The thing that is baffling to me is that not even the teams he played for could agree that he is worth giving top 4 minutes. That's across 8 NHL teams, or a quarter of the league. He is 34 and very likely going to get 1,000 games in a league that still accepts "because, big" for a scouting report.

Erik Gudbranson (1x1.75m deal with Columbus) is, technically, an NHL player for another season. He is ferociously, woefully bad at the sport that I love. Jesus wept.

The year is 2035. It is too hot to go outside. Everyone likes the NHL now because it's the one place where humans get to be in the same room as ice. To increase their appeal, all NHL teams have cold-themed names. Olli Maatta still fetches a 4th rounder, this time from the Buffalo Sa-brrrrs.

The ultimate question is whether FIFA can structure a best-on-best tournament where the U.S. looks like anything more than a band of misfit toys. Beating a nation that didn't exist 40 years ago and has 1/100th your population should be a given.

Dang, NHL.com using quite the words to describe the state of Markstrom's play recently.

Weird how this never applies to the Second Amendment.

You know what, I'm going to ask the questions that other people are too afraid to ask. Do you even watch the games, @erictulsky.bsky.social ?

Yes, what the people said in the late 90s as Eminem started his career was, "He's a white guy, but so was Vanilla Ice, so he deserves a chance." I've often said this. My source? Oh, yes...it says here: Vanilla Ice.

Here's a good example of what @jamellebouie.net is talking about.

AI, My Eye: A Story in Three Parts

currently reading a whole bunch of petitions and editorials from black americans of the revolutionary era and it is so striking (and frankly inspiring) to see how the ink wasn't even dry on the declaration before black americans were demanding that the patriots live up to their stated ideals

Ok, I'll bite: yes, it's similar. Same, even.

One of the things I kept finding with Kyrou was how efficient he was in his minutes. As in one of the most efficient in 5v5 production as we've seen league-wide in recent years. A lot of Ehlers vibes, both in production and with a team not fully committing to him. To Tim Barnes, I say:

Davidson not exactly exuding confidence in all those defensemen they've picked these last few years. And betting the boat on Byram. They might kill Bedard's career dead even before Bowman kills McDavid's.

Kyrou going for McMichael, bleh prospect, and mid 1st rounder, still good. Esp. because McMichael turned into a pumpkin and there's not a lot to suggest he isn't, in fact, a pumpkin.

Oof, that's a nice piece of work. He and Thomas both signed for long team-friendly deals, iirc. Kyrou has been a low-key great middle 6er for nearly a half-decade now.

To quote Sex and the City, and just like that...William Eklund probably ensures Kaliyev won't crack the top 6. But hey, the AHL needs its goal scorers, too.

Jason Blake, Jackson's dad, is a pretty wild one. Undrafted, didn't get regular playing time until he was like 30.

Goalies don't count btw

One of my favorite things is when somebody pops up out of seemingly nowhere and play well...Darren Raddysh being a current example. Other fun ones: Matt Moulson, Eric Boguniecki, Chris Kontos.

In a weird set of circumstances, the way is kinda paved for Arthur Kaliyev to be an out-of-nowhere asset for the Senators. A guy who just throws a boatload of shots (with greater success than Brady). 40 goals down at Belleville, trying to get it back after battling an apparent gambling addiction.

New paper from me and @jaredb-econ.bsky.social on the debt and our fiscal outlook! Before we dig into the paper, I think we should be frank about how we got here. At the beginning of the century, debt was on track to be stable indefinitely. Then Congress enacted enormous tax cuts. Now it's not.

Here’s a link the Ta-Nehisi’s latest w/o a paywall. READ IT. archive.md/SSLbJ

I suppose I don't mind the idea of putting in some Hall of Very Good goaltenders into the Hockey Hall of Fame, except that it feels like the death knell of the candidacy of some Actually Excellent goaltenders from the previous generation (Andy Moog, Curtis Joseph).

