JR Ewing

I have to admit that I don't agree with the notion of eliminating a player from contention for an award based on what happens when he's not on the ice, and think it's in no small way a vestigial artifact from a time when 3/4 of the teams in the league made the playoffs. I think that Giroux would be a fine Hart winner this year, but if it were to go to one of those others at the top, it's not as if some sort of grand robbery would have occurred and Giroux's legacy has been stolen from him.

Yeah, I thought it was really nice, too. It was also a good thing to see after the way the Canucks players and coaches, led by Henrik, returned to the ice to shake Smyth's hand. Class. I imagine that this moment was not forgotten by the Edmonton Oilers organization, and they were sure to return the favor.

You could be dead-on with a lot of that. Unfortunately, this is the PHWA; the same group that voted Alexander Ovechkin to the post-season All-Star team in two separate positions in one year. Sometimes, they don't know if they should scratch their watch or wind their ass.

@elmatus That was pretty much my stance on it as well. I think there's a great argument for Giroux winning the Hart this year. His problem is that Taylor Hall can make a lot of the same claims, but with the added bonus of playing with inferior players, and Nathan McKinnon kicks in with a similar claim as well. If any one of those three go on to win, I don't think the others have been robbed.

As ever, these men have forgotten more about how to coach a hockey team than I will ever know, but I do think there were issues regarding coaching. Late in the season, the Oilers pulled Talbot for an extra attacker, and McLellan used Milan Lucic as that guy, even though he had only scored 1 goal in his last 41 games. Even at that, he's had a strange insistence on giving Lucic a lot of PP minutes even though he's never been a big producer on the PP during his career at any point. He was always very strong at ES, but not as much on the PP; his game doesn't really translate to that situation. I was ready to turn a table over. Meanwhile, Jesse Puljujarvi, a kid with a huge right-handed shot, playing for a team with a PP we always hear desperately needs a big right-handed shot, languishes on the bench, playing only 48 mins on the PP this year. [Hidden Content] Ryan Strome never produced on the PP in New York, but received the 5th most minutes in Edmonton, but again, coach McLellan handed more minutes to Mark Letestu than Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. I will never get over that. Guys with established mediocre or poor track records on the PP are given premier minutes, and whilst other players with superior offensive ability took a 2-minute breather. A team should be using its best players in high leverage situations. People want to know why the PP suffered in Edmonton? In my honest opinion, it's down tremendously to coaching.

Issues: -The defense is very poor at moving the puck out of their own end, and they lack any actual NHL defensemen who can make the first pass with regularity. They tend to play VERY slow in their own end, pass back and forth, rim around the boards, etc, which leads to turnovers, which leads to needless GA. -The Oilers need depth on the wing, especially speed. They seem to feel that Aberg and Rattie are those guys. I'm not remotely convinced that 24-year olds who haven't been able to establish themselves as scorers are the way to go. I think it's a bad bet. -The PK was one of the absolutely worst of the modern era; a truly bizarre thing. For most of the season, the used an L-shaped defense, with the two defensemen in the traditional spots, and then each forward lining up in front of the the d-man's side on the side of the rink the puck was on. It created MASSIVE cross-ice one-timer opportunities which were repeatedly buried. The Oilers coaches steadfastly stayed with this tactic until the season was lost, at which point they switched to a very traditional PK, and things immediately improved, where they went from a distant 31st to 25th in the short time. That's how bad that configuration was. -In a similar vein, the PP was far worse than it should have been, especially with being able to trot out McDavid, Draisaitl and Nugent-Hopkins. Bizarre choices were, gain, the order of the day. Until he was traded, Mark Letestu was given more PP time than Nugent-Hopkins, despite a world of difference in offensive talent between them. In a game against Anaheim, Kevin Bieksa was asked about how they were shutting down the Oilers PP so well. I cringed, because he damned near laughed at the club, openly, on TV. "Well, I haven't seen The Spread since about 2007. Didn't know anybody was still using that." -I hate bitching about refs, and a search here would reveal that. It can't be ignored, though, that the Oilers received a historically low amount of PP opportunities. Somebody will always be first and somebody will always be last, but not by THAT much. This was the lowest number of PP opportunities ever seen per 82 games. I'm not being a homer when I say that Connor McDavid drew only a fraction of the calls which could have been made, and I get the strategy: if teams obstruct him constantly the refs pretty much have to let a certain amount of it go or else the game would grind to a halt with constant stoppage. -Talbot had a very miserable start, but carried a .920 SV% in the second half of the season. He's by no means an all-star, but this year when he was bad is the outlier so far in his career, so I think that betting on a rebound isn't horrible.

The Cup is the big thing; no doubt about it. -My team's guy is pretty much seen as the best player in the world now. Great. -He's now in a group of only two players ever to win this many scoring titles by this age. Awesome. -He was so dominant at even-strength, of players to win an Art Ross, nobody has ever done it with so little feasting on the PP: only 18% of his points came with a man advantage. Wayne didn't even get below 20%... Lovely. That's all great, but the Oilers didn't make the playoffs, and this might be the most disappointing season I've been through in all of these years. It's been honestly brutal. I would have rather watched him finish 2nd in scoring and get to watch them play in April.

A cliff? The only cliff you'll find in Saskatchewan is located in a phonebook.

When you add in Saskatchewan having a small population (thus equaling a small tax base) yet more km of highway than any other province, the condition of the roads can be very spotty. There are times when the Red Coat Trail, running east-west across the southern part of the province, is better driven in a lunar rover than a car or truck. Any day you go out for a highway drive, you'll encounter large farm equipment, overlapping the single lanes, being driven. I've been following equipment, in this scenario, where we encountered an equally large vehicle coming from the opposite direction, forcing all to slow down where they each drove on the shoulder. They barely slowed down. You've seen the drifting snow in the winter: sometimes it dances across the highway so much it can almost trick your eyes, and make it feel as if you're floating on a cloud. It can be very easy to lose your place in the road in those conditions.

As usual, Hart voting will come down to: 1. Did the scoring leader's team make the playoffs? Yes? Give him the award. 2. No? Give it to one the best player on a team that just eked their way into the playoffs. That guy's a real leader. It would continue the habit of awarding players trophies based on things which are beyond their control, good and bad. Given that, Giroux actually has a decent shot at this, as he was splendid this year. I think that, generally speaking, Giroux is often criminally underrated as a hockey player, and I was happy to see him work his way into second in scoring on the last day.

It would probably shock most people to think that a province which looks like this would be a very dangerous place to drive, but they would be wrong. Saskatchewan is the most dangerous place to drive in Canada. [Hidden Content] The number of people killed on highways there is twice the national average. My wife has lost 4 family members and friends to separate highway crashes, several classmates in high school, and she can't hope to offer a number for the number of victims she saw as an OR Nurse in Regina. And farm accidents? Don't even get me started. She's lost more to those than on the highway.

Been awhile, but I liked: -Darren Puppa -Par Djoos -Bill Quackenbush

Horrifying stuff. For years of abuse directed at Kennedy, he received a two-year sentence, after which he received a full pardon. Later, Theoren Fleury and Todd Holt brought evidence to the RCMP. He was charged with numerous counts of sexual assault of a minor and again received only a two-year sentence, which outraged the public. He is a notorious man in Canada, particularly in hockey circles.

Graham James is the former Swift Current coach who spent years sexually assaulting his players, including Sheldon Kennedy and Theoren Fleury.

-Terrible news. Really awful, gut wrenching stuff. Fourteen lives barely lived... -My nephews put on the miles all across that area of the province, and have for years, to go to games and tournaments. The roads can be extremely treacherous and this is everybody's nightmare scenario. -People still talk about the Swift Current crash, and I know they will for many years now with this tragedy.