 9.5M AAV. If he can continue his production for even 5 years, that contract is a super team-friendly deal.

[Nazrark]

I like watching womens curling. Women soccer is something I look forward to now that Raonic pulled out of the Summer Olympics. I don't really care for the Summer games. Canada tends to suck hard at it. We are more of a Winter games nation.

[draynay]

Women's soccer will probably be the only thing I watch.

[Puupi]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BH8AiS4A9Q8/?hl=fi

That's how you deke a goalie three times within a second.

[VanillaO]

Odd trade between the Sens and Rangers today. Zibanejad + 2nd for Brassard + 7th (both picks in 2018). Z is 23, Brassard will be 29 when the season starts. Both have similar production, obviously Z's ceiling is much higher, and he's on the last year of a deal for like half the cost of Brassard, and isn't UFA eligible for 3-4 years, while Brassard hits UFA in 3 years.

Why were the picks even necessary? Surely, Zibanejad for Brassard straight up would already be slightly in NYR favour (in my opinion) already? If we had any Sens fans ever show up in this thread outside the one or two playoff wins they have in recent memory, I'm sure they'd be kinda pissed right now.

[Nazrark]

Yeah we are quite devoid of Sens and Oiler fans in the thread. Pretty much a lot of team fans. I was surprised when I saw that we had a Wild and Preds fan post regularly.

[Greeney]

Odd trade between the Sens and Rangers today. Zibanejad + 2nd for Brassard + 7th (both picks in 2018). Z is 23, Brassard will be 29 when the season starts. Both have similar production, obviously Z's ceiling is much higher, and he's on the last year of a deal for like half the cost of Brassard, and isn't UFA eligible for 3-4 years, while Brassard hits UFA in 3 years.

Why were the picks even necessary? Surely, Zibanejad for Brassard straight up would already be slightly in NYR favour (in my opinion) already? If we had any Sens fans ever show up in this thread outside the one or two playoff wins they have in recent memory, I'm sure they'd be kinda pissed right now.

Brassard will have the best offensive defenseman in the league passing to him now and Zibanejad won't even have Yandle at this point. I could easily be wrong, but right now I think Brassard's point totals will look a lot better than Zibanejad's by end of this year if he's on Ottawa's 1st line powerplay with Karlsson setting him up for the slap shot.

[Rennadrel]

Yeah we are quite devoid of Sens and Oiler fans in the thread. Pretty much a lot of team fans. I was surprised when I saw that we had a Wild and Preds fan post regularly.

Ottawa has hockey fans? Who knew.

But seriously, that city has some of the most fairweather fans in the entire league, and they can't even outsell the Leafs when they come to town.

[Armourboy]

Yeah we are quite devoid of Sens and Oiler fans in the thread. Pretty much a lot of team fans. I was surprised when I saw that we had a Wild and Preds fan post regularly.

We have a pretty spread out group now. I know when I started posting it seemed to be all original 6 fans lol.

[Greeney]

Glad to have seen yesterday Matthews signed to an ELC. I love how they waited right up until some media reporter wrote an article trying to spread paranoia to the masses to report it. Back to the media complaining about Marner's weight or the next irrelevant Sun/Star Leafs related headline.

[VanillaO]

All that article did is prove how fucking gullible (maybe even stupid) the average Leafs' fan is. Everyone started freaking out 'oh he doesn't want to play here', 'oh, Lou is gonna run him out of town', etc. Lou is an information iron curtain - shit does not get out, shit does not get in. Anything Toronto 'writers' (and I say writers and not journalists to make a point) come up with is purely speculation. And now this idiot can spin this however he wants - Lou caved, Shanahan made Lou step aside and got the contract done, Matthews threatened to leave for KHL/wherever if he wasn't given full bonuses, and so on. Would love it if journalists went back to actual news instead of buzzfeed clickbait bullshit.

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Leafs signed (Connor) Carrick to a 2 year deal. Kid looked solid after the trade last year - pretty sure it means Corrado or Hunwick are going to whoever wants em at this point - whatever the return might be.

Also, Pistol Pete Holland on waivers, probably because he just hasn't taken that next step since he came here and is too inconsistent to outplay the C's we already have. Sucks, because he has shown flashes of reaaaaally good hockey, but just shits the bed too much :/

[Rennadrel]

Toronto media are good at one thing, sensationalism. I hate most of the current writers. The good writers work for Sportsnet, there hasn't been a good sports writer in Toronto in ages. Dave Perkins retired recently and he was a good writer but didn't do much hockey. Steve Simmons is a troll and I don't even know who writers for the Star now, I heard that Dave Feschuck got run out of town.

[Nazrark]

Toronto media are good at one thing, sensationalism. I hate most of the current writers. The good writers work for Sportsnet, there hasn't been a good sports writer in Toronto in ages. Dave Perkins retired recently and he was a good writer but didn't do much hockey. Steve Simmons is a troll and I don't even know who writers for the Star now, I heard that Dave Feschuck got run out of town.

Yeah the better writers got jobs elsewhere. Jonas got a job with the Canadian Press. The sports writers for the Winnipeg Sun are very good.

[VanillaO]

James Mirtle (writes for the Globe) is usually very good without the sensationalist bullshit, but even he slipped a bit with this contract 'holdout' that wasn't even going on. Does a lot of articles incorporating advanced stats which I like.

[Puupi]

Arizona signed Schenn for pretty cheap. A good deal methinks.

[Nazrark]

James Mirtle (writes for the Globe) is usually very good without the sensationalist bullshit, but even he slipped a bit with this contract 'holdout' that wasn't even going on. Does a lot of articles incorporating advanced stats which I like.

Typically the guys who follow the teams around from city to city write very good articles.

Someone wrote an article awhile ago asking "Can you win a cup with 9 million dollar players on your team?".

This was the first year Chicago had the monster contracts on the books. LA has Kopitar. You are going to run into issues with cap space.

[Greeney]

Arizona signed Schenn for pretty cheap. A good deal methinks.

I'm biased but I think he'll probably do his usual one good season for the new team and then disappear after it. What a disappointment he turned out to be after his first season.

[VanillaO]

Hard to disappoint when you aren't making very much