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Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Crosby's Injury, Playoff Outrage, And The Draft Lottery

(Editor's note: Welcome to Sean McIndoe's weekly grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter. Check out the Biscuits podcast with Sean and Dave Lozo as they discuss the events of the week.)

Three stars of comedy

The third star: This Predators fan—We'll get to the whole P.K. Subban dancing controversy in a bit, but let's just say that Nashville fans get it.

— Preds Warmup Signs (@PredsSigns) April 30, 2017

In related news, the Rangers can do stuff like this in the warmup and apparently nobody cares.

The second star: Chris Pratt—OK, technically, this is from three years ago. But Pratt just reposted it on Twitter recently, and it was the first time I'd ever seen it, so we're grandfathering it in.

Sudden Death really is just about the greatest movie ever made. We broke down the mascot fight in the YouTube section four years back, but that's not really enough. We should probably do another scene from that movie some time soon. Hmmm...

The first star: Taylor Hall—Apparently he listens to the podcast.

Officially adding

— Taylor Hall (@hallsy09) April 30, 2017

My favorite part of that joke is that it's still only the second funniest lottery-related tweet of Hall's career, trailing this one from two years ago.

Outrage of the week

We're three weeks into the playoffs, and you know what that means. We've reached outrage overflow mode, that inevitable point in the postseason where everyone is on edge and there's so much happening that our capacity to rationally discuss anything just disappears completely. We're going to have to break out the lightning round this week.

The issue: Sidney Crosby has another concussion after an ugly collision with Matt Niskanen, one that was helped along by a nasty Alexander Ovechkin slash.

The outrage: The play was dirty!

Is it justified: Seeing Crosby down and out like that was awful, just about the worst-case scenario for any hockey fan. It doesn't matter who you cheer for—hell, even if you're a Capitals fan—you don't want to see the league's most important player out with another head injury.

That said, the play itself was anything but black-and-white. I'm pretty sure I've watched it hundreds of times so far, and I'm still not sure if it was dirty. I didn't like the Ovechkin slash, which should have been at least two minutes. But Penguins fans just finished spending the last few weeks telling us that a hard slash on a puck-carrier is a hockey play, so that outrage only goes so far. The Niskanen half was the tough one, and I still see a player realizing that a falling opponent is about to crash into him and putting his hands up to protect himself.

Not everyone agrees. Maybe Niskanen really did sense an opportunity to target Crosby's head. But I'm still not sure, and I lean towards it ultimately being careless and maybe even reckless, but not dirty.

The issue: The Department of Player Safety didn't suspend Niskanen, or even hold a hearing.

The outrage: The DoPS never suspends anyone during the playoffs!

Is it justified: We've been over this before. If you want tougher sentences during the playoffs, have the GMs and owner instruct the DoPS to call it that way. But based on the standards that have been established over the years, it's no surprise that Niskanen didn't get anything beyond the game he'd already missed as a result of being ejected. It would have been unusual if he had.

The issue: Pittsburgh reporter Rob Rossi challenged Washington coach Barry Trotz about the play, wrote a column accusing the Capitals of intentionally targeting Crosby, and then made the media rounds to push the theory.

The outrage: That take is nuts. Let's spend the next two days talking about it!

Is it justified: The accusation about Capitals players planning Crosby's demise was out of bounds, especially in a post-Todd Bertuzzi league. He was widely criticized and mocked, and rightly so. Rossi's done some good work over the years, but there's no defending that take.

That said, as Elliotte Friedman pointed out this week, this seems to be the direction that a lot of sports journalism is headed. Lots of people wrote measured, thoughtful takes on the Crosby injury. If you ended up talking about Rossi instead, well, that tells you all you need to know. Attention is the currency of today's media, and now more than ever, you get what you pay for.

The issue: Nick Bonino drew a crucial penalty on Wednesday by embellishing a high-stick from T.J. Oshie.

The outrage: Hockey fans hate this stuff.

Is it justified: Sure, but the problem is that this is how the game works now, diving and embellishment works. There's a good chance you get the call. Every now and then, you'll get called for faking, but most of the time the ref will still take the other guy too. Unless you're completely obvious, they'll almost never take just the diver. Lots of players do this stuff, Oshie included.

Could the league fix it? Not totally, although encouraging refs to just take one guy more often would help. So suggest cranking up the post-game fines—drop five figures on someone who pulls a Bonino and at least a few guys might think twice. But you can never get rid of this stuff entirely, short of making everything open to review. And it's hard to think anyone wants even more reviews.

The issue: There aren't enough bathrooms in the new Edmonton arena and now their media want everyone to start peeing in the sinks.

The outrage: That's... wait, what?

Is it justified: Yeah, I don't get this one either. Let's just keep moving.

The issue: Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs says he doesn't think the NHL will go to the Olympics because it's not worth the effort for "the four people that watch it".

The outrage: The NHL really does hate its fans.

Is it justified: I'm sure the league's key television partner was thrilled to hear Jacobs trash-talking the viewership potential of an event it pays billions to broadcast. Just a thought, but the NHL might want to ease up on side-eying anyone else's ratings. But it was certainly interesting to see an owner as influential as Jacobs say "I don't think it's going to happen" about something we've already been told definitely won't happen. Gosh, it's almost as if the league is still posturing here.

The issue: P.K. Subban danced during a warmup and Mike Milbury called him a clown.

The outrage: Nobody likes Mike Milbury.

Is it justified: The clown take was terrible and pretty much everyone knows it, including Milbury, who backed off the comments fairly quickly. The NHL needs a lot of things, but more lectures from the fun police isn't on the list. Here's hoping Subban dances all the way to the Stanley Cup final.

The issue: This is too much outrage.

The outrage: Seriously, we're all exhausted.

Is it justified: Pace yourself, we still have five weeks of this stuff to go.

Obscure former player of the week

Earlier this week, Ottawa's Jean-Gabriel Pageau scored four goals in a game, becoming only the 12th player to do so in the last 30 years. So who's the most obscure player in that group? Well... it's probably Pageau, to be honest. But it seems a little early to hand him those honors, so let's go with Tony Hrkac.

Hrkac was taken in the second round of the 1984 entry draft when the Blues decided to show up for a change. He made his NHL debut in 1987, and played part of three seasons with St. Louis before being traded to the Nordiques. That would be the first of many moves over the course of his career; he'd go on to be traded six times, sign five free agent deals, get claimed on waivers once and be picked in the 1998 expansion draft.

All in all, he played for nine NHL teams over his career, despite spending several years in the IHL in the mid-90s. He appeared in his last NHL game for the Thrashers in 2003, although he continued playing off and on in the minors until 2010.

There are two things most fans of the era remember about Tony Hrkac. First, his last name was pronounced "hur-kuss", so everyone called him "the Hrkac Circus". And more importantly, he had one of the best playoff games ever as a rookie in 1988. That night, in game five of their first-round series, Hrkac lit up Chicago's Darren Pang for four goals including a short-handed winner in a 6-5 Blues win.

Hrkac's four-goal playoff game was the first that the NHL had seen in almost 24... hours. Buffalo's John Tucker had done it the night before against Boston. But the feat wouldn't be matched again for 12 whole days, when Mark Johnson pulled it off against the Capitals. What can I tell you, the late-80s were fun.

Be It Resolved

Saturday's draft lottery resulted in three longshots moving into the top three picks, including the Flyers, who had the 13th worst record but will pick second. Meanwhile, terrible teams like the Avalanche and Canucks and the expansion Golden Knights all dropped way down.

Is that fair? Not really. The lottery is kind of a mess. But if that's news to you, then you haven't been paying attention over the years. And you can't start complaining now just because your team was the one that got screwed.

First things first: We shouldn't even have a lottery. There's a far better system for determining draft order while still weighting everything in favor of the worst teams. It's called the Gold Plan, I've written about it a ton, and you're probably sick of me mentioning it. But it's roughly a million times fairer than random ping pong ball drawings, and a lot more exciting to boot. If you're not already on board, now's a good time to join us.

But let's assume that the league wants to keep a lottery system. After all, this is the NHL, the league where everything is fine and nothing should ever change. If you want to keep the ping pong balls and the weighted odds, then sometimes, the longshots will win. That's a feature, not a bug.

This whole thing is classic NHL. Design a system that we all know could result in a specific scenario; appear to be totally fine with that possibility; wait until that scenario inevitably plays out; then demand the system be changed because the thing you always knew might happen finally did.

We already did it with the Connor McDavid lottery a few years ago, when the Oilers won for a third time and everyone complained even though we knew Edmonton had decent odds going in. We did it with the skate-in-the-crease rule that everyone insisted was just fine right up until it showed up on a Cup-winning goal, at which point it was immediately scrapped. We're doing it right now with the offside review and puck-over-glass, badly implemented rules that won't be changed until they cost some team a playoff series. Which they absolutely will. We just need to wait long enough.

Should teams like the Avalanche have better odds? Maybe. Should teams like the Flyers have any odds at all? Maybe not. But these were all questions to be asking before Saturday's drawing. If you didn't have a problem with the system then but do now, you're either being disingenuous or you don't understand how probabilities work.

Either way, it would be nice for this league and its fans to want to solve a problem in advance for once, instead of slipping into knee-jerk reaction mode whenever the inevitable happens.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

So the Washington Capitals are peppering the Penguins with shots, but can't score because Marc-Andre Fleury is playing like some sort of mid-90s action hero. You know what other Penguins' goalie played like a mid-90s action hero?

Oh hell yeah.

If you're not familiar with Sudden Death, you should a.) acknowledge that you have fundamentally failed as a person somewhere along the line and b.) head over to this excellent SB Nation tribute. But if you need the short version: The Blackhawks and Penguins are facing each other in game seven of the Stanley Cup final, terrorists are trying to blow up the arena, and Jean Claude Van Damme is here to karate fight everyone in the building.

At this point, we're well into the move. We've already seen Luc Robitaille swear and Van Damme use a supersoaker full of lighter fluid to end a dude, but have not yet seen a helicopter crash at center ice.

Also, Van Damme has already killed the Penguins' mascot with a dishwasher. Have I mentioned this is the greatest movie ever made? It totally is.

So at this point, we're late in the game and the Blackhawks are leading. Even worse, Penguins' starting goalie Brad Tolliver has left the game with the flu. Fun fact: Tolliver was played by former Penguin Jay Caufield, even though Caufield wasn't a goalie. I'm starting to think this movie might not be very realistic, you guys.

Van Damme has stolen Tolliver's uniform because of reasons, and he returns to the game. Well, he returns to the bench, where he sits in the middle of all the players, the way goalies do. His coach comes over and orders his unhealthy player back onto the ice, because this was 1995.

By the way, the two announcers are the Penguins' real life duo of Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald. I love that Mike "Scratch My Back With a Hacksaw" Lange has his own IMDB page.

Brad Tolliver wasn't a real player. But as we hear from the arena announcer, the guy he's replacing is: It's Ken Wregget, playing himself. This game is going to end with the arena getting blown up by a helicopter, making it the second biggest hockey-related disaster Wregget has ever been a part of, behind the 1984-85 Maple Leafs.

"I don't know what he did back in the locker room." Uh, he has the flu, guys. I'm pretty sure we can narrow it down to a couple of options.

We get an extended sequence of Van Damme trying to figure out where to look and how to stand while praying the puck won't come near him, aka "the Brian Elliott". He eventually responds to a breakaway by charging out and flipping his opponent into the air, which is completely ridiculous because only a psychopath would ever do that.

"He hit his head on the ice... he hit it so hard his kids will be born dizzy." In the modern remake, this is the point where the concussion spotters will call down and the movie will end.

Tony Amonte gets his second breakaway of the shift because apparently the Penguins are being coached by Jared Bednar. Still woozy from his brain injury, Van Damme drops down and makes a highlight reel glove save. In what stands as easily the worst part of the movie, his Penguins teammates celebrate by raising their sticks in the air like they just scored. This is so stupid that I'm amazed The Love Guru didn't think of it.

This is the point where our clip ends, but it's not the end of Van Damme's goaltending adventures. He realizes that he can't save the world if he's stuck on the ice, so he does the only reasonable thing: Grabs a random Blackhawks player and sucker punches him to start a line brawl. Because the script writers have never actually seen playoff hockey, this results in the referees actually giving him a penalty, getting him out of the game and back into the terrorist-murdering business.

Sudden Death came out in December 1995, because the world had been good and deserved a Christmas present. It made several billion of dollars and won every Academy Award, but ushered in the Dead Puck Era of the NHL because the league's goalies now had access to Jean Claude Van Damme game film while coaches started focusing on defending the neutral zone in case a helicopter crashed there.

There have been 20 Stanley Cup finals since this movie came out, and the Blackhawks and Penguins have combined to win 25% of them. You do the math.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected].

Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Crosby's Injury, Playoff Outrage, And The Draft Lottery published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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