JR Ewing

As of today, the Wings are 6 points back of New Jersey for 30th overall...... and they have the toughest remaining schedule in the NHL. I know how difficult it is to go through these times as a fan (I can't imagine what it's like to be on the team) so you really have my sympathy. Better days are coming.

... and with almost no time to think about what to do. When things go wrong in the NHL, it happens quicker than a hiccup.

I kinda feel for Spezza on this one, to be honest. His stick broke, he was headed to the bench, and then the bench hollered at him to get the puck. He jumped back over to kick it, only Rielly is now there and all that happens is that Spezza cuts him off from it. It's not like it was some pathetic attempt at defense and he did a pirouette to get out of Nichuskin's way lest he be run over.

IMO, the Flames are in some trouble. They could lose most of their entire D-group this summer, and they have some really gross contracts (cough, LUCIC, cough) to deal with. They've achieved this really mediocre season without any key injuries that are coming to mind, too.

Yeah. Apart from everything else, goalies can win a Jack Adams for you and they can get you fired, too.

Both have been extremely helpful. Last year, Cam Talbot surrendered a GA on the first shot of the game 12 times. That's a dozen games where you're immediately trailing. His Quality Start % was .478 last season and he surrendered almost 10 more goals than expected. It's tough to win when you don't get saves. The coaching has been a good change. The first thing that Tippett did was get rid of that horrific and historically bad PK setup: If the puck was higher up, it became an L, as we see here, and if the puck was closer to the corner, then the D would take their spots closer to the posts. It was an EXTREMELY passive PK and was mercilessly picked apart with cross-seam passes which became grade-A scoring chances. About 2 seconds later, Nylander found Matthews over on the left side for an easy goal. The Oilers ran that for the 2018 and 2019 seasons and rode it to historically bad results. No other PK was ever as statistically bad as that. This year, Tippett is running a tried-and-true aggressive box and the PK% is #2 in the NHL. Last season, after McLellan was fired, the Oilers brought in Ken Hitchcock, and there was immediate turn-around in key areas. They spent a lot less time defending, forechecked a lot better, and were winning until, after one really bad game, Hitchcock (who IS a great quote) had a press conference where he excoriated the team and suggested that he cares more than they do, and from that point on, the team clearly quit on him. Structure largely disappeared, and they lost a bunch. Big note: Leon Draisaitl transformed under Ken Hitchcock, and became a far better all-around hockey player. He went from flying the zone and scoring at an 82-point pace to a player that was much more responsible and scored at a 110-point pace, and it's only improved this year. When McDavid was interviewed by TSN after being put at #1 on their list of the top 50 players in the NHL, he spent nearly the entire time talking about how he felt they had underrated Draisaitl, whom he felt should have been in the top 5. McDavid is starting to take over now, and is sitting at the top of the scoring race, but until the last couple of weeks, Draisaitl was the better player. McDavid looked rusty from a summer of rehabbing his knee rather than doing proper hockey drills, and it showed. He's looked more like himself with every game. I can't complain about Koskinen this year, and last year he was really good until Hitch simply played him too often. A huge difference in the team this year: regardless of how well Neal would play this year, deleting Milan Lucic from the lineup is a huge difference. He's a sub-replacement level player, and I can't begin to guess what Brad Treliving was thinking by bringing him on board. Neal has scored 14 goals in 29 games so far this year, and I feel extremely confident in saying that I don't think Lucic will score 14 more goals in the rest of his career. I was thrilled on the day of the trade, and remain so. By the way, why did Treliving think that bringing in the three worst Oilers would somehow make his team better? The other major item: the emergence of Ethan Bear. He's been very good in the defensive zone: separates pucks from offensive players, and is a + passer out of his zone, which the Oilers didn't have on the roster. He's a Dave Tippett-type defenseman through-and-through. The loss of Adam Larsson presented him with the opportunity to play, and he's (as well as the team) have taken full advantage. ------------------------ To put this very basically, as of today, I think the gameplan is this: a) Even-strength: for 22 minutes a night, they're the best in team in hockey. b) Special teams: for about 4-6 minutes per night, they're rolling out the most potent PP in the league, and this year, they've had one of the top few PKs in the league in those 4-6 minutes. c) It's those other 30ish minutes that make all the difference. If the rest of the team can at least tread water, they have a good chance to win the hockey game.

