50-PERCENT CAPACITY IN PHOENIX: THE NHL 2022-2023 SEASON THREAD (INC AVALANCHE HANGOVER & SALARY CAP SHENANIGANS. HOCKEY IS THE BEST)

hextall and burke out in pittsburgh, thank god

I mean a dark era is coming for penguins hockey, but they did a number of things to hasten its arrival

NHL clearly setting Pens up to get Bedard in the draft

Hush your mouth.

xp i like the way you think

things hextall did right: trading for and then re-signing rickard rakell last year; getting malkin and letang to re-sign (although apparently the latter was an ownership demand)

two years ago he got jeff carter, who was a great rental, at the deadline. but then he re-signed him for his age 37-38 seasons, during the latter of which he was borderline unplayable

things he did wrong: pretty much everything else? when they clearly needed to get younger and faster, he resolutely went older and slower without even getting bigger. his key deadline pickup this year was 31yo mikael granlund, who managed one (1) garbage-time goal in 21 games and has two more years at $5m per ffs

Sports in the salary cap era are cyclical and they got 3 Cups. They did good (I hate them).

oh, totally. it feels good to heap blame on a flyers legend tho

TIL Don Beaupre has 268 career NHL wins

panthers have actually played quite well but it isn't nearly enough

man joe pavelski got exploded

wow what a great win for the (la) kings

Way to get a Canadian grade 7 class's attention:

(Looking at Chromebook while they work on math) "(Gasp)!"

Class looks up.

(Moves finger across screen as if reading) "Auston Matthews out for remainder of season..."

I should have left them distraught till they got home, but I let them know I was kidding. (Not that they wouldn't have Googled right away anyway.)

harsh

That is violent i love it

o god the leafs

brutal

Serious stop they’re already dead energy

GOOD CLEAN HIT, YOU FUCKIN LOSER

Incredible work by everyone all around. pic.twitter.com/jfeDcnonPX

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) April 20, 2023

see, we don't need F-slurs to chirp

hey the leafs

Devils need to wake up

otfm

if lou were still in charge he'd have fired lindy ruff during the second intermission and taken over the bench in the third

also what is going on with colorado

Love the Isles PA announcer trying to announce a goal but constantly getting interrupted by another Islanders goal. 4 goals in 2:17!

lol that is awesome. (it's so deflating when the road team scores before the home team can even announce their last goal.) fastest four playoff goals ever, right?

honestly been waiting decades to ride the winnipeg jets bandwagon but it just never seems to work out

Bandwagon idling in the garage, officially at the ready.

i've totally mentioned this before, but i miss the days where several of the western canadian teams had blue kickplates at the bottom of their boards (as opposed to yellow). bring that back imo -- let's have (however artificial) some rink individuality

Atmosphere at MSG seemed kind of tame tonight. Also, bunches of empty seats behind the benches in full camera view.

I probably mentioned this last year but really wished the bolts and leafs could differentiate their uniforms more.

On the same note, if you’re Winnipeg and all your fans wear white to your games, it doesn’t make immediate sense for you to wear your all blue uniforms and have the visiting team wear white.

congrats to toronto but still hoping they can blow it

they are never ever incapable of blowing it

Ooooooh boy oilers

Oh woops there was more space dust

awesome game

great series

draisaitl has been on the ice for all 14 edmonton goals in the series

o shit, leafs showing backbone

i mean they'll still probably lose, but forcing OT down 4-1 on the road with 11 minutes left is Character-Building

love to see an eberle OT winner

nice depth scoring from the oilers last night. hyman scored with his face!

meanwhile in the east, brock nelson scores off of aho's face!

i know hockey feature's face-offs, but this is ridiculous! ba-dum-dum.

finally saw makar's hit on mccann from the other night -- pretty egregious, and difficult to see how it wasn't a major. no doubt he only got the one-game suspension because mccann never returned

i'm not sure when we as a society decided that we needed 'rules interpreters' for games -- is the color commentator incapable of doing that? -- but these hockey ex-refs are the very worst of a bad bunch. so afraid of stepping on the current officials' toes that they end up saying a bunch of words that mean nothing

leafs lose an elimination game, crazy

This is so messed up.

A.J. Soprano was canonically a @NJDevils fan. Had the memorabilia in his room and everything. pic.twitter.com/WJPkB3ceGW

— Greg Wyshynski (@wyshynski) April 30, 2023

what a moment

Tavares has now got 2 series winning OT goals that have snapped long playoff win droughts for both teams he’s played for. Leafs finally had a series where a lot of the breaks / puck luck went their way.

thank you for not mentioning david volek

I held back on that just for you

<3

In truth i am glad the oilers won

Two Canadian teams win series on the same night. Down is up.