<> during the second period at TD Garden on December 16, 2015 in Boston, Massachusetts.
NHLBy Dave Lozo on

Each week we’ll take a look at some of the most pressing questions around the NHL, as well as some of the more ridiculous things hockey fans seem to care about. It’s The Comeback weekly hockey mailbag!

1. They’ve got fight in them

There’s no point in 2016 to arguing with anyone who thinks fighting has a place in hockey other than, “I like watching guys punch each other in the face.” If you hear the words “momentum” or “deterrent,” treat them like you would any other fanatical group and back away slowly.

The why, though, is an interesting question. If you follow enough people on Twitter from the NHL’s 30 cities, no media corps lights up quite like Edmonton when it comes to fighting or toughness or sending a message. On Sunday night, Matt Hendricks earned himself a three-game suspension when he cowardly ran Aaron Ekblad from behind.

Imagine seeing that hit and thinking:

https://twitter.com/SportsnetSpec/status/686405860503887872

Or when a skilled player gets legally hit in a contact sport and the immediate response is:

https://twitter.com/SportsnetSpec/status/686397304144703488

Seriously, it’s 2016 and people think fighting prevents star players from being victims of injurious hits despite the fact fighting has existed for the same amount of time as star players being victims of injurious hits in the NHL. Go figure.

But why? Here’s my theory for why the Edmonton media loves fighting more than anyone else:

Wayne Gretzky.

You see, a good chunk of the people covering the Oilers today either grew up watching or spent time covering the Oilers of the 1980s. While Gretzky was skating around, setting records, scoring goals, doing pretty hockey things, Marty McSorley was known as his “protector,” the guy that made sure the frail Gretzky could do his magical things without fear of being hit or punched. McSorley was hailed forever because of this and even went to Los Angeles in the Gretzky trade in 1988 to maintain his protector role.

http://gty.im/468050751

To them, fighting has a purpose. And maybe it did 35 years ago. Like all of us, we think everything that happened in our late-teens and early-20s were the best moments in our planet’s history and everyone should be allowed to live permanently in that nostalgia bubble. The Oilers were the NHL’s best team in an era of line brawls, so that high level of play and the side-show goonery become melded together in the minds of people that watched that stuff at a time in their lives when they were very easily influenced, like all of us at that age.

Throw in the fact that Oilers journalists for the past decade have been trapped in a world of hellishly awful hockey and surrounded by those “tough guys” of the 1980s running the team, blathering about toughness at all times to media members who grew up watching them, and good luck getting through to them with the idea that having someone on the roster who can punch faces is useless in 2016 and only getting more useless.

People that have endured the Oilers teams of the past decade are basically Tom Hanks in Cast Away. They’ve been trapped in isolation for so long that when they finally get a taste of modern success, they will have the same reaction to the Oilers winning without any enforcer types the same way Hanks couldn’t believe the Houston Oilers were playing in Nashville now.

http://gty.im/489500062

It’s just another form of indoctrination. The best way to break out of any cult is by getting to see the rest of the world, immersing yourself in another culture, which is something beat writers rarely do. They are all mostly focused on their teams, and understandably so. It’s a lot harder to explain to them about the successful teams in the playoffs when they so rarely have to cover them because of the Oilers.

Imagine the look of, say, a Blackhawks writer when an Oilers writer sees Patrick Kane get crushed with a clean hit and says, “Too bad you guys don’t have Brandon Bollig anymore to answer or prevent that.” It’s like talking to a living, breathing, Onion article.

So, like with any sort of worldview that doesn’t connect with reality, it usually comes down to where or how you were raised. It’s learned behavior. When the Oilers are a playoff team in a couple years, check back with me and let me know how important fighting was in getting to the postseason.

 

http://gty.im/503469630

2. Crosby being Crosby

https://twitter.com/bricklaying69/status/686403097518714880

One-time NHL All-Star Sidney Crosby has been scoring at the rate of a multiple-time All-Star lately. Why? Good question.

