PLUS/MINUS: Often ripped off by people who pretend they don't know me, but never duplicated!!!!!!!!! And also, just a terrible stat!
PLUS: The NHL Trade Deadline is one week away. This is one of the best times of the year. Always exciting.
I remember once when I was about 15, my mom left for 12 hour continental shifts early in the morning, and my dad left for his job at 2:30 in the afternoon. Since I knew he'd sleep all day, stayed home from school to keep track of the trade deadline, but I mistimed my Dad's exit and he realized I was home about ten minutes before he he had to leave. Boy was he pissed!
The moral of this story is that almost no trades happened. Nothing major anyways. I remember being like 'I stayed home and got in trouble for this?'
I've had Christmases where I was dirt poor, and ones where I was rolling in dough, and the NHL tradedeadline mostly compares to a welfare Christmas - you get excited, but nothing really happens.
Still, every year I get excited anyways.
MINUS: The Oilers hiring Keith Gretzky as their interim GM. The Oilers should be running as far away from experience career hockey men as it's possible to get.
They even botched the Chiarelli firing by not also firing Bob ___ing Nicholson.
PLUS: You have to give Gretzky credit though, even though he should not be considered at all to run the Oilers (they need a Kyle Dubas-type) both his trades yesterday were excellent.
Spooner is garbage and there is no way Gagner should be in the AHL, so that's a big win. Talbot wasn't coming back and that move saves money, so that's two base hits up the middle. Basically.
MINUS: The way people talk online.
I have to spend way more time online then I would like (when I retire from writing about hockey, I plan on never going online again if I can help it). It's not the specific catch phrases that bug me, though they do, it's the fact that people are so unoriginal, and they don't even care.
Someone old question something? Old man yells at cloud meme.
Someone has an unpopular opinion? Spongebob poorly capitalized meme.
There is writing with with periods between every word, there is posting the same five memes instead of using words to argue, there's "my dude," "low-key," "savage," "high-key," "living rent free," "you had one job," "amirite," "asking for a friend," improperly using the word because or saying things like "I be like," .......I could go on all day.
Now, I know that no one cares what I think (nor should they) but I just personally feel embarrassed for people who use catchphrases and can't be bothered not to talk like idiots in order to fit into a crowd.
PLUS: Spiderman on PS4 - but with one exception.
As much as I love pretending to be Spiderman, I feel that games today are hampered by the fact that you have unlimited tries to make it between check points. I make it to a checkpoint, then I have a new goal and it takes five or ten tries before I master whatever needs to be done then I'm at the next checkpoint.
It's boring and it sort of ruins the experience for me. It's why I quit playing new games years ago in the first place. Obviously if you lose and have to start the game over, that'd be worse.
It's one thing to keep redoing a battle, but I don't like having to (for example) try 40 different ways to sneak through a bunch of guys without getting noticed. There's no skill involved, it's just trial and error.
Lame!
PLUS: My backyard rink lasted past valentines day for the first time ever (this is the third year making it).
MINUS: The idea that all hockey talk - whether with fans online or on TV/radio - centres around the idea that whatever is currently happening is what will happen forever.
Stats allow us to make far better predictions about the future, but the discourse hasn't caught up. Take the Islanders for example. They have a weak roster and were not expected to make the playoffs, but they're near the top of the league.
This is a team that spends 52% of games playing defense that gets credited with being a good defensive team. You literally can not be a 'good defensive team' if you possess the puck 48% of the time. It's called the Roman Polak rule, and it's unbreakable. Playing good defense doesn't matter when you don't have the puck as much as your opponent.
"Trotz is a great defensive coach," and yet, somehow, this great tactician has his team 18th in the NHL in scoring chances against per 60 minutes, and allows the 7th most high-danger chances per 60.
The Islanders are second in the NHL in PDO - indicating great luck.
Their success, such as it is, comes from nothing else but the fact that they lead the NHL in 5v5 save percentage.
Lou Lamoriello made four transactions so far. Two of them involved fourth liners, one involved a sixth defenseman, and one was signing a scrap-heap goalie to a cheap UFA deal.
That goalie, Robin Lehner, is a near shoe-in for the Vezina. Maybe Lamoriello is a genius, and he knew secretly that Lehner was going to be lights-out, but trading for Matt Martin sort of nullifies that option.
The fact is, the Islanders are a bad team propped up by a great goalie, and the media is falling all over themselves to overrate Trotz and Lamoriello, when in fact there is a team like this every year in the NHL. And, every year, they fall back to earth.
The Islanders, as they approach the deadline, should keep in mind the fact that a brutal Senators team lucked all the way to within five minutes of a Cup Finals appearance and subsequently went all-in for no reason.
Hopefully people don't need to wait and see the Avalanche draft Jack Hughes before they realize this is true, because by then it will be too late for the Islanders.
PLUS: Yesterday I watched Birdman andHer two movies I avoided for a long time because they looked super boring, but in fact they turned out to be great. Birdman especially is a fantastic movie. I rate it a full 5 Tony Almeidas.
MINUS x 5:HD Trivia. This is something the boys at poker insist on exposing me to, and I have to say that it is the worst thing in the world. It's annoying, evil, stupid, and offensive. If I had to compare it to something, it would be unfavorably compared to a serious genital injury.
The host is annoying. The questions are stupid, random and generally have nothing to to with actual trivia. It's loud, stupid, and painful to listen to. And to top it off, when you play it, one of the worst people on earth makes even more money.
If you could take everything I hate about the world, media, people and our culture, mix them altogether and intentionally try to come up with something that is a representation of everything I hate, loathe, despise and mock, you'd have HD Trivia.
PLUS: I want to leave this on a positive note, so let's just say the Fleet Foxes are pretty awesome, and leave it at that.
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