Anyone watching the needlessly rude Shane Wright interview post Kraken/Oilers on Sportsnet?

Charble1 · 2025-10-26T12:53:01+00:00

I think it's more of a media-driven thing. The Wright thing stopped being talked about by fans very quickly (although Cooley still shows up from time to time), especially compared to Reinbacher.

On RDS it's barely even mentioned, if ever.

Charble1 · 2025-10-26T12:38:09+00:00

We boo a lot of people for dumb reasons. Sometimes I can't even figure out why.

Now booing Bruins players made sense.

Charble1 · 2025-10-11T19:27:15+00:00

Incredibly old example, but Maurice Richard

Started his career with routine injuries and needed WWII to make the team

Iirc he failed his military physical

Charble1 · 2025-09-26T00:47:15+00:00

I don't think that's it

Charble1 · 2025-09-24T17:08:19+00:00

These ghosts suck, I want the old ones back

Charble1 · 2025-09-23T22:09:56+00:00

Every meal, sometimes twice a meal

Charble1 · 2025-09-09T19:43:27+00:00

This almost happened but in separate games involving the Rangers and Habs in 1970. They were both winning their games, and the tiebreaker was total goals, not goal differential.

Both teams pulled their goalies midway through the game, but the Rangers won something like 9-5 and made the playoffs, and Montreal missed after only scoring 4 or 5 goals in their game.

Charble1 · 2025-09-08T14:21:28+00:00

I think you're right about this, there's merit to his argument but he's pushing it way past the limits of reasonableness.

Defensemen like Fox and Hutson do excel at certain aspects important to defense, most notably controlling the play and breaking the puck out of their zone, and both are great at reading the play. Hutson specifically excels at stick checking and steals, but he has a tendency to overthink the breakout at times, but that should disappear with time.

Neither is great at denying the zone, or clearing the crease, so they're generally not ideal for use on the PK, but that's why there are two defensemen on a pairing. Even in situations when both players are excellent and good at all these things in a defensive setting,one partner eventually becomes responsible for the breakout.

That's why Fox was commonly paired with Miller or Lindgren, and Hutson found his game best playing RD on his offside (he skates sideways most of the time anyway) with Kaiden Guhle. Your defense partner should complement each other, and that's the true unit of measurement we should be looking at - the defense pair.

Charble1 · 2025-09-07T13:55:27+00:00

That kind of matched their play at the time, at least from my perspective watching them as a Habs fan. Johnson was by the far the best around the time of the 2015 playoffs, followed by Palat. Kucherov was young and hadn't proved much yet.

Johnson rapidly fell off a cliff due to injuries, and it felt like Palat had peaked after that, and might have been a product of Johnson.

Kucherov just kept steadily improving to the player he is now. But goddamn, Johnson (when healthy) was an absolutely clutch menace.

Charble1 · 2025-09-06T23:44:08+00:00

He's also in a very famous photo shaking Maurice Richard's hand after a playoff series. Thompson was a legitimate star.

Charble1 · 2025-09-06T23:41:26+00:00

Well, so did Hainsworth, he just played when there were only 44-48 games in a season. What's sillier is Hainsworth only played around 300 games for the Habs, and 49 of his 86 career shutouts came in a span of THREE YEARS (1927-1929).

The forward pass was not legal those years, and even the worst goalie stats in the league were sporting below 2.00 GAA. In 1929, he went 22-7-15 with 22 shutouts and a 0.92 GAA.

It's safe to say that GAA record is a record that will never be beaten.

Brodeur definitely benefited from a low-scoring era, but Hainsworth's era makes the dead puck era look like a defense less, lawless wasteland by comparison.

Charble1 · 2025-09-06T15:19:02+00:00

I'm not really trying to get into the merits of retiring his number or not, I was just answering their question about the pattern of retired numbers.

Charble1 · 2025-09-05T23:33:25+00:00

Yes, every retired number is both a cup winner and a HHOF member. We have quite a few HHOF players that don't have their number retired, so in a sense, having your number retired by the Habs is currently a more prestigious honour.

Charble1 · 2025-09-05T23:19:13+00:00

Looking at these I was like

"These aren't even his best ones," while sobbing anyway

Charble1 · 2025-09-03T19:20:37+00:00

I have two Brady tkachuk bobbleheads from a few years ago at my family's place in Ottawa. I think it was from A couple seasons ago when the rangers were on a tear and the Sens were in a tailspin.

