ScorchStack Issue #127 - Even with a whole series to pass the summer, you’re still gonna get this content
It's hot outside and I for one am going to get an ice cream
If you have a Bluesky invite, you’re obviously encouraged to follow Scorchstack (scorchstack.bluesky.social) on there. But while you’re there, make sure you also follow Tibs (nhlflames.bluesky.social) and Konnie (calgaryflames.bluesky.social). And also the others. But mostly those handles.
What’s inside?
Our Forever A Real One series continues with a former Flame who may not have truly developed on the ice but sure did in our hearts.
Pokémon.
Konnie reached out to his real GM friend and shot the shit regarding some trade proposals.
Since last issue
Forever A Real One continued with issue #126 and then a blessed tribute to the most forever one of all - Michael Stone.
They announced the proper retiring of Miikka Kiprusoff and to make it even better they are going to take down Vernon’s number from the rafters. It will still be essentially retired cause everyone knows it’s cursed and doesn’t want it.
It’s summertime but the hits keep coming
The ScorchStack Forever A Real One Series: Sven Baertschi (T-12th)
Svensational!
by Tibs (@decayinwtheboys)
I am pro-gatekeeping in sports. Not in the girls-and-gays-shouldn’t-watch sense, but in the shut-the-fuck-up-you-whiny-fuckin-babies-you-have-not-begun-to-understand-what-it-means-to-suffer sense. With that in mind, I would like to gatekeep most Flames fans from cheering for the Calgary Flames.
I figure that most Flames fans came into the fold around 2015. I can’t blame you for that, the Flames finally did something good that year, and the previous years were watching the clock run down on the Iggy/Kipper era in an extremely drawn-out and numbing fashion. But joining up then means you missed Sven, and if you missed Sven, I never want to hear you talk about a prospect being mishandled by the organization. You have not begun to understand what it means to suffer.
Let’s set the scene: remember that malaise you felt from about game 50 onwards this past season? Now expand that over a period of several years and spread it across all levels of the organization. Even at your most dramatic, you will not capture what the 2009-2013 era of the Flames felt like.
There’s no past because the team hadn’t achieved anything, no present because the team wasn’t going to achieve anything, and no future because every draft pick was traded to achieve all that nothing. Here’s where we stood with the Flames in the first round before the Sven draft:
Kris Chucko: could not be in a room with the lights on
Matt Pelech: just as stinky as the day they picked him
Leland Irving: Homer’s roast pig
Mikael Backlund: the saving grace (natch)
Greg Nemisz: See Matt Pelech
Tim Erixon: already did not want to sign in Calgary
2011 pick: traded for Olli Jokinen and then thankfully used on Brandon Gormley
Prospect perverts weren’t invented, so no one had heard of TJ Brodie yet, but he was also the only good Flames pick outside of the first round during this time. Dire fuckin scene.
All this naturally led to bad feelings with the first-round pick in the 2011 draft: they were going to blow it. There was no chance that they wouldn’- holy shit they picked a good player. Someone who scored more than a point per game in junior. A player that was at least heard of by the draft panel, someone whose name wasn’t immediately followed by “a bit of a reach” or the other generous phrases the talking heads use to not appear negative during draft coverage.
It sounds goofy now, but just the presence of Sven electrified people. That sweet, monosyllabic name that made for good chantin’. The fact that he was Swiss, a unicorn nation back then, felt special. That number 47, bizarre and clunky but instantly unique and special. That there was a good player under the age of 20 was enough to make you think “You know, maybe better days truly are ahead.”
Perhaps this all sounds naive and rose-tinted in retrospect. But motherfucker, argue with this:
Three goals! In five games! In a last-minute, emergency call-up stint! The motherfuckin’ Svensation was here!
And look, the next season wasn’t as good as that either, what with the “oh, Iggy and Kipper really won’t be here next year” and the 16 other jamokes on the roster playing some real definitely-did-not-have-a-training-camp-because-of-the-lockout hockey. Sven wasn’t that good, but no one else was and ten points in 20 games was enough to get you excited. What else was there, Roman Cervneka and Kenny Agostino?
