Conspiracy theory: NHL edition

"boxrocket" (boxrocket) 05/20/2018 at 17:47 • Filed to: hockey, nhl, stanley cup

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I’ve been saying all season that it seemed that the NHL was helping the LVGKs get by, and that it wouldn’t be beyond the league to ensure the GKs got to the Stanley Cup Finals to make headlines.

I’m not surprised to so far proven right.

Don’t get me wrong: Hockey - especially professional hockey - is grueling, and fixing matches isn’t as easy in theory as it would be in other sports.

That being said, seeing how the Jets - and even their fans! - were this afternoon, it makes me wonder if they just succumbed to the seeming inevitable.

Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero > boxrocket 05/20/2018 at 17:57

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Claiming the NHL fixed this season takes away the actual hard work and determination the VGK had all year. There’s nothing rigged about it. They’re just that good with a roster full of players who have a chip on their shoulder

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > boxrocket 05/20/2018 at 18:01

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The Jets hitting the final would also make headlines. The franchise hasn’t been in Winnipeg all that long either, and before that they were Atlanta, so...

boredalways > boxrocket 05/20/2018 at 18:05

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I haven’t watched a game since gm 1 went the Jets won. It does make for a fun conspiracy theory. I think the the reason why I haven’t watched is that it has just weirded me out that thanks to the special draft (can’t think of the official name), they picked the right group of players to make this run. And they’ve almost completely pissed on decades of NHL tradition. Plus, it looks like the Caps are about to choke their way out against TB.

Then again, MLS’ Chicago Fire won the MLS Cup their inaugural season. Been pretty much an also ran ever sense though.

boxrocket > Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero 05/20/2018 at 18:07

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Like I said, it’s hard to fix a hockey game, especially a professional one. It certainly seemed that officials were happy to give Vegas surprising leeway and calls in their favor during the regular season (especially the beginning).

I said it was a conspiracy theory, not something I actually believe.

Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero > boxrocket 05/20/2018 at 18:16

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Officiating has been shitty all playoffs. The Jets got away with major shit during their series with the preds. It’s not rigged. It’s just human error

Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero > boredalways 05/20/2018 at 18:17

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The word you’re looking for is expansion. It was an expansion draft. And there will be another one in 2020 when Seattle joins the league

KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs > boxrocket 05/20/2018 at 18:52

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VGK doing as well as they are doing is a black eye to Bettman, as well as practically every GM in the league.

These guys were told by their former teams that they weren’t good enough. Imagine being Jonathan Marchessault and being told by FLA that you aren’t good enough to be kept over (take your pick of players worse than Marchessault on the Panthers).

I mean, same with Fleury. And Fleury is playing possibly the best damn hockey of his life for Vegas.

On that whole thing alone, I want Vegas to win. As one big F#-@ You to the entire league.

boredalways > Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero 05/20/2018 at 20:04

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Thank you! That was driving me nuts.

boxrocket > Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero 05/20/2018 at 21:24

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I didn’t watch much of the playoffs, I referred to the regular season.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > boxrocket 05/21/2018 at 10:02

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VGK is doing well for several reasons. The NHL made the rules for the expansion draft quite favorable to Vegas putting together a good team right off the bat. It is in the best interest of the NHL and hockey in general if VGK does well. It does nobody any good if VGK sucks for 10 years before getting any where. If they start hot and do well they establish a big fan base in a nontraditional hockey market. They also possibly pull in some fans among people who are just visiting Vegas and wouldn’t care about hockey otherwise. It was also a big risk for the NHL putting the team in a market that has never supported a professional sports team of any kind.

The other reason that Vegas is doing well is that the front office did their homework and did real well in the expansion draft. The VGK front office made sure did a good job of drafting players that would fit their game plan. Instead of going out and picking the biggest names they could find they said, here is the style of hockey we want to play (or maybe the style of hockey we’ll have to play) and these are the best players available to do that. The front office built the team around the concept of team first, picked players who they thought would buy into that concept, and have managed to put together an amazing run based on it.

https://www.nhl.com/news/nhl-expansion-draft-rules/c-281010592

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs 05/21/2018 at 10:21

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Not sure how this is a black eye to Bettman. It was in his and the leagues best interest for Vegas to do well off the bat. Bettman’s expansion focus has always been on nontraditional markets and it looks good for him if an expansion team that he brings in does well.

