You really can’t. The Red Wings teams of the mid 90's had a second line anchored by a HOF C. So did the same Avalanche clubs. The Oilers teams had Messier and Glenn Anderson. The Penguins had Ron Francis as their second line C for their cup runs.

Well, what you’re basically saying there is that the 4, 5, 6 forwards for Tampa Bay this year, this supposedly dominating world force, weren’t quite as good as the 4,5,6 forwards for last year’s Maple Leafs.

Here’s where I go for Line info:

The numbers I’m looking at have Kucherov’s second most common line as being him, Stamkos and Miller and he was mainly with Stamkos in the playoffs but fair point on the most common regular season line being him, Point and Johnson.

“Lacked depth” may be a stretch but I just mean in the context of teams like Winnipeg or Toronto or Pittsburgh(provided everyone is healthy in Pittsburgh). All of those teams have their own problems but I’d take each of those teams’ second lines over Tampa’s.

No, but what I’m saying is that their very high goal differential comes mainly from goals for and, for whatever reason, something was screwy with goals for this year. Maybe Tampa was particularly well suited to take advantage of that in a way other teams weren’t and the playoffs, where things tighten up, choked off…

But in a way that’s sort of what I’m saying. If Tampa has a slightly worse record in one goal games/OT and SO games then they’re not seen as some sort of mind blowing world beater and are more seen as just being on par with your average President’s trophy winner. If they’d finished at 115 points or so they’d still be…

But in a way that’s sort of what I’m saying. If Tampa has a slightly worse record in one goal games/OT and SO games then they’re not seen as some sort of mind blowing world beater and are more seen as just being on par with your average President’s trophy winner. If they’d finished at 115 points or so they’d still be…

Yeah, but I guess I’m at least a little tempted to think that at least some of that is just because something screwy was going on this year in terms of goals for. Tampa wasn’t one of the 150 best teams in the post-lockout era in terms of goals against but were the #1 team in the post-lockout era in goals for. That’s…

They only had the one line where any forward had more than 50 points. Sure, they had a lot of guys in the 40+ range but that’s still effectively a one line team. If, and granted this is a huge if, you could shut down Kucherov’s line what else on Tampa was going to beat you?

I really don’t think it’s that big of a mystery. Tampa’s record this year was at least partially inflated by things that aren’t generally sustainable(record in one goal/OT/SO games) and were the sort of team uniquely vulnerable to this(dependent on very effective special teams/not a ton of depth).

Yeah, I think you’re very much incorrect if you think that Dolan owns the Knicks and Rangers primarily as a personal toy and less because they make insane amounts of money both as individual entities and for his larger cable empire. That makes them drastically different things.

I don’t think you can say the Lightning were a bad team or Columbus especially good. The NHL is just a league where just about any team can win a playoff series with some goaltending, a couple good breaks and getting hot at the right moment.

Yeah, that’s more or less what I figured. It’s still a pretty weird flex though. 

I still don’t really get the jump though. Colleges have Title IX and the existence of a large female student body that make offering female athletics(and paying athletes the exact same nothing they pay male athletes) a pretty reasonable decision. So here you have club teams “subsidizing” a woman’s basketball to the…

I don’t know about that. It felt to me like what the AI did best was acknowledge that you were playing a video game and did what it could to make the video game difficult. The idea that anything in it felt like human behaviour is pretty tenuous.

I agree. The fact that the “endgame” basically renders everything you did to get up to that point as completely meaningless really sucked. I get that these sorts of games need to be about constant, unending warfare but that’s why the ones set in fantastical settings work better. Here you get people invested in…

Yeah, I actually found the endgame to be even worse than the levelling. At least while levelling, what with the building of the settlements and clearing of the zones, you had a slight feeling of accomplishment. In the end game nothing you do matters and it’s just a quest to marginally improve your gear score so can do…

Something that I always don’t get in all of these stories is, like, is women’s basketball really that popular in Russia? Because that seems at least a little bit strange. I know for years and years the allegation has been that the KHL, which is Men’s hockey which is pretty popular in Russia, can only pay players the…

The Wire finale is, I think, a fairly good episode finished with a perfect closing sequence.