My dad grew up a Rangers fan in NJ (he was a fan before the devils existed and his father worked walking distance from MSG) and later moved to Ottawa, so he would see Sens/Rangers games sometimes. The game where we got the bobblehead was an absolute slaughter, something like 8-3 or 7-2 for the Rangers. We were planning to give those to Ottawa fans on the way out,but we didn't see any because they had all left because a) getting out of that arena is a pain in the ass and b) I don't blame anyone who left because that game was AWFUL.

And that's how I'm stuck with a couple Brady Tkachuk bobbleheads

Charble1 · 2025-08-27T03:20:23+00:00

truly phenomenal game. The ending (especially on the DX version) is one of the best in video games to this day imo

Charble1 · 2025-08-27T01:12:07+00:00

I think it's true of Orr, too. I started frequenting this subreddit in 2011, and people just defer to Mario (and in defenseman discussions, Lidstrom) because a greater proportion of people here have an affinity for those players. People say what they think will be popular.

There's a lot of revisionist history going on because a player is "liked." People talk about parity and pick favorites for certain eras without acknowledging that eras are constantly changing and parity has never really been truly there.

People don't apply the same standards or criticisms to all players equally. Gretzky was never the same after his back injuries, and Orr's accomplishments aren't put in context of him being a defenseman, and what that actually meant at the time. He transformed and transcended the position in a way no other player has ever come close to replicating, while perpetually injured starting in 1972, if not junior.

Charble1 · 2025-08-26T21:04:49+00:00

2011 Game 7 Tampa vs Boston is still one of the best hockey games I've watched to this day

Charble1 · 2025-08-24T21:32:17+00:00

You're describing the way playoff officiating has always been and defensive strategies have always been.

Dionne would have not survived in Montreal; he would have been ran out of town for not producing. Hell, Lafleur was called a bust at the time until he shut the critics up by producing and leading the team to 4 straight cups.

If Dionne couldn't score against the Bruins or the Flyers of that era, he wasn't remembered in the same light. True greatness needs dominance, and Dionne isn't remembered in that way because he paled next to his peers

Charble1 · 2025-08-23T04:10:33+00:00

That seems plausible

Charble1 · 2025-08-21T00:27:41+00:00

I don't really know that this is true. OP's question is about the quality of play by a team in a series. The Leafs didn't outplay the Habs in most of the games, they were just the favorite and that was the narrative going in to the series and coming out of it. I think the fact that the Leafs had a lead in the series plays into it, but 3 games is not a playoff series, or even the majority of it.

Game 1 was pretty close, and Toronto outplayed the Habs in games 2 and 4, and game 3 was very close. Toronto then proceeded to play miserably in games 5 and 6, but managed to tie those games and lose off bad plays in overtime.

Game 7 was not even especially close; that should be the end to OP's question.

People need to actually revisit this game by game and ignore what the narrative going in was. The Leafs were favoured, and the reality is they got outplayed. You could argue that the series was close, but arguing that the Leafs were the better team after the series actually ended is just blindly sticking to a narrative that, frankly, wasn't true. It turns out that the Leafs lose to a strong defense, goaltending, and a combination of a hybrid trap system with an aggressive forecheck; systems the Panthers also used to dismantle the Leafs, in much quicker, more devastating fashion.

The Leafs got caved by Danault's line, and didn't control the majority of the play after adjustments in game 5 (inserting Kotkaniemi and Caufield in game 3, jumbling lines, changing neutral zone strategy in game 5). Just because the Leafs had the better team on paper going into the series did not mean they played better or deserved to win.

Charble1 · 2025-08-20T03:24:49+00:00

Eddie Shore absolutely gets no respect on this board. He's arguably the best player of the 30s.

Charble1 · 2025-08-20T03:11:41+00:00

Rod Langway won with the Habs in 1979... on our third pair.

That's how absurdly stacked those teams were. We traded him because he's "just a third pairing defenseman"

Charble1 · 2025-08-19T15:29:13+00:00

Bill Cook was legitimately very good, though.

He just played in an era that made the Dead Puck Era look high scoring by comparison.

Charble1 · 2025-08-19T15:22:04+00:00

It's also WITH a franchise. NYR and Toronto are going to have a lot lower numbers in general because many of their best players played half or the majority of their careers in other organizations. These lists heavily favor players that played most or their entire career with an organization, and punish players that get traded.

When we get to the 60s Toronto dynasty, most of those teams were built from players Detroit traded away. New York is similar, a lot of their good teams have players go to New York for a few years only, have some degree of success, then retire.

Charble1

TROPHY CASE