What a playoffs. Hopefully we never see anything like this again but more than full marks to the team that came out as champion.
A whole lot of people said this whole thing was either a bad idea or it was going to be marred by players getting sick.
Hats off to the NHL and the players for pulling this off.
This entire feat of pulling this tournament off without a single positive case in the middle of a global pandemic is likely the NHL's greatest achievement. I sincerely hope we never have to see something like this happen again. But the league pulled off what many of us, myself included, thought was a big waste of time and simply a matter of time before it got shut down.
Instead the league, PA, players and all tiers of people involved showed what they can accomplish when they put their minds together.
I don't know what hockey looks like going forward for this league. Even next season will be lot of the same questions. But I will easily give them the benefit of a doubt.
Remarkable achievement that I think one day we will all truly appreciate when looking back.
Congrats to the 'Bolts. Obviously the hate still runs deep for that organization. But they have such an awesome group of likeable elite players. Point, Johnson, Vasilevskiy, Hedman, Stamkos. All awesome players you can't help but cheer for, along with Cooper as the head coach.
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Teams conventionally pass it by pecking-order, with the star players getting it first, with a couple long-tenured veterans mixed in. By the time the Cup gets to the role players and rookies half the team has skated away. That never sat well with me.
It looks like Tampa deliberately threw that out the window, as role players and even some guys who weren't dressed were among the first to be handed the Cup, and some star players among the last. Along with having the whole team gather around the Bettman Cup hand-off, it showed a team-first approach.
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Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
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This entire feat of pulling this tournament off without a single positive case in the middle of a global pandemic is likely the NHL's greatest achievement. I sincerely hope we never have to see something like this happen again. But the league pulled off what many of us, myself included, thought was a big waste of time and simply a matter of time before it got shut down.
Instead the league, PA, players and all tiers of people involved showed what they can accomplish when they put their minds together.
I don't know what hockey looks like going forward for this league. Even next season will be lot of the same questions. But I will easily give them the benefit of a doubt.
Remarkable achievement that I think one day we will all truly appreciate when looking back.
Congrats to the 'Bolts. Obviously the hate still runs deep for that organization. But they have such an awesome group of likeable elite players. Point, Johnson, Vasilevskiy, Hedman, Stamkos. All awesome players you can't help but cheer for, along with Cooper as the head coach.
Great post. The Lightning organization is truly exemplary and you have to give Yzerman a ton of credit IMO for putting together this team. He is breaking the adage that great players don't make great coaches or GM's.
Who knows what next year looks like for the NHL and they have some serious economic concerns but it does feel like there is a sense of partnership among the players and league right now. The NFL seems to be showing you can travel in order to play games safely, but they only once a week, so still seems unlikely NHL could look at a full schedule at least to start.
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Great post. The Lightning organization is truly exemplary and you have to give Yzerman a ton of credit IMO for putting together this team. He is breaking the adage that great players don't make great coaches or GM's.
Who knows what next year looks like for the NHL and they have some serious economic concerns but it does feel like there is a sense of partnership among the players and league right now. The NFL seems to be showing you can travel in order to play games safely, but they only once a week, so still seems unlikely NHL could look at a full schedule at least to start.
Yeah. The Lightning really did buy in to the team first approach where good guys can finish first. Rare to some degree for a sports team with a type personalities. This definitely sets a team standard across the sport which is a nice approach to treat the fourth liner as important as anyone.
As for next years logistics, it wouldn’t surprise me if they do a baseball type series where you do back to back to back games in a week to minimize travel. You save costs as well as get your series in with your division rivals.
Stamkos is the 5th first-overall pick from the '00s to win the Cup with the team that drafted him.
Only 5 players chosen first overall between 1970 and 1999 won the Cup with the team that drafted them (Lafleur, Potvin, Lemieux, Modano, Lecavallier*).
So far, no players drafted first overall in the 2010s has won the Cup with the team that drafted him. If I were a betting man, MacKinnon is the only one I'd put any money on to do it.
Furthermore, I checked this out. Only 16 1st over-all draft picks have even won the Stanley Cup.
...Congrats to the 'Bolts. Obviously the hate still runs deep for that organization. But they have such an awesome group of likeable elite players. Point, Johnson, Vasilevskiy, Hedman, Stamkos. All awesome players you can't help but cheer for, along with Cooper as the head coach.
I was pretty intrigued about the possibility that TBL might move on from Jon Cooper after their playoff debacle last year. Cooper is exactly the kind of guy that I think Treliving would target hard as a coach.
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Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
I was pretty intrigued about the possibility that TBL might move on from Jon Cooper after their playoff debacle last year. Cooper is exactly the kind of guy that I think Treliving would target hard as a coach.
Nah, Cooper would be too established as a winner in the NHL for Treliving to consider him.
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In fact Doughty and Pietrangelo round out that top 5 so all of them have a cup, pretty cool to see.
This got me curious about top 5 picks winning the cup. I looked it up, and quite often at least 2 players picked in the to 5 have won the cup, so I figured to limit my criteria, and here is what I found. 2008 is the year of champions! 1984 and 2006 came close.
Looking at the top 5 players in each draft, there was a tonne of players who played for a team that won the next year (or in some cases they were traded away in the middle of that season), also quite a few who went to a team that just won the previous year, but that didn't help them out.
Nah, Cooper would be too established as a winner in the NHL for Treliving to consider him.
Yes, that would be the exceptionally jaded view. But in the real world Treliving's choices have tended towards the more cerebrally minded coaches, which is a consummate description of Cooper.
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Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
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Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
Hedman won the Conn Smythe with votes 9-8-1 and Point finished 8-8-2.
That's cool. Both were tremendous so I like that the vote was close. Both were deserving, but like I said earlier I'm glad a dman won it since they often get overlooked.
I like how they did the trophy presentation and handoff, I thought it was super classy. Also like that Bettman announced Tampa requested it to be that way. You barely noticed there were no fans because of how well it was done.
Then you have the Superbowl debacle of a presentation, LoL.
I like the idea that some have mentioned around teams playing a series with the teams they face off against to minimize travel. Teams are facing some opponents 4 times a year, so that can be spread across 7-9 days. Teams that play each other twice a year can be spread over 4 or 5 days and maybe they play with the schedule to have a minimum number of games against an opponent be twice so they can minimize travel, eliminating the single games altogether.
