Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Fuck Buffalo!


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Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

It’s the production company combined with the Ops guys. They’re obvi not communicating if it’s an issue

Rangers are the same way though - could be a market specific

Would appreciate if anyone else could share

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

I really wish the Flyers would have won tonight.

If you can win 10 in a row you have the talent - you just need someone to take you to the next level

Winning 10 in a row while missing the playoffs would have been fun again

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Wow, Hawks PP is absolutely on fire now. They have been converting just shy of 40% (39.1%) since a week before Christmas. Good game tonight - Kane (13), DeBrincat (7) and Toews (7) extend their point streaks. I think they got outplayed a bit but converted better, shame they gave up the tying goal with less than 2 minutes left but went to OT and Toews undresses the D man for the game winner so now the Hawks are 2 points out of a WC spot due to this current 6 game winning streak. Pettersson is just amazing for Vancouver, he is a lock for the Calder if he does not get injured, shame Boesser got hurt last year or they'd have 2 Calder winners in consecutive years.

Hawks gotta keep this winning streak going at home against Detroit on Sunday!!! :multi

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...7b7b2a37dd.jpg

Gotta love when an underrated star throws shade low key against an ex rival.

Kuzy is so much fun to back

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Ya know, I’m not much for nhl street justice, but it sure was satisfying to watch Wilson beat the shit out of Avs dude who picked Kuzy’s head right after it happened. Thankfully Kuzy is ok.

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

You guys have a poor track record of retaining goalies though - anyone remember Vanbiesbrouck in a Flyers Jersey? Anyone outside of PA recall Bobrovsky in Philly? Didn't think so! :lol

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

too many banners.

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Trying to break the MSG curse tonight

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

How hava the Av's fallen so hard so quickly. They were an easy pick for a deep run for a few months and now they look awful for the most part. I don't watch them all that often but I see the box scores and think to myself - 'how the hell are they not picking up points against teams they are far better than?'

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

blackhawks and the flyers gonna make the playoffs.

book it.

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Kings over Hawks.

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Kovalchuk can’t pass for poop

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

It is certainly possible with the way both teams are trending and would be fun. That said I am sure you could find a few things that you wish the Flyers could clean up a bit. Hawks need to fix the PK, tighten up their D and stop the turnovers that yield grade A chances and frankly they need more depth scoring because pretty much Kane, Toews and Debrincat are carrying that offense. That said if the Hawks do end up in the playoffs I think Kane is gonna get some major love for the Hart considering right now he has either scored or assisted on just about half the teams total goals. Should be an interesting stretch run for both teams. Also, as for the Hawks, Crawford practiced today, if he is nearing a comeback do they deal Ward to a team needing a second string goalie in return for a scorer if possible. Regardless if they make it the Hawks should be in great shape for a run next year with the cap flexibility they will have, they easily have enough space to sign Debrincat long term and go after an A list free agent like possibly Panarin. Who knows man, gotta take it game by game and treat each like a must win - which both teams seem to be doing right now - they just need to sustain the momentum as long as possible. If both teams do make the playoffs riding these hot streaks they would present a tough first round challenge to any team.

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

James Neal losing his teeth in slow mo is amazing

https://twitter.com/blakesteck/statu...033729536?s=21

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Yeeeeeesh. Like, owwww

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

How the hell do I get into hockey? It looks like a lot of fun but I don't know anything about it. Definitely looks better than the NBA these days.

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

You don't need to know anything. Playoff hockey is where it is at, if you can watch playoff hockey and not be hooked something is off about you.

You are an Atlanta fan, so you have no real close teams. Atlanta has had two pro teams, the Flames and the Thrashers. Flames moved to Calgary and kept the name and the Thrashers moved to Winnipeg and became the revived version of the Jets.

Winnipeg and Calgary are both solid teams leading their division right now so you know you will be watching a good product.

If you love misery though the Flyers are your team

Edit: Both Calgary and Winnipeg have some solid young players that they have locked up. They should be fun to watch for a while

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

The thing about hockey is that it can be tough to follow the actual game when you’re brand new and don’t know the rules. Back when my wife and I got serious and she realized she was gonna have to learn this sport, she said that for the first year or so of regular watching that following the puck and understanding what exactly was happening was hard. It’s a very fast moving game that if you don’t fullly understand what you’re seeing, it can just seem like disorganized nonsense sometimes. And it’s not a game of instant gratification, in that sense that there can be long, long stretches of play without a score. Of course that’s pretty obvious, but it’s a dramatic difference from the NBA in that regard. It does make the exciting moments much more exciting, at least in my opinion.

