Hope so. That cross check before they tied it at 3 was complete bullshit, and was followed by another too many men on the ice that just plain wasn't called. The Wilson cheap hit wasn't called as a make up, but it was eventually called because is was so fucking blatant that it earned an after-whistle punch in the face. The face punch drew a penalty, so Wilson had to, as well.
Crappy thing is that make-up calls should be a power play to 'make-up' for the goal that shouldn't have been allowed!
Fuckin' hockey...
Just embarrasing refs. And hockey really is so much blind luck. Yeah it makes things exciting but it really is the game that feels the least decided by skill in sports.
Vegas should spend more money fixing their shit ice.
I don't get why people are so surprised by Vegas being good, the NHL did them a ton of favors. Yeah a few guys have had surprising years but its mostly Fleury being really good, which isn't actually shocking and the fact that they have less drop off on their 3rd and 4th lines than any other team in the nhl.
Yeah when you let the expansion team take your top second tier players from every team, chances are the team will have the most depth of any team in the league...
Good one NHL. Good one.
Is that how it played out? I didn't pay much attention, just knew that expansion drafts are usually the guys you don't want to keep.
Yeah there is a reason the NHL has already said they wouldn't do it like that again. Vegas got gifted a team that was at the very worst going to be average. They've gotten some suprise seasons and that coupled with Fleury reverting back to top form and you get this season.
Its a little surpising, its not nearly the story everyone wants to make it and isn't even in the same universe as Leicester winning the premier league.
Most of the players had never even met each other a year ago, much less played together on the same line; teams work for years to build that kind of chemistry on the ice.
This is a unique set of circumstances but at its core the team is playing with no pressure and for fans that won't turn on them if they don't win.
They are a good team, fun to watch, and I’m not necessarily rooting against them. But there is a small part of me that thinks a team has to pay its dues first.
And Vegas payed less than any team ever, so it's fine if they don't end up winning.
It just seems to me that it's probably the fanbase that "bought" this incredible run by paying the dues of having no major sports team (even though the business of gambling is intertwined with them all).
Their support is pretty damn crazy, though. The fans are juiced for hockey, that much is undeniable.
But the rest of that is BS. Sure there's not much drop off on the 3rd & 4th lines because the whole team is made up of third tier players.
Basically a team of 3*s is three wins away from the hardest earned championship in pro sports, no wonder most on this board can't figure it out.
Vegas is playing for a fanbase that was going to support them wildly even if they only won 20 games; they had no pressure from fan expectations, no one was on a "hot seat" and all were probably glad to get a fresh start. Aided unfortunately by the resonance of the community coming together because of the tragedy at the beginning of the year.
See Michigan fans, let this be a lesson to you:
A team that has full support of their fans and no pressure from expectations can do great things even if they are a bunch of 3*s.
...you do seem to know a lot about absurdity.
I already mentioned Fleury; besides, you really believe Pittsburgh left it's 5* goalie unprotected? He is no longer near the goalie he used to be but when playoffs come there's not many better than he is.
Couple first liners? Second liners?
They only had three guys who scored more than 20 goals the year before! And one is Tatar!
Maybe Marchessault, Smith and Neal were first or second liners, but the rest were unproven cast offs.
And the fact that you can't control the bounces of the puck is exactly what makes the Stanley Cup the hardest trophy to win in all of sports.
Again it just indicates that a supportive, excited fanbase who isn't just concerned with wins and losses can help their team get the bounces they need.
And while it will never be so obvious in college sports, it works the same way.
You keep talking about fanbases like it matters. The NHL playoffs are the sport where home ice matters the least, the fanbase isn't impacting the outcome of the game. The penguins let Fleury go unprotected because they had Matt Murray, a cheaper younger player who also was very good. Vegas got incredibly fortunate that Pittsburgh had two really good goalies. As a team they had two five star QB's on the roster. It would have been like if JT Barrett left after Cardale Jones won the starting job. Plenty of goalies have had elite years in their mid to late 30's, its not like Fleury is some old timer, he is a former #1 overall pick who at his best has always been an elite goalie but had a couple mistakes in the playoffs for two years and the Penguins went with Murray.
These guys weren't cast offs. On top of one goalie teams could protect either 8 skaters however they wished or 7 forwards and 3 defensmen. Any player who had no trade clauses had to be protected. The guys they were picking were at worst third liners, not cast offs. Because of having to protect guys with no trade clauses plus teams wanting to protect younger players they got a few veteran second line level guys. What vegas really shows is that depth and having zero holes is just as valuable as having a couple of star players. Vegas got lucky and a few good seasons from unexpected sources, the fanbase has nothing to do with it and its not nearly the story people want it to be.
Your analysis is spot on IMHO.
Home ice matters but is not critical. Before game 7 of the Caps-Bolts series I heard a stat that surprised me - in the previous 20 game seven's in the NHL playoffs, the home team was 9-11. So now it's 9-12.
And yes, Vegas got the benefit of generous expansion draft rules. And McPhee used them to his advantage. He built a team, as you mention, of solid 2nd and 3rd liners. But unlike teams strapped by the cap, they were able to load up on those types of players. And STILL were able to make trades for multiple first round picks in the last draft and the coming draft. If McPhee used and uses those picks wisely they could be good for quite a while. They even took on some dead cap hits to make the floor. So they are in position to go hard after some free agent, too.
The really crazy thing is that some of those players (James Neal being example A) were taken with the express purpose of trading them at the deadline as rentals for even more picks. But instead they were actually buyers at the deadline, not sellers.
As for Fleury, the Pens were totally boxed in. They had to keep Murray. He is younger and cheaper, and they have cap issues that letting go of Fleury helped solve. While he has been a high level goalie for most of his career, he has also had some serious issues in more than one playoff series. In this case Vegas is fortunate that he has had a great playoff run.
I read that the league is giving the next expansion team (Seattle) the same rules. I wonder if GMs will handle it differently and not make as many side deals to protect certain players. That seems to have backfired in many cases.
I'm talking about the pressure from the expectations that most fanbases have no problem dumping on their team. (And it's REALLY relevant here since UofM football fans are filled with the most unrealistic expectations and turn on their players in a second)
Not to mention, the reason that lately teams have had a tough time winning at home is probably because they are playing in front of a nervous fanbase with huge expectations.
Plus, I don't believe that after 20 years of being an underwelming GM that McPhee all of a sudden became Scotty Bowman. He sure got some help from the Panthers! But even if his moves were perfect that would only explain a winning record, or maybe a playoff berth, which would be quite a story in itself.
But this team is 3 wins from the cup, and the ONLY explaination that makes sense IMO is that there was no pressure from fan expectations.
Everyone was happy to be there, to get a fresh start and play in front of wildly excited fans who have been waiting for a major pro sport.
O wait, fanbases are irrelevant sorry
"fanbase isn't impacting the outcome of the game"
"the fanbase has nothing to do with it"
They why do you even care, because obviously you must think the UofM fanbase has nothing to do with it too?
I scream, I cheer, I swear; sometimes I've even been known to throw, but once the game is over, that's when I like to say to myself:
"Self, you're watching young men being exploited, while at the same time having some vitality drained from them, by old fat rich guys who's only existence is to unsure that colleges never had to take the legal responsibility for all the negative effects of the game that brings lots of enrollment dollars."
So after I take a deep breath, I justify my interest in college sports by rooting for the team, even when we get RichRod'd into a 3-9 year, being happy I root for a team that at least tries to make academics important, welcome 2*s and PWO the exact same as 5*s and most importantly never ever spend one dime on anything that helps make the NCAA any money.
I'd have no problems with a decades of 8,9,10 win seasons with a magical season thrown in here or there.
And I absolutely believe that the collective attitude of a fanbase can have a huge affect on their local sports team, as witnessed by the Boston Strong, Houston Strong and now the Vegas Strong situations in which a fanbase rallying around a sports team as catharsis in the wake of a tragedy has lead to improbable championship runs.
I think its great because thats what being a fan should be about, supporting each other through the rough patches; "Where gonna believe in each other, we're not gonna criticize each other, we're not gonna talk about each other, we're gonna support each other." During all the 3 and 4 loss seasons, I'm gonna "stick by them. Keep believing." for "the Team, the Team, the Team".
Or some such nonsense.
Obviously a team needs to be good and Vegas is good but it also means being lucky. The presidents trophy has existed since 1985, only 8 times has the best regular season team won the stanley cup. Teams that have won the presidents cup have also lost 6 times in the first round. So its almost as likely for the best team over the course of 82 games to lose in the first round as it is to win the stanley cup. That shows how much luck is involved in the game of hockey. Any team in the playoffs is an above average team so they are all good enough to win the cup.
In the NBA the team with the best regular season record wins the title 50% of the time. The NFL, even with a one game elimination style sees the team with the best record win a championship more frequently than the NHL. The only league where the regular season means less and thus means being the best team means the least is in baseball, another sport where luck and flukes tell more of a story than skill (see the best players in the world still getting out nearly 7 out of 10 times). The uncertainty makes the playoffs exciting, it doesn't result in the best team winning, which is fine.
Something that is annoying, though, is when the commentators/news say Vegas is a team of a bunch of players that nobody wanted. Not true. They were just ones that weren’t protected. I’m sure most teams would have preferred to keep their entire roster.
McPhee played a lot of other teams like a fiddle leading up to and during the expansion draft. He picked up an incredible number of picks and prospects as part of deals to ensure he picked certain players that either opened up cap space or avoided certain unprotected players. Too many owners/GMs got scared of how the draft was going to go that they put too much stock into the here and now and not to the future.
Other teams just made some boneheaded decisions in who they protected. Florida let Marchessault go despite being their top goal scorer so they could protect a few middling guys; St. Louis decided to protect Reaves, an enforcer, instead of Perron, and now Reaves is on Vegas anyway; Boston decided that an older, less talented Kevan Miller was more important than Colin Miller, who turned out to be the best offensive contributor on Vegas' blueline.
The rules aren't going to change when Seattle's expansion draft comes up, but if you think Seattle is going to have any immediate success even approaching what Vegas has done, you're going to be surprised. This was a masterclass in using leverage to build a competitive team, and the rest of the league learned the hard way.
Yeah baby I put $1000 on a VGK futures to win the Cup. I could win $500k!
Then I woke up.
would like to see the Great 8 hoist the cup this year. First game looks like it's got the making of a great series.
I'm pulling for the Caps, but I won't be disappointed either way.
So..... If Holland steps down next year and Stevie Y. comes home as GM, would it be more likely that Gallant agrees to be the next HC if Vegas wins, or loses?
I can hear Stevie calling him up, "Spudsie, we're getting the band back together. Come home and coach the Wings."
Unfortunately, not happening.