FanPost

Why Your Team Sucks: Pacific Division

If you are a regular reader of this blog, there is a good chance you like one of the teams in this division. There is also an even greater chance you hate most or all of them.

This preview is for you.

ANAHEIM DUCKS:

Your 2014-15 Season:

"The Ducks Had A 3-2 Series Lead And Home Ice For Game 7; What Happens Next Will Amaze You!"

Just kidding; they lost, just like they always do. Sure, they made the conference final, but that barely counts. They had to beat Winnipeg and Calgary to get there. You may as well have just given them byes through the first two rounds. The Ducks would have had less of a chance playing two Timbits kids teams on the way to the Conference Final. What matters is that once they played a real team, they absolutely blew it yet again.

Your Head Coach:

Bruce Boudreau. Most notable for potty mouth and that time he went into a restaurant and ate everything in the restaurant and they had to close the restaurant.

Boudreau has coached his team to the division title every full season of his career, and this is the first time he's ever been past the second round. His playoff coaching record is 38-36, but that includes an 8-1 record against the Jets and Flames, which shouldn't be counted because LOL CANADA. Otherwise, Boudreau has a .461 winning percentage in playoff games. Todd McLellan has a better record only ever coaching the Sharks. BRUCE BOUDREAU IS SHORKIER THAN A SHORKS COACH. I'd call him a paper tiger, but paper is too lightweight.

Your Starting Goalie:

Frederik Andersen, who won the starting job with a .914 SV%. How bad does your goaltending situation have to be that league average earns you the starter's spot? They let Hiller walk and he put up better numbers in Calgary, behind a team largely consisting of flaming garbage cans and bears driving around on little cars. Andersen plays for what people consider a contender!

John Gibson is made of peanut brittle, so they've also added Anton Khudobin, most notable for being good in 2013. Here is a picture of Khudobin eating a puck while plotting your death.

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New Things That Suck:

They extended Ryan Kesler and are now paying him $6.875M a season despite not even hitting 50 points in the last four years. Kesler is a career second-line player who scored 40 goals once, roughly 39 of which came from getting to play the Oilers a half dozen times. Ryan Kesler sucks. He's basically getting paid to flop around like a fish out of water and bang bored Orange County housewives in a bar bathroom.

Also traded for Kevin Bieksa, because any time you get the chance to add core pieces of one of the most hated teams in hockey history to a roster including Corey Perry, you do it! Bieksa is now their highest-paid defenseman, despite the fact he actually doesn't know how to play defense. His defensive play has largely consisted of taking dumb penalties, and that was when he was good. Now? He'll make Korbinian Holzer look good, which is saying a lot for a guy who has a giant cement block where his legs should be.

Old Things That Still Suck:

The team is the ugly redheaded stepchild of LA-area sports. Not just because it's not among the first tier of LA teams (Kings, Dodgers, Lakers); even second-tier LA teams laugh at it. The Angels at least have the best player in baseball. The Clippers are more respectable despite being run for years by a literal racist. The Ducks are just….there. They only exist because Disney wanted to boost box office sales for a hockey movie. And THAT was their high point.

Now? They don't even have whimsical Disney charm. Their uniform looks like a logo for that dated nightclub you always walk by, but have no desire to go inside. Their captain is best known for his male pattern baldness. Their star player is the most offensive right winger outside of the Trump campaign. Their coach looks like Sloth really let himself go.

All of the California teams suck, but at least other California fans cheer for loveable losers (Sharks) or perpetual contenders (Kings). The Ducks have neither. They have no redeeming qualities. They play in an area of LA most known for a TV show and wealthy white supremacists.

Also, Corey Perry looks like a ferret.

ARIZONA COYOTES:

Your 2014-15 Season:

After a bad-but-not-bad-enough start to the season, the Coyotes ensured a high draft pick by going 8-29-4 in the second half of the season to plummet down the standings. In the year 2015, this team didn't even win more than three games in any given month. They won one game in regulation after February 3. ONE.

Let's put it this way:

See that? That was a goal from their eighth last win (sixth last ROW) of the season. This happened IN JANUARY. Against a team as bad as they are. They needed a one-in-a-million fluke bounce just to beat a team that basically forfeited every game from January onward.

They then managed to miss out on a top 2 draft pick. They even failed at failure.

Your Head Coach:

Still Dave Tippett? Yep. Still Dave Tippett. Well, bummer. That's no fun. At least the Coyotes were a fun trainwreck with Gretzky behind the bench. Under The Great One, you were guaranteed 30 hilarious losses and one gambling sting investigation per season. Now they're bad and boring. They're basically New Jersey Southwest.

Your Starting Goalie:

BUTTGOAL! BUTTGOAL! BUTTGOALLLLLLL!

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Your annual reminder that Mike Smith is overrated trash. Overrated because he had one amazing season three years ago, and has been marginal since. Trash because of stuff like this. He even got called out by Henrik Sedin once! How much of a diver do you have to be to get chirped by one of the core players of the Diviest Bunch of Divers That Ever Dove?

My personal favourite was the time Smith dove because he couldn't stop a puck and wanted to hope the goal wouldn't count.

New Things That Suck:

Oh look; it's a new new lease deal with the City of Glendale! After the city reneged on a dumb 15-year agreement because it realized two years later what a terrible idea that was. This new deal is two years, which might at least ensure a year off from Coyotes relocation speculation. Or will it? Let us consult our Coyotes-to-Seattle Terror Alert Chart™:

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As you can see, the threat level is currently "Yellow," or Elevated. Coyotes fans can rest easy until the growing pit of revenue loss forces either ownership or the City to inevitably balk yet again.

Turning to hockey, the Coyotes acquired the contract of Chris Pronger, since they have experience with having league employees on their payroll. They added a couple other irrelevant players like Brad Richardson and Nicklas Grossmannn (the extra N is for NNHL. That N was a typo.), but they're trying to tank again, so it's cool.

They also brought back Antoine Vermette. Amazing. They literally traded the guy away just so he could win a Cup and then re-signed him. It's like when your college girlfriend dumped you during her semester in Europe so she could sleep with lots of better looking European dudes, then took you back when she came home. That's hilarious. Vermette should do this every year.

Old Things That Still Suck:

This team is forever stuck in purgatory. They're in a market where no one cares, playing in a city no one wants to travel to. They constantly live in a state of both imminent non-existence and perpetual existence. The Arizona Coyotes are Schroedinger's Team.

What fans they do have take out their anger on mostly non-hockey fans for deigning to think stuff like roads, schools, and hospitals are more important than a hockey team. Instead of, I dunno, realizing moving the team 10 miles further away from their entire fanbase was a bad idea, they continue to double down by blaming politicians and taxpayers for recognizing a bad investment when they see it. They are to Glendale as Dave Nonis was to the 2013 Leafs.

I'd comment on a Coyotes fan paying to tase the mayor of Glendale, but it doesn't even surprise me. Arizona was high on my list for "least surprising states to make the news for some random person tasing a public figure." Only Florida would shock me less.

CALGARY FLAMES:

Your 2014-15 Season:

PDO'd their way to the playoffs. Well, that, plus the Kings deciding to take a year off because they thought committing some springtime felonies would be nice.

Yes, they won a series. Big whoop. Their first round win was over Vancouver, and it doesn't really count when you look at the Sedins' ice time in that series. Calgary basically had the game difficulty set on Rookie. They then followed this up by receiving a lopsided 5-game thrashing. From THE DUCKS. There is a line between pretender and contender in the NHL postseason. That line is "are you capable of beating the Anaheim Ducks?" The Flames didn't even finish just below that line; it is so far above them that you would require the assistance of NASA just to see it.

Your Head Coach:

Bob Hartley. Hartley is this year's reigning Jack Adams winner, notable for great coaching systems such as "ensure Jiri Hudler has a career year at 31," "play one good line and two really good defensemen a lot and then hope for the best," and his personal favourite, "literally beat the crap out of the Canucks." To this day, he remains the only coach someone has tried to probably murder, which is an impressive feat considering Patrick Roy is an NHL coach.

Your Starting Goalie:

Jonas Hiller! He put up a .918, his best year since 2010-11. He continued rolling in the postseason, putting up a .920+ in four of his five starts. Then, with the games becoming more meaningful, how did he do?

GAME 6 vs. VAN: this was a game on home ice that would either give the Flames the series or force a Game 7. Hiller responded by allowing 2 goals on 3 shots. He would luckily live to fight another day because Luca Sbisa exists.

GAME 1 vs. ANA: series opener against his former team, so he gives up 3 goals on 14 shots.

Sure, it's just two games, but those are the most two important games of his year. That's like getting straight A's in everything but English, which you failed miserably. That unpossible!