But Flames management, somehow at its stupidest ever, decided that the real reason the team was bad wasn’t because of decades of accumulated crud and a neglected prospect cupboard, but rather that a 21-year-old without even 50 NHL games under his belt did not quite look like a full-fleged NHL player yet. If you think a Darryl Sutter post-game is harsh, check out the two top men in hockey ops host a press conference explicitly about how this dude is ass less than a quarter of the way through the season. Note that Brian Burke says he doesn’t want to throw a kid under the bus in a media event where he is doing exactly that (also note that the Herald uploaded this in 2018 for some reason).
When Burke stepped in and fired Feaster, his next move, almost happening simultaneously, was to send Sven down to the AHL. That’s pointed as fuck. The man saw the entire Jay Feaster tenure and decided that the one thing he did right, giving an exciting prospect room to grow on an expectation-less team and refusing to send him down, was actually wrong. Instead, we got Kevin Westgarth and barely saw Sven again. He got 15 more games as a fourth-liner the next season. Whichever part of Siberia Bob Hartley currently resides in probably isn’t cold enough, and I hope Burkie has been brushing up on his Siberian (Konnie what language do they speak in Siberia) as well.
Even when he resigned himself to his fate and asked to get out, Sven still couldn’t win, as he was flipped to the Vancouver Canucks for a second-round pick and immediately got eliminated by his former team in the playoffs. Forever the sweet boy who gave everything to the franchise that didn’t deserve him, that pick turned into Rasmus Andersson.
Thank you Sven, thank you for Rasmus Andersson, and thank you for this picture*:
*The picture is lost to time, so we give you the picture it was based off. Sven’s face was where Iggy’s is, Burke’s is where Feaster was. If you have it, scorchstack@gmail.com
Calgary Flames as Pokémon
Even with a whole series to pass the summer, you’re still gonna get this content
by Nathan (@hanoten)
So, a new online thing made the rounds last week which was able to use fancy stats to line up which player is which Pokémon. There have been a few of these that have gone around the web over the years, but this one is new and with all due respect to Twitter user Blandalytics (real name Kyle Bland) - I don’t like it!
The premise is simple - using the data from the genius twins at Evolving Hockey, things like Time On Ice and EV Defense can be substitutions into things like HP and Defense stats for Pokémon, but it’s not a perfect science. How do I know this? Because one of the first players I looked up was Milan Lucic, and got Bulbasaur. What a front to Bulbasaur, #1 in the Pokédex and in many of our hearts. Also, Bulbasaur can continue to evolve and grow if they’re into that kind of thing, and Lucic is sunsetting in Boston like a Dropkick Murphys fan. These things are not the same! Also, I get there is a similarity score that Kyle Bland to show how close these things are but I am choosing to ignore it in favour of content. I will also be picking from all gens.
First, are all the options bad? Not necessarily. Best defensive forward in the league Mikael Backlund (factually true since Patrice Bergeron retired) is the a defensive Forretress as we all knew all along.
Anyway, here we go.
Adam Ružička: Girafarig. Young and tall and hoping you won’t notice it isn’t all that good.
Andrew Mangiapane: Honchkrow. Arguably the most Italian-looking Pokémon, although Mangiapane is a nice Italian boy and Honchkrow makes a few calls and you’re sleeping with the fishes.
Blake Coleman: Cacturne. Besides the obvious Western motif, they were described in Sapphire as “following in a ragtag group” which is dead to rights the Calgary Flames.
Chris Tanev: Bastiodon. From the Ultra Moon Pokédex: “This Pokémon is from roughly 100 million years ago. Its terrifyingly tough face is harder than steel.”
Daniel Vladař: Pidgeotto. Easy to root for but ultimately never in the long-term plans for the team. Also have the same haircut.
Dennis Gilbert: Take your pick off this list.
Elias Lindholm: Wartorle. Pretty good, although definitely benefits from being around other stars as well. Kind of a jerk but lovably so.
Jacob Markström: Lucario. Looks pretty cool, but not as good as the hype would lead you to believe. Defense and HP undermine it.
