Chicago Fanatics Message Board :: View topic - The Las Vegas Golden Knights!

How do you not hope they go all the way now?

Godfella wrote:

How do you not hope they go all the way now?

By not wanting to invite comparisons to arena football and Major League Soccer, for instance. Also, James Neal and Ryan Reaves are enormous pieces of shit, something you would know if you followed the league and didn't just glom onto some shallow-ass NARRATIVE

It does make the league look suspect (or shitty) when an expansion team wins a championship. Not every team can be the 1998 expansion Chicago Fire, who won the MLS Cup and the US Open Cup the same year.

Especially when the league has been lusting over Las Vegas for years and then cut a planned two-team expansion down to one so that Las Vegas could have the expansion draft all to itself. Everything about the NHL always looks crooked. In Jim Cornette terms, guess who won the pony.

Did you see the pregame thing before the first game? Some of the players may be jack-holes but the city for a long time has been waiting for something like this, I hope they go far. Like Cup slinging far

Tampa is much more deserving. They have built their team through excellent drafting and salary cap management. But I've predicted against the Knights every round so I should probably stop now.

This makes the league look like a joke. Teams like the Wild and Jets have been building their rosters for years. To see an expansion team just show up and cut through hot butter all the way to the Cup finals is fucking embarrassing.

They better hope Ovi takes over and gets them in the finals because Las Vegas and Tampa Bay should be fighting it out over who is going to host the off season owners meetings....not who is going to hoist the cup.

Urlacher's missing neck wrote:

Tampa has been a legit squad for a while now. You have to love what Stevie Y has built over there.

Ogie Oglethorpe wrote:

Urlacher's missing neck wrote:

Tampa has been a legit squad for a while now. You have to love what Stevie Y has built over there.

Oh i know how good tampa is. It just looks awful on paper having Vegas vs Tampa. At least Tampa earned it and they built a team over many years. They have been elite for quite a while.

I like the Lightining.

Granted I don't have the historical hockey knowledge of CH or most here but I don't get the love for the Jets right now. Til 7 or 8 years ago they were the Thrashers and 10 years previous they lost the team to the Coyotes. The Coyotes and the Thrashers are both stupid teams.

It just looks awful on paper having Vegas vs Tampa.

Author:	Brick [ Sun May 20, 2018 5:04 pm ]
Post subject:	The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
The second greatest hockey story in history!

Author:	Regular Reader [ Sun May 20, 2018 5:17 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Do they believe in miracles?!? Yes???

Author:	RFDC [ Sun May 20, 2018 5:17 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Only a story this great could bring Boilers and Hoosiers together onto the same side. Long live the Knights!

Author:	Terry's Peeps [ Sun May 20, 2018 5:21 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Best underdog story since Moses!

Author:	Godfella [ Sun May 20, 2018 5:34 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
This is a pretty amazing thing. How do you not hope they go all the way now?.. Unless you're fans of their opponents. Cinderella story.

Chicago Fanatics Message Board https://mail.chicagofanatics.com/

The Las Vegas Golden Knights! https://mail.chicagofanatics.com/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=112441	Page 1 of 2

Author:	Curious Hair [ Sun May 20, 2018 5:35 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Godfella wrote: How do you not hope they go all the way now? By not wanting to invite comparisons to arena football and Major League Soccer, for instance. Also, James Neal and Ryan Reaves are enormous pieces of shit, something you would know if you followed the league and didn't just glom onto some shallow-ass NARRATIVE

Author:	chaspoppcap [ Sun May 20, 2018 5:39 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Did you see the pregame thing before the first game? Some of the players may be jack-holes but the city for a long time has been waiting for something like this, I hope they go far. Like Cup slinging far

Author:	IMU [ Sun May 20, 2018 5:40 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Curious Hair wrote: Godfella wrote: How do you not hope they go all the way now? By not wanting to invite comparisons to arena football and Major League Soccer, for instance. Also, James Neal and Ryan Reaves are enormous pieces of shit, something you would know if you followed the league and didn't just glom onto some shallow-ass NARRATIVE Yawn.

Author:	DAC [ Sun May 20, 2018 6:29 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Tampa is much more deserving. They have built their team through excellent drafting and salary cap management. But I've predicted against the Knights every round so I should probably stop now.

Author:	KDdidit [ Sun May 20, 2018 6:36 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
It does make the league look suspect (or shitty) when an expansion team wins a championship. Not every team can be the 1998 expansion Chicago Fire, who won the MLS Cup and the US Open Cup the same year.

Author:	Curious Hair [ Sun May 20, 2018 6:40 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
KDdidit wrote: It does make the league look suspect (or shitty) when an expansion team wins a championship. Not every team can be the 1998 expansion Chicago Fire, who won the MLS Cup and the US Open Cup the same year. Especially when the league has been lusting over Las Vegas for years and then cut a planned two-team expansion down to one so that Las Vegas could have the expansion draft all to itself. Everything about the NHL always looks crooked. In Jim Cornette terms, guess who won the pony.

Author:	DAC [ Sun May 20, 2018 6:54 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Curious Hair wrote: Especially when the league has been lusting over Las Vegas for years and then cut a planned two-team expansion down to one so that Las Vegas could have the expansion draft all to itself. Everything about the NHL always looks crooked. In Jim Cornette terms, guess who won the pony. While the NHL definitely gave Vegas the best expansion draft ever, at least in the last 30 years, no one predicted they would be this good. No one envisioned Karlsson, Smith, and Marchessault being one of the best lines in the league. While we knew what Fluery was capable of, he had been replaced in Pittsburgh and visions of his playoff meltdowns were still fresh in most people's mind. Players such as Schmidt, Haula, Tuch, McNabb, and Miller all had promise and potential and they all exceeded expectations. We knew Gallant was a good coach but maybe that is still underestimating him. While I agree this makes the league bad, just about everything had to hit for Vegas to reach the Finals.

Author:	SpiralStairs [ Sun May 20, 2018 6:58 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
chaspoppcap wrote: Did you see the pregame thing before the first game? Some of the players may be jack-holes but the city for a long time has been waiting for something like this, I hope they go far. Like Cup slinging far There's like three people actually FROM Las Vegas, the rest are transplants. Unless you mean the city of Las Vegas is a sentient being that lusts for a Stanley Cup, in which case carry on.

Author:	Mr. Reason [ Sun May 20, 2018 7:01 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
I’m with CH. This is an abomination.

Author:	Curious Hair [ Sun May 20, 2018 8:35 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Well, we can be certain that the league intended for them to enter with more success than Nashville, Atlanta, Minnesota, and Columbus. But really, it makes the entire sport look illegitimate when you can scoop up everyone else's eighth or ninth-best skaters, stick them in front of a Hall of Fame goalie who became redundant out of sheer luck, and run a system (as I've detailed, an amped-up dump-and-chase with high-volume shooting) that has them dominating teams that have been building their rosters for years. It's similar to the way the Coyotes broke the game under Dave Tippett, where their roster sucked, but their goalie and defensive-zone shell were able to hold leads by forcing blocked/missed shots until the clock ran out. What the Coyotes did from 2009-2012 was a blemish on the league's legitimacy as well -- and wouldn't you know it, another southwestern market that the league was very interested in making a success of -- but at least their shit stopped working. Overall, it's such a fake-it-till-you-make-it feeling. This could never happen in baseball. The Marlins and Diamondbacks just bought everyone.

Author:	Curious Hair [ Sun May 20, 2018 11:28 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Oh, incidentally, the Panthers made it to the Stanley Cup Final in their third year in much the same way (fell ass-backwards into elite goaltending and veterans and broke the game, only they did it with a dreadfully stifling neutral-zone trap that worked until it didn't, thanks, run-and-gun Avs, who themselves fell even more ass-backwards into elite goaltending) and spooked the NHL into rolling back the expansion-draft privileges for the next four teams. Atlanta in particular had a rough go of it, I think it was as restrictive as Nashville's plus they couldn't draft goalies from teams that Nashville drafted them from. We saw how that would work out for them, which is that there is no Atlanta in the league anymore.

Author:	Curious Hair [ Mon May 21, 2018 1:01 am ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Spaulding wrote: I like the Lightining. Granted I don't have the historical hockey knowledge of CH or most here but I don't get the love for the Jets right now. Til 7 or 8 years ago they were the Thrashers and 10 years previous they lost the team to the Coyotes. The Coyotes and the Thrashers are both stupid teams. Okay, well, here's the historical hockey knowledge: The WHA was started by the same carnies behind the ABA with roughly the same intention: to end-run the restrictive expansion policies of the NBA and NHL by competing with them and forcing a merger. The Winnipeg Jets would be one of the founding franchises of the WHA, poaching Bobby Hull from the Black Hawks by offering him a then-unheard-of million dollars a year. The Jets would go on to be the most successful team in that league, which shook up the status quo as those rival leagues tend to do: in the case of the Jets and the WHA, they extensively scouted Europe at a time when the NHL was almost exclusively North American, and Canadian at that, which brought over a lot of speed and puck possession that was lacking in the North American dump-and-chase orthodoxy. Eventually, the WHA ran out of steam and reached its planned endgame of forcing a merger. But the crusty old NHL didn't want to add Canadian teams. What they didn't count on was Canada, led by Winnipeg, Quebec City, and Edmonton, boycotting Molson beer (owner of the Montreal Canadiens, along with the Hawks and Bruins a leading voice against admitting the WHA) until the Habs relented and let them (plus Hartford) in. Furthermore, the owner of the Oilers had Wayne Gretzky signed to a personal services contract and the only way they were getting Gretzky was with the Oilers attached. So by 1979, Winnipeg finally got in. But once those teams finally got in, as punishment, they were fined and stripped of most of their rosters to the extent that NHL teams could claim the rights to their previous players. This knocked the shit out of the Jets, Nordiques, and Whalers -- the Oilers made it out okay because they didn't rely on veterans, I don't think -- and the Jets in their first or second NHL season would put up one of the worst records of all time. Through the '80s the Jets were a decent club, they had Dale Hawerchuk and Thomas Steen, fine players, but the playoff seeding system of the time was 1-4 by division, and the Smythe Division had THE Oilers and a loaded Flames team that was dominant in its own right. But every year, they would run headlong into the Oilers or Flames, and if they got past one (plus decent Canucks teams now and then), they never got past the other. Meanwhile, the Norris Division was a pile of shit where terrible plodding Wings/Hawks/Stars/Blues/Leafs teams would get a free pass to the third round based on who could get the fewest teeth knocked out. It was a real morale-killer, as was the old Winnipeg Arena, which by all accounts was a lousy place to go to a game. By the '90s, player contracts were exploding, and as per NHL policy had to be paid out, then as now, in USD while revenue for the Jets was in CAD. This wouldn't be a huge problem if the Canadian dollar hadn't plummeted in the '90s, eventually down to like 63 cents. Enter the 1994-95 lockout: small-market owners (plus the large-market cheap-ass Bruins) couldn't negotiate any sort of sanity because then-new commissioner Gary Bettman was a huge fucking asshole whom no one wanted to speak to and almost killed the entire 1995 season by being such an insufferable prick. This was when Chris Chelios more or less threatened to kill him and everyone more or less understood! Eventually, the big-market owners commandeered the negotiations and worked out a CBA that would get the league going again but fucked the small markets, and remember, they only took the WHA teams under protest, anyway. The Jets never had deep pockets; they were owned by a realtor who pretty much minded the store but never made any money on it, partly because a community organization (Manitoba Enterprises?) kept all the parking/concession money that really keeps any sort of attraction going. So to recap: salaries are going up, the Canadian dollar is going down, the arena's a dump, it makes no money, and they have no friends. So with nothing to prevent escalating salaries and no guarantee of a new arena, the owner makes it known that he'll have to sell the team. Bettman's response is "OH NOOOOO, WHAT A SHAAAAAAME," and immediately starts brokering deals with his NBA friends to get Winnipeg out of the league once and for all. But the community stepped up to form a group that would buy the team and keep it in Winnipeg -- basically what the Packers have but with some big-money backing on top of the grassroots investors. They had big Save The Jets rallies and raised the money they needed to buy the team, but then Bettman moved the goalposts on them and said that an investment group rather than a single owner was not allowed to buy a team. The team was supposed to move to Minneapolis but the Timberwolves wouldn't let them use the Target Center (they did this to the North Stars, too), so Bettman called his old NBA friend Jerry Colangelo and had the team move to Phoenix instead, even though America West was not set up to fit a hockey rink. At least it wasn't Winnipeg. So by 1996 the NHL was finally rid of Winnipeg (and Quebec City, then Hartford a year later; they tried to bump off Edmo for Houston but failed), the hope being that they could turn these small northern markets into big southern markets and make lots of money. Meanwhile, a couple of the Save The Jets guys bought an IHL team called the Manitoba Moose and ran it as close to an NHL team as possible, the same thing the Chicago Wolves would do while the Blackhawks were in the shitter. They built a new downtown arena to NHL-minimum specifications in 2004, just in case. And when the Coyotes went bankrupt in 2009 and had to be bought by the NHL, they made a play to buy back the old Winnipeg Jets and bring them home for the summer of 2010. It didn't work, though, because the NHL got Glendale to pay the league $25MM in "arena management fees" to keep the team, their fear being that the team was the anchor tenant of an exurban strip mall that would fail without them. (You can't make this shit up.) They were 15 minutes away from signing the papers before Glendale said they'd pay up. The same show would play out in 2011, Winnipeg owners try to buy the Jets-turned-Coyotes, Arizona wastes taxpayer money on sports, Winnipeg is told thanks but you're not needed here. Except this time, the owners of the Atlanta Hawks, also the owners of the Thrashers, had been suing each other for years over which partners in the ownership group had the right to sign Joe Johnson to a big contract (again, can't make this shit up!), and in depleting their funds on legal fees, realized that nobody went to Thrashers games and no one made any money on them, so they told the NHL fuck it, we're not scheduling Thrashers games here in 2011-12 and beyond, even if someone here buys them, they're not playing at Philips Arena, those dates will be for other attractions. Checkmate. With the Thrashers homeless and the NHL powerless, TNSE swept in and bought the team for the low price of $110MM, which the NHL amended to $170MM as a "relocation fee" that never existed from 1995-1997 when teams were relocating out of cities they didn't like. To give you an idea of how the NHL felt about this, there's a famous clip of Bettman at a game getting the news on his phone that the Thrashers were doomed and going into Parkinsonian trembling and quaking. So there's a press conference in Winnipeg to announce that the NHL is coming back (yet to be named but in our hearts we knew). Up steps Gary Bettman, who says that the team must sell 13,000 season tickets in two weeks or something or else the owners will not approve the relocation to Winnipeg. They sold out in like 10 seconds. The team, which would be named the Winnipeg Jets (also floated: Manitoba Moose, Winnipeg Falcons, Winnipeg Gold, Manitoba Polar Bears) because the NHL inherited the trademarks when they bought the Coyotes out of bankruptcy and didn't mind giving back, was of course a complete mess as an organization because the Thrashers were understaffed, undercapitalized, under-everything. It wasn't like building a team from the ground up, it was more like tearing down a dilapidated building and then building on the lot. Mostly, the team was shit, as we all know, but as they finally put the money into scouting and coaching that the Thrashers never did, they quietly hoarded picks and prospects and turned a joke of an organization into a model franchise, like their Moose had been in the I and the A. They got lucky with the draft lottery and Patrik Laine, but for the most part drafted well across the board and had a roster this year that was almost all homegrown. So why the love for the Jets? Because Wheeler, Scheifele, Laine, Byfuglien, Ehlers, and Connor are amazing talents. Because this is a hockey-obsessed fanbase that has been absolutely shit on by the NHL as they neglect their heartland for places like Nashville and Phoenix and fucking Las Vegas. It's their game far more than it's any of those places', and yet they're expected to be a captive market with no real seat at the table unless they can rip it away from someone else. And let's be real: Winnipeg is a dismal place. It's dirty and cold and sad. It's Rockford. This is just about all they have (not counting their surprisingly elite ballet company), but it's just about all they want. They've put up with nothing but disrespect and heartbreak in hockey, and everyone craps on their city, but they keep at it. They're without question the best fans in the entire league, far better than our own here and orders of magnitude superior to any johnny-come-lately fucks in Nashville or Vegas. People who don't know shit about the inner workings of this broken toilet of a league think Vegas is an underdog. This was the real underdog. The team did everything the way an NHL team is supposed to: draft well, trade smart, play right, and deserved to be rewarded the way the Blackhawks were. I wanted the good guys to win. I guess it's not meant to be.

Page 1 of 2	All times are UTC - 6 hours [ DST ]
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group https://www.phpbb.com/

Author:	Brick [ Sun May 20, 2018 7:05 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
DAC wrote: Tampa is much more deserving. They have built their team through excellent drafting and salary cap management. But I've predicted against the Knights every round so I should probably stop now. Somebody call the whaaaaaaambulance.

Author:	Crystal Lake Hoffy [ Sun May 20, 2018 8:19 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
KDdidit wrote: It does make the league look suspect (or shitty) when an expansion team wins a championship. Not every team can be the 1998 expansion Chicago Fire, who won the MLS Cup and the US Open Cup the same year. By suspect, do you mean questioning the sport itself or questioning if the NHL somehow conspired to assure they won?

Author:	Ogie Oglethorpe [ Sun May 20, 2018 10:22 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
We all know that in the playoffs, a hot goalie can pretty much steal the show. That's what we are seeing here with Las Vegas. That and the fact the Pacific Division they came out of was weak as shit. The Jets jut ran into a hot goalie in the WCF. Vegas will however get rolled by whoever comes out of the East.

Author:	Urlacher's missing neck [ Sun May 20, 2018 10:48 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
This makes the league look like a joke. Teams like the Wild and Jets have been building their rosters for years. To see an expansion team just show up and cut through hot butter all the way to the Cup finals is fucking embarrassing.

Author:	Curious Hair [ Sun May 20, 2018 11:11 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Urlacher's missing neck wrote: This makes the league look like a joke. Teams like the Wild and Jets have been building their rosters for years. To see an expansion team just show up and cut through hot butter all the way to the Cup finals is fucking embarrassing. The Jets especially! True North inherited an organization that was a total mess because nothing could get done during that ridiculous Joe Johnson litigation. And they had to build it all the hard way, patiently through the draft, turning the worst farm system in the league into one of the best. Now it's finally time to contend and this is what they get. At least they beat Nashville. And more than the Jets, the Blackhawks themselves! If Bill hadn't died when he did, he was ready to surrender the franchise back to the league. Imagine the NHL having to own the Blackhawks. Almost happened. And yet they turned the ship around from near-receivership to championship, and for those of us who were there for the last years of the Dollar Bill era, that first championship was amazing. We as fans, in a way, earned that joy. What's been earned here? The NHL told a shithole city full of transplants YOU'RE GETTING A HOCKEY TEAM WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT AND IT'S GONNA BE GOOD and they got it and it is. Great.

Author:	Brick [ Sun May 20, 2018 11:29 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Lots of tears here....

Author:	Spaulding [ Sun May 20, 2018 11:47 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
I like the Lightining. Granted I don't have the historical hockey knowledge of CH or most here but I don't get the love for the Jets right now. Til 7 or 8 years ago they were the Thrashers and 10 years previous they lost the team to the Coyotes. The Coyotes and the Thrashers are both stupid teams.

Author:	DAC [ Mon May 21, 2018 5:09 am ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
Urlacher's missing neck wrote: It just looks awful on paper having Vegas vs Tampa. Good point. Las Vegas versus Tampa Bay definitely will not have much of a Q rating.

Author:	Frank Coztansa [ Mon May 21, 2018 8:10 am ]
Post subject:	Re: The Las Vegas Golden Knights!
I don't care who wins, hockey should not be played in June. Just like baseball shouldn't be played in November.