TrueBlue4ever

Hopkins was prepared to give his acceptance speech live on Zoom if he won, but the Academy refused to allow that forum. So he visited his father’s grave in Wales instead and was asleep in bed when they announced his name.

The kind of luck you get during a losing streak. Stastny goes 5 hole through Koskinen and hits the heel of his skate and stays out. 2 on 1 with a stick on the ice messing up the lane, and Morrissey misses an open net and then has his stick explode leading to a 2 on 1 the other way.

Trump would never share the spotlight.

Coming to this site and expecting something other than doom and gloom?

I get the idea of stale and agree with that. I am just not sure that’s what this is right now. Remember that Edmonton lost 4-0, 3-0, and 6-1 to Toronto at home this year. Teams go through bad patches. The injury bug has hit us with Wheeler, Lowry, and Ehlers out. Lousy timing, but it can’t be controlled. This team seemed very tight and fighting for each other for most of this year. Maybe it has changed, but I am willing to give it more than 4 games before I declare Maurice’s style stale. We overachieved in 2018 and it has set up some false expectations. We experienced a natural regression in 2019 but still had a chance to take out St. Louis in the playoffs but for a collapse in game 5 and a team that caught lightning in a bottle for half a season. Then our defence completely caved in and we have not recovered from it. I put more responsibility on Chevy than Maurice for that, and sadly players don’t want to play in Winnipeg as much as other places, and it has little to do with the coach or the teammates, it really boils down to the city itself, the climate, and the taxes. Sucks to be the runt of the litter, but again it can’t be controlled. So I look at where we started from 10 years ago, what we climbed to, and why we have dipped since then. Losing your #1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 defencemen in one summer and damaging the #3 guy in the process due to overwork was a sucker punch, and will take time to recover from. We cannot outbid the big markets for free agents, so this style is the one that works best for this market in my mind. It may appear to be stale in the low moments, but I don’t see firing Maurice as providing the spark that will turn things around. I would see it as the team throwing in the towel on the year and would take us longer to recover from. We are a contender with our talent but hardly a favourite, and we would need a ton of breaks to win the Cup this year. One big trade for a top 2 defenceman at the deadline was not going to significantly change that status in my mind. And I see our window still at 4 years while the contracts for Scheifele, Ehlers, Connor, and Hellebuyck are in place. Some definite re-tooling needed, but not ready to blow up this approach yet. Ask me again if we lose the next 8 and get swept out losing 5-0 in every game in the playoffs. Or just tell me who steps in right now as a coach and makes us better. Part of the solution is not just the firing, but the quality of the hire. Who is the best candidate available right now? (On paper, Mike Babcock has the best track record but he is now a toxic name after his time in Toronto). Aside from the gutted defence, what I am hearing is that our forwards are not doing enough defensively, and I certainly see that with bad passes and poor back checking, notably from Kyle Connor and supposed rink rat and student of the game Scheifele. How much is on the coach and how much is on the player? I am actually closer to the part in parentheses than all my other posts would suggest.

I would not classify the Jets’ approach and success as “tired”. No Western Conference team has has a better record in the past 4 seasons. But if the mentality is “Stanley Cup or bust” every single season and we can the coach if we don’t win the division or make the final 4 more than half the time, we will be recycling coaches with no better results over that time. The Bombers showed what instability in coaching did for the better part of 25 years after Cal Murphy got dumped. People called for O’Shea’s head for the better part of 4 seasons, right up to half time of the West semi-final in Calgary. Wonder how we would have fared if we axed him in 2017 or 2018? And who wants him gone now? But that is my mentality. I can deal with slow and steady and prefer a methodical approach to building a team. I would rather see sustained success where we re-tool rather than tear down and re-build. So much has to go right to win a championship, I do not wish for a decade of abject failure to get a 2-3 year window before we crater again. I can deal with this approach more than the flash in the pan. If you want a tired approach, look at Buffalo’s last decade or the Oilers between the Messier and McDavid years. Or even Ottawa, who were in the Conference Finals a year before the Jets were. Who would trade our last 4 years for theirs? Just my opinion.

He absolutely is not above questioning. And he does have a decent but not exceptional by any means track record of success. Are there coaches with better track records? Of course. Are they retired or otherwise already employed? I would say yes. But I am happy to consider alternative names if anyone offers one. And I have already considered and will soundly dismiss Patrick Roy as a suitable replacement.

We had a team that went on a regular season tear that teams achieve once every 30 years. We had a big physical defence with Buff, Chariot, Trouba (who also made Morrissey better), and Myers, with Toby Enstrom as our 6th or 7th defenceman. Joe Morrow too and Kulikov. Compare that alone to what we have now and that explains a lot of the difference. Now include Tanev, Laine, Little, and a 32 year old Paul Stastny and a 31 year old Blake Wheeler. One stat said there were 14 NHLers at 6’5” or taller in 2018 and the Jets had 5 of them, 3 on defence. Now we have 3, one out with injury, one who supposedly has been playing hurt all year and now coming off a concussion, and a rookie on defence. We have lost size and speed. We have lost the loudest building and most energetic fans in the league for all of our home games. And yes, we are depending too much on Hellebuyck. So when Goalie picks 2 coaches and says “it’s pretty obvious who the problems are” I find that it overlooks a ton of stuff.

