grumpelstiltskins
2025-05-23
Unexpected Pity and Much Expected Pettiness. Also, O'neill is terrible.
On July 1, 2018, John Tavares signed with the Maple Leafs for 7x$11M ($77M) over the Sharks for 7x$13M ($91M). The Sharks won the same number of playoff rounds as the Maple Leafs during the entire contract.
Now that's just a beautiful sentence. Step aside "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" because this is how I'll be testing out new pens from now on. As a Sharks fan who's cold, teal-speckled, but mostly black heart runs mostly on pettiness and yellow drink I don't think another sentence could possibly elicit a more delicious feel...
The Buffalo Sabres have twice as many playoff series wins since the lockout (4) as the Maple Leafs (2), despite their 14-season playoff drought.
Holy shit.
Anyway... yeah it would've been nice if Tavares had just signed with the Sharks and we'd won in '18 or '19 and never had to endure the Karlsson days, but if the only alternative was that we end up where we're at now, with Macklin and Will and a bright future, and JT did exactly fuck all over that entire contract with the Leafs... well, I can accept that. And the fact that the pajama-wearing fanny cost himself $14M and is now a pariah in his hometown is just icing on top.
Unfortunately nothing I can say will hurt Leafs fans nearly as bad as PoMo and Marchand trying to say nice things about them after absolutely working them, in Toronto, for the second time in a row. I mean, to be genuinely pitied, by Brad Marchand... that has to be absolute rock bottom for the Leafs franchise. Right? It can't possibly get any worse than this, and yet they will almost certainly find a way. Also worth noting that Florida was the team to bounce them in the second round after all 2 of their playoff round wins so eloquently referenced in the above quote, which, let's remind ourselves, put Buffalo... that's BUFFALO, in a more favorable light than the Leafs. I can imagine being Alexin when that quote dropped it was like that scene in Return of the King where the sun came out for like ten seconds and things didn't seem so bad, and then it was gone and they remembered they were absolutely fucked. Good luck with your 4th rebuild in a row, at least you're not the Leafs.
The group of potential pool-winners has been shrunk down to 3, and unfortunately, no, not even Bob can catapult me to the top spot, though he could earn me one of the least deserved third place finishes in recent memory. Here are our potential winners:
- Rob – He's currently leading the pool, but for him to win Carolina must win this series against Florida. If that happens only an Oettinger Conn Smythe can possibly stop him.
- Adam – If Florida returns to the dance for the third year in a row, Adam will be in a good position, unless they lose to Dallas. Tkachuk could come alive in the second half to make things interesting, but at this point Adam is hoping for a repeat of last year's final to seal the deal after 3 rounds.
- Joe – Joe is the only person left who can hit the 60-point threshold, but having had a much less productive first half than Rob and Adam puts him in a position where he will need to get points from the Cup Final round to win the pool, and if Dallas beats Carolina in the final, those 10 points still won't be enough to bridge the gap between him and Rob. Otter is still in the mix, and hasn't been horrible, but with Rantanen looking like an absolute steal at $12M Joe's best bet is to hope Dallas meets and beat Florida in the finals.
At the other, shittier end of the standings, O'neill finishes last, completing an unlikely but entirely deserved first* to worst fall from last year to this. Additionally, for the second time in pool history last place goes to someone who correctly picked all four first round series in one conference. The previous person to do it? Also O'neill, in 2018, where he also had a perfect Eastern Conference Quarterfinals. So we can safely add ignoring the Western Conference to the growing list of offensive personality traits of this truly generational jabroni.
2025-04-29
Welcome back to the new old site... aaand I'm cooked
This is gonna be short and... well mostly just short because I've been pouring way too many hours into this fucking site. It may look exactly the same, but in fact it's been painstakingly refactored with an obsessive attention to detail that can only come from someone with too much free time and several increasingly apparent mental disorders.
Thank god for the Canes. At this point the 3 points I'll likely get from them are the only points I can feel at all comfortable about and they might end up being the only points that keep me out of the Nick Jones Realm of Sadness and Ineptitude. I mean... the Habs to win two series? The Sens to win a series? What the fuck was I thinking? Oh that's right. It's that Ovi is old and the Leafs feel like they're already choking up 3-1 and the Canes aren't really in the business of winning anything past the first round. Still, barring some miraculous comebacks, my only chance at a mid-table finish will be on Bob's shoulders.
The Avs are down 3-2, and the Bolts are down 3-1. If they both go down a lot of us are going down with them. What's left will be a couple people who look like geniuses, a handful of pitiable Leafs fans, and O'neill who is the only person to pick Minny to win two series, which seems somehow actually possible at this point. Of course O'neill is also as likely to rustle up $12 before the end of the first round as he is to pay for baked dough rolled with italian meats and cheeses.
That's it for now. have a poke around the site if you want, but don't poke too hard, it's genuinely been a deeply upsetting amount of work.