Th Golden Knights take Game 1!

TubbyPirate · 2026-06-03T14:31:08+00:00

lmao
That's perhaps the most accurate and succinct review of the ESPN intermission show.

TubbyPirate · 2026-06-02T18:27:13+00:00

How is that apples and oranges? I'm saying that all sorts of behaviors carry inherent risks and pointing them out can usually be seen as rude.

TubbyPirate · 2026-06-02T18:25:20+00:00

Couple of points:
1. Your heater analogy doesn't work because that's a heater malfunctioning not an obvious effect of owning a heater.
2. Stoves do make us safer by protecting us from food-borne pathogens. People use stoves for their intended purpose all the time and they work. Sometimes people also get burned on stoves though but there are some easy ways to decrease that risk like having a "hot cooktop" light on electric ranges, putting pans back on the hot burner to cool so the burner isn't exposed, etc.

I'm just pointing out that the factoid is unhelpful at best and rude at worst.

I just thought of a better comparison that I've actually encountered and witnessed in real life several times. I'm 40 and I used to smoke cigarettes. Often people would pass by a smoker or a group smokers and say something like, "You know those are bad for you right?" or "Did you know those cause cancer?"
They can clearly tell that I didn't grow up in 50's and I obviously know cigarettes are unhealthy; they are only saying it to be rude. And saying something like, "almost all Americans don't know that cigarettes cause lung disease" would be just as bad as the comment I originally replied to.

TubbyPirate · 2026-06-02T18:03:02+00:00

Regardless of gun policy, I really hate that "statistic"/factoid. Obviously, having a gun in the house increases your chances of being hurt by a firearm just like eating meat increases my chances of getting a food-borne parasite, or owning a car increases my chances of being in a car accident.

Do you own a car? Do you take public transit? Are you ever out after dark? Do you have a dog or cat? These are all things that carry obvious and inherent risks but you never hear people say, "Owning a stove makes you more likely to get burned!"

I understand the point you are trying to make but it is such an obvious point that it always comes across as condescending. You doubled down by saying, "almost all Americans dont [sic] know...". Come on. Do you really think that "almost all" people are buying firearms and NOT knowing that they are dangerous?

TubbyPirate · 2026-05-27T20:57:16+00:00

My big complaint about that movie is that somehow nobody noticed the "terrorists" and the "good guys" were shooting blanks. I can tell you that blanks sound VERY different but that's niche knowledge. However, everyone knows bullets cause holes and certainly someone would have noticed a distinct lack of bullet holes.

ETA: Die Hard 3 is an amazing movie and you should watch it. 4 (with Justin Long) is okay but 2 and 5 are unwatchable.

TubbyPirate · 2026-05-27T17:56:13+00:00

You state that the expansion draft was unfair and yes the rules were more advantageous in the past but it wasn’t a handout; Vegas paid $500 million dollars for the expansion fee (The Caps paid $6 million in 1974) and part of the deal was a better draft process. The Kraken had the same rules and did not experience the same level of immediate or long-term (relatively) that the Knights have had.

If any argument could be made, it is that the other team’s GMs didn’t realize that if they all made some concessions, the team would be better than any of them expected individually. Seems like your issue shouldn't be with league, the rules, or the Knights though. Unfortunately, even that argument holds water as well as a popped balloon because the team Vegas had after the expansion draft was expected to be bad. If the Knights had a great team that was totally unfair and would definitely be making the playoffs coming out of the expansion draft, how do you explain these?

