Scorchstack Issue #110- We provide a public service here at the Scorchstack.
Scorchstack will never die until we get bored of it or someone buys it
Good thing most of our numbers come in from email! Tell your friends to sign up or give them an early Christmas present and sign them up without their knowledge.
What’s inside?
The Flames will finally do battle with their former rat king, which forces us to ask: who will uphold the Code?
There’s no more Twitter- where are you going to see some absolutely loony takes about your Calgary Flames? Thankfully, here.
Have sports been making you feel down recently? Well, thankfully the Mariners are here to cheer you up again. I don’t get the analytics based on fandom, but I’m certain there are a lot of Mariners fans here and that we’re not just doing Marinerstack to annoy the Jays fans who also read this.
Since last issue
Off the schneid, baby! The Flames! Winning two games! How about that. They lost again last night, by the way.
Floob wrote Big Monday Thing and titled it Uh Oh? and this is not as much fun as the hit ‘90s YTV game show Uh Oh! but it’s still really good all things considered. No, I didn’t just copy/paste this from last week’s issue, I did change the exclamation point to a question mark.
Did you check out last week’s Scorchstack? The final one of the Twitter era? It’s all tweets. It’s the last place to get tweets. Suck it up, you piggies.
Which Current Calgary Flame will try to fight Matthew Tkachuk on Saturday?
They are gonna try and Matthew will just continue on laughing
by Konnie (@konnie49 - is this still worth doing?)
The Flames are poised to play against the Florida Panthers this Saturday with will be the first time Scorchstack’s favourite rat Matthew Tkachuk will face off against his old team (and so will Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar). Since getting to Florida, Tkachuk has been the same pesky kind of player as he has always been, usually the first one in almost every scrum with 3 guys who are trying to get at him to try to fight him, only for Tkachuk to skate away and laugh at them. The Saturday game is going to be no different, only this time, he is going up a team that knows his tactics inside and out, and might potentially let it get to them regardless. In preparation for the game, lets take a look at the Flames roster and see who would get provoked by Tkachuk's antics in front of the net?
Mikael Backlund
No way he fights his surrogate son. If anything at all, he would give him a big ol’ hug on the ice and tell him that he is proud of him.
Blake Coleman
I can see him do a customary “skate to the scrum and give a few shoves” but that’s about it.
Dillon Dube
Until further notice, this player will not be participating in these articles.
Jonathan Huberdeau
Thats not his target tonight. If anything, he has sights for only one man on the Florida Panthers, and that’s Bill Zito. Has a fight between a player and a GM ever happened on the ice? Without diving too deep into anything that around 100 years ago, I would say no. I like Huberdeau’s chances in this tilt.
Nazem Kadri
See, Kadri definitely is a guy who could rival the rat-like nature of a Tkachuk, so while he definitely could get provoked, he himself could provoke Tkachuk back, since he does have a short temper himself. It would be very funny to see the agitator get extremely agitated.
Trevor Lewis
Just like Blake Coleman, but even more boring.
Elias Lindholm
Hmm. I don’t see him fighting at all, maybe just a light push. However, you can bet your house on the fact that Lindholm will do some rat related jesture to get under Tkachuk’s skin.
Milan Lucic
100% guaranteed he will try, 100% chance he will fail. 100% it will be extremely funny.
Andrew Mangiapane
Also would be a guy who would try to provoke Tkachuk and he would immediately be bullied like the small child he is.
Brett Ritchie
He will drop his gloves, be prepared to fight and then as he tries to land a punch, he gets knocked out by an errand fist from Matt Borowiecki.
Kevin Rooney
Nah, thats not the Roons way. The Roons operates his own way.
Adam Ruzicka
He is too Italian too fight. No, I won’t tell you what that means.
Tyler Toffoli
He is too Italian too fight. No, I won’t tell you what that means.
Rasmus Andersson
Absolutely will try to start stuff with Tkachuk and will follow him around the entire game to provoke him into one. its not gonna work, and it might lead to some funny
Noah Hanifin
Can’t see him doing more than just a face wash.
Connor Mackey
Lol. This guy can barely even play hockey.
Chris Tanev
Can’t see him doing much.
MacKenzie Weegar
Can’t see him doing more than just a face wash.
Nikita Zadorov
Gonna be hunting for a huge check on Tkachuk all game and it will of course lead to Tkachuk being wide open of a tap in goal.
Denis Gilbert
Who?
Jacob Markstrom
He will at least try to trip him after a scrum (if he hasn’t already let Tkachuk score on him).
Dan Vladar
It’d be really funny for a backup to get on the ice and try to fight a player. Yeah its a 10 game suspension, so what?
The Cosmic Brain Zone
I did not bother to watch the show, so I don't have a clever reference to put here
by Tibs (@decayinwtheboys)
Hockey. We talk about it a lot. We argue about it a lot. That is called discourse.
Many think that there’s only two camps to this discourse: the old boys club, 200 hockey men brain approach and the analytics knowers brain.
That is an illusion. They are merely tools to be used by the real gradients of hockey discourse: the cosmic brain scale, as demonstrated by this handy meme template. You could literally not know how to do math and have great opinions just based on the vibes you picked up. You could also be beating off to some fourth liner whose xSPAR/60 is off the charts, arguing that he deserves the Hart. Discourse is not measured by how you come to your opinions, but by how wild they are.
What we are about to enter is the world where takes aren’t uniformly rational and reasoned, or out-to-lunch and out-of-left-field. We are entering… the Cosmic Brain Zone.
I will make a better image later. We will discuss the Flames topics of the day, and approach them with all forms of brain. Onto the Cosmic Brain Zone.
Adam Ruzicka
Normal brain: Great for him! The Flames’ lines have not entirely been clicking to start this season, to say the least, and any help is much appreciated especially if it doesn’t have to come from the trade market. The brief injury to Jonathan Huberdeau in the middle of the great losing streak sent many Flames fans into a manic state, one only relieved by Youtube binge watching Connor Bedard highlights, and Darryl Sutter’s response to simply insert his healthy scratch forward into the first line was perhaps a sign that the coach was already out of ideas. Things were desperate and the team’s relief fourth line centre did not appear to be the solution.
But then it worked. Ruzicka is a (shade under) point per game player, has effectively pushed out the Roons (sky point), Huberdeau gets the Backlund bump, the Flames are winning again (or at least looking good), and everything is fine.
Glowing brain: Get real! This is not going to last.
I think on some level, hockey has never fully understood the Linsanity moment. For those who don’t remember a brief stretch of basketball history from ten years ago, Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin found himself inserted into the starting lineup thanks to an injury crisis, he went absolutely ballistic and led a struggling Knicks team on a seven game winning streak. He set records and briefly flirted with being the league’s best point guard. Then he never got close to those highs ever again and settled back into being a bench player who could be handy if he didn’t have to handle the ball most of the time. He was 24 during Linsanity’s original run, and 26 when he entered his “bouncing around the league” era.
Ruzimania is running wild right now, but I think Floob said it best:
Ruzimania is not lasting forever, brother.
Hockey’s term for Linsanity is the infinitely nerdier “regression to the mean.” Again, that’s not fully understood, not because of some deficiency in math skills (people generally understand PDO and why being way over/under 1.000 is bad/good), but the mental gymnastics involved in why it’s different this time is where they get hung up. Ruzicka is not simply riding the waves of his hot moment, he’s proof positive that giving prospects a shot is 100% guaranteed because they’ll always live up to their most generous scouting labels. He’s not simply benefitting from two much better teammates, he’s a talented puck retriever that offers a new dimension that the Huberdeau-Lindholm-Toffoli line was lacking. Not [on a PDO bender] actually, he is [this one convenient narrative as to why he’s on a PDO bender].
I implore you to kill that happy feeling of a homegrown prospect finally making it and accept that the Flames need another top six winger because Ruzicka is in that Micheal Ferland zone: he’ll fit until he extremely does not.
Cosmic brain: Put Ruzicka and Huberdeau on the same line with Kadri in the middle. Mangiapane-Backlund-Coleman, Phillips-Lindholm-Toffoli. I’m putting this into my model and it is showing me sigmas and all that good math shit.
Mackey/Valimaki
Normal brain: Connor Mackey stinks. Juuso Valimaki rocks. The Flames kept one and let the other go for free. You don’t have to be following along closely to know which is which.
The Flames got so enamored with Mackey’s do-nothing, low ceiling game that they couldn’t forgive Valimaki’s higher risk, higher reward game. The natural warping of perceptions over time made Mackey look good (not on any radar years ago, rapidly ascending to decent NHL prospect despite collecting pension cheques) and Valimaki look bad (first round defenceman, next best thing, extremely not that) set the bars at different places and the team couldn’t see which player was clearly better even though there was an obvious answer. Hockey conservatism wins again.
