Westgarth

[Sasha Cares]

at least we get the hottest G in hockey on Friday to look bad for... Holy ****, how bad does that 5-1 loss to FLA look now? they are 0-4 with -15 goal diff since!!!!!

 

[DaveG]

at least we get the hottest G in hockey on Friday to look bad for... Holy ****, how bad does that 5-1 loss to FLA look now? they are 0-4 with -15 goal diff since?

And their entire top line is prettymuch injured. I'm betting we would have fared better too if we had been able to lock down Joni and Faulk on the Kovalev line rather then having to roll the dice with Harrison and whoever the **** we had with him out there.

 

[PaulProteus]

Forslund is so full of ****, he's approaching the Tripp Tracy level of completely bizarre player analysis. Why is it that 95% of the coverage of this team is by people who are employed by the team?

Things that also make a difference sitting on the bench:

- Gatorade bottles.
- Stick tape.
- Towels.
- Whiteboards w/markers.

Five games into this season and after a comment like Forslund's I'm starting to come around to this Ministry of Caniac Propaganda campaign.

 

[Ole Gil]

If things devolve, having Westgarth in the lineup does matter. We just haven't had one of those games yet. Gleason fighting Lucic is a reasonable tradeoff, and the Ott was it's own special thing

In a situation like Buffalo was in last year with Miller, we can send out a guy who will fight anyone. The fact they had to put out a guy who knew he was going to get his ass kicked but had to defend Buffalo's honor probably wasn't great for morale.

I don't know how important all this is to the players. But the idea of dressing a guy who can fight is pretty prevalent, so it's clearly not inconsequential.

 

[Anton Babchuk]

The team doesn't exactly hand out locker room passes to anyone who asks. In order to cover the team in any substantial way, you have to have access to the players (otherwise you're just a guy with an opinion) and that access is limited to team employees and a small number of official media outlets who are basically guests in the arena.

It's like this in almost every NHL city. The exceptions being places where the game is popular enough to spawn professional independent coverage.

The problem is that the people that get the press passes do nothing with them but ask fawning, basic questions that you'd expect from 12 year old girls who write Jeff Skinner fanfiction. Doesn't Canes Country have a press pass? At least they did in prior seasons. Yet they wrote a whole paragraph about Joe Corvo's 7 minutes of ice time, complete with a list of all the times he's played under 10 minutes in his career....but no quote from Muller or Corvo or anyone relevant as to why Joe Corvo played 7 minutes. Isn't it kind of a big deal that a guy signed about five minutes in to free agency who JR said was going to play with Tim Gleason is now relegated to #7 defensemen minutes even when we dress 6 defensemen? Did anyone ask why this happened?

I saw more from Chip Alexander about Tim Gleason chasing around Joe Corvo in practice than I saw about Nathan Horton walking around Tim Gleason in a game from all of our media combined.

 

[TheBigKahuna]

I've heard Forslund and Kaiton call a spade a spade, but not during a game usually. Catch one of them on some other show, and they will usually tell you when a player stinks, shouldn't be playing, etc. But don't expect much during an official game broadcast.

As to media personnel actualy asking the tough question, Luke is the only one who has ever dared.

 

[Joe McGrath]

It's tough to get the right kind of media coverage. Those guys in other cities that ask the "tough" questions are also the guys who ask the absolutely asinine questions that they know they aren't getting an answer to. the Canes don't have anyone who will ask which blows, but if we were in Toronto there would be 40 guys standing at Corvo's locker asking him what he thinks about playing 7 minutes. Is that better? I don't know.

 

[tarheelhockey]

It's tough to get the right kind of media coverage. Those guys in other cities that ask the "tough" questions are also the guys who ask the absolutely asinine questions that they know they aren't getting an answer to.

They're also the guys with a large enough platform to really make something out of not getting an answer. That's probably the biggest factor.

 

[Ole Gil]

I've heard Forslund and Kaiton call a spade a spade, but not during a game usually. Catch one of them on some other show, and they will usually tell you when a player stinks, shouldn't be playing, etc. But don't expect much during an official game broadcast.

As to media personnel actualy asking the tough question, Luke is the only one who has ever dared.

I was thinking this in when reading the thread. Forslund basically insinuated to Mike Man... that Joni will quit on the team if he feels slighted. Was a pretty blunt statement. I remember hoping Joni doesn't listen to the aftermath.