Sharks Gameday: Rear Window

From David Pollak on Wednesday:

#SJSharks Niittymaki says he hopes to be game-ready in two weeks, let somebody else figure out where he fits in.

Nitty practiced with the team on Wednesday for the first time this season. He hopes to be ready to play soon. Eventually the team is going to have to figure out what to do with him or Thomas Greiss. A bunch of stuff has been written about this approaching Goalie-pocalypse already, so instead of talking about that we are going to embrace the spirit of my 61st-favorite film, Rear Window, and distract ourselves by checking out what other fans around the league are concerned about right now.

First up, the fanbase for tonight's opponent, the Montreal Canadiens.

Who Are They? Habs Eyes on The Prize

The Good Stuff: The fans are knowledgeable about hockey and have a good sense of history.

The Bad Stuff: The fans may be the most entitled bunch of whiners on the planet. Also some of them speak French.

What Are They Talking About? The Max Pacioretty Suspension

What Are They Saying? Some quality outrage in the comments:

Broken knows or broken nasal cavity. Fact remains Letang didn’t miss time.

Malone hit Campoli no suspension when similar incidents had suspensions. Ference fingers the crowd, no suspension when similar incidents had suspensions.

If the fanbase was represented as one of those people in the apartment building in Rear Window they would be: A French dude who spends all of his time on the phone calling complaint lines about frozen pizzas with which he was not "completely satisfied."

Next up let's take a peek at the fans of the Sharks' opponent following the Canadiens: the Florida Panthers.

Who Are They? Litter Box Cats (eww gross)

The Good Stuff: A history filled with failure has broken the fans' spirits enough so that they are pretty tolerable, most of the time.

The Bad Stuff: The fans are certainly warming up to the whole "insufferable asshole" part of cheering for a good team, specifically of the "we don't get our due respect!" variety. They're also way too happy to have sweaty ginger Brian Campbell on their team, which is just embarrassing and is certainly never something Sharks fans would be guilty of.

What Are They Talking About? I'm not really sure.

What Are They Saying?

Regarding Tomas Kopecky:

I THINK HE IS OUR NEXT BEST FORWARD BEHIND THE BIG THREE. MAKE THE TRADE:RYAN-WEISS-VERSTEEG AND FLASH-KOPECKY-SAMUELSON.

Regarding Trading for Bobby Ryan:

I’m good. This team has enough talent.

Regarding cheering for Satan:

Let’s go Wings! Do us a favor and keep the lightning down.

If the fanbase was represented as one of those people in the apartment building in Rear Window they would be: A dumb guy with a crappy job who was awarded a lot of money in a lawsuit after he fell down some stairs and now he spends all his money on crazy/cool/dumb shit for his apartment. He probably has like eight lava lamps.

And finally, the Sharks' opponents on December 6th: the Minnesota Wild.

Who Are They? Hockey Wilderness

The Good Stuff: The fans are now cheering for Dany Heatley and Devin Setoguchi, and most of them still love Brent Burns.

The Bad Stuff: We'll get to that in a second.

What Are They Talking About? In a fun bit of a Russian nesting doll-style-coincidence, they're talking about how Copper and Blue, the Oilers blog, sucks because they care about stats and math and stupid nerd stuff like that. Seriously go read this awesomely passive-aggressive gameday post.

What Are they Saying? Lots of stuff with really funny accents:

Okay. I did it, and I knew I shouldn't have....

I visited the Copper and Blue for the 1st time. I read about 2 words, and well, that was enough.

Apostacy in print. Gotta love how they change a verse from the Bible to some bull about the Oil. Fine work there gentleman.

Then it’s off to the stats. And OMG does this guy jizz himself over stats. He starts talking about how a # of shots per game means something. Then he brings up COPD, or PDO or some bullshit about stats.

Zona asks: Is this going to be another snoozer?

Riiight, because finding new ways to bastardize advanced stats is so fucking exciting.

For the record Copper and Blue is awesome. If you care about hockey and you aren't dumb you should probably care about advanced statistics.

Do you think these guys follow stats so much

because that’s all they have to do up there in Edmonton?

Do you think that people in Minnesota know that here in California we would make this exact same joke about people in Minnesota?

For reference I think all the Wild fans are pissed because Derek Zona at Copper and Blue has been writing stuff like this, which shows pretty conclusively that if advanced stats mean anything (which they do or we would stop paying attention to them) then the Wild are a much worse team than their record so far would indicate.

Plus it's really cold and boring in Minnesota so people there don't have anything to do except complain about people who follow stats.

If the fanbase was represented as one of those people in the apartment building in Rear Window they would be: Some dude who has a handgun in his apartment and constantly brags about it and thinks that it makes him tough and will keep him safe from criminals. Then a polite Canadian who lives in the next apartment tries to explain to the guy that having a gun in your home is much more likely to injure you or a family member than to ever be used against an attacker, so the Wild guy calls the neighbor a dork and then goes home and accidentally blows off his big toe while cleaning his gun.

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Suppose a team's fans were very snooty, and suppose they were also French...but I repeat myself.

Prediction: Sharks win 4-2. Fans on every sports blog everywhere continue to be embarrassing.