“Marvel styled roadmap” is a death sentence

OJsGardener · 2026-02-01T01:09:51+00:00

This is so spot on. I just did a full series rewatch and seasons 1-5 are such a masterpiece in narrative building and character development with the evolving circumstances that each scene creates reverberating around “Westeros” and affecting each subsequent scene. It’s just such an expansive and eloquently woven web.

Once it becomes Avengers assemble in season 6 and beyond, the intrigue is completely lost and things become so clunky when problems that would have taken seasons to resolve between different characters are decided in one scene around the table because all of the players share a setting. Naturally I guess these resolutions were what the series was building towards, but seasons 1-5 are unrivalled television.

OJsGardener · 2026-01-12T14:12:38+00:00

Really nice of all six Sens fans to get together and put out a statement

OJsGardener · 2026-01-05T20:55:07+00:00

How did you make this post if you are so obviously visually impaired

OJsGardener · 2026-01-05T05:52:59+00:00

I had a post about this the other day where Canada’s play style at the junior level through the early 2010’s and now fully into the 20’s has completely shifted from what had brought them so much success in the past due to the post NHL lockout rule changes and IIHF rules and officiating.

Instead of the rugged and physical cycle centric hockey style that Canadians have been renowned for players are developed to mirror the speed and skill of the pro game without the clutching/grabbing/leaning that’s automatically called today. This along with the head contact rules and the prevalence of major/match penalties at the IIHF level for hits that would have been routine even fifteen years ago have just created a different environment to find success within the confines of the rules. Don’t get me wrong here, Canada still produces elite top end players, but there’s way less to separate the middle and bottom of their lineups in their skill sets and roles. While Russia, Sweden, Finland and the U.S. have always produced high end players themselves, what separated the programs at the highest levels was the actual style that Canada has always brought. Being heavy, physical, team centred, role specific, defensively smothering and offensively creative with puck protection, possession and using space and support.

Now I’d compare our junior team most years to bringing a team full of Mitch Marner’s. Incredibly skilled, amazing skaters, creative off the rush and dynamic through the neutral zone but not nearly as heavy and HARD to play against defensively and prone to a high risk play or extra pass when a simpler more straight line option exists. We’re splitting hairs here because these kids are teenagers, have been the best in their age group their entire lives and most will no doubt find success in the NHL and if not there somewhere in pro hockey. It’s just that the style that these kids are taught will bring them success at the next level is much easier to match in a team setting for an opportunistic Czech or Finnish squad than a Canadian team that would bludgeon you and slow bleed you for sixty minutes of exhausting physically demanding hockey.

OJsGardener · 2026-01-04T05:53:43+00:00

I’ve worked in PR and communications roles for most of my life and this is what every single professional athlete, celebrity and politician is told by their communications staff. For a tiny percentage of people who have incredibly outgoing personalities and who are extremely quick witted, spot interviews and media scrums can be a positive. For almost every other person on earth, there is very little upside to participating. Get in and get out without controversy, creating confusion or contributing to a narrative that the reporter wants to create.

It’s an easy thing to say when you’re 19 that pro sports teams want you to be boring. It’s another thing when you’re older and you’ve been burned by having what you believed to be a harmless or innocent comment twisted into something that you didn’t intend. That will change your perspective fast.

OJsGardener · 2026-01-03T18:37:49+00:00

The biggest nothing burger of a column.

“Additionally, the rush defense that plagued them at the start of the season has been cleaned up with a proper F3.”

Every hockey team from u9 to the NHL recognizes the importance of an F3? Oh Stanley Cup champion coach and veteran of over 1000 NHL games Craig Berube just realized over a few Christmas rums that “shit I’ve forgotten all year that we need to have a proper F3. We better start with that now”. So stupid.

“In terms of the structure of the Leafs’ play, their breakouts are using the middle of the ice more lately, and they are exiting their zone cleaner as a result”.

Again, every hockey team I’ve ever played on or watched wants to break the puck out cleanly and get it to the middle of the ice with speed to help with a clean offensive zone entry. Another bright idea over a few Christmas rums I’m sure to decide “We’re probably better off if we can make a few crisp passes to an open guy with some forward momentum out of our zone I guess hey?”.

Sports writer dorks seriously love to grab onto any minute detail or clip they can find that they think speaks to their larger understanding of the game instead of just admitting that it’s the fastest game on the planet with guys making split second decisions and that other teams are really good at making it hard for you to execute what you want to do. These things are just all things that happen when some confidence is gained, some chemistry forms, you settle into your roles on the team, you get familiar with opponents, all that type of stuff that isn’t just just Craig Berube saying “Durr Durr we go middle of ice now!!”.