New Things That Suck:

Managed to outwit Don Sweeney, which when you look at this offseason, really wasn't that much of an accomplishment. But hey, Dougie Hamilton joins a team that was bottom of the league in virtually every shot attempt metric there was.

Here to improve their fancystats is Michael Frolik, who now becomes the Flames highest-paid and longest-signed forward despite never scoring more than 42 points a season. Weren't these stats intended to exploit market inefficiencies? Paying $4.3 million for a good possession player seems like the opposite of that. It's like the alternate timeline of Moneyball where Billy Beane takes the Red Sox job.

Also, it is now 19-year old Sam Bennett. Update accordingly, Jim Hughson.

Old Things That Still Suck:

They've only won four playoff series in the last 25 years, but two of those were against the Canucks so they don't count. These people still whine about not winning a Stanley Cup eleven years ago because the refs wouldn't give them a goal that was clearly kicked into the net.

Calgary fans will loudly convince you that they're the best fanbase because they're really loud. Wow. Groundbreaking stuff. Literally NO OTHER FANBASE has ever done this before. You play in an arena shaped like a saddle; I'm sure that doesn't affect the acoustics at all.

Also how bout that RED MILE? BEST FAN CELEBRATIONS EVER. Wow. Drunk people in the bar district celebrating and flashing their boobs because their favourite team won? Something else I've never seen millions of times before! These Calgary Flames, I tell ya. They just keep setting these new trends!

This seems par for the course for Calgarians, though. Nowhere else can you find a city of people so convinced their little slice of mediocrity is the best place on earth. News flash: Calgary is like literally every other urban centre, with a river running through the middle. Except for July, when rich city kids act like they grew up on a ranch in the middle of Tumbleweed, Oklahoma. COME TO CALGARY WE GOT TALL BUILDINGS AND THEM DRUNK PEOPLE WHAT WEAR THE COWBOY HATS.

Also: the quadrant grid system is stupid.

EDMONTON OILERS:

Your 2014-15 Season:

Third last, and somehow even worse than in 2013-14. They had 62 points, which is the same as what they had in the first year of their rebuild with less wins. How do you even manage that?! You have Hall and Eberle and Nuge and Yak. How can you be as bad as the 2009-10 team? Dustin Penner was their leading scorer! And nobody else on the team came within 22 points of him! The Edmonton Oilers: so bad, they're worse than a team whose best player is now a goddamn DJ.

Your Head Coach:

Todd McLellan, who can finally rest easy knowing his team will no longer blow it in the playoffs. The Oilers were so impressed with his skill coaching in the World Championships that they wanted to put him in a position to do it every May!

McLellan now becomes the sixth Oilers head coach in seven seasons. That has to be some kind of record. Italian governance has more stability.

Your Starting Goalie:

Cam Talbot?! Yep, it happened. The Oilers were so desperate for goaltending that they actually spent a 2nd round pick on a guy with 57 career games. Seems like a good plan, seeing as the last five attempts at trading for someone else's backup to be your starter worked so well. Even the Cleveland Browns QB coach think the Oilers have a goaltending problem.

Backing up Talbot will be Jenny Scrivens' husband.

New Things That Suck:

The Oilers will get the chance to ruin the first generational talent in ten years! OOH HOW EXCITING! I mean, Nail Yakupov was easy. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was small enough to let nature work itself out. Ruining Taylor Hall was about as easy as an open book boating exam. But this is Connor McDavid. He is the Catalina Wine Mixer of prospects. The real deal. Destroying his potential will be extremely difficult, but if anyone can do it, I have faith in the Oilers. I believe they're up to the challenge.

Speaking of star players, now managing the team is former Boston GM Peter Chiarelli. Always an encouraging sign when your star player gets drafted by the guy best known for trading his star players away. The good news is if McDavid takes up drinking now, he'll end up on a better team in three years.

Old Things That Still Suck:

When I say other teams suck, it's all relative. There is no organization that can boast as impressive a track record of suck as the Edmonton Oilers. They've added their fourth No. 1 overall draft pick since 2010, and have absolutely nothing to show for it. And yet the lucky ping pong balls of the NHL keep bailing them out. You know that guy at a BBQ who continually drops his hot dog so you give him another in the hopes he won't drop that one, and he does? That's the Edmonton Oilers.

The old guard has been relegated to guarding bees in the arena basement, but it doesn't change the fact they're still there. You can mask the suck of the Lowe-MacTavish Era, but you can't ever really eliminate it. You know when a dog poops in your car, and you clean, freshen, and scrub everything to death, but it still smells like poop for a week? That's the Oilers front office. That's what the Edmonton Oilers are to hockey: a freshly-soiled vehicle.