If coaches were fired every time they had a 4 game losing streak, then every single team would have fired a coach last year, and 24 would have done it again this year. Don’t know why some people continually look to dump a coach and think it will be a magic cure. This team has some clear flaws, some through bad luck and bad timing, some systemic, some through personnel, some through coaching. Like every other team out there (maybe save systemic for a precious few). If there is a better coach out there right now with a proven track record of success beyond Maurice, I am all ears. But change for change sake is a fool’s errand. And I seriously hope that any mention of Patrick Roy is a joke.

And maybe selling away our best prospects to get one more defenceman would have made zero difference come playoff time anyway, and we mortgaged our future for what? There is definitely some change needed here, but why blow it up or sell off the future when we are neither a fading team nor a right now legit top contender. Let’s start by teaching Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele among others how to play defence.

Imagine if Maurice had left Helle in all game and said “We weren’t playing well, but he wasn’t to blame for the goals and I felt he was playing well. So I did not want to pull him again and make him feel bad”

Without McDavid and Dreisaitl, Edmonton does not make the playoffs. With them, Stanley Cup contenders. Those two alone are just toying with the Jets. And I don’t know why but Mike Smith really bugs me. And the Oilers are rolling out the Andrea now. Time for bed.

Now 3-0. Hate to be doom and gloom, but does anyone think we can come back down 3?

Odd man rush. D played who they should have, Wheeler trying to back check but he got crossed up at the Oiler blue line by the bad pass by Dubois and isn’t going to catch McDavid from behind.

Dubois with a bad drop pass in the offensive zone and it ends up on McDavid’s stick and in the net. Edmonton just jumps on every mistake.

Oilers winning the board battles. Jets need to hit every chance they get, especially McDavid. He will get his points, but he can be frustrated with body contact as the Habs have shown this year against him. And not minding Jordie Benn so far. Calm with the puck, simple game, plays the body.

Well, 13 minutes in and more hustle by the Jets tonight so far than I saw in the last 3 games.

Clearly I am in the best generation because of this essential truth!

Very true, and Brandon’s best first response probably could have been to ask Tracker on what basis that assertion was being made about police in Canada. Instead, he chose to dismiss it as completely untrue rather than ask for an expansion. So he now takes the role of throwing out a blanket statement, and can fairly be put to task to back it up. His over the top non-response to that request only serves to diminish his credibility and in fact unintentionally strengthen Tracker’s original position without Tracker having to justify it. Not really getting anywhere at the end of the day. Hopefully some more fruitful discussion can be put forward. In the words of Melania Trump, “Be best”

As long as there remains a system of financial inequality in America, there will be continued crime in America as result of that inequity, disproportionately res presented by the poor. And so long as there is systemic racial inequality, the number of poor will be disproportionately African Americans. And so long as those in power seek to systemically keep the poor in their place (as was so well put by Trevor Noah on his earlier video), the police will continue to oppress those who they see as not respecting their place. And as long as police continue to be trained in suppression tactics to “gain and establish control” in all situations, police will still have a “shoot first” mentality. And with every training video of the dangers of every traffic stop where a officer gets ambushed and shot, their mentality will be that they must neutralize the threat before they become the victim. And as long as every American can carry guns legally, every traffic stop will pose that presumed threat that will justify these aggressive police tactics in their minds, and will promote that militaristic style of training. Multi-layered problem, but rather Than the tired whataboutism that creates the belief that “since we can’t fix everything, we shouldn’t do anything”, let us hope that a starting point can be found, and that these issues can be ticked off one by one. I would love to see guns for everyone taken out of the equation as a starter, to at least remove the paranoia of officers that every interaction is a shootout waiting to happen, so their assessment of a threat is a bit more measured and reasonable.

Meanwhile, Edmonton got 5 days off last time before playing us when we came off 17 of 22 on the road, and 3 in 4 nights, and the next time we play them they will have had 4 days off after we play the Leafs back to back. Hating a bit on the schedule maker.

Since I added the Leafs to my hate rankings, they have lost 5 in a row. Coincidence? I think not.

Guilty on all 3 counts, unanimous.

If the going rate for pay/points is $100,000 per point, then this deal is fair and in fact a deal. To land a 6’5” centre with decent faceoff skills, grit, and who is solid defenseivly and and draw in against a top line as a shutdown forward, this becomes a very good deal. The only downside is that now we can’t play the shell game in the expansion draft where he remained exposed to protect both Copp and Appleton and then did a back door free agent signing with us afterwards. We are now obliged to protect him and that good contract. Of course, no guarantee that it would play out the other way if he hit the open market. His dad coming here to coach secured his tenure here.