Cosmic brain: What if I told you that Valimaki also stunk and the Flames were 100% right to cut him.
I will invent a new term: Sam Bennett Syndrome. It’s what happens when a team moves on from a player for entirely justifiable, potentially correct reasons, ones you maybe even agreed with (hot tip while twitter still functions- from:[username] “valimaki” to see everyone’s Valimaki takes. Using this tip to delete them is cowardice). Then that player does at least 1% better in a new location and everyone gets a tummyache wondering what could’ve been all the while blaming the process that lead to this point.
Let’s apply it to Valimaki - he wasn’t great under a disgraced former coach, he wasn’t great under Geoff Ward, and he didn’t impress Darryl Sutter at all which is a death sentence for anyone under 24 years old. But he also got AHL opportunities and didn’t make a statement there either, not to mention suffering brutal injuries to key areas of the body that limited the promising parts of him. At every training camp he failed to make an impression. Yes, training camp is some dumb job interview bullshit, but the rules apply to everyone and you can at least wear something nice instead of the metaphorical sweat pants Valimaki kept showing up in.
What exactly do you do here? There’s a EA NHL video game approach that many people love applying to real hockey: if a player has a certain potential and certain skills, you can simply insert him into the lineup and everything will work. Real life is obviously different. If you stink bad, don’t make the most of your opportunities, and are generally unimpressive, you are not going to get many more chances regardless of how good you theoretically can be. Teams don’t (and arguably, shouldn’t) wait around for you to breakthrough after you struggle for a number of years, and it’s really on you if you don’t show them something that can change their mind.
Valimaki didn’t do that, and now he’s in Arizona - a team actively trying to lose as many games as possible - where he became the team’s second best defenceman the moment they claimed him. That’s great and I’m happy for him, he deserves a chance at individual success. It is also worth reinforcing that he is primed to do that as he is one of two defencemen on that team. On a roster full of replacement level players, he is somewhere above that. No one ever disputed he was probably at least an NHL player, but when you get the benefit of enough garbage teammates, you look so much better in comparison.
Quick aside: the Flames weren’t correct in giving the spot to Mackey either, that much is clear. He stinks and one doesn’t have to go back far enough to remember Spencer Foo and why getting all excited for late bloomer college prospects is an idea that rarely pays off. But again, what are you going to do. He showed up at the times Valimaki did not, both in training camp and in the AHL. If you’re one of those people who argue that AHL performances are truly meaningful, predictive, and should be rewarded you also have to agree that Mackey (first pair mainstay with the Heat, literally did everything) deserved it more than Valimaki (second pairing player not much more convincing than Andy Welenski or whoever).
Aside over. That doesn’t apply for the Flames. With a fully present and healthy roster for the Flames, he is still the seventh man out. It wasn’t going to happen here. That’s the way she goes sometimes. You stink, you get fired, you ply your trade somewhere else. If it cheers you up, the sample size skewed charts that say he’s one of the league’s best defencemen will correct itself over time. I mean, probably.
Jeremie Poirier
Normal brain: He is a good AHL prospect, probably a few years away.
Glowing brain: There’s no reason the Flames can’t also consider him as a potential call up among the mix of replacement level dreck they’re currently using. Sure, your third pairing defence doesn’t really need to be the best in the league, and whoever is on there now is at least doing a convincing job of being NHL players. But if you can find improvements somewhere in the margins, that’s more helpful than you think, especially if you started the season poorly and still look a little shaky as we approach the quarter mark of the year. Those lost points add up over time.
Cosmic brain: The Flames need to play him now. Not because he’s putting up x points in the AHL, I’m not even going to bother to look up how he’s doing. Poirier skates like the wind and the Flames are sorely missing that element due to Kylington’s absence. Send Mackey, Desimone, and Gilbert packing back to, uhhh, Calgary (maybe they need to move the AHL team elsewhere so that this can be more dramatic) and get me the redheaded French boy wheelin’ and dealin’ on the ice. Who cares if he makes a mistake, there’s waiver flexibility and Kylington will come back (fingers crossed).
