#26 — Vanek! with a Jurco

[dekedangle_rpf_mod]

This is the twenty-sixth post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.

THE RULES

1. Mods retain the right to delete, freeze, and/or screen threads and comments.
2. Meme rules do not require warnings.
3. Respect flock. Do not repost or share information from private tumblrs, locked twitter accounts, flocked LJ posts, etc.
4. No linking fans to their real life identities.
5. No looks bashing or body shaming. This applies to players and people associated with those players and their clubs, as well as fellow fans.
6. No embedded music.
7. No embedded images.
8. No spamming the meme, whether through repeated comments or other means. 
9. No discussing trolling, individual trolls, or their efforts.





Meme rules do not require spoiler cuts. However, this layout does allow for them. Any of the following tags will create a spoiler cut when closed: <div cut>, <span cut>, <font cut>, <font color="white">

If you have any questions or concerns, please direct them to The Mod Post. 

Threaded View
Flat View
Top-Level Comment View

Next post opens at 5,000 comments.

Comments

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting. The ESPN announcers just said that the Team NA players hadn't been told by their coaches that they had to win in regulation yesterday. On the one hand, the players could have looked it up themselves/should have tried to win in regulation regardless/etc., but on the other hand that might have been worth mentioning somewhere in the presumably motivational speeches before the third period.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

Yup they thought they were through when they scored. I guess they would expect their coaches to tell them though and not look it up.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt Yeah, I knew the players had thought they were through, but to me the way the announcers said it, it sounded like someone on the coaching staff decided not to tell them before the game, or didn't think it mattered to tell them.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, it's so weird that the coaching staff didn't mention it at any point to the players. What happened there, the coaches didn't know, they didn't think it was important, or they thought it was better not to bring it up?

I saw some people bring up the possiblity that the coaching staff thought telling the players might lead to some reckless plays and risking too much in the third. I don't know if that's better or even worse than them legitimately not knowing what it would take to clinch the semifinals. Either way, it's a shitty way to run a team.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

And the players don't seem pleased about it? Gaudreau, MacKinnon, Saad all commented. I know McDavid said he personally wouldn't have played differently if he knew, but McLellan also coaches his NHL team.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

DA
McDavid also said he wouldn't want to play for team NA again in the future, so I am personally questioning his commitment to this fake team that he's supposedly the captain of!!

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

NA

Ooh, links to that? I want to speculate about it semi-baselessly and could use the exact wording.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

https://twitter.com/Michael_Traikos/status/779020431269519360
I mean it's not a stretch to think most of them would prefer to be playing for Canada/USA (especially the NTDP Americans) but I'm kind of surprised he just...said it.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

Gretzky said he thought you should get to play for your national team after one year of "service" to TNA. I don't think McDavid's quote was controversial because I'm pretty sure he was responding to that.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Thanks! And I'm definitely sympathetic to that mindset. As much fun as it ended up being, I thought Team North America was gimmicky and pointless from the beginning, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the players felt the same way. What he actually said was pretty mild, all things considered.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

DA - To me that just reads as in four years I want to be successful enough to be in Team Canada.

With maybe just a hint of I want to be on the grown-ups table.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

Sound like the C should go to a player that actually care. Too bad it's his GM/Coach that was responsible for building Team NA.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

I really wonder how the rest of the team felt about that. A lot of guys were giving it their all and seemed to buy in to the team itself, the way Team Europe. But apparently the captain didn't even want to be there? Ew.

We'll never know I'd bet and you'll never hear media question McDavid over this, but it's NAGL, in my opinion.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if that was a factor in his poor production. Even if it wasn't, I can't imagine the players that did give it their all were thrilled that their captain, who didn't want to be there but still got to play 20+ minutes a night, wasn't at least putting up some points to match his ice time.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

Or at least there were more tactful ways to phrase it - "this was an amazing experience, but I would be honored to represent my country in four years as well."

Only one primary point and no goals isn't a lot to show for anything when you're leading the forwards in TOI.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a little surprised he explicitly said he doesn't want to play for NA again. Of course he would like to play for his country, pretty sure all of the NA players would like to represent their countries rather than their continent and age group, but expected him to be coy about it, give some noncommittal answer about being happy just being a part of the tournament, all that bullshit.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

The coaching staff didn't pull the goalie, or instill any sense of urgency in the last couple minutes of the game. Even if they did know they needed to win in regulation to clinch (and aren't just blindly covering their asses), there's no way they knew the other scenarios, or they would have known that at that point there was practically nothing to risk.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

Lol, they had the fourth line out with like two minutes to go. They fucked up somewhere, even if exactly where is hard to pinpoint.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Yeah, that too, lol. And after insisting on shortening the bench last game too. It's hard to pinpoint exactly how ignorant they were, but it's pretty certain they didn't understand the advancement scenario.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

McLellan says the coaching staff knew the clinching scenarios before the game.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

I don't believe him. At most, he knew that a regulation win = clinch. But not the other clinching/elimination scenarios.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

Well they didn't act like it, so I'm not sure I believe them.

I don't really see why it matters, though. If they did know and still didn't tell the players or make coaching decisions that gave them the best shot forward, it's just as stupid as if they didn't bother finding out about the scenarios beforehand.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

Right? Either way he didn't do his job, and has still made a couple decisions that helped prevent them from advancing.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

it's just as stupid

I'd almost want to say it's stupider, to be honest. You can sort of see how he might have mistaken the clinching scenarios completely -- it's still a terrible mistake, but it's complicated, a lot of fans didn't know h2h was the tiebreaker and not goal diff. It's carelessness but you can see how it would happen. If they did know and still made those decisions -- that's just unfathomably, incomprehensibly stupid.

Re: Game day thread 22 Sept 2016

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's quite possibly a mix of carelessness and stupidity. He said they went through all the possibilities, but the way he talked about what they knew seemed a little off. Like he was talking mostly about a goal spread they had to stay within, which didn't actually matter in any scenario but a regulation loss, and even then not that much. Maybe he was referring to that particular path and didn't say it perfectly, or otoh maybe they were looking at the wrong things altogether/had the wrong end of the stick.

Not that I'm imputing this motivation to him, but for me personally, the fact that tiebreakers are convoluted and differ across various tournaments and leagues is the number one reason I would hesitate to get aggressive in a situation like this. I wouldn't want to find out after losing sort-of-on-purpose that actually I misinterpreted some unfamiliar rule wrong and surprise, my team goes home when they didn't have to.