I would agree that if you really wanna jump in blind, I’d wait until playoffs. The games are far more intense and the compete level exhibited by the players is much higher. Then if you find out you like it, try the regular season next year.

And of course, us hockey fans love converting new people. So if you feel lost, this group in here would love to answer your questions.

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

This, 100%. If you have never played nor watched it can be really tough to follow but once you 'get it' there are fewer things more exciting than watching a great game. Following the puck can be tricky at times because it moves so fast, differentiating between defenseman and forewords can get tough when a team is pressing and pinching to tie a game up, offsides and icing can take a bit to learn, penalties can be tough as well because they are somewhat subjective (goalie interference is a pain for even a longstanding fan because it is all subject to the ref's view (or review), equally say a high stick penalty might not make sense - I have seen guys take a shot and as they are following through and someone skates into their stick is often flagged because a player has to be in control of their stick), power plays and penalty kills you will catch on to quickly and pulling a goalie to add an extra attacker might not make sense to you at first because it seems counterproductive but it does often work.

If you are looking for a high scoring game hockey might not be the best for you but if you want something akin to to a pitchers duel with some fast paced action, tons of excitement, griping about ref decisions and seeing some physical play you will certainly enjoy it.

The great thing about hockey is that you do not necessarily have to pick a specific team at first - you can watch highlights and games by whatever team you want and just plain marvel at the skill of guys like Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Erik Karlsson, Johnny Gaudreau, Patrick Kane, Conner McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Taylor Hall, Austin Matthews, Nikita Kucherov and many others - they can do shit that will make you just gasp at the screen watching their skill level - eventually you will pick up a team as your favorite and become as passionate as any of us.

A couple years ago some guy was at his first hockey game (he had never been a fan) and he live tweeted his thoughts during a playoff game between Chicago and St. Louis and he realized just how exciting hockey was while the general hockey fan just laughed thinking - 'we got another fan now.' His tweets were hysterical, some of the highlights were as follows:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/this-shit-lit

:lol

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Yeah I know both our teams left and all that my biggest problem is that I don't know the rules. I didn't grow up playing it so it's hard to relate to. It's a lot of action and the speed of the players is pretty hard to grasp because it's so impressive. I just feel like I'm missing out on a great sport.

I'd probably lean towards the Preds as my team.

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Thanks guys. I don't need to see tons of points. I love defense in sports. That's why I'm so turned off by the NBA now because they score too much. I think I'm definitely going to tune into playoff hockey this year. It sort of reminds me of CFB a little with the cult following. Starts in April right?

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Yea, Regular season ends April 6th I believe. I don't think you not knowing the rules will be as daunting as the fellows in here make it seem. The biggest rules you may want to figure out first are Icing and Offsides because they are the ones most enforced. Besides that you can pick up what penalties are just by watching because they always have replays. Nashville is a good team to pick, probably closest market to GA without me doing any math

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Just don't root for the fucking Caps or Penguins and you're golden. Maybe jump on the Tampa bandwagon since they're kinda close to you. (Not the Panthers, you'll up their fanbase from 19 people to 20.)

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

The rules themselves aren’t terribly complicated. It’s just that it goes so fast that it’s easy to miss stuff or not understand something.

Basically, in the simplest form I can put it, it’s 5 skaters per side plus a goalie. 3 of those skaters are forwards and two are defenseman. That doesn’t mean that defenseman don’t play offense and vice versa, however.

The common reasons for stoppages in play are offsides, icings, penalties, and the puck accidentally leaving the rink.

Offsides is a pretty easy concept to grasp, basically there are two blue lines: one you defend and one you attack. When you’re attacking, the puck must cross the blue line you attack before anyone on your team does. Otherwise, you are offsides.

Icing is when a player shoots the puck all the way down the ice and no one from their team touches it. You can’t do this, and it results in an icing. This causes a faceoff to happen in your defensive end.

Penalties can happen for all sorts of reasons. Generally, they are two minutes in length, and the offending player sits in the penalty box while his team plays with a 5 on 4 man advantage until the penalty expires or the team with the advantage scores.

Often, the puck accidentally leaves the rink. There is a circumstance where this is a penalty, but generally this is not a penalized event and will result in a faceoff at the closest faceoff dot to where the puck left the rink.

That’s a very general overview of some basic rules of the game. I’d love to go more in depth if you’re interested.

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerd

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

I suppose I forgot the other common stoppage reason: the goalie making a save and holding the rebound

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Bro, I could talk about this game all day.

Re: The NHL Thread: featuring Gritty, the regular season mascot champ.
 

Also, if you like Stanley Cups, I might recommend choosing the Washington Capitals as your team