Are you standing on an NHL logo? Does that make you a bad human being? Should we still review offside? How many beers at a tailgate is too many? You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers that are probably in no way correct! You could be in trouble! Mailbag! It’s here!
1. Dave Logo
https://twitter.com/afalker/status/722068974049976321
I’ve told my own story of logo-stepping in the past, but I’ll tell it again because you’ve probably never heard it. I’ll tell it in my best Sophia Petrillo voice.
Picture it. Chicago. 2010. A young man has been charged with getting quotes from Dave Bolland, but the Blackhawks locker room is packed like a Tokyo train at rush hour. Compounding the problem is that the team has a gigantic Native American caricature on its floor that must not be sullied with shoes, so it has been cordoned off with the ropes you see at a bank.
Like this.
Sorry I stepped on your logo. pic.twitter.com/WSOxnOSelv
— Scott Stinson (@scott_stinson) June 15, 2015
The ropes create even more traffic problems and there is a line about seven deep to get to the locker of the Blackhawks’ fourth-line center. I take out my phone to pass the time by checking Twitter. Suddenly, I hear anger over my shoulder.
“Get off the logo! Show some respect!”
My eyes never left my phone. I feel bad for the sucker that just broke the logo rule!
“I’ll have you f***ing kicked out of here!”
Wow, I thought, that guy is really getting reamed! What an idiot!
Suddenly, I felt all eyes on me. So I looked up, then over my shoulder, and there was Brent Sopel with fire in eyes directed at me.
“Show some f***ing respect.”
I’ve told that story before so if the quotes don’t match up, I can assure you that’s the essence. Yet, as previously stated, the logo is roped off. I wasn’t stepping on it. But there I was getting aired out by Sopel while I unintentionally ignored him.
Anyway, I don’t care about your logo. I avoid it when I can. I don’t work for your organization. It’s not my logo. If that emblem means that much to you, put it literally anywhere else but the floor. Thanks and good luck.
I just don’t understand why there isn’t a sign posted or when someone is doing this, a player almost never calmly explains the situation. It’s usually shouting as if you sat on their child and farted.
I look at the logo-stepping thing the way I do religion, as someone who does not believe in that. If I come to your home and you want to say grace before the meal and thank an invisible man in the sky for this mac and cheese we are about to consume, I’m going to respect your beliefs and not start talking about my fantasy baseball team while you are praying.
I don’t see the point in what you’re doing, but I’m going to respect your beliefs while I’m in your home. Then I will talk about those beliefs with like-minded people behind your back.
2. Getting Offside
@davelozo Offside replays should only be available at full speed. Eliminates the razor-thin ones, still corrects egregious ones. Yay or Nay?
— Scott Aefsky (@aefskysa) April 18, 2016
The hardest nay possible. If you are offside, you are offside. Two inches, two feet, you are offside. The offside rule has existed for 100 years and now people are mad we are enforcing it correctly? I don’t get it.
Oh, it takes three minutes to review it? It’s eating into your valuable time, people complaining on Twitter? A game that usually ends at 9:30 now ends at 9:33, but we get the call correct? Oh my, the horror! It’s almost every argument that the NFL faced when it started reviewing plays, and now everyone accepts that an extra five to 10 minutes is worth not blowing calls.
Here's the offsides call. #Isles pic.twitter.com/umOJg3rN7Z
— Buddy (@BuddyPeck) April 18, 2016
If you want to change the wording of the offside rule, I’m with you. If you want linesmen reviewing the plays on something with a bigger surface area than toast, I’m with you. If you want to let Toronto handle all reviews and take it out of officials’ hands, again, I’m with you.
But these piping hot takes that we should allow illegal goals to be scored because there aren’t that many goals scored in the NHL in the first place is such a hot take that it must be handled with those metal thingies people in smelting plants use to do whatever it is that happens in smelting plants.
3. The Beers
@davelozo How many beers would (do) you drink at the Meadowlands to pregame a Giants game? Same question for old Devils game.
— Jă§øñ (@kranman85) April 18, 2016
However many it takes. If you’re keeping track of how many beers you are drinking, you are doing it wrong. Protip: Never ask someone how many beers they’ve had and then say, “That’s it?” It’s not a competition unless, of course, it is a drinking competition.
4. Worst Western
@davelozo Why does the Western Conference hate me and my bracket?
— Nick Wester, P.I. (@WeHaveSnacks) April 18, 2016
I don’t know.
5. Bruin Coffey
https://twitter.com/BBduboff/status/722110322014875648
Maybe one big change? The ideal one is fire Don Sweeney, but that’s not happening for at least another year and probably way more. Claude Julien is coming back, which makes me sad for him because he probably would have cartwheeled out of TD Garden if they canned him. David Krejci played hurt all season and is having his hip fixed, plus he makes a bunch of money so it makes sense to keep him. Trade Zdeno Chara? They should have done that last year instead of half-rebuilding, half-going for it.
I am so disinterested in the Bruins that I took a break between paragraphs to watch Mike & Molly. I just hope there’s a sequel to the Zac Rinaldo trade and they give up a third-rounder for Derek Dorsett or Tanner Glass. I like to laugh.
As for the “Bruin Coffey” header, I always thought it would be funny if the Bruins hired or signed Paul Coffey just so someone could write that headline.
5. So So Cal
https://twitter.com/MissCourt_02/status/722101878188670976
I will write this before the Kings and Sharks play Game 3 Monday night, so we can have this ask-and-answer session at the time of your query.
I don’t think the Kings are done — I think the Ducks are — but I’m not sitting around with a “Hahaha, the Sharks up big in a series with the Kings? Can’t wait to see them lose lololol” attitude. The Sharks are good. I thought the Kings were a little better, but maybe I was wrong.
The Ducks, on the other hand, I feel I may have overvalued. I knew the Predators’ speed would give them issues, but it’s been more of an issue than I realized. Throw in the fact that John Gibson has looked ordinary and Pekka Rinne has looked like Vintage Pekka Rinne and it just feels done.
I picked the Ducks to win the Cup preseason and pre-playoffs, but I may be ready to wave the white flag. Of course, if they come back to win this series, ignore all this.
6. Face it
@davelozo think Boyle would fight someone if he had a broken hand?
— Becky not “a becky” (@wickedcellist) April 18, 2016
Think Abdelkader would fight someone if the other guy wasn’t prone on his stomach? And if you’re looking for someone to take pity on a guy who broke his hand on a defenseless guy’s face, you are looking in the wrong place. My guess is Abdelkader had the tape on his hand just so he could say, “Hang on, person facing me, but I can’t possibly fight for if I did, I would receive a match penalty and potentially be suspended for a game, so let us reconvene at a later day.”
7. Capital fun-ishment
@davelozo how will the Caps royally screw up their first round series this time?
— Andrew Stetka (@AStetka) April 18, 2016
Much like the Ducks/Kings question, this answer comes before Game 3 on Monday.
I think this series is unscrewupable for the Capitals with Sean Couturier out. I thought it would go six or seven games before the injury, but now I don’t know how the Flyers win four of five, unless Braden Holtby joins a cult that requires members to avoid sports all costs. Related: If that cult exists, please brainwash me and take me there.
8. As a bald person, who is your favorite bald hockey personality?
Joseph
Me.