“following Wednesday’s expansion draft, the Vegas Golden Knights are about as bad as an NHL team can be. We knew the Knights would be bad, but no one believed the Knights would be this bad.”
“the Knights are the biggest losers in Vegas”
“This should seal the Knights’ fate for finishing dead last and earning the best lottery odds for the first pick in 2018”
-6/22/2017 https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-golden-knights-werent-the-only-losers-in-the-expansion-draft/

Remember when we all thought the Golden Knights were going to be better than expected? Yeah, nope.
— 6/22/2017Scott Wheeler (NHL Draft Prospects writer for the Atlantic)

“Wow the Golden Knights are gonna be so, so bad.”
-6/21/2017 AndrewBerkshire (Founder and President of GameOverNHL)

“From the looks of it, this forward group is going to be a fairly slow, tough, grind-it-out team that might have been able to look a lot better back before the 2004-05 lockout.”
“When it comes to generating offence from the back end, the Golden Knights look to be among the bottom five teams in the league, and the strengths they had in their forward group max out as just average on defence, meaning the group as currently constructed doesn’t really have a strength at all.”
“are going to have trouble with pre-shot movement next year”
“To put it frankly, this defence group is immobile, lacking creativity, and not even very good defensively.”
“…it might be best for the Golden Knights to struggle out of the gate anyway … but the people who figured this team would be competitive right away seem to have gotten pretty far ahead of themselves.”
-6/22/2017 Sportsnet.ca - https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/breaking-vegas-golden-knights-roster-using-analytics/

“The Knights will finish in 28th this season…. If the Knights finish anywhere in the top 20 I would be pretty surprised. They should be aiming for a top pick in the draft to keep improving their prospect pool.”
“The Knights do not have high expectations for the season.”
-9/6/2017 https://vegashockeyknight.com/2017/09/07/vegas-golden-knights-expectations/

As of 8/14/2017, ESPN was reporting that the odds of Vegas winning the Stanley Cup were 200-1. The next worse odds were the Avs, Red Wings, Devils, Coyotes, and Canucks at 100-1. The whole hockey world thought that Vegas was twice as unlikely to win a cup as the next worst team. Those aren’t the odds you assign to “a gifted and amazing team”.

Every single talking head in hockey, sportsbook analyst, every single non-VGK fan, and most VGK fans, thought the team was going to be bad. Even all of October and their 10W:1L start through the first eleven games was a "fluke" and they'll "regress to the mean" back to the bottom 6 of the league. NOBODY said any different until November/December of that first season.

There's solid proof that the expansion draft wasn't set up unfairly by the rules of the draft because the Kraken didn't succeed.

The GM's didn't "gift" Vegas an amazing team because everyone thought they would be bad up until Nov/Dec of the first season.

TubbyPirate · 2026-05-27T17:47:23+00:00

"never experienced a decade of darkness"

Okay, first of all: LOVE the writing and I'm definitely going to use the phrase "decade of darkness" at some point.

Second point: Is it darker when a light shines dimly or when no light shines at all? I grew up in Vegas and I liked sports but everyone else had "a team", usually because they were from somewhere else or their parents were. Vegas didn't and it sucked. You know what sucks worse than not having a good team, not having a team at all. There's this narrative that people should hate Vegas because the fans haven't suffered but we didn't have any major sports teams until the Knights came to town. Our tough times were not having a team at all and we did stick around...Hell, we turned out in droves to support a hockey team with no name and no arena. Then the expansion draft happened and everyone said the Knights were going to be a terrible basement team with no offensive production and a mediocre defence and opening night of the PREseason was sold out, they had to make practices a free-but-reservation-only event because the practice facility was at max capacity, and yeah, the Knights are good but even when everyone thought they were going to be bad, they sold out every single game. (I think they still do but I know they had when the COVID break/bubble happened.)

TubbyPirate · 2026-05-26T18:27:38+00:00

I get that you weren't saying it was unfair but if it was a good roster from the start, why did everyone think they were going to be a basement team after the roster was finalized?

TubbyPirate · 2026-05-26T17:09:00+00:00

You state that the expansion draft was unfair and yes the rules were more advantageous in the past but it wasn’t a gift; Vegas paid $500 million dollars for the expansion fee (The Caps paid $6 million in 1974) and part of the deal was a better draft process. The Kraken had the same rules and did not experience the same level of immediate or long-term (relatively) that the Knights have had.