As for the guys who were left unprotected in the draft, it wasn’t necessarily because their teams thought they weren’t good enough. The rules for who teams could protect were written in such a way that teams weren’t able to protect everyone that they wanted to. Teams would have also left good players unprotected if the players didn’t fit into the teams system, or were underperforming. Actually take a look at Marchessault’s stats. Last year for Florida he had 51 points which is OK, but he was -21 which is not good at all. This year was by far the best year of his career with 75 points and +36 (the only year he’s played a full season and been positive). For whatever reason the guy didn’t fit in Florida so they left him unprotected.

As for Fleury he had been beaten out by Murray for the top job in Pittsburgh. After Fleury signed his big contract with the Pens he had a slump. Murray stepped up and won the starting job from Fleury, and earned his own starter caliber contract. Now Pittsburgh had two starting goaltenders, both earning starter salaries and they can only protect one from the expansion draft. The smart move for them is to protect the younger goaltender with more potential left, especially when he is playing better than Fleury was at the time.

KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 05/21/2018 at 14:28

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1 ) Right now, VGK is the exception for expansion teams. It took FLA three years to get to a final in 1996, and they haven’t been back since then. The general rule is that the expansion teams were always getting the short end of the stick.

So long as we are allowing rampant conspiracy....It wouldn’t surprise me if the league was pushing GMs to make deals in order to not have the expansion yield a bunch of just in-betweeners (bouncing back and forth between the NHL and the AHL) and the normal journeyman suspects.

I agree Bettman wanted Vegas to be somewhat successful, since he can make a lot of money on expansion fees (*cough*Seattle*cough*Quebec City*cough*). I would suspect his goal was above .500 the first season, and maybe a playoff berth in season two or three (which is about what VGK themselves set as their goal before the season started. It’s likely that they are just as surprised as everyone else is that the train never derailed)

2 ) As for players not fitting in, that’s as much on them as it is others on the team. Someone like Marchessault who is OK on points production in FLA, but has absolutely nothing behind him will be a disaster on +/-.

To put this into perspective, Alex DeBrincat has 52 points this year for CHI, and is only a +6. CHI’s defence was a massive dumpster fire this year. Duncan Keith finished with TWO goals, 32 points, and a -29. His normal partner in crime for first pair defence, Brent Seabrook (7G, 26P, -3) got scratched by Q during the season.

So either this means that Marchessault either had even worse defence behind him than DeBrincat (which is possible), a goalie that was worse than when Corey Crawford was healthy (CHI’s season went down the tubes when Crawford got benched due to injury), or he is actually not that good. This season’s play, and watching the Panthers when they were actually playing decently says the latter isn’t necessarily the case.

Florida has both Luongo and Reimer, so I’m not sold on the goaltending being so bad as to fully explain it either.

Not to beleaguer the point, but consider that Patrick Kane finished with a -20, and 76 points this season. I don’t think any observer would put Kane in the “not good” bucket solely on +/-, when that +/- could easily be explained by the fact that Kane played on average 6 minutes more each game than DeBrincat.

3 ) Pittsburgh took a gamble on Matt Murray. It wasn’t the wrong decision by normal metrics. You assume MAF is older, he’s going to eventually slump (Not every netminder has the staying power of Lundqvist, although he’s clearly on his down ride), so you take Murray. But having watched some of Matt Murray, he wouldn’t have been a first choice based on some of the “eye test” when observing him. He’s not bad by any metric, but you see the decision making, the “hockey sense”, and sometimes you wonder...

No one really could have known the kind of season MAF would have. However, what I do find interesting, is that PIT waited on that, rather than trying to get something more for MAF in a trade. Maybe there wasn’t anyone who was willing to move for Fleury early in the season, since they had their positions locked up.

What it looks like happened was some of the GMs were passing out second string players as consolation prizes, so that VGK wouldn’t take someone else that they couldn’t protect but still wanted, and then VGK takes someone else who wasn’t part of the plan.

I mean that explains William Karlsson and the David Clarkson contract from CBJ.