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Is Gritty a good fighter? Is Josh Allen actually good?

September 24, 2018, 3:59 PM ET [89 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT



Gritty and I didn’t even give it a second thought. Gritty has bath salts eyes and you don’t mess with that. Not only is Gritty amped up energy wise, but he’s crazy enough to do anything. One second he could be carrying on a semi-coherent conversation showing no signs of malice and the second you turn around he’s attacking you trying to chew your trachea. Gritty looks like an organism they found in Bobby Clarke’s blood and combined it with the ninja turtle ooze. He should fit right in with the organization.

I think Gritty is great, but I would advise people to enjoy him from a safe distance or risk becoming a statistic.





Riikola is certainly one of the Penguins more interesting players at this training camp. There aren’t a lot of defense prospects to talk about in the Penguins which is quite the change from the Shero era. There isn’t any room for him in Pittsburgh unless there are a rash of injuries. You have Kris Letang, Brian Dumoulin, Olli Maatta, Justin Schultz, Jamie Oleksiak, Jack Johnson, and Chad Ruhwedel all in front of him. He might see a game or two, but I wouldn’t predict a full-time role in 2018-19.



I guess I don’t care about the awards like I used to. As a kid I thought they were the end all be all. Then you see how the sausage is made and most of the people who decide these awards don’t have a great understanding of what makes a player good. Some voters hold team success against individuals. The Vezina voting is based on goalie wins. Some people give players a vote because it is “their turn”. So quite frankly I don’t really place value in the NHL awards anymore. I am all for the split conference awards. The reason is it will give more players more money with the incentive based contracts. Anytime the players can get more money I’m good with that.







It really depends on what the roster looks like. The wild card here is Daniel Sprong. If he can play top nine minutes then you can afford to put Kessel with Malkin. That leaves the option of playing Rust, Hornqvist, or Sprong to play with the third line. If Derick Brassard is playing center you have a better chance of having a competent third line that doesn’t need Kessel. If they are going to play Brassard in the top six on wing then I don’t see how the third line would be consistently successful without splitting Crosby, Malkin, and Kessel on three separate lines. The great thing about having depth is that you have a lot more legitimate options than your competition. There are cases for keeping Malkin and Kessel together as well as apart. They have until April to figure it out.





Football is great because the perceptions of players can swing so violently based on single game performances. After his performance in Minnesota on Sunday his status has been elevated to that of Bill Brasky in Western New York. I heard his sweat has been used in part to cure Jim Kelly’s cancer. I hated the Josh Allen pick and I would love to be wrong about him. It was actually fun to watch the Bills call plays that made sense and a quarterback use his physical strengths to make plays. It’s encouraging that he looks competent with the number of scrubs the Bills have surrounded him with.




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