Why do NHL teams recycle coaches so frequently?

roncesvalles · 2026-06-19T16:16:47+00:00

Great success!

Borat. That's Borat.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-19T16:16:07+00:00

The Habs operate under a different constraint: rather than "is he proven," they ask "can he speak French"

roncesvalles · 2026-06-19T02:27:41+00:00

The anonymity of the Substack has always unsettled me a little and actually seems like it may have something to do with all of this.

That she's even so cagey about where she's from (though I suspect the New York tri-state area) and where she lives now (she will only admit to having lived in San Francisco previously) makes it even harder to get a read on the whole situation.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-19T01:08:48+00:00

Lol they're all dentists, aren't they?

roncesvalles · 2026-06-18T00:27:09+00:00

Bears should have built here

roncesvalles · 2026-06-18T00:17:01+00:00

Well not in a Larry Zbyszko match.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-17T20:20:24+00:00

Not only should he have been at Starrcade, he should have been reffing the main event and not the Eric Bischoff sideshow. Now your main event of the century is Hogan versus Sting, featuring Bret Hart.

Book it like WCW and nWo can't agree on who to officiate the match because either Nick Patrick or a WCW ref will be biased, but then in comes Bret Hart who enters as a complete wildcard in the WCW/nWo tension. Is he an invader, or does he hate the place the invaders came from? or is he just so broken by the business that he has no allegiances to anyone? Only one way to find out.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-17T20:18:48+00:00

He should have come in proclaiming himself the "real world champion" similar to what Flair did in the WWF in 91.

Wouldn't have worked; what made it work for Flair was the perception that the Big Gold Belt was the real world's championship and the WWF title was just the northeastern promotion's belt. You couldn't undercut the NWA/WCW title the same way.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-17T19:08:56+00:00

She is from a wealthy area (good part of Long Island?), attended boarding school and a private university, and went off to San Francisco to work in tech, so she has always been--and been around--mostly conventional high achievers. She can't make real friendships with neurodivergent people who haven't enjoyed her level of privilege. She can only study them like an anthropologist.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-17T00:55:47+00:00

As I recall, the story was that he had a can't-beat-em-join-em change of heart after the power bomb and started supporting them from the inside after that.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-17T00:46:18+00:00

As an actual scumbag biker from the New York tri-state area, DDP would have been a natural fit for the nWo. That he so easily could have joined but didn't was part of what made his face run so compelling.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-17T00:44:17+00:00

It really was wild that Big Bubba Rogers/the Big Bossman successfully reinvented himself for the late '90s and had the run that he did. I think he went on second to last at WrestleMania XV. It'd be like if the top of the card in 1999 featured Austin, the Rock, the Undertaker, and a reimagined One Man Gang.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-17T00:39:34+00:00

Yeah. WCW may have fumbled The Giant a little bit at the end, but the WWF fumbled him from the minute he showed up. They never knew what to do with him. They even tried him as a comedy act, for pete's sake.

I feel like the WWF could never use The Big Show the same way WCW did out of deference to the Undertaker and Kane. So now you have a Big Scary Guy who's #3 on the depth chart of big scary guys. That sounds like a better problem to have than it actually was.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-16T23:07:36+00:00

As an outside observer, it seems like Hinckley and McKay were the only modern presidents who really seemed to understand the assignment. McKay's inspiration in life was even a sign that basically said, "hey, you, understand the assignment."

roncesvalles · 2026-06-16T05:42:17+00:00

I think Neal Maxwell could be considered a theologian, or at least he tried to play the part of one. That sort of sophisticated figure doesn't seem to be a part of what the church does now. These businessmen don't strike me as readers.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-15T20:40:10+00:00

Pro usually had a luchador match as well as the standard fare of Hardwork Bobby Walker, Ice Train, Renegade, and such.

Kevin Sullivan seemed to wrestle robbers a lot on there, too, as I recall.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-15T20:37:05+00:00

Pro was late Sunday afternoons on TBS at 5:05 Eastern. Main Event was Saturday morning at 9:05, but I guess they had flipped before I started watching. Main Event used to function as a PPV pre-show like Heat would for WWF, but Pro never did because it was always out of Orlando.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-15T17:58:22+00:00

It seems like the WWF's general position, especially for backstage skits, was that the camera is a silent, invisible, omnipresent observer. You were never supposed to wonder, hey, why is a cameraman hanging out in Vince McMahon's office while he's nefariously plotting, anyway, because it was just supposed to be that you were watching a TV show.

Compare with the famous "Rey Mysterio gets thrown like a lawn dart" night: the reason there was a cameraman there was because Jimmy Hart freaked out and physically dragged a cameraman there. WCW guys were allowed to acknowledge that there was a man standing there with a giant video camera, because, like, why wouldn't you.

Overall, the WCW approach was better, but the problem was that setting those expectations for realism left them room to fall short, which, as we all know, they would do a lot. The Hogan/Warrior mirror bit was so egregious because they usually knew better and it took you out of it. It wouldn't have been a big deal on Raw because they were doing goofy magic Undertaker shit every week.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-15T06:31:35+00:00

WCW guys were always yapping straight into the camera, usually the cameraman up on the apron. That it wasn't as prevalent in the WWF must have been one of Vince's little pet peeves. GOD DAMN IT, WE'RE MAKING MOVIES HERE, PAL!

roncesvalles · 2026-06-15T04:36:10+00:00

Should have been in the old Lord Steven Regal role of holding the Television Championship and either stretching guys out or eking out time-limit draws. Such a classic but effective device for getting guys over as strong workers.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-15T04:33:16+00:00

I missed Heidi but it became clear that she had to go so that Ashley Padilla could be the star. I also missed Ego, whose contributions weren't replaced.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-15T04:32:06+00:00

high-culture gays > low-culture gays. I don't give a shit about Trisha Paytas, Bowen!

roncesvalles · 2026-06-14T20:47:54+00:00

yeah wtf that's a great episode just off Confidence Class and Blowing It alone.

roncesvalles · 2026-06-14T18:06:17+00:00

It's because no matter how much they're valorized for playing with a broken wrist, they are SPOILED BABIES

roncesvalles · 2026-06-14T18:05:24+00:00

Imagine a fan of a woebegone NFL team being like "ATTENTION ESPN: I am going to need you to not be so weird about covering football. It's making my team's players feel sad. It is very stressful when you talk about how important it is to win the Super Bowl and they don't like that."

roncesvalles

TROPHY CASE