Nashville Predators News & Notes
2018-2019 Nashville Predators Player Report Cards: Frédérick Gaudreau | On the Forecheck
Doing report cards for players you like but can’t give the grade you want is tough. Bryan did an excellent job here with Freddy Gaudreau’s.
Not Nashville Predators News & Notes 🙁
Olympic Skier Lindsey Vonn Is Engaged to New Jersey Devils’ Hockey Player P.K. Subban | Vogue
Listen: I could link you to a sports website that just quotes the Vogue interview, or I could just take you straight to the source, which has all the fun details, and if you don’t want the fun details you weren’t going to click on the link even if it went to NHL on NBC.
Other News & Notes
Leafs’ Ceci files statement of defence against $8.6M lawsuit | Sportsnet.ca
I honestly forgot that less than a year ago one of the Ottawa Senators’ core defenders had a woman claim that his partner drunkenly threw burning ethanol at her at what sounds like a riotous party. So much else happened.
Evgeny Kuznetsov receives four year suspension by IIHF after testing positive for cocaine | Russian Machine Never Breaks
Breaking: apparently, if you ask someone if he did the drugs you know his friends were using, and he says that he’s never done any drugs, he might not be telling the truth! This might seem obvious to anyone who has ever parented a teenager, worked with a teenager, or been a teenager, ever, but apparently the NHL didn’t think that the same applied to adults? Awkward.
More seriously, though, the way the NHL handled this is farcical, but that’s on them, not on Kuznetsov. The Capitals announced that Kuznetsov is seeking help via the NHL/NHLPA program, and I hope he gets what he needs from them–or from some other program, so long as he gets that help.
What the Penguins need to become a championship team again | ProHockeyTalk
*closes laptop*
*walks out the front door into the night*
*keeps walking*
Dave Bolland: Leafs’ Mitch Marner should ‘wait out to get what he wants’ | Sportsnet.ca
A former Blackhawks player saying that Mitchell Marner is Jonathan Toews good and people should stop expecting him to score goals if he wants to get paid is deliciously un-self-aware.
Excuse me, I’m being told that I have to say “NHL Top 100 Player Jonathan Toews”. (No offense meant to Toews himself. He seems like a decent guy for a Blackhawk.)
Takeaways from the USA vs Canada U18 and U22 series | The Ice Garden
I’m not sure how this series of games will impact the Canadian panic over not automatically winning gold even in women’s hockey (where there are a lot fewer competitive teams due to funding and training issues) any more, but it sounds like they have some good young players nevertheless. And hey, you know, welcome to the world where the rest of us live.
Getting another chance: Wild, Guerin good match a year later | ProHockeyTalk
On the one hand, it’s genuinely encouraging that a NHL team was willing to ease back on their “must have been a NHL general manager before” requirement for hiring a new GM. On the other hand, the Wild still started with that requirement, and ended up picking a former NHL AGM whose prior NHL playing experience they’re excited about and who’s been friends with their “executive adviser” for decades. It’s an extraordinarily small, cronyism-filled world.
Auston Matthews: It would be ‘huge honour’ to captain Maple Leafs | Sportsnet.ca
I was going to make a snide remark about it not being inherently more of an honor–as Matthews says it is–to wear the C for an original six team just because of the legends who’ve worn it before, but the Leafs have actually just not had a captain for three and a half years, and there’s no guarantee they’re going to have one in October. If teams more consistently held off giving a guy the C just to give someone the C, that’d be a different story, and maybe there’d be something to it. What do you think?
Introducing a two-point shot to hockey | Times Union
The Aurora Games, a showcase of women’s sports, is trying something new out for hockey. I’m torn between “TWO-POINT SHOTS I NEED THIS IN EVERY HOCKEY GAME EVER GIVE IT TO ME THIS INSTANT” and “…the Nashville Predators do not need another reason to take ineffective point shots”.