i know it’s frustrating for media members but watching steve yzerman duck and dodge questions is amazing. @ArthurJRegner: asks great question on relative positional value at the draft
Steve: “I don’t know how to answer that without answering it so I’m not going to answer it”
— Prashanth Iyer (@iyer_prashanth) July 5, 2022
I touched on this briefly in yesterday’s QH comments, but I appreciate that Yzerman is a lot more honest in how evasive he is.
I know a lot of fans feel their fandom and the money they spend (or otherwise help funnel to the organization) entitles them to more clarity than Yzerman tends to give. I’m not here to tell them they fan wrong, but I disagree. The GM is in a position to have to manage both what’s best for the team to be competitive and to make sure fans remain happy enough to keep spending or funneling money their way. When those two considerations collide, I tend to lean more towards what helps the team compete with the other clubs at the expense of knowing I’d FEEL a lot better about the club if everything was meticulously explained to me.
Yzerman’s non answer tells me what I need to know: That the Red Wings are aware of the concept of relative positional draft value and they have analysis of the idea.
I will also say that my patience with an evasive GM stretches only so far as I can see a direction. I used to love how Ken Holland would lie to us fans. It turned from cute to insulting about the same time I felt it was more about covering up a bad plan than keeping opsec on a good one.
What Makes Your NHL Team Annoying? – Pension Plan Puppets
Philadelphia Flyers
What makes you annoying? Flyers fans hate everybody. They hate you. They hate me. They hate other teams. They hate their own team. They booed Santa Claus at one point. If the Second Coming took place at Wells Fargo Arena, Jesus would have about five minutes to tap in a power play goal before they would boo his ass back to heaven.
What makes you endearing? Actually it’s the same thing I just described. Say what you will, they stick to their principles.
There’s one for every team and they are extremely accurate (even the Detroit one). Boston’s and Dallas’ are my personal favorite, but I enjoy this piece as a callback to a time in hockey blogging where this kind of shit-talk was pretty common.
Toronto Maple Leafs promote Hockey Hall of Famer, four-time Olympic gold medalist Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser to assistant general manager – ESPN
Wickenheiser, whose focus will be player development, originally joined the Leafs as assistant director of player development in August 2018 and was eventually promoted to senior director of player development in 2021
Wyshynski put all of those accomplishments in the title of the piece because everybody knows that a bunch of dorks would be screaming about whether “the most qualified candidate got the job.”
He was right.
Mike Grier makes history as NHL’s first Black general manager – Fear the Fin
Grier, 47, comes from a family of sports executives, but his interest in hockey was a bit of an outlier in a football-centric home. His father, Bobby, began as a high school football coach in the 1960s, working his way up through the collegiate system before joining the New England Patriots in 1981. In 1993, Bobby was moved to scouting, kicking off his NFL executive career, which eventually included a run with the Houston Texans from 2000-2016. Mike’s older brother, Chris, is a former college football player who has served as the general manager of the Miami Dolphins since 2016.
Grier was born in Detroit and was always one of the few San Jose Sharks players I actually respected.
Hard to wish the Sharks well but I like Mike Grier.