Why do you think young players like petey have to pay dues before refs give them calls? Sidney had to go through it. Now he can be dirty and not get called.
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Monday Mailbag: Referees, The Drop Pass, and Early Reviews of Myers & Benn
Photo credit: Matthew Henderson
Oct 28, 2019, 14:43 EDT
If there is one thing I will never understand about the NHL, it is the officiating. You’d think that the path of least resistance would be to treat every player in the same fashion and call the game consistently regardless of which players are involved, how much time is left on the clock, or what month it is; but apparently that’s not the case.
My best guess would be that, just like anyone else, the referees are more likely to give someone the benefit of the doubt if they’ve had time to develop a working relationship with them. I doubt it’s intentional, but that doesn’t make it any better. It’s no secret that the NHL has had a wide variety with its officiating for as long as I can remember and I can’t begin to imagine what the solution is.
If it were up to me, the league would just abolish referees altogether, along with offsides, kicking the puck, and owners; but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Rank these boutique law firms in order of likely success in estate litigation: Quinn, Hughes LLP Tanner, Pearson LLP Jackson, MacDonald LLP
Considering Jackson McDonald is already the name of a lawyer or law firm in Australia I’m going to go with that.
Are the Canucks fun to watch again?
Pettersson and Boeser haven’t been quite as electric as they’ve been in years past, but the overall product has been much better. On any given night, the team can roll at least two forward lines and two defense pairings that are a threat to produce offence, which is a major improvement over the last few seasons. So overall, I would say yes, although it would be nice to see Pettersson in particular catch fire again offensively the way he did at times last year.
With all the talk of extending overtime, would this work? 4 minutes 4v4 followed by 3 minutes 3v3 followed by 2 minutes 2v2 followed by 2 minute 1v1. That would produce a winner and way more exciting than what we currently have.
I’ve seen this idea floated around in the past and I have to be honest, the idea of watching 2-on-2 or 1-on-1 in overtime does not seem like a huge improvement over the shootout. It’s replacing a gimmick with another gimmick. The best idea that’s been floated is still continuous 3-on-3. The pace is so fast and there are so many chances that I can’t see it going on for much longer than a few extra minutes anyway.
Thoughts on Tyler Myers and Jordie Benn after 10 games?
I don’t think I have really noticed anything Jordie Benn has done since the start of the season, which means he gets an A+ from me. Really, all you can hope for from your third pair is to not have to think about them, and that’s more or less been the case this year with Benn and Stecher.
I have to admit, I’ve been borderline astounded at how successful the Edler-Myers pairing has been so far. Myers has the best shot-share of any Canucks defenseman, and aside from a couple of gaffes he’s looked very solid in his role. The pairing just doesn’t seem like it would work on paper for a variety of reasons, and Myers’ body of work in Winnipeg was very hit-or-miss, but kudos to everyone involved for getting it to work so far.
I’m still extremely skeptical that the Myers contract is going to work out in the long run, especially when 33-year-old Alex Edler is his partner and he’s playing nearly half the game on some nights. I’m also not entirely convinced the strong numbers are going to hold up over an entire season, especially as the competition gets stiffer and the games more frequent. All that having been said, I was concerned the issues with Myers would start to present themselves almost immediately and that hasn’t been the case so far, which is a good sign. If he can give the Canucks decent value through the first three years of his deal, it’s going to make the likely decline over his last two years a lot more palatable.
Is that game going to set Markstrom back. He didn’t look himself in 3rd or shootout. Or rather he looked liked the goalie formerly known as Marky.
I wish I could confidently give you a straight answer but I honestly have no idea. Goaltending is the most cerebral position in hockey, and we can infer based on how Markstrom has behaved in the past that getting in the right head space is imperative if he wants to succeed.
I’m generally skeptical of the impulse to attribute every little up and down in a goalie’s career to coaching, but Markstrom really has looked different since Ian Clark took over. Markstrom has proven that he could carry over last season’s success into this year, which traditionally hasn’t been the case, so I’m willing to wait and see if he can brush off poor performances more quickly than he’s done in the past, too.
What do you think of boeser on shootouts? He seems to wind in slow and shoot, not versatile with the deke and goalies know this
Everyone generally assumes that their best offensive players at even-strength will end up being their best players in the shootout, but anyone who watched enough of the Sedins over the course of the last decade or so will know that isn’t always the case. What makes Boeser a good goal-scorer is his ability to slip through defensive coverage, get open, and get his shot off. That skill set doesn’t necessarily lend itself that well to the shootout. Boeser can pick a corner as well as anyone else, but if he doesn’t have teammates to get the goalie moving it’s going to limit his effectiveness. Obviously, he’s still got time to improve and work on his moves, but we may just have to accept that the skills competition isn’t his strong suit.
I have so many issues with this I don’t even know where to start. I don’t understand why the drop pass has become such a hot button for fans in this market when just about every other team in the NHL makes frequent use of it. I can tell you this much, a team is not going to have more success at entering the zone by dumping the puck in and giving up possession than they do by using the drop pass. I don’t advise dumping the puck in at even-strength, let alone on the man advantage.
I know it can be frustrating to watch sometimes, and I’m not saying the Canucks couldn’t use to cut back on their reliance on it, but we can’t just expect the team to completely drop a perfectly fine tactic for entering the zone just because they have some players who can actually skate the puck in now.
Would there be a market to sell “high” on Tanner Pearson? Move a contract and replace with Baertschi and try to drive that asset value up?
Maybe? It seems like Pearson has already cooled off significantly from where he was at at the start of the year, and his rough start last season followed by a lacklustre stint in Pittsburgh seem to have really lowered his value around the league. If he can put together a strong campaign and put himself back on pace for another 40-point season by the trade deadline, I could see him fetching a decent return. I don’t really see the Canucks pulling the trigger, though. They’re all in to make the playoffs this year and if they’re still in the picture by the deadline they’ll be buying, not selling.
What kind of managing editor let's one of his writers compare Adam Gaudette to Frankie Corrado and expect it to be taken seriously?
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from doing this job and watching others do it before me, it’s that you will never satisfy everyone. I find a lot of fans say they want more diversity of opinion, but what they really want is just for their opinion to be disproportionately represented in comparison to ones they disagree with.
I’ve been writing here for over three years now, and I’d be willing to say that the diversity of opinion among the editorial staff has never been greater, and that the site overall has probably never been more generous in its view of management than it is right now. And yet, on the rare instances when I take a look at the comments section (or someone else does, and tells me about it), a large portion of what I see is people accusing me of having an agenda, being too negative, and a truly astounding number of references to J.D. Burke, who hasn’t written at the site in over a year.
While it may seem hard to believe, my job does not entail telling people what to think. I want to editorial content the site produces to be of the highest quality possible, and my goal is to make the writing clear and concise and the arguments sharp. What I don’t want is to tell anybody who is kind enough to devote their time and energy into writing for the site what they can and can’t think. In Mike’s case, he looked at Frankie Corrado and saw another former fifth-rounder who came into the league with a lot of hype, but struggled to make a name for himself. He also thought there was a lesson that could be learned from that situation when it comes to overhyping prospects who where drafted in later rounds. To be quite honest, that doesn’t seem all that outlandish to me, and I can only imagine the screeching that would occur if it came out that I told him not to write something because I didn’t agree with it.
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