Going back to this thing I wrote over at Vice (self-indulgent cross-promotion!), one of the reasons I identified for Crosby’s relatively poor numbers this season was a lack of regular playing time with Chris Kunitz, who is basically the Crosby Whisperer. For whatever reason, those guys are magic together and it’s more of a symbiotic relationship than one where Kunitz applies his suckers to the underbelly of Crosby in order to sustain life. Imagery!

At the time of that post, Kunitz and Crosby had been together for 109 of Crosby’s 331 minutes (32.9 percent) at 5-on-5; since then, Kunitz and Crosby have been together for 210 of Crosby’s 247 minutes (85 percent!) at 5-on-5. Crosby has 16 points in 16 games over that time after starting the season with 15 points in 24 games. New coach Mike Sullivan has seemingly made it a point to keep Kunitz and Crosby together as much as possible since taking over for Mike Johnston.

I was of the opinion then the new norm is Point-Per-Game Crosby and that’s what he’s done with a heavy dose of Kunitz. There are other factors at play besides that, but I think that’s helped him immensely. Crosby just works better with Kunitz than anyone else. It’s funny to say Crosby lugs Kunitz around the ice but it’s just not true.

 

3. Clothes lines

Is this a thing? The thing that bugs me about TV shows is people lounging around their homes in pants or jeans. I’m not saying you should be roaming your home in your underwear but why aren’t you in sweats or shorts? Anyone on TV that is spending the day at home that is wearing a belt is a fraud and you should immediately cease watching that show.

The biggest issue I have with unrealistic attire on TV. Brett Favre and Drew Brees hocking Wranglers and Aaron Rodgers and Peyton Manning selling insurance are the exceptions to the rule that sports dudes in the national commercials must be wearing a uniform.

Cam Newton is off to buy yogurt in his uniform. Buster Posey is here to deliver a baby in his full catcher’s gear and uniform. Jarome Iginla walks into a bank in his jersey. Eli Manning wants to buy a car in his jersey. Marshawn Lynch is a spokesman for Pepsi and isn’t wearing a jersey or uniform, but the commercial takes place in a locker room and he is surrounded by uniforms.

I always thought the point of having a sports star endorse a product was because that person was a star and transcended sports. They were so recognizable that their faces could sell underwear or shirts or condoms or candy or whatever. Yet they almost always have to wear jerseys.

When George Clooney is an ad selling instant coffee, he’s not dressed as an astronaut because he was in Gravity. Although, that would be funny and I’d probably that coffee stuff he’s lent his name to.

 

1976_fly_away_duke_live_600w

4. David, Bowie?

Heroes. I’m a simple man. I like them all. Plus, I went backwards on this song.

The first time I heard Heroes, I was in college. I was young, full of hope and void of cynicism. Then I heard the song — it was great. It was uplifting. It was like nothing I had ever heard.

And as far as I was concerned, that song by The Wallflowers on the Godzilla soundtrack was the best song I had ever heard.

Then I heard Bowie’s version and realized I was the dumbest person alive. I realized that I could never trust again and I embarked on a path of mistrusting everyone and everything, all because of Bob Dylan’s kid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgcc5V9Hu3g

So imagine drinking Shasta all your life and then someone hands you a Coke. That was me with Heroes.

 

http://gty.im/478691632

5. A lottery pick Bruin?

https://twitter.com/DrewBovy/status/686401706498879488

Bruins fans want the Sharks to do poorly, because the Bruins gave the Sharks goaltender Martin Jones for a first-round pick in 2016, and that’s quite the amazing first-round pick.

The Sharks are the 3-seed in the Pacific with 42 points. They are also five points away from being last in the West and eight points from being last overall. The Bruins could wind up with a top-5 pick or a bottom-10 pick depending on how things break because the Pacific is an awful division where 85 points may be enough for a playoff spot.

I have no idea how things will go for the Sharks. I just wanted to use the remaining space to illustrate the Pacific Division should be blowtorched like all those hatching eggs in Alien.

5-on-5 statistics via stats.hockeyanalysis.com

If you want to be a part of next week’s mailbag, send at tweet to @davelozo.

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