Michal Jordan's claim of being kicked by Peters and witnessing him punch and kick teammates also confirmed by Rod Brind'Amour. [Hidden Content] The video is doubtless blocked for those who celebrate Thanksgiving a month-and-a-half late.

Not one of Bill Peters' best days, professionally speaking: [Hidden Content]

I'll do you the honour of being honest: I was just trying to not to cry in front of everybody. I was more humiliated than angry at the time. He's dead now, but if he were alive today and asked, I'm pretty sure he would say something along the lines of "Yeah, yeah... He didn't miss the cut-off man again, did he?" I didn't, actually. lol... I didn't want more of what he gave me that day.

It's one thing to get canned in Nashville, and it's a whole other to be fired in Toronto. Woe betide when that happens, because the bodies will be exhumed and shown for all to see.

A creeper with a bed roll on it is a poor substitute for an actual bed.

In my last year of baseball, I was one of the starting pitchers (every manager loves a lefty) and playing centre when not pitching. One game, I flat-out missed the cut-off man, and my manager was livid with me. Fair enough, I blew the play. Berated and screamed. Again, that's fine. It was the stuff he said, though: "Jesus Christ! Maybe if you pretended that the cut-off was another prairie n****r, and you were throwing a bottle of beer at him, you'd be able to actually hit him with the throw!" Everybody around, including those in the stands that heard it, just about pissed themselves laughing. It sucked. There was nothing I could do. It was his ball club, and I had a small chance for a scholarship, so what could I say? Plus, I was a kid. It's just not always easy to stand up for yourself, particularly when everybody laughed at what was said.

So, it would seem that the players are having their Harvey Weinstein moment, where years of ill treatment and abuse from former coaches is coming to light. This and the Babcock story won't be the last of it, and may not even come close to the worst of it. Just watch.

According to TSN, he isn't fired yet, but I think it's just a matter of time. Some of Aliu's teammates have confirmed his statements, so Peters might as well start emptying his office as we speak. @yave1964 In my head, my very first response to "will he be fired for this?" was to think "Gee, to get fired for something you said 10 years ago" but immediately followed it up with "Yeah, but he should have been fired on the spot, 10 years ago."

From TSN: "Speaking publicly for the first time since he made the allegation on Twitter, the Nigerian-born Aliu said Peters made the remarks in the AHL’s Rockford Ice Hogs dressing room before a morning skate during the 2009-10 season while the 20-year-old Aliu controlled the team’s music. “He walked in before a morning pre-game skate and said ‘Hey Akim, I’m sick of you playing that n----- s---,’ ” Aliu told TSN, with Peters, who was then the Ice Hogs head coach, referring to Aliu’s selection of hip-hop music. “He said ‘I’m sick of hearing this n-----s f------ other n-----s in the ass stuff.’ “He then walked out like nothing ever happened. You could hear a pin drop in the room, everything went dead silent. I just sat down in my stall, didn’t say a word.” Two of Aliu’s Rockford teammates who were in the room at the time of the alleged incident, Simon Pepin and Peter MacArthur, independently corroborated Aliu’s account to TSN on Tuesday. "I think everyone should be held accountable for their actions or words spoken," Pepin said. Aliu said Rockford team captain later confronted Peters about the incident in the coach’s office. Dowell could not immediately be reached for comment. When Peters then called Aliu into his office to talk about it, Aliu said Peters did not apologize. Instead, Peters again expressed his displeasure in Aliu’s choice of music for the dressing room, with Aliu saying Peters said: “You know, I’m just sick of this n----- s---. It’s every day. From now on, we need to play different music.” [Hidden Content] Confirmed by two other players in the room, so that's just awful to hear. When I played baseball, I had a manager say something re: race to me, in front of all my teammates, that would get him thrown off the team in about a 1/4 second today, but didn't raise an eyebrow back then. Back then, everybody just laughed.