I love hockey, but following it so closely for so long has warped me as a person. I have seen too much. Now there is no joy left inside me, only irritability and scorn.<\/p>\n
Too many people have said annoying things about hockey for too long. Today it ends. I present to you: all the annoying ways people talk about hockey and why it has to stop, or I swear to god I\u2019m going to crash out.<\/p>\n
Clinch a berth<\/p>\n
I hate it. Berth to me is the spot at the dock where the boat gets tied in. When combined with clinch, it sounds like a person with a speech impediment is giving advice for delivering a baby, which, in my personal experience, is a traumatic thing that I don\u2019t associate with the loffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Further on that point \u2013<\/p>\n
Magic number \/ Tragic number<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know what this is. I have been watching this sport for 30 years and covering it for 15, and I still don\u2019t understand what a magic number is. I can look it up, and I can even give a vague definition to a normie like my mom, but the core concept escapes me. Just gotta win this many more points or Can\u2019t miss this many more points makes sense in an abstract way, but applying it to a real situation might as well be differential algebra, and I don\u2019t know what that is either. In school, I kinda topped out at hypotenuses. I\u2019ve been faking my way through the advanced stats thing since 2012; the spreadsheet is doing all the work.<\/p>\n
Games in hand<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t get it. The games haven\u2019t happened yet, so they are not in your hand. They are games left to play, in the future, where your hand is not. Once #LoffsWatch rolls around, I will have to rewire my brain to understand what it means when the Nashville Predators have two fewer games in hand than the Calgary Flames. I don\u2019t think I will need to understand that one in particular, though.<\/p>\n
Just need some consistency<\/p>\n
Bad teams are always saying they just need to get consistency. They will often say that after they shot 20 percent in a road game against the Nashville Predators, who were unrested. \u201cWe just gotta build on this win, get some consistency.\u201d No, you don\u2019t. The very last thing you want a bad team to be is consistent. You want them to ride the PDO wave like Jimmy Tango\u2019s Fat Busters<\/a>. If you\u2019re going to be bad, at least be entertaining: defense optional, make the goalie do handstands, let the fast 19-year-old with oppositional defiant disorder play on the top line.<\/p>\n Consistent is not the same as good, and you really want to be the second thing.<\/p>\n Classless<\/p>\n This is what you call someone when they do anything you do not like, provided it falls under either of two subtypes: a) dishonorable behavior or b) I just don\u2019t like that you\u2019re enjoying doing sports right now. It\u2019s pro-social to condemn a guy for suckerpunching another guy, sure, but celebrating goals should be laudatory \u2013 even if (gasp) your team already has the lead. Hockey should be fun, and it should be normal to enjoy it outwardly.<\/p>\n Let’s play the Worst Hockey Discourse game. Only rule is you have to use the word “classless” every turn. We’ll go first: Svechnikov demanding his stick back from that poor fan? Classless move.<\/p>\n \u2014 RMNB (@rmnb) January 4, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n Far less importantly, as a person with annoying politics, I think being classless is good, actually. Well, first we should develop class consciousness, then we should figure out who the vanguard of the revolution will be, and then yadda yadda yadda \u2013 all of a sudden we\u2019re a classless society.<\/p>\n See also: Stay classy. The TV writer Jane Espenson would call that phrase \u201cclammy.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Feels like a playoff game<\/p>\n No, it doesn\u2019t. You\u2019re lying. It\u2019s not 80 degrees outside with bioweapon levels of pollen, the sun\u2019s not still up at 8 PM, and you don\u2019t have nervous diarrhea. You\u2019re just watching a low-scoring hockey game with a lot of hits in it.<\/p>\n Playoff hockey has a reputation it doesn\u2019t always deserve. Maybe I\u2019m just saying this as the guy who covered the 2024 Rangers-Caps series<\/a>. But if a hockey game is good, let it be good on its own merits. Let the regular season, already overlong and about to become overlonger, be good too. Ideally, it\u2019d be 12 games shorter, but gate revenues are still the main thing ownership cares about. Until then, whenever we hear \u201cfeels like a playoff game,\u201d we\u2019re all going to think the second part silently: \u201cunlike a boring-ass, rego-season game no one cares about.\u201d<\/p>\n Goal-scorer\u2019s goal<\/p>\n Shut up. You know how you sound right now? The person who scored the goal is the scorer of the goal, and therefore, via the transitive property or something, also the goal-scorer. You\u2019re just saying that the hockey player had a degree of finesse you did not expect from them. Because you think they\u2019re clumsy, despite being one of the best 0.01 percent of hockey players on the planet.