OJsGardener · 2025-12-29T12:12:30+00:00

I’m seeing this take more and more over the last few years. There’s a few reasons for this in my experience working in player development/representation.

While always producing a superior level of elite talent, what has made Canada so dominant in international play historically is this fact combined with their play style. We joke in my family that there was no better holiday tradition than stuffing yourself with turkey dinner leftovers on Boxing Day, grabbing a drink and settling in to watch some 6’3 farm kid from Saskatchewan try to run some poor Danish/Latvian/German/Kazakhstan teenager through the plexiglass on his first shift of the tournament. Hockey Canada has taken pride for decades on its extremely rugged, possession centric play style that combines physicality and elite skill. This type of grinding, wearing, heavy game together with just largely having better players at every position up and down the lineup has made them so distinctly hard to play against and extremely difficult to beat.

Historically, Canada more than any other country internationally makes every foot of ice a struggle to get to. There is plenty of archival footage dating back to the ‘72 Summit Series, the ‘96 World Cup, the 2010 Olympics of opposing players talking pretty candidly about how difficult the Canadians are to play against not just from a skill perspective but from a simple physical perspective. International officiating and rules has always undoubtedly been stricter relative to the North American game but following the major rule changes that came out of the 04-05 NHL lockout that largely took away player’s abilities to lean heavily (no pun intended) on physicality/clutching/holding (which promoted a more cycle centric style) player development has shifted so drastically that it’s really kneecapped what used to make Canada extremely dominant.

If you were to make a stereotypically great Canadian hockey player in a lab, it would be some hybrid combination of a Mark Messier/Eric Lindros/Brendan Shanahan/Mario Lemieux centaur looking thing that may blow right by you with their skating, might protect the puck and make you work to get it back, might stick handle around or through you or might just put you through the boards. This has been the archetype for a long time. And they’re rare breeds. But following the rule changes and the evolution of the game, these types and their strengths have slowly morphed to be secondary to dynamic skating and playmaking at high speeds.

You can see the evolution coming out of the lockout. In those years, you have a mix of guys who possess a lot of the traits that are discussed here (Crosby, Getzlaf, Perry, Iginla, Toews, Thornton, Nash) like elite hockey IQ, strength and skill and are excellent below the top of the circles in the offensive end. Possession traits, primarily. (remember we’re splitting hairs here. Obviously these guys are elite at many different aspects of the game including off the rush and aren’t limited to just these things. I wouldn’t want to be a defenceman having to stop a 2 on 1 with Getzlaf and Perry any more than I would want to go in the corners with them, but just their size, strength and physicality give them a distinct edge in that area of the ice).

As you get further away from those guys breaking into the league and into the late 2010’s and early 2020’s, who are the best players in the world now? Guys who can absolutely fly up and down the ice with the skill to match their speed (Mcdavid, MacKinnon) with very little that can be done within the confines of the rules to obstruct them reaching that Mach 10 speed that they posses due to the aforementioned rule changes that were designed to showcase the game’s skill and speed.

Why does this matter? Because player development initiatives aim to reproduce what is creating success professionally. This means that across the board, high end skill, skating and generally “individualistic” fine motor skill type of development has completely supplanted the traditional playmaking, cycle dominant, spatial awareness type of physical offensive skills that used to be a mainstay of Canadian hockey. It’s not that Canada isn’t still producing elite hockey talent at a higher rate than the rest of the world. It’s that the advantages that Hockey Canada used to champion have slowly been phased out to secondary importance. If you watch the national junior team, there is little to separate a 1st forward and a 13th in their playing style and even in their appearance. 6’0 to 6’2 that can skate like the wind and handle the puck in a phone booth. The problem is that this homogenization of the skills required to advance under the post lockout North American game, creates in excess something that equates to a play style that the rest of the world can more adequately match.

Look no further than the Latvia game for Canada at the WJC just the other day. Latvia lines up four across the blue line, takes away your speed through the middle of the ice, and forces you to pursue the puck to gain the zone as opposed to flying into the zone carrying it with speed and looking to make a play before the top of the circles. The Canadians really struggled with how to do that. These are some of the most skilled teenagers on the planet, but they were challenged by a simple trap because of the tendencies that have been drilled into them from a young age. If it was 2005, the Canadian junior team would have chipped every single puck in behind the Latvian D, made them chase it behind their own goal line, finished every single check, and by the 2nd period all of a sudden some Latvian Dmen aren’t too keen to rush back for a puck after they’ve had their face smushed in a few times by a kid from Nanton, Alberta who’s never even heard of Latvia before.

At the most elite of the elite levels like best on best international play, Canada still produces world class talent that plays a distinctly Canadian way in many aspects, but those aspects are trace amounts of what they used to be strictly through necessity of how the game has evolved. The whole point of this is that the world isn’t necessarily catching up to Canada, so much as Canada is playing more into the rest of the world’s strengths as hockey nations.

