Scorchstack Issue #62 - Andrew Mangiapane’s performances definitely made life hell for this kid
Is Andrew Mangiapane cancelled? We'll be the judge of that.
The Calgary Flames can shut out teams like the New York Rangers, but when it comes to Adin Hill they’re about to be stonewalled. Is this some sort of sick game?!
What’s inside?
Christian, head of Scorchstack Intelligence & Research (SIR), explores the claims that Andrew Mangiapane is anti-labour and ruined a kid’s life.
Nathan doesn’t think mustaches are sexy — well tough shit, we’re forcing you to look at mustached Flames players past and present. You can’t stop us.
Bones Days and No Bones Days are taking the internet by storm so we turned it into a hockey metric. The future of hockey analysis is here, people.
Since last issue
Another Monday, another The Big Monday Thing™ by Floob. Rating continue to be through the roof!
The Flames lost to the Stars, crushed the Rangers, and then last night they lost to the Sharks. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Flames of our lives.
Mike was not one, but two(!) podcasts and will be on Andrew Berkshire’s GAME OVER on Thursday with Sportsnet’s Tara Slone.
We’re still protesting the Glamorgan Safeway in Calgary over their mustache policies. Everyone go shop at Save On Foods and use promo code SCORCHSTACK to save $15 off a grocery purchase of $150 or more.
Scorchstack Investigates: did Andrew Mangiapane ruin a Buffalo Wild Wings employee's life?
The hard hitting journalism we win Pulitzers for all the time.
by Christian (@decayinwtheboys)
On Monday night, something disturbing slid across the desks of the Scorchstack offices: slander against a Calgary Flames player that was not originally published by the Scorchstack.
If you don’t have the time to watch the clip, here’s a quick summary: the Buffalo Wild Wings in Barrie had a partnership with the Barrie Colts, Andrew Mangiapane’s OHL team. If the Colts scored five or more goals at a home game, everyone in attendance would get five free wings at BWWs. During Mangiapane’s junior career, where he would rack up back-to-back 100+ point seasons, this was a frequent occurrence.
You may think that this makes Mangiapane a hero of the people for feeding them, arguably one better than our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. If you think we’re blaspheming, Jesus fed 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish one time, but Mangiapane scored five free wings for the thousands who attended Barrie Colts games, and he did it multiple times. The stats don’t lie, Andrew Mangiapane has a case for being the second coming (we will investigate later).
Since I’m already going to hell for that last paragraph, let’s sneak in one more joke: Andrew Messiahpane. Thank you.
But all this miracle work came at the expense of a high school fry cook (I don’t know who he is, but apparently he’s big enough to be on a fantasy sports podcast with high production value). His late shifts at B-dub-dubs were often extended, as crowds poured out of the Barrie Molson Centre and literally across the street to enjoy their free wings. All other plans had to be put aside, as he slaved over hot oil to cook wings for freeloaders at a paltry $9.60/hr rate. As he describes, Mangiapane’s offensive production caused his shifts to run late “so many times,” often pushing to 12:30 in the morning when he needed to “goddamn study for a math test.”
Could this be true? Could Andrew Mangiapane, beloved bread boy, actually be an anti-labour agitator for one particular location of a chain restaurant? Is he anti-education too? Is this a stain on his reputation, or a case of a local trying to ride someone else’s coattails?
Scorchstack did slander Andrew Mangiapane last issue, so it may seem to some that we’re only trying to disprove this out of spite because this guy stole our bit, but that’s not true. We’re a respected journalistic outlet, we had to do the research: how often did Mangiapane make this poor fry cook late for school? And to what extent was Mangiapane actually responsible? Like good journalists, we took a multi-step approach to this investigation.
Step 0: Some assumptions
We’re not going to reach out to Buffalo Wild Wings to dig up six year old schedules for a teenager whose name we don’t know, I’m certain that’s illegal, so let’s assume some basic points:
This unnamed fry cook worked the night of every Barrie Colts game.
Unnamed fry cook worked at Buffalo Wild Wings from 2013-2016, the length of Andrew Mangiapane’s career.
Every day after a Colts game was a goddamn math test for this kid, thus making an early punch-out from work a necessity.
The promotion ran consistently for Mangiapane’s OHL career, and for every Colts home game, not just regular season home games.
Step 1: How often did Barrie score five goals at home?
Let’s begin by casting a wide net. The Barrie Colts played 102 regular season home games, in addition to 17 home playoff games, and three preseason home games in 2015 (the OHL did not keep preseason records before that season) for a total of 122 games. How often did the Colts score five goals?
The answer is 54 home games, which has you feeling bad for those poor Buffalo Wild Wingers. Already, the evidence against Mangiapane is piling up.
Step 2: How often did Andrew Mangiapane contribute to those five goal games?
Mangiapane scored at least a point in 44 of those games. Early on, it’s not looking great. We may have to cancel him.
Step 3: To what extent was Mangiapane responsible for this fry cook’s suffering?
Of course, we all know that hockey is a team sport. Even though Mangiapane was the star player, there were 17 other skaters out there for the Colts on any given night. Blame shouldn’t fall squarely on the shoulders of Mangiapane.
In the interview, our long-suffering fry cook describes a specific game where Mangiapane scored a hat-trick in the last half of the third period in a 2-1 game, unleashing a crowd of hungry and excited fans on a low quality chicken wing restaurant. Obviously, scenarios like that couldn’t have been that frequent: he wasn’t scoring hat-tricks every night. It stands to reason that Mangiapane shouldn’t bear the burden if all he did was pick up a measly secondary assist.
To help answer this question, I’ve created a little scoring system to judge Mangiapane:
A goal will be awarded two Scorchstack points (can’t think of a good name)
A primary assist will be awarded one Scorchstack point
A secondary assist will be awarded a half Scorchstack point
A hockey point will only be awarded a Scorchstack point if the hockey point came during the first five goals. If Mangiapane scored seven goals, but they were goals six through twelve in a game, he would be awarded zero Scorchstack points. Since the threshold for free wings is five goals, anything after that is superfluous and we cannot hold that against Mangiapane.
The maximum amount of Scorchstack points