Who knows how long that will be, but 20 games might be a good timeframe. Give Jeremie Poirier 20 games and stop wasting everyone’s time. In fact, give him the time. I want 15 minutes of Poirier per night. None of this nonsense where four defencemen are playing 25-28 minutes per night and two are playing 16 and seven minutes. Logging heavy minutes isn’t great for any defencemen, and I have a feeling that a partial reason the Flames don’t look that good in their own zone is that the entire defence is gassed by the third period. There’s many reasons you blow leads, but it’s much easier to do so when you’re running on empty. Poirier will literally solve every problem.
Cosmic brain zone may or may not come back in the future. Check back next Wednesday.
Marinerstack #8 - Teoscar? Te Amo
hot stove season is hot
by Floob (@itlooksreal)
We provide a public service here at the Scorchstack. I mean we literally provide one solitary public service, and that’s to keep you abreast of what’s happening with what I like to refer to as “America’s Sweetheart”, the Seattle Mariners.
Since we last checked in on the Official Major League Baseball Team of the Calgary Flames ᵒⁿˡʸ ˢᵘᵇˢᵗᵃᶜᵏ ⁿᵉʷˢˡᵉᵗᵗᵉʳ, The Assembled Committee from The Emerald City (I’ll think of a better nickname next time) bowed out of their American League Division Series after some heartbreaking losses to the [redacted because I truly hate to even say their names], but not before convincing fans across this sport that both the immediate and long term future for ball in Washington State is bright. Indeed, star center fielder and your new boyfriend Julio Rodriguez winning the AL Rookie Of The Year and being signed with the team until possibly, fucking somehow, 2035 is a big step in that direction. Re-signing staff ace Luis Castillo after he was traded to the Mariners at the deadline is also a major coup, and housing a promising young core that have graduated to every day players mixed in with quality veterans who can mash the ever loving shit out of a baseball is a sign to the entire league that Seattle is for real. It’s a shout out to, as a random example, free agent shortstop Carlos Correa, that the Pacific Northwest is a viable and attractive place to come win and make millions of dollars and learn to live with a lot of rain. And have a lot of fun in the process.
That axiom was further bolstered this week as the Mariners continued to do the thing some people who are me argue they do best: Hand the Toronto Blue Jays an L.
General Manager Jerry DiPoto went out and just traded for Jays outfielder Teoscar Hernández on Wednesday, sending relief pitcher Erik Swanson and prospect arm Adam Macko off to southern Ontario in the process. Hernández, who you may have noticed factored heavily into the highlight video I linked to just one paragraph above, strengthens an area of need in the corner outfield (in the sense that the defensively just okay Hernández is a lot better than Maybe-The-Worst-Outfielder-I’ve-Ever-Seen Jesse Winker) for reasonable money and not an egregious acquisition cost, keeping all the budget the team had earmarked for, again, picking a name at random here, someone like free agent shortstop Carlos Correa. To say nothing of Hernández’s ability to obliterate a baseball thrown in his general vicinity, he also checks off another important box for Scorchstack fandom: vibes. The vibes are immaculate:
Are you kidding me? This guy spending all day in the outfield next to literally Julio Rodriguez? They’re going to infuse a guy who likes to celebrate into the team that does a circle dance after every win? The Mariners are going to radiate good times after this trade. They can practically weaponize it.
Especially if things are going well. If the team can bring pending UFA Mitch Haniger back to play the other corner spot while landing one of the prize middle infielders that are set to hit the market (maybe Carlos Correa? Not a bad idea!), the team will be frighteningly deep at virtually every position, which teases a mouthwatering long term and sustained success for a fanbase who has never seen what that looks like.
But, as always, the most important part of this entire transaction is that it makes Blue Jays fans sad, which is important to me, because I’m a bit of an environmentalist and I need to use their tears to power my home. It’s one thing to overcome an 8-1 deficit and sweep Toronto right out of the postseason and the hearts of the people who might stop buying tickets to their games, it’s another to double back and take their sole offensive contributor in that series away from them while they’re still licking their wounds. It’s been an outstanding couple of months.
Let’s go Teoscar. Let’s Go Mariners. Carlos Correa.
Up Next Week
Well we may not be able to tweet out the relevant points of our articles in advance of actually publishing them, so I guess you’ll have to tune in! It’s a surprise!
The Flames are on their big long eastern roadie. They play the Flyers, which is always a turning point in the season for some strange reason.
clever elon musk joke goes here. maybe we buy Hockey Night in Canada promising to bring back Don Cherry, but instead fire everyone who knows how to operate a camera? can someone help me punch this one up?