Jonathan Huberdeau: Delcatty. Okay I phoned this one in, Delcatty evolves from Skitty, and prior to Gen IV, Assist was the signature move of Skitty. But Delcatty is older and shifter. Like his contract, they can’t all be winners.
Jordan Oesterle: No number announced by the team yet so obviously he’s MissingNo.
MacKenzie Weegar: Reuniclus. Potential ablities include Magic Guard and Regenerator which is spot on, but is also just generally an underrated Pokémon in the competitive scene.
Matthew Coronato: Tyrogue. Kid is young and a fighter so it seems and could evolve so many ways! How exciting.
Nazem Kadri: Tentacruel. Quite simply rocks and will definitely fuck you up. Best to stay away.
Nikita Zadorov: Boldore. Next.
Noah Hanifin: Gurdurr. About to be traded and [redacted].
Oliver Kylington: Rapidash. Been around for a while, just a sight to behold at top speed, primed to make a comeback.
Rasmus Andersson: Krookodile but specifically the one from the anime wearing sunglasses.
Stay off the tracks.
Yegor Sharangovich: Graveller. The hope is that the trade unlocks something new and forceful here and he’s not just going to be a big rock on the ice.
Anyway, I’m sure that Bland’s actual service is good and just whiffed on the first impression of Lucic being Bulbasaur. Give it a go if you have time to kill this summer and please do not tell me about it unless you are superficially Gavin my good buddy who I talk mostly about hockey and Pokémon with.
NHL GM Evaluates your Trade Proposals... Again!
Yes, we got an actual current NHL GM to do this again, and we still won't tell you who it is
by Konnie (@konnie49)
Hello, readers. It has been a while since this happened, but after many months of careful negotiations and promises that this won’t go as badly as it did last time, we here at Scorchstack are proud to announce that we have finally brought back our NHL General Manager from Issue #15! Why don’t you say hello again to all the fans?
Hello, again to you all. It is I, *[REDACTED]*
(No we still cannot disclose the name of our mystery GM. Stop asking.)
Oh, sorry.
Thanks to the generosity of our wonderful guest, we are glad to be here today to ask our lovely GM to evaluate even MORE trade proposals from CapFriendly!
I swear to god, if they are as bad as last tim-
Let’s get started with our first one!
Trade 1
This is a bad trade.
Come on, you said you wouldn’t do this again. Like could just do a bit of analysis?
What do you want me to say? There is nothing to evaluate.
Can you just play along? PLEASE?
Alright, fine. This trade is an absolute pile of dogshit. First off, the Flames are not selling off their best centre and a guy they just acquired and signed for a failed #3 overall pick and some AHL player and a pick that’s more than likely locked in the 25-32 overall range. Second, why would Lindholm even agree to go back and play for his old team? Thirdly, you can’t have conditions based on a team re-signing a player. Idiots!
Woah there, haha. A little spicy off the bat there Mr. GM. Let’s move on.
Trade 2
Alright, there is some clear wishful thinking here. No one is gonna take the Flames’ garbage with a first attached and just think “Sure, I’ll give my team’s best forward for that!”. Stop living in this fantasy land.
Come on, I don’t think this one is too far from reality, no?
Trade 3
What the hell is going on? Are you trying to make fun of me with these? For once, show me an actual sane proposal, or I am gone.
Woah woah. Cool your jets there Mr. GM. (editor’s note: No, this GM is not associated with any non-airport NHL teams)
Trade 4
Okay, there we go. Finally, some god damn sense.
How dare you disrespect the Roons like that, Mr. GM.
Trade 5
All right, I’m done. Enough of this. I am out of here. Don’t even think about ever contacting me again, we are through. I have had enough of this stupid little pathetic game.
Ah crap.
Well, it seems like we have lost contact with our GM during this exercise, but uhhh hey, got some analysis! Er, kind of.
Whatever, I hope his team misses the playoffs anyways.
Up Next Week
The kickball team that half the Scorchies are on may get their first win of the season.
We debate the evolution of Olli Jokinen’s facial hair.