Brady Tkachuk's put up some scary good metrics, but historically guys who play his way in the top 6 struggle to give you 60+ games post-peak. The question will be whether he changes his game, or settles into middle 6 TOI rather than top 6. Problem for rest of the league is FLA will know what to do.

Building off this thread, you have to remember that when all these people started, there was no path to an NHL front office. They thanklessly built and maintained stats databases, crunched numbers, developed new ideas, just for the love of the game. And were *relentlessly* mocked by “hockey men”.

I pushed my college on hiring a full-time Latin American historian, got them to use my wording on the job posting, & we just successfully hired our top candidate to better serve our large & growing Hispanic student population. It's a good little victory for today. For those that helped, thank you!

Carlo Ginzburg taught me there was a secret book exchange among "intellectuals" (really, just ppl who were literate & asked philosophical questions) during the Inquisition, & that the Inquisition archives include the voices of the tortured as they died, in case they confessed or implicated someone.

Tortorella is going to make the rest of his career into being the guy who gets hired to "jolt" playoff contenders, isn't he?

I distinctly remember some of the hockey writers suggesting that the Canes blew it with the whole Rantanen situation, that they had essentially given up an opportunity to be real contenders.

re:Tulsky's success w/the Canes: a too-easy narrative is that a stats-savvy GM won the Cup, & so stats-savvy anybody can be GM. But Eric is really an extraordinary person, not just bc of his stats proficiency, but his ability to translate stats to accessible narratives and actionable conclusions.

Choose your reasoning, he is either completely lying to push eugenics-like rationale, or so painfully ignorant he refuses to learn. One of the least qualified people for their job on this earth (ONE of).

This is a case in-point re: the Canes' high "floor." Like most teams, their floor is their 4th line. Would you like your team playing the 4th line in those critical minutes? You would if you knew they're all great at 5v5, and aggressive forecheckers who tire out opposing bottom 6s constantly.

Peaks and elite performance are conspicuous things that everybody sees and looks for. But a higher floor keeps you in the conversation always, ready when something like lightning strikes...say, when Bussi gets hot or Jordan Staal finds the net again. The Canes were a success long before this Cup.

The unheralded thing about Tulsky's work with the Canes, and the value of he and his team's approach, is raising the floor of their potential outcomes. You don't have a chance if you don't make the playoffs; it's hard to win a series without controlling the balance of play.

An SB Nation blogger used his writing to become a general manager of a team that won the Stanley Cup

Fuck yeah @erictulsky.bsky.social

I have an XFL-level idea that would likely never happen: pay-per-view game feed w/uncensored player mic(s). Would be even wilder if all players were mic'd and you could choose the player. Arena noise + chatter + player personality = $. Imagine the waiver form they'd have to negotiate for that one.

Trevor Gillies on the ice

I don't think I've ever seen a team as Kryptonited as much as the Avs look in this series against Vegas. Not having Makar or MacKinnon at 100% just made everyone else fold like a cheap suit. And this was the no-doubt top team in the league!

About 2/3 of the NHL team analytics departments were salivating over the Jets giving up on Ehlers. Now he's there and they're golfing.

It's interesting, there was a time when the professions included: soldier.

I distinctly remember some of the hockey writers suggesting that the Canes blew it with the whole Rantanen situation, that they had essentially given up an opportunity to be real contenders.

There is no way to do anything interesting in any sustained way in any field without immersion in that field. That's just a fundamental fact of being human, and there's no getting around it.

Ok so - since nobody else seems curious enough to actually bother doing a serious comparison of Chayka's *total* draft record vs the rest of the NHL for the 4 years from 2016 through 2019, I have gone ahead and done some quick "big picture" analysis.

This is Scott Wedgewood erasure

People say hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in professional sports...yet it isn't even the hardest thing to do in professional baseball! Out-pitching a big league hitter is definitely harder.

Indigenous American and African technology and scientific/medical knowledge were on-par with or superior to the European equivalent at the time of first contact and, in most cases, would continue to be so well into the 19th century.

But they were all deceived for a 5th loco was made

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