LOS ANGELES KINGS:

Your 2014-15 Season:

Defended their Stanley Cup title pretty much by vomiting all over themselves. The optimistic thing to take away from this year is that they led the league in all major possession metrics such as Corsi, Fenwick, and controlled substance zone entries.

Your Head Coach:

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Your Starting Goalie:

Elite goaltender Jonathan Quick. Quick had his best season since 2012, putting up a .918 SV%, making him the sixteenth best starting goalie last season. If you're keeping track, that's seven more years after this one of their goalie being better than roughly half of yours. This behind one of the better defensive teams in the league. He faces like 20 shots a night! Your grandma could post a .915 for the Kings.

The long-term commitment to Quick ended in backup Martin Jones being traded and subsequently flipped to a division rival. Jones is now the third goaltender to be traded away from LA after Jonathan Bernier and Ben Scrivens. All three are capable of putting up better numbers than him. Two of them have actually done so on teams that are complete laughingstocks.

Anyway, to ensure there's no danger of that happening again, they signed Jhonas Enroth.

New Things That Suck:

The Kings traded their backup starting goalie and a 1st rounder for…..wait. No. You didn't. You REALLY didn't.

OH MY GOD THAT'S MILAN LUCIC'S MUSIC.

The Kings brought in Lucic to presumably replace Conn Smythe winner Justin Williams, which is like replacing your car with a drunk Uber driver that punches you in the face and steals your wallet. That said, they needed Lucic to repeat their record number of team arrests from last season, given that most of those players are gone or, y'know, incarcerated.

Speaking of which, Slava Voynov is slated to be out of the slammer in….two days before Opening Day? WOW WHAT A COINCIDENCE. I'm sure the Kings organization has enough principle and integrity that it will think long and hard about whether they want him to be part of this organization going forw- BAHAHAHAHAHA I COULDN'T EVEN FINISH THAT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE THESE PEOPLE ARE AWFUL OF COURSE HE'S GONNA PLAY.

Old Things That Still Suck:

The Kings organization is a perfect reflection of the city it plays in. LA is basically a land of vapid, soulless sociopaths, and the Kings do a wonderful job of emulating that.

Where else in the NHL can you find a team that tries to sneak a guy who beats his wife into practice while suspended, but unceremoniously terminates the contract of a guy for Oxycodone use because they didn't want to pay him?

And the fans; my god the fans. These are the most entitled, sensitive people despite not knowing what hockey was prior to 2012, and using the team as something to do until the Lakers are good again. Make a joke about the Kings and get owned on line by angry people saying bad things about your mom. The fanbase may have more convicted felons than the roster does. Also, Wil Wheaton.

SAN JOSE SHARKS:

Your 2014-15 Season:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Season highlights included:

(1) Technically succeeding at their preseason goal of not blowing another 3-0 lead in the postseason.

(2) Dropping a tacky rap video.

(3) This:

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Two of those three things prominently featured their fourth line goon, so you have a pretty good idea of how the year went.

Your Head Coach:

Peter DeBoer. After seven disappointing seasons, the Sharks "mutually parted ways" with Todd McLellan, who only got them to a President's Trophy and two conference final appearances. But the playoff disappointments! Wait, wasn't this the problem with the last coach, too? Hmmm. If only there was someone above the coach also accountable for the team's problems. Some kind of person that generally managed the team, you could say.

Anyway, DeBoer is the perfect fit for the Sharks. The Sharks are a team made up of two cores: (1) solid veterans running out the clock; and, (2) young kids with potential who haven't peaked yet. In DeBoer, they've hired a guy who is a colossal failure at coaching both these things.

Your Starting Goalie:

Martin Jones is here! $3 million to a guy with 34 career NHL games to be their starter! He was a .906 last season, by the way. At least the last time they poached a goalie with a Cup ring, he was their starter. You basically just traded for a glorified Glenn Healy.

New Things That Suck:

MOAR VETERANS! The Sharks brought in Joel Ward, because the greatest priority for a team that missed the playoffs is a third-line Game 7 specialist. They also signed Paul Martin until he's 38, because the Sharks are required by law to have at least one really really old guy on their blue line at all times.

Old Things That Still Suck:

When we last checked in on San Jose, they were a good but hilariously unlucky team. In one short year, they've managed to downgrade to downright dysfunctional. The franchise leader/former captain (no, not THAT one; the other one) and GM despise each other. Both survived the offseason.