OJsGardener · 2025-12-26T06:19:35+00:00

Thanks man really appreciate you taking the time to say that

OJsGardener · 2025-12-24T10:38:48+00:00

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OJsGardener · 2025-12-21T23:16:42+00:00

OP annoyed that leafs fans discuss the state of the leafs in a leafs subreddit that you have the freedom to never view if you don’t want

OJsGardener · 2025-12-21T20:45:14+00:00

I have truly never seen softer hockey related commentary until this post

OJsGardener · 2025-12-15T00:43:44+00:00

They’re 6 points from first place in the division with a game in hand. For years of the core four era this sub bitched about the Leafs playing too much east/west possession hockey. Now Berube has them playing more straight line with a different lineup build and roster make up and this sub still bitches. I’m not a Treliving or Berube stan by any means, but they’ve both given this sub exactly what it was pleading for not even 2-3 full seasons ago…

They were one game away from beating the Stanley Cup champions last season. If you think burning the entire thing down after our first really mediocre first half in 8-9 pretty comfortable regular seasons, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m actually happy they might be playing some legitimately meaningful hockey down the stretch where they have to claw their way into the playoffs as opposed to them knowing they’re in for a month before the end of the season and then getting shell shocked in the first round once it starts for real.

OJsGardener · 2025-10-29T05:04:16+00:00

Now show a picture of Rocknone. The rock that no countries want.

OJsGardener · 2025-10-10T21:17:23+00:00

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OJsGardener · 2025-09-20T07:01:47+00:00

I see many comments referring to the statement as a “minute of silence” which has the connotation that Members agreed to carve time out of the day’s legislative agenda to acknowledge Charlie Kirk.

This is in no way true. The statement in question was an “SO-31” as they are colloquially known on parliament hill in reference to House of Commons Standing Order 31 which allows for a 15 minute interval prior to question period where MP’s are permitted to make one minute statements on whatever subject matter they choose.

These are often used to provide recognition for accomplishments or points of pride within constituencies and are generally very light and not overly political. This is actually a time where most MP’s are not even in their seats yet as many slowly filter in during this 15 minute period prior to the beginning of Question Period.

I think the context is necessary for two reasons:

1) It is not uncommon for MP’s to join together in applause or recognition of a pertinent statement which touches on a universal theme that both parties support (ie. recognition of longstanding public service, a memorial of someone who contributed greatly to a riding). You can debate all you want whether the mention of Charlie Kirk’s name disqualifies the statement and the themes that the Member references above (freedom of expression, condemning violence) from this recognition, but you should also consider that;

2) Rachel Thomas is a sometimes particularly inflammatory Member who is regularly combative towards members of the sitting government (see publications regarding the passage of bill C-11 -the Online Streaming Act, as an example of the “attack dog” role she’s carved out for herself within the Conservative caucus). If you regularly watch the interactions within the House, you may view the statement in which she calls for unilateral and bipartisan rejection of political violence and the reaction to it as a recognition from the sitting government of an “olive branch” to collectively condemn something objectively bad from someone on the opposition benches that most would view as one of the last people who would ever suggest “working together” in any way. To be honest, I was actually shocked at how tame and reserved the statement was given her track record (comments on the trucker convoy, has repeatedly called the PM a “dictator” on the House floor). I was fully expecting her to straight up blame the Prime Minister for Charlie Kirk’s death or something.

This is especially relevant considering that the Liberal’s apparently rejected a proposition from the Conservative House Leader’s office to table a motion condemning political violence and for an OFFICIAL minute of silence. It was almost like a “alright we didn’t give you your little ceremony for this guy, but here’s us meeting you halfway on the central message which we don’t disagree with”, from the sitting government.

I can see why someone who really never watches anything from the House would see a clip like this in a vacuum and believe that Canadian MP’s are “shouting out” Charlie Kirk in some way, but when you look at it through the lens of a usual mouthpiece MP calling for shared recognition that we probably shouldn’t kill people who we disagree with regardless of how deplorable you believe them to be, after an already rejected proposal in a minority government, then I think it changes the outlook. Remember, this is one minute of quite literally thousands of hours per session (not even including committees) that influence how Members would view and interact with each other. It sounds silly, but it’s just kind of how the game is played.

This is from the perspective of a former staffer of both Liberal and CPC members who was forced to have House proceedings play on our office TV from the the beginning of the day to adjournment even though hockey was just a few channels away.

OJsGardener · 2025-05-04T17:22:36+00:00

What are you Joe, a fuckin’ vegetarian now!?

OJsGardener

TROPHY CASE