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2022-23 NHL Thread

Admittedly I'm not expecting a great deal of rigorous intellectual consistency here but getting a statement like this from a player I think does a great job of highlighting the problem inherent both with the players and the NHL's messaging on this. He is choosing, by his own words, not to endorse "something". But what is that something? Is it just being gay? Or having some measure of pride in being gay as opposed to shame? A word that often comes up among defenders of this position is "lifestyle" but your sexual orientation doesn't define your lifestyle. There are celibate gay people and married with kids gay people and gay people who are out there having sex with a bunch of different partners just as it's true with straight people.

And where's the courage of his convictions? If you think what you're being asked to "endorse" here is bad enough that you're not willing to take part, why would you think it should be welcomed into the game of hockey? Either this is a bad thing you need to take a stand against or it isn't.

Someone really needs to sit down with Gary Bettman and ask him three very simple and very fair questions:

1. Would he be just as open to players expressing their "individual rights" objecting to, say, something like MLK day on the basis of them being racist.

2. If not, what's the tangible difference in the NHL's eyes?

3. If either question 1 or 2 have a meaningful answer, can Hockey really be said to be open to everyone?

At some point the league has to take a meaningful and clear position here.
 
AtomicMapleLeaf said:
Guilt Trip said:
Hiding behind a religion that apparently loves you unless you turn gay. Every pe
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But they'll honor the military, which literally kills people for a living. I'm a vet for what's it's worth.
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Well that's different tho don't ya know. And thx for your service!
 
Would be nice to centre the players that are actively supportive (Dermott, JvR, etc) instead of platforming dissenters
 
herman said:
Would be nice to centre the players that are actively supportive (Dermott, JvR, etc) instead of platforming dissenters
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I appreciate the sentiment there but at this point it's really more about the NHL's response and stance as an institution than it is individual players and their beliefs.
 
Pretty big heel turn by Reimer here. He's lost a lot of his old fans over this but gained a bunch of new ones, ok he gained the bigots but still
 
Guilt Trip said:
Burke says it best....

https://twitter.com/bruce_arthur/status/1637303603970084864
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1000% agree. The Bible says a lot of things so it's funny to me what people decide is the line for inclusivity or not. In the end if you're Christian you should be following Christ who at the time was pretty inclusive as far as the standards of the day were concerned.

And what kills me is there are lgbtq+ Christians (we have several in my own family)! Funny that one Christian refuses to accept another.
 
Bender said:
Should I care?
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Fanatics jerseys are pretty crap. They were always seen as the more budget friendly option so it was a "you get what you pay for" sorta thing. I guess it remains to be seen how much that'll change now.
 
https://twitter.com/TheAthleticNHL/status/1638224198211608577

Through March 12, when the summit began, 100 of the league?s 271 fights in 2022-23 had come as a result of defending a teammate after a hit, the data showed. Of those 100, 89 were fights following a clean check. The instigator penalty had been called a miniscule 21 times.
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That's wild (but completely unsurprising). The instigator should literally be the easier penalty call for a referee to make in these situations.
 
Fights after clean hits are silly looking from where I'm sitting, but I do think it's a lot harder to tell when you're on the ice and focused on the play, and suddenly the crowd stirs and you see your teammate laid out. The result of a clean hit and a bad hit are generally going to look about the same in that second or two of recognizance.
 
herman said:
Fights after clean hits are silly looking from where I'm sitting, but I do think it's a lot harder to tell when you're on the ice and focused on the play, and suddenly the crowd stirs and you see your teammate laid out. The result of a clean hit and a bad hit are generally going to look about the same in that second or two of recognizance.
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My issue with it isn't even necessarily from the players perspective (although I do still think they're dumb). It's that challenging someone to a fight in the immediate aftermath of a big hit, clean or not, is quite literally the text book definition of the instigator penalty and the refs are making the correct call in those situations roughly 20% of the time.

If players want to keep reacting that way, fine. But the rulebook should be properly enforced when they do.
 
herman said:
Fights after clean hits are silly looking from where I'm sitting, but I do think it's a lot harder to tell when you're on the ice and focused on the play, and suddenly the crowd stirs and you see your teammate laid out. The result of a clean hit and a bad hit are generally going to look about the same in that second or two of recognizance.
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Fights after a hit (and in general) are pretty useless, regardless. The damage has already been done, and we have decades of history showing the fighting is not effective as a deterrent for bad hits. All you're really doing is robbing your team of your services for at least 5 minutes of game time plus putting yourself at risk for an injury. I understand the desire to stand up for a teammate, but you can do that without dropping the gloves and effectively punishing your team more than the other side.

The officials and the DoPS should be doling out the punishment here - though, with this league, that's not going to work, either.
 
I ain't relying on the refs to do anything subjective. I think mandatory full cage/masks solves a lot of problems.
 
Fights are a thing of the past.  No use for them in the game/sport.  After a game, I never think to myself, "Gee...I really wish I saw a fight tonight.". Glad they are few and far between at this point. The premeditated ones as soon as the puck is dropped are the worst.
 
Chicago not having pride jerseys because they might upset their Russian players.  Trash organization
 
L K said:
Chicago not having pride jerseys because they might upset their Russian players.  Trash organization
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I thought it was more like they might upset the Kremlin.
 
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