They have a core of veteran leaders and young players with not much else. When teams are generally in that state of flux, they either: (a) go for it; or (b) trade the veterans and rebuild. The Sharks seem perfectly content to do neither and ultimately have nothing to show for it. This team is basically purgatory, if purgatory were sunny and inhabited by a bunch of douchey tech bros.

The Legend of John Scott may be gone, but a far inferior Mike Brown remains. This team also still employs Raffi Torres, who was voted "Most Likely to Park His Hummer Across Three Handicapped Spaces" in high school.

Also, we are one year closer to Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau retiring, thereby leaving Logan Couture to be the face of this franchise. And that face is Secretariat.

VANCOUVER CANUCKS:

Your 2014-15 Season:

PLAYOFFS!!!!!1 Never mind the fact that it was entirely dependent on the Sharks and Kings having a down year, in a division that was about as strong as a Meek Mill diss track. THEY DID IT. They were also lucky enough to draw perhaps the only other playoff team worse than them in the first round, so naturally they followed that up by imploding their way to a first round exit, including blowing a 3-0 lead with their postseason lives on the line.

Of course, this was a Canucks playoff series, so it wouldn't be complete without the team and its fans vociferously claiming the moral high ground in one game only to piss it away the next. Geez, you guys. Can you at least wait until your players aren't using someone's head as a basketball before you preach about how it's the other guys who are all goons?!

Your Head Coach:

Jim Benning. If not in name, then in principle. He's done a great job this offseason of molding the team in his graven image while firing the ever-loving crap out of people because he was tired of that pesky little thing called dissent. At the end of the day, Benning controls this team with an iron fist. Trevor Linden is basically this guy:

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Anyway, your actual coach is Willie Desjardins, most notable for being former BC Premier Glen Clark's body double. Desjardins' coaching systems include great ideas such as "Play the Sedins less than your third line even though they're literally the only people on your roster who don't handle the puck like it's a newborn baby holding a live grenade."

Your Starting Goalie:

IT'S MILLER TIME BABY! Benning traded away the younger, better, universally beloved Eddie Lack to double down on their 35-year old franchise goaltender of the future. To honour the team's 45th anniversary, fans will be treated to many tributes of Ryan Miller's greatest moment in the Canucks' arena: giving up a goal against.

Miller could've been traded this offseason, but apparently that 3rd round pick for Lack was just too hard to turn down.

Should Miller falter, their backup is now Jacob Markstrom, who has a career .872 SV% with the Canucks, but at least his season debut last year went pretty well.

New Things That Suck:

Apparently the Canucks saw Boston losing its mind and saw a chance to finally beat the Bruins at something. There's just so much here, so let's do it in point form. They:

  • Spent $6 million on a Coke machine and a pylon, by which I mean they extended Derek Dorsett and Luca Sbisa.
  • Traded Lack for a 3rd rounder when even terrible goalies fetched a minimum 2nd round pick on the open market.
  • Traded Zack Kassian, who is 24 and awful, for Brandon Prust, who is 31, even more awful, costs more money, and will be a UFA next year.
  • Attempted to solve their defensive woes by signing Matt Bartkowski, who is basically just a literate Kevin Bieksa.

The piece de resistance, however, was trading Nick Bonino for Brandon Sutter, who sucks and costs more. AND trading a prospect and trading down draft picks for the opportunity to do it. AND extending Sutter for north of $4M through 2021 before he's even played a game in Vancouver. But I'm sure there's a plan there, right?

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Oh. I see.

Old Things That Still Suck:

Despite the obsessive hatred of Eastern Canada, Canucks fans are basically a concoction of the worst traits of those fan bases. There's the inferiority complex of Ottawa; the conspiracy-laden whining of Montreal; and, most importantly, the faux arrogance masking relentless pessimism and self-loathing of Toronto. What an unholy trinity.

The worst thing about the Canucks, however, is that they simply lack an identity. They change uniform colours so often that their home games look like a dyslexic rainbow. Their bitter "rivals" are usually too busy winning Stanley Cups to remember that they exist. Other teams may complain about reffing, but only Vancouver has literally erected a monument to it outside their arena.

Also, Alex Burrows is still here. Burrows is the human personification of the poop emoji. I hope he steps on a Lego.

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Coming up in 1-2 weeks: the final installment: the Central Division.

This FanPost was posted by a fan, and it probably sucks and is dumb.

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