Hard in the Corner

I'm a Leafs fan, and as a Leafs fan, I have a duty to be completely miserable all of the time. Now, I thought that was kind of an interesting idea for fancy stats. How can we chart the happiness of a fanbase? What criteria go into deciding whether a fanbase is happy or sad? Well, I chose some, and charted the happiness, over the course of a season for two separate teams. First up is the sky-high 2016-17 Pittsburgh Penguins, not to be confused with the sky-high 2017-18 Penguins. Yes, the amazing 2016-17 Pittsburgh Penguins. Repeat Stanley Cup Champions led by Phil Kessel and some other guys. This is a team loaded with star players and high-octane offense. So, fans had plenty to be happy about. I was originally going to do the Edmonton Oilers, but then I remembered they blocked me from their subreddit, so fuck them! :) Anyways, let's look at the chart: There you have it, the literal ups-and-downs of an NHL season. Now, to understand what these numbers mean, we need to ...

It's no secret that Peter Chiarelli is a dangerous figure in hockey. He has a reputation, and that reputation precedes him by about a mile. He trades star players and doesn't care what he gets back. He lucks out at the draft and he signs bad players to even worse contracts. So let's go back and do a year-by-year ranking of NHL General Manager, Peter Chiarelli. Remember, I try to grade based solely on the manager's moves that year. The outcome counts, but if it's because of a signing 1 year prior, that's where the points for that championship will be. This is the 2nd in a multi-part series "What did _____ ever do?" where I rank the performance of NHL GM's. We take into consideration how the GM chose to handle the NHL Entry draft and any transactions made over the year. The first subject, Lou Lamoriello, scored a paltry 53% (160 points out of a possible 300). Chiarelli started his management career in Ottawa as an Assistant GM under Bryan Mu...

Basically going to go ahead and just rip Elliotte Friedman's amazing 31 Thoughts article and publish my own insane ramblings from around the league. Slightly different, each number will be a separate thought for each team. 1 . Every team in the NHL is trying to keep up with the Golden Knights twitter account. Some do well like LA and Nashville, others like the Anaheim Ducks make such a horrific attempt, that it comes across as a deliberate attempt at offending. Last week we got to see Ryan Kesler, strolling around an office setting completely naked. This was to celebrate the team's 'birthday'. The social media team clearly missed the obvious correlation between that concept and the countless accounts of women coming forward to finally speak out against work place sexual harassment and inappropriate advances. This is coming from the team that has a known and vocal homophobe as their Captain though, so maybe it's par for the course. 2 . The NHL is talking a...