okay i've been putting this off for a while but we need to get to it

first, i won't really claim that i know that much team-wise, besides a small selection of people i have vested interested in (russian three, martin necas, whoever i've read about). this primer is pretty old, with bunch of people gone by now, but it covers important historic bases, so it's a good start. @st5rcrest does aho understanding and brind'amor understanding and many others understanding, so they can help you out, too.

now come to me to the minecraft dirt house cathedral 👇 we have important business to discuss

first, this post. it's just so. it's soooooo! pk dropping truth nuke from being aged fucking eleven! and svech laughing and embracing him and like dude!!! you're embarrassing us again! but could he resist? no.

addressing the elephant in the room: massive fucking fagcent. i swear i'm not delusional. idk if you can pick it up if you aren't native russian speaker. you have to look me at the eyes and believe me.

me serving a diva out of drag in the rupaul dressing room discussing my stupid chud life. in a stupid "brodsky inspired" pretentious hat. bro who likes to read for "self-improvement" but only reads random shit, like "something from economics, something from philosophy, etc". bro who's doing self-education through some mysterious online courses and never elaborates what they were. bro who's dreaming of being a businessman even, though he was too lazy and irresponsible to start selling the "pk" hats despite many people wanting them. bro who was ghosting english tutors because they were giving him homework and he didn't wanna do it and didn't do it and didn't text the tutors back because they would ask about the homework. which he didn't do. svech had to translate. svech berated him for doing zero shit to get better.

ok, other things. very emotional and naturally funny. svech really loves it. kooch was dreaming about his goalie goal for so long. kept thinking and imagining how he's gonna celly when it happens. maybe he'd do a matthews. maybe he'd jump into boards. something something. was practicing it while playing for wolves, too, staying late and shooting the puck on the dogshit ice. everyone knew, so that's why everyone was so happy when it happened. and then he forgot all about how he was planning to celebrate it and just did whatever. and also ended up in the penalty box in the same game for whatever reason. bro just gets MADDD sometimes. did he threaten to kill svech if he ever pulls a michigan on him? i don't remember. i think it came up.

posts of note: one two three

okay then svech... actually i don't know what to say? he's delighted to be near pk, so. he's kind of a basic guy! he's very cute. likes the backwards cap that hides the incoming norwood baldness disaster. very close with his brother, and they have about same-ish taste in women: american and blond.

he had a cute thing with marty necas and a cute thing with jordan marty(nook). he has a taste for martys, i guess. and for goalies. he's such a goalie fucker. any goalie would do, it's just his thing. he's actually childhood friends with another goalie from kazan, amir miftakhov, now a backup in chicago wolves, i believe (hiiiiii king arty! kazan supremacy 💪💪💪). i know this pisses pk off. it's easy to piss pk off and its somewhat easy to earn forgiveness. i know pk was so pissed off during the cup celebrations because he only played 9 games and 0 playoff ones, i think. it hurts his feelings when he feels disrespected and he likes to hold grudges. that's canonical, not me making shit up. but i will be making shit up from now on.

okayyy so walk with me 🚶 pk is gay, svech is bi. they met each other REALLY early on and kinda instantly bonded. in a way that you latch onto each other as soon you realize that the other guy is also "one of those". it's lonely out there. it's lonely to be a faggot with diva tendencies even in the normal life and especially so in the hockey industrial complex. you don't socialize much outside it, so the guy you find kinda becomes THE guy. it doesn't hurt that svech is so cute. pk got a crush and the crush grew and then kinda solidified and then kinda became a permanent fixture of his mind. just standing around there. i always wanted andrei svechnikov, and sometimes andrei svechnikov wanted me back. we were meant to be Together because we were each other firsts. this is how it works.

but for svech, kind of not really. its so fun with pk! hes effortlessly funny and makes you smile and even the drama and the moods and the grudges aren't tiring, they are like challenges to crack open. what's not fun is the implications. there's a life svech has in mind, that does not include Being Gay. svech is not gay. probably not anything, as far as he's conserved. svech is normal. svech has Woman and Children somewhere in the future, as an endgame. and pk is fun, but he is also embarrassing. the diva behaviors do get uncomfortable for very straight-minded svech. it's like the internalized homophobia tumblr post that goes "ummmmm am i the only Gay Guy who just likes Penis without the faggy rupaul drag race BULLSHIT?" except you are not Gay Guy, you are just a Guy. the faggy bullshit scares svech sometimes. it promises damage to his social status and self-image, espeysh in russia. pk knows it and filters it, but, well. it gets through a bit! try to play it as joke!

But what you don't know is that it was not just one trade, or two or even three. It was actually several years in making, facilitated by parties that had no idea they were working together.

And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2024 Andy Scott, the agent of both Rantanen and Draisaitl extended the latter with Oiler's idiot GM to the tune of $14 million, which he understood as "resetting the market". And all the while in the background, it was widely known to just about anyone that Vegas is tampering with Mitch Marner, who at this point had not extended with Toronto, and neither was planning to at all. Everyone knew that the outcome will be that either Marner walks for nothing or Toronto trades his extension rights, receiving pittance in return, since they can't move Marner due to NMC otherwise.

And then it was the begging of the season, I suppose, when Scott decided to use the Marner case for leverage, feeling freshly invigorated by Draisaitl extension and asking for the same price. What he didn't account for was that Rantanen did not have a full NMC, like Marner had. He also misjudged what kind of an executive MacFarland was, who previously already designed Duchene trade in what, I think, was 2017? So, fearful of Rantanen walking for nothing like Marner intended to do, and taking Scott's threats seriously, MacFarland traded Rantanen away while his value was the highest.

But Rantanen himself balked at this. He wasn't expecting Scott's negotiations with Colorado to fail, and refused to stay in Raleigh. And Tulsky even tried to trade him for Marner. Would be funny, don't you think? But it didn't happen because of the same NMC that blocked Toronto from dealing Marner earlier, and will block them until the sign and trade to Vegas. Vegas didn't want to sign and trade at first, but Toronto forced their hand by "leaking" their intentions to sue Vegas for tampering to Friedman. Essentially blackmailing them into behaving. And meanwhile, Tulsky got Stankoven and a first rounder, and they will not win the cup this year, but they will the next one. All the while lacking any "generational" talent or even a finalist for any of the NHL awards, and having a bunch of cap space and a bunch of intact picks. And then the youtubers made a bunch of videos trying to crack it and explain how it's possible until you eventually clicked on one to learn about "the system".

Truth be told, I've only just now finally got to watching the game 3 and game 4 and my impression is like. I also have no clue. You've mentioned this post in the other ask. I, broadly, still think it's true. It describes the current state of the league and the dynamics of what's working and what's not working, but it doesn't describe why did they implode in this exact case.

With the other post as foundation, what was the Avs pokemon type? Avs were very reliant on MacNecas, who were were very effective in what they did, which was speedy dual rush with a same-handed partner into the offensive zone. That's great, but that's one thing. An observant and crafty opp will foresee this and rearrange the defense to counter specifically this. You will have to respond in kind and adapt to the new challenge. Bednar was not able to adapt with the assets he had. Nate is a skilled player who's sometimes not creative enough, and Marty is a creative player who consistently prefers passing to shooting, and both have the random bouts of idgafitis that Jared was not able to cure. There was good Avalanche Hockey where everyone was playing to their strengths and there was bad Avalanche Hockey where everyone played to their weakness, and WCF was all bad and no good. Idgafitis also became contagious to the point people fully believed nothing was happening when the series was already 0-2. Then it instantly went from Idgafitis to gloom and doom and noone stepped up to stop it. They were outcoached, then they were scared, then they were arrogant, and then they lost. Etc. The power play is a great measure of the creativity and cohesion level of the team and you know what power play was like. There was no rushing on the power play and you know what it meant.

Look, there's a thing with those postmortems. The thing is everyone puts the thinking caps on and starts posting like OF COURSE they failed. That was OBVIOUS ALL ALONG! You can't hope to win the cup while lacking at XYZ! Or its gonna be the reverse: OBVIOUSLY vegas was gonna win! They were actually the best team in the league at ABC metrics all along, and just needed the extra oomph from Torts!

In truth all teams are Bad, rather than Good, and all teams don't deserve to win the cup because of their various flaws, and, like, statistically, none of them do. One out of thirty two teams wins the cup. Margin of error. You get good matchups. You hope the bad matchups get eliminated by someone else. You stay better than average. You play 4D chess with the other coach. And, of course, you pray. A lot. Preferably in tongues so that you prayer is perfect. And this all nets you like 50% chance at most if all the cards were played perfectly.

A players responsibility is a shift, a coachs responisbility is a game, and a managers responsibility is a season. Then who's responsible for postseason? On the one hand, it's a direct continuation of the regular season, which determines the roster and the seed. On the other, the managers job at this point is done: whatever cards you have are the cards you will be playing. It's known that season-good team is not the same as postseason-good team. You can jump in on the last train and get to the very end, or you can get the regular season trinket and quickly collapse anyway.

In truth, team goodness is not a one single stat with a one number. Rather, teams are good against some teams and bad against others, a sort of a pokemon type chart. You play the same team no more than 4 times, spread throughout the regular season, so if you are really Psychic towards the other teams Bug, it might not dent your general standing that much. And even beyond this, shit is happening all the time during the regular season. Players get injured, players get dry spells, teams get back to backs, teams get random bouts of bad vibes. Say, team A mogs team B and is mogged by team C. It then beats B all 4 times they play, and it's "fair". As it should. But it also beats C every time because C's players keep getting injured at the wrong time and/or hit the posts in bad luck. Just an unfortunate thing for C, but for A's record, the implications are huge. Psychic is super effective against Bug, regular season says.

That's the regular season. What happens next? The series are best of seven to theoretically remove any randomness from the outcomes. Weird shit can happen in one, two, even three games, but you have to stop somewhere, and this was the stop. Do they actually remove the randomness? From this one match-up, yes, in general, no, since seeds and conferences obviously exist. Conferences are there to grow rivalries, and dismayed as we may be by their existence, they will probably stay. Your path to the trinket might go through Bug and there's nothing you can do about it.

Then again, teams, too, can change. A team is a set of tools that the coach coordinates into something greater. NHL's talent pool is very diluted, the demand is vastly bigger than supply. As a result, the sets of tools are largely the same. The teams have to be built in such a way that everyone is replaceble, so that the team does not collapse when a guy walks away for bigger money, or palm trees, or because the media was hecking mean. This puts more responsibility on coaches. Coaches, then, can't rely that the star combos, with proven chemistry, will consistently produce forever. The "system" becomes more important than the individual efforts, even though it will obviously bend around the star power to juice as much as possible from it. This also makes it more predictable, and as such, more susceptible to pokemon type match-ups.