<\/p>\n Joel Rechlicz Scores Shootout Goal\u2013 No, Really<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes even the Joel Rechliczes of the world can go far-side, top-shelf too, though I don\u2019t have video evidence of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Find a way to win\u00a0<\/p>\n Outscoring the opponent is definitively the only way to win. One time, Chicago got so pissy they forfeited a game in protest<\/a>, but even then, they were already getting outscored.<\/p>\n If I\u2019m being charitable, and the whole point of this column is not to be that, then I\u2019d say finding a way to win means sometimes your power play goes three-for-four in a blowout win, while other nights you get a shootout game-winner from Joel Rechlicz.<\/p>\n The secret value of this phrase is that you can use it to launder your skepticism. Despite all their struggles, the Nashville Predators are finding a way to win. This is what you say when they go win three games in a row in the middle of a 3-0-7 stretch.<\/p>\n Hates to lose<\/p>\n Oh, no way. A professional athlete playing at the highest level of the sport prefers to win their competitions? All this really means is that the player lets everyone know exactly how much they hate to lose by giving a postgame interview at subaudible volume with enough vocal fry to crisp your nuggies. They\u2019ll indirectly apologize to the goalie, whom they let down tonight, and they\u2019ll prostrate themselves (and that\u2019s one of those words you really gotta triple-check the spelling on) so the pundits can punish them.<\/p>\n No one likes to lose. \u201cIf failure had no penalty success would not be a prize,\u201d Terry Pratchett said. The rest is theater. This is soap opera<\/a> after all.<\/p>\n Expected by whom?<\/p>\n Stop. I hate you. Expected goals mean how many you\u2019d get \u2013 hypothetically \u2013 against a league-average goalie, based on the number and quality of the shots you took. I\u2019m trying to defend Evgeny Kuznetsov over here with obscurantist maths, and you\u2019re mocking me for it.<\/p>\n It must be so easy to be a commenter and reply-person. I bet you don\u2019t even have any spreadsheets. Meanwhile, I\u2019m over here, up to my patchy beard in stats I don\u2019t actually understand, trying to justify the employment of a player I liked purely for his off-ice entertainment value and pageview potential. Give me a break.<\/p>\n Nicknames<\/p>\n This man is 36. He is a millionaire, and he has a non-patchy beard. He has four houses and two children, both named Jizlynn. His entire groin has been gradually replaced through surgeries, Ship of Theseus style. You once saw him get decapitated by blocking a shot, and he didn\u2019t miss a shift. He is an adult, and you will call him by his adult name, which is either Braden, Brandon, or Brendan. Not some lazy bastardization that sounds like you had a mild stroke midway through saying his last name.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re going to give a player a nickname, make it a good one. Like The Mechanic<\/a>.<\/p>\n Combined stats<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say the line of Stromer, Ovi, and Beauvi scored two goals, probably against the Nashville Predators. Now, if you say that line combined for six points, I\u2019m going to take off my shoe and throw it at you.<\/p>\n The NHL\u2019s point system is already wack. Some goals are worth one point; some are worth three. Assists are arbitrary; scorekeepers are capricious. You can get a secondary assist for touching the puck thirty seconds before someone, let\u2019s say Evgeny Kuznetsov, does a portion of Swan Lake in front of the opponent, again, let\u2019s say the Nashville Predators, before scoring a goal.<\/p>\n Points are absurd, and counting the same point multiple times is unacceptable. All the players involved in the goal share the one point. All players on the ice for the goal share the plus. Which reminds me!<\/p>\n Plus\/minus<\/p>\n You already know<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Corsi and fenwick<\/p>\n When I was a kid, I thought it was really cool that Aragorn had a lot of names. He was called Strider, Elessar, Telcontar, and Estel. Then I grew up, and now I am exhausted by all the names. He\u2019s just that guy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Corsi? That\u2019s shot attempts. Fenwick? That\u2019s also shot attempts. There\u2019s a distinction; it\u2019s not important. In a decade of full seasons from 2010 to 2019, forwards had an average gap of 0.8 percentage points between their corsi (vomit) percentages and their fenwick (hurl) percentages. We don\u2019t need all the aliases, so let\u2019s just call them shot attempts. People are smart. They can intuit that a shot attempt is when a player attempts a shot. For Corsi, they have to search Google and get an AI Overview that bleached a barrier reef just to say the stat was named for the guy who invented swiftboating, because that\u2019s a joke I wrote 13 years ago.<\/p>\n P.S. \u2013 one day I will tell you about the emails I got after that article<\/a>. It may have to wait for The Book.<\/p>\n Have their way with<\/p>\n Gross. No. When a team is playing better than another team, there are many options for how to describe it. Dominate is good. Dictate play is okay. Mollywhop is a personal fave.<\/p>\n There are a gazillion things broken in hockey culture. Let\u2019s not conjure them when we just want to talk about how bad the Nashville Predators are losing.<\/p>\n Hearing<\/p>\n This is reserved for hockey insiders posting on The Everything App. Who<\/a> is<\/a> hearing<\/a>, dawg<\/a>? You<\/a> are<\/a> hearing<\/a>. Let\u2019s<\/a> get<\/a> some<\/a> personal<\/a> pronouns<\/a> in<\/a> the<\/a> mix<\/a>. Let\u2019s<\/a> write<\/a> some<\/a> coherent<\/a> sentences<\/a>. Let\u2019s<\/a> own<\/a> the<\/a> rumor<\/a> we\u2019re<\/a> spreading<\/a>.<\/p>\n (Actually, rumor is the wrong word. Insiders don\u2019t spread rumors. They only share the information that connected people want them to share. They should never be confused with adversarial journalists, which is usually a silly concept in sports. When it\u2019s not silly, it\u2019s really serious, and there are only three or four bylines under those headlines. (The best is Katie Strang<\/a>.)<\/p>\n O Captain, My Captain<\/p>\n The captain is dead in the poem. It\u2019s the wrong literary reference to use when Alex Ovechkin scores an insurance goal against the Nashville Predators. Good poem though.<\/p>\n Hey, did you know that Cap\u2019n Crunch\u2019s real name is Horatio Magellan Crunch?<\/p>\n On a pace (after the first game of the season)<\/p>\n Looking forward to tweeting that Alex Ovechkin is on pace for 168 goals after he scores a hat trick in the season opener on Thursday.<\/p>\n \ud83d\ude09 @peterhassett<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Ian Oland (@ianoland) January 12, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019m literally just calling out Ian here, who literally does this just to annoy me. Say Justin Sourdif scored a goal in the first game of the regular season. Yes, he\u2019s technically on an 82-goal pace, but also technically, you\u2019re being a butthole.<\/p>\n It should be a bannable offense to mention any kind of full-season pace before Thanksgiving. Also, there\u2019s only one real Thanksgiving, and it\u2019s the American one.<\/p>\n The book is out on the goalie<\/p>\n Did you hear? Turns out this one guy is weak if you shoot it high to his stick side. He also has trouble if there\u2019s a lateral pass before the shot. And if there\u2019s a screen in front of him? It\u2019s over.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the same book for every goalie, and we crack it open every spring, invariably two periods into game one of a playoff series. Had we not read the book, we might have given him too many shots he can see, or shot it into his pads, or done what every losing team has done since hockey was invented, four or five lockouts ago.<\/p>\n Gonna want that one back<\/p>\n Of course he is. The puck went in his net. Whether it was his fault or not, he\u2019s not happy about the situation. He wants it back.<\/p>\n We all want our mistakes back. I wish I could take back my ska phase, or using the word \u201cepic\u201d so much between 2005 and 2015, or going long on Madison Bowey<\/a>, or my chain wallet. I don\u2019t regret my chain wallet. I want my chain wallet back. Chain wallets are the opposite of whatever ultra-low-rise jeans are to millennial women.<\/p>\n Mark Messier<\/p>\n I have no time for this person<\/a>, looking as if the handsomest man ever to live got his face stretched over the skull of Frankenstein\u2019s Creature. The Mark Messier Leadership Award, as judged by Mark Messier, and in accordance with some clown-universe logic, determines that these players are all leaders: Jacob Trouba, Patrice Bergeron, and Deryk Engelland. All with the implicit message that the ultimate leader is Mark Messier because one time he said his team would win, and then they did.<\/p>\n Did you know the Mark Messier Leadership Award was a monthly thing for five months in 2006-07, before Messy decided he couldn\u2019t be bothered to pick a name out of a hat more than once a year?<\/p>\n Alex Ovechkin named winner of 2024-25 Mark Messier NHL Leadership Award<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Also, I took it as a personal offense when he gave it to Ovechkin last summer. I didn\u2019t know how to feel.<\/p>\n Team hashtags<\/p>\n RMNB has mostly avoided using hashtags on social media. There are two exceptions: the hard-hitting investigative journalism of #RMNBInvestigates<\/a> and Joe B Suits of the Night of #joebsuitofthenight<\/a>.<\/p>\n At some point, the NHL started buying hashflags (the premium hashtags that have an icon after them) on Twitter, which led to fans and media people referring to their teams using little mottos. It works fine when Tarik is tweeting about a roster move.<\/p>\n But if the hashflag sounds like cheering on the team, and if the tweet is a bummer, that creates dissonance.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Also, some of them are just terrible. The Wild are #TimeToHunt. For a minute, the Hurricanes were #Redvolution. We should leave team hashtags in the last decade, alongside the Nashville Predators\u2019 last good playoff run and the rule of law.<\/p>\n I have dozens more of these. This is part one of a series, and I say that as a threat.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t