That Sillinger penalty should’ve never been called

Except the Olympics was never meant to be for professional athletes. It's merely gotten to be that way due to the massive price tags associated with hosting the events. The inclusion of professional athletes is a very recent phenomena (literally since the 1986) as the biggest names in sport attract more dollars, higher viewership totals, and more revenue from sponsors. The NHL is already a best-on-best tournament, the difference being is that it takes 9 months for each tournament to finish.

If you want a best-on-best based on nationality, then support the World Cup once it's revived as it will likely be NHL-sanctioned.

Val Filppula, a non-NHL affiliated hockey player, won an Olympic gold medal against the best non-NHL affiliated players in the world. There is no asterisk, there is no "it doesn't count", it's objectively what happened. There's no need to diminish that fact.

That's a fascinating discussion, because the intention/nature of the Olympics and it's 'amateur' status is always talked about with reverence, but really it was just an elitist means of preventing lower classes from participating.

You can easily argue that the inclusion to the point of dedication to professional athletes has only widened that gap.

With the right dedication and a gym membership, any human being - in theory - could have made it as an Olympic power lifter before that paradigm shift. Financial independence to the extent of freedom to pursue athletics is now required en-masse across sports as a whole.

I wonder who’s going to give Kadri a long term contract in a few months

Boston?

Boston usually doesn’t give up bad long term deals but maybe that’s changing with the Lindholm signing

Filppula played in the National League in Switzerland this year (which is a pro league too). Why is the NHL the only pro league to be excluded?

I cant agree that winning it in 2022 is as big of a feat as winning in 2010 or 2014. The 2022 olympics was much lower quality since they did not include the majority of the best players in the world. Definitely still a major accomplishment but hands down the 2010 or 2014 gold medal teams would destroy every team that competed in 2022 - it would be like the NHL all stars taking on the AHL all stars

Being evenly matched has no impact on the level of hockey. For an extreme example I can go find a timbits hockey game thats more evenly matched than a TBL vs ARZ series would be, but that doesnt mean the winning timbits hockey team is better/equal to the winner of a TBL-ARZ series (obviously TBL)

Philly or Seattle

There is occasional karma in pro sports. Jason Spezza walks in post retirement to the Maple Leafs front office. And for now Mike Babcock can’t get a job coaching in the NHL.

— Steve Simmons (@simmonssteve) May 29, 2022

Babcock gonna have to write a list about that

I’ve done some reffing myself, and honestly that was horrendous. I was legitimately shocked that after the Chabot hook (which yes, was a penalty, although given the fact that it’s OT of a very important game I’ve been bred as a hockey fan to ignore all penalties in that situation) the Finn didn’t also get called for grabbing his leg and dragging him down lmao. Like, drawing a penalty doesn’t give you immunity to do whatever you want. The play was still active, he tripped Chabot. And this is putting aside that him going down was weak, because the Chabot penalty ended up being hooking and not tripping, but yeah, shoulda been both going off regardless.

I only switched over during the intermission between the 3rd and OT (was watching a recording of the Monaco GP), but the fact that the intermission people were talking about how horrible the refereeing was throughout the game (and especially the 3rd apparently) is actually horrifying. The referees should NEVER be a topic of discussion, and the fact that that was the biggest talking point between the 3rd period and OT of the GOLD MEDAL GAME of the world championship is terrible for the sport and the IIHF. Just brutal.

Also what happened to Driedger? Was he injured?

See the problem with having exclusively amateurs (besides the elitist roots) is that it dramatically lowers the quality. Like, do you want the guy who works out after his 9-5 every day competing, or do you want the guy who does that full time? Even in other sports without established leagues, athletes get sponsored by governments (food, travel, expenses, etc.), other sponsorships if they’re famous enough (like Penny Oleksiak is in every ad), and purses for winning other events on the calendar, because being an athlete at that high of a level IS a full time job, and nobody wants to pay to watch someone only slightly better than them compete.

Also, the NHL is the only professional league that didn’t go. Like, the KHL, SHL, Liiga, etc. all sent players. Just because they’re not in the BEST pro league doesn’t mean that they aren’t professionals, those are all professional leagues.

I will agree there shouldn’t really be an asterisk next to the gold medal, because they won a tournament where everyone had the same handicap (no NHLers) although it would be foolish to pretend that not sending NHLers doesn’t adversely affect North American teams significantly more than European teams (Europeans that aren’t quite high end enough to be impact NHLers tend to go back home and be stars there than depth guys in the NHL [see: Lehtonen, Shipachyov, etc.], as well as go home to play the last couple years [see: Krejci, who would still have been good enough to play in the NHL this year, but went home and represented Czechia at both the Olympics and WC]). On the other hand, despite heavily affecting Canada and the USA’s chances, it does level the playing field among other countries (Finland, Sweden, and Russia are among the traditional big 5, but without NHLers, nations like Germany, Slovakia, and Czechia are a lot closer to those 3, or at least on par with the North American countries). So yeah, there shouldn’t be an asterisk, but the asterisk would just be that it’s different, not worse, just like there shouldn’t be an asterisk next to Tampa’s COVID bubble cup, but some people think there should be, and if there is, it’s just that it’s different and more teams were in the running, although I would argue if anything that was harder than a regular cup, because there were no home games (which is basically the only point of the regular season), and you had to win 19 games instead of 16. But I digress.

habs or seattle

Elliotte Friedman on 32 thoughts talking as if there is a possibility Sandin is traded.

He’s gonna look great in an islanders jersey

Sandin for Wahlstrom?

That’s interesting

if you can get varly to waive

No, but I would give pick #13 for Sandin

I would not

Really? If the Isles had a 1st around 20 they'd maybe trade that for Sandin but at 13, there's a decent chance you get someone who projects as a higher ceiling

I would at least consider it, Sandin is on a top pair trajectory and he’s one of the better puck movers in the NHL.

If Nazar is there at 13 I wouldn’t do it, but if the choice is between Lekerimaki, Mintkuyov, Korchinksi, Gauthier, or Geekie then I’d rather trade for sandin

Sandin for Sorokin

J would mind Lekkerimaki at all, and if Lambert is still there, I want Lambert. If Lekkerimaki, Lambert and Nazar are all gone, I wouldn’t mind trading the pick, but I’d want more value back than sandin. It could be Sandin+ for 13