Guilt Trip
Active member
About time...
https://twitter.com/TSN_Sports/status/1483488314422444039
https://twitter.com/TSN_Sports/status/1483488314422444039
2021-2022 NHL Thread
- Thread starter Kin
- Start date
Deebo said:
Yeah this is definitely like a Kessel/Feschuk situation.
I did not realize that Ovi just took over the scoring lead (partially because the Edmonton duo has only played 1 game in the past 2 weeks). He's up to 55 points in 40 games, putting him at a 113 point pace. That would actually break his previous career high in points of 112, which he set in his 3rd NHL season. He hasn't broken the 100 point mark, or even been on pace for 100 points, since the 09/10 season. Just an insane season for the 36-year old.
Heroic Shrimp
Active member
https://twitter.com/archivistsports/status/1483699080341590018
Heroic Shrimp
Active member
https://twitter.com/wyshynski/status/1483847080745521152
Chris Johnston wasn?t sympathetic to Matheson?s approach either, on TSN1050 yesterday.
Chris Johnston wasn?t sympathetic to Matheson?s approach either, on TSN1050 yesterday.
Heroic Shrimp
Active member
Yes, as we all know, Chris Johnston is the only reporter who uses sources and surely Jim Matheson never has used any.Nik said:
In most of the full 3 minute video clip, Draisaitl answers reasonable questions as adequately as one might expect. No, he is not insightful in any meaningful way. Players in all sports are rarely insightful in meaningful ways in such interviews. It?s quicker and easier to be boring, and sometimes they?re literally boring personalities.
Matheson starts some questioning trying to explicitly force the narrative of ?anger? over frustration (maybe to imply the lack of anger?? I have no idea) onto Draisaitl. Leon doesn?t bite and brings it back to frustration. Matheson then explicitly wants Draisaitl to name the #1 problem with the team. The popular answer pretty clearly seems to be goaltending. Unsurprisingly, Draisaitl doesn?t give him any useful answer at all.
I?m generally all for reporters asking players hard questions about themselves and their play. If Draisaitl has been playing terribly, go ahead and grill him on that and get specific. But with the ?#1 problem? question, Matheson is asking Draisaitl to explicitly call out specific teammates either directly or indirectly, and the only variation of a response we can expect to get from him is the way in which he doesn?t answer the question. Sure, players get asked literally all the time what?s wrong when a team is losing and unsurpringly we get generic answers. Somehow Matheson things that he asks a question about calling out teammates with extreme specificity that he will get a specific answer. Unsurprisingly, he doesn?t.
Was Draisaitl rude? Yeah, sure. Yes, one can say Leon started it with his answer. But I honestly don?t blame him, and it was a colourful answer to a stupid line of questioning in an unexpected way, and revealing in its own way. Matheson still comes off as the big baby to me here.
I like Scott Wheeler?s thoughts on the whole episode in this thread and in the comments, and you likely would as well:
https://twitter.com/scottcwheeler/status/1483608195385995272
Kin
New member
Heroic Shrimp said:
I think there's a pretty wide difference between "using sources" and being someone whose whole schtick is relying on sources to know about trades five minutes before other guys. The next time Johnston or Friedman or any "insider" reports something even resembling a difficult or controversial point about a NHL team will be the first and I'm, I think, pretty fairly skeptical on their takes on getting on people's badsides.
Heroic Shrimp said:
If you're the leader of a team, whether officially or by virtue of your play, you should be expected to be asked tough questions about the team as well as yourself in bad stretches. That doesn't obligate you to give answers they want, and indeed it almost never results in that, but I don't think that makes the questions themselves out of bounds.
Heroic Shrimp said:
No, he doesn't. He asks him "What do you think is the #1 reason for the losses...is there one thing in your mind where you're saying we got to get better at?". Now, you might think that in asking that he's implicitly asking him to criticize teammates but quite literally he's including Draisaitl in the "we" and, accordingly, Draisaitil could have answered with "No, when you're on a losing streak like this it's never one thing" or even answered in a way that implicated himself. Which, of course, is what Draisaitl did albeit in a bit of a brusque manner. My beef isn't with Draisaitl's answer.
But the fact that the hockey world at large has decided that if a team has one glaring flaw that asking any of the players, implicitly or explicitly, to talk about it is off-limits and that any player who answered any such question remotely honestly would make them a horrible teammate and human being doesn't actually mean a reporter shouldn't ask about a glaring flaw that anyone with eyes can see. Even if Matheson had said "Hey Leon, your goaltending sucks, any comments?" it's still a legitimate question if the goaltending sucks. A hockey team's decision to close ranks and not call out individual performances doesn't alter the relationship a journalist should have to what's actually happening on the ice.
I know people resist the comparison of sports media to people who cover more important subjects but any big organization like the Oilers could use the same excuse to duck difficult questions. We, as the public, just wouldn't accept that in any other context. Imagine the head of Coca-Cola PR being like "Hey man, we're not going to comment on all the human waste discovered at our plant in New Mexico. The New Mexico Coke Bottlers are teammates of ours!"
I don't know anything, really, about Matheson and whether he's a good reporter and really my take here isn't about defending him for calling Draisaitl pissy or even criticizing Draisaitl fror being pissy which, given how the Oilers are doing, seems kind of reasonable to me. I'm just genuinely struggling to understand the "Draisaitl doesn't want to answer what might be a difficult question about the team, so the reporter is a jerk for asking it" POV coming from a lot of fans and even some media. Like, at that point why even have a hockey media? So you can ask a player about how he's doing exclusively?
Frank E
Active member
FLA is certainly deep: http://www.nhl.com/stats/skaters?reportType=season&seasonFrom=20212022&seasonTo=20212022&gameType=2&playerPlayedFor=franchise.33&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=points,goals,assists&page=0&pageSize=50
Interesting beyond Huberdeau's wicked year, Duclair has 30 points in 31GP...Verhaeghe has 32 pts in 38GP.
Interesting beyond Huberdeau's wicked year, Duclair has 30 points in 31GP...Verhaeghe has 32 pts in 38GP.
Highlander
Active member
I think Verhaeghe was our 3rd round pick and seemed to have some real potential that we obviously gave up on way to early. Pity especially when you pick plugs like Biggs, Percy and the Goat in the first round.
Guilt Trip
Active member
Lou gave Verhaeghe away for nothing. Florida is a really good team. I think I'd rather face Tampa...lol. We'll see what happens. Half the year to go still.Frank E said:
Heroic Shrimp
Active member
https://twitter.com/domluszczyszyn/status/1484375204935581697
Trying and failing to reconcile this with the 6-0 Oilers loss. How do they do it??
Trying and failing to reconcile this with the 6-0 Oilers loss. How do they do it??
Guilt Trip
Active member
You forgot Hyman. Nice player but not 5.5 x 7. They have no secondary scoring and their D after Nurse, Bouchard is terrible.L K said: