Real Olympic thread [[[[NO HOCKEY ALLOWED]]]]]

[Fife]

Gallagher v. Subban chirps. . .

I didn't see a smile, just blood running down his face.

[Smitty-48]

The Habs are in a sorry state, can't say I shed any tears for them, that's fo sho, none the less, free Shea Weber, to the Leafs, for $4.85 million, the Habs are wasting the Big Nasty, he needs to be on a better team.

Let Babs have him, put him with Rielly, play him like Big Z with Charlie McAvoy, Mo can skate around fetching pucks, while the Big Nasty boxes people out with authori-teh.

[Smitty-48]

Tell you something else, even tho Nylander is the far more skilled player, as of right now, for playoff hockey, Kapanen is the better player, Nylander has the shot, the vision, the creativity, but he's soft and he's too fancy, he's too east west, he dances around the periphery too much, whereas Kapanen is north south, he plays the simpler heavier game, he goes into the dirty areas, he gets there fast, he makes the quick and dirty move, bam-bam plays, made for the playoffs, he's never gonna be Phil Kessel, but in terms of the Phil Kessel trade, Kapanen is really starting to pay off now.

That's the thing about the Leafs, it's just gonna take more time, the kids have elite skills, but only Matthews, Brown, Hyman and Kapanen play a heavy game, Nylander and Marner ain't there yet, say what you want about Komarov, but until Marner and Nylander add more Komarov to their games, they're going to be peripheral players, lighting it up in the regular season, but not nearly as effective in the playoff trench wars.

The Leafs right now are built for regular season skills competition, but if they're going to contend, Babcock is 100% right, they're gonna have to get way heavier.

That's the thing about Pittsburgh, it's not just their skill, the Pens are arguably the heaviest team in the East, they're heavy like a Western Conference team, it's no wonder they keep grinding it out through the East with a bullet, once the playoffs start.

The Pens don't do anything fancy unless they're on the power play, but five on five, they are totally north south, they just hurl the puck in there and go after it like a dog on a bone, and then bam-bam plays, quick and dirty, throw it back to the point and then crash the crease, the kids on the Leafs need to learn to play that way, because as the playoffs progress, that's pretty much all you can do with the time and space available.

[Fife]

CNN knows sports.

[Fife]

[StCapps]

Subban plays way tougher minutes than Gardiner, cherry picking one public screw up, and one advanced stat, the usually routine from the PK haters. Trying to pretend PK isn't good in his own end is so two years ago, get with the times maan. He did not deserved the Norris a few years ago, that's certainly true, and he's got a huge contract that isn't the greatest in the world in the salary cap era, but you overcompensate for that, and ridiculously so. Roman Josi is the riverboat gambler of the two, not the defensive defensemen that's Subban and Ekholm, Fife tell this fool what is what, he's clearly not watching a lot of Preds games and is making decisions on a small sample size.

If you are going to shit on Subban for his defensive weaknesses holding him back from ever deserving the Norris despite his offensive upside, than you can't talk Josi being a Norris candidate, that makes no sense, at all. Smitty sounds like the Toronto/Montreal sports media PK haters who never watch any Preds games and then shit on PK as if he's still on the Habs and hasn't improved his defensive game by leaps and bounds since then, and then gives all that credit to a guy who is even worse defensively than Subban just because he flashes on offense and isn't PK. Obvious PK hater talking points are obvious, you need to stop listening to the Leafs and Habs fans/media about PK Subban, they don't know what they are talking about these days and live in the past.

[StCapps]

Mat Barzal has 3 5-point games this season. The Buffalo Sabres have 3 5-goal games this season.

Barzal so good, Buffalo so shit.

[Smitty-48]

Subban improving defensively and Subban winning the Norris Trophy and getting $9 million per is two separate issues, PK Subban doesn't suck, but he's not a Norris Trophy caliber defenceman, never was, and never will be. Fake Norris Trophy Winner.

And the media is not out to get Subban, he's a media darling. It's the media who made him a Fake Norris Trophy Winner, affirmative action hire.

[StCapps]

Subban improving defensively and Subban winning the Norris Trophy and getting $9 million per is two separate issues, PK Subban doesn't suck, but he's not a Norris Trophy caliber defenceman, never was, and never will be. Fake Norris Trophy Winner.

Meh, he's a top 10 NHL defensemen right now, any way that you slice it, so if he has one killer season down the line, he could totally earn it.

Though the window to pull a Norris that he actually earned out of his ass won't be open forever, being on Nashville with vote splitting due to the stacked defense won't make it any easier and I certainly wouldn't bet on him pulling it off before the window closes.

Fake Norris is one thing, ain't good enough to ever theoretically earn a Norris, quite another.

And the media is not out to get Subban, he's a media darling. It's the media who made him a Fake Norris Trophy Winner, affirmative action hire.

Yeah the media either loves him too much, or hate him too much, and often as an overreaction to the other group, they can find no balanced perspective on PK Subban, it's as if they are incapable of it, and even you are overreacting to those media folks opinion of him and can't find the balance yourself.

How about you just ignore the dummies and stop filtering your PK Subban opinion to counter their obvious idiocy that shouldn't even be addressed? That's what I do.

[Smitty-48]

My position is balanced, PK is a good defenceman, probably worth about 5 x 5.5, but Norris Trophy and 5 x 9 is nonsensical, and it's only because he was a Montreal media darling, which ended up backfiring on him by getting him and his bloated contract shipped out to the boonies in Nashville.