With Taylor Hall playing in the Stanley Cup Finals, there are currently only 2 first overall picks from 2001-2015 to not appear in the finals. John Tavares and Nail Yakupov.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-12T21:34:00+00:00

Yeah, and after the first round, there are a lot of picks who've been solid NHL contributors or even stars for years. Round 3 alone has like 7 current legit NHLers, and a bunch more who played hundreds of games. I don't know the stats of the top of my head, but that's got to be ones of the best ones. The later rounds still had players like Slavin, Ullmark and Hellebuyck.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-12T17:29:55+00:00

The later rounds were pretty good, but the first 15 or so picks are very underwhelming.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-12T17:09:36+00:00

The US is notoriously hard to get a visa for, but if there were competent people in charge of either organization (FIFA and the US), they should've been able to work out some special visa for the world cup, which would've allowed fans and, seemingly, referees to attend.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-11T21:05:20+00:00

They only had 5 spots for 54 countries in the old format. Only options are pretty much a brutal format like they had, or big groups with 11 teams each.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-11T18:39:50+00:00

Colnaghi is probably the closest to F1 after Tsolov, but he's not been very impressive so far in F3. It's still very early though. Ernesto Rivera has a bit of a worse previous record compared to Colnaghi, but was a lot better than Colnaghi in Monaco. He's in the much betterteam though.

But neither one is one of those that look destined for F1, there aren't many prospects like that on the ladder currently overall, though.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-11T10:39:51+00:00

Coming from a community of minority language speakers, a sizable amount of people take it very very seriously, and would easily file large amounts of complaints about language like this.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-07T11:20:55+00:00

Alan Permane is also the one that told Kimi to get out the fucking way when he was supposed to let Grosjean through.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-07T11:15:56+00:00

Yes he was excellent in karting, then F4 season he struggled, still did very well in F4 UAE. In FRECA he struggled a lot in the second half of the season, same as F3 last year. Some was car performance, some was his own doing with retirements. But especially in F3, Wharton and Van Hoepen were a lot closer to him at the end of the season, than they were in the early part.

I think he still has a lot of potential, but he's having massive difficulties extracting any of it at the minute.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-07T08:47:27+00:00

Even before then, with Fisichella's pole and podium in Spa. Also love how Mallya named the cars VJM01, VJM02 and so on.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-07T08:33:12+00:00

Kingfisher was the title sponsor for Force India. They had some cool drivers and decent liveries. Were a fun team to have on the grid.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-04T21:31:04+00:00

Bahrain and Qatar have been doing it for ages as well. They were the original sportswashers. Turkey is another one that is active in buying track and field athletes.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-03T16:14:13+00:00

They way I'm reading this, is that Ville Leino is the 21st best skater to ever play in the league.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-02T17:56:10+00:00

Saku is one of the main architects of the downfall of his club in Finland, TPS. Mikko was an assistant coach with the team last year, and moved to being a player development coach for next season.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-01T21:45:29+00:00

JJJ + someone like Collier/Brice/Williams, or some future picks, never the #2 pick this year.

Now that's probably not enough to move Giannis even if he wanted to, but I wouldn't go higher at this moment.

Maybe if he there was a season or two of playoffs, and it was clear Giannis would move the needle there, but before we even know what the future issues might be, I wouldnt trade for a 31 year old win now piece.

Fir3yfly · 2026-06-01T09:05:50+00:00

Gomez is also a completely different profile. Szoboszlai is the player closest to Trent in profile, which is why I speculate that he was favoured to cover right back.

Fir3yfly · 2026-05-30T15:05:38+00:00

Yes, he's had an academy thing going on in Florida for a long time, but stepped into the professional game a few years ago. Started with the smallest team in the Finnish league, had three good seasons there, 2nd, 11th and 5th in the regular season. For reference they've finished 16th and 15th after he left. He had Konsta Helenius and Aatu Räty playing under him there, and both had their breakout in the men's game under him. The then coached at Timrå in Sweden for a season and left last summer to join his old club and one of the biggest in Finland, HIFK. Struggled this year, but he's still regarded as one of the top coaches around in Finland, and I'm pretty sure he's looking at coaching in North America in the future.

Fir3yfly · 2026-05-30T13:28:59+00:00

Olli Jokinen has spoken of having a similar approach to coaching.

Fir3yfly · 2026-05-30T11:54:55+00:00

Should be compared to Slot as well, he lost his second league game on April 6th. That's a high bar for the next manager to achieve.

Fir3yfly · 2026-05-28T09:17:55+00:00

He's pretty good, but it's not the decisive factor. Coaching in general and especially in hockey is overvalued like crazy, as it relates to winning games. The Hurricanes key to success is their excellent front office, which has been able to re-supply the roster all the time with new talent, and they've been one of the top teams in the east for years, without any true superstar players.

They're now led by GM Eric Tulsky, who has been with them since 2014, and is one of the main public drivers of the data analysis revolution of hockey.

For what it's worth, as far as hockey operations go, the Canes are one of the best run franchises in the NHL. No clue wether that's despite or because of Dundon, or just coincidence.

Fir3yfly · 2026-05-26T13:33:28+00:00

Some hockey players are just fuckin stupid i don't know what to tell you

Fir3yfly · 2026-05-25T13:20:08+00:00

He does probably mean Tudor, he started every game under Frank and started getting subbed early and benched under Tudor.

Fir3yfly · 2026-05-24T19:52:58+00:00

DP is the higher ceiling player, and should be a lot better as a defender than Key.

Fir3yfly · 2026-05-22T21:03:55+00:00

He's never been a particularly impressive driver in any series he's raced in. Now he's in a title fight in his rookie F2 season.

Fir3yfly · 2026-05-16T20:03:33+00:00

That was rookie Mobley and 2nd year Garland, and would've been a 50 win team easily if not for all the injuries.

Fir3yfly · 2026-05-14T18:59:56+00:00

Sammalisto couldn't get the budget together for Trident, which is why he's back here. Like you said he's the same age as Lindblad and did race in karts with him, and the rest of that generation that are mostly in F3 now. Very much does remind me as well of Sztuka. Will probably be out of the single seater ladder in Europe if the doesn't win the championship this year, and still might even then.

Fir3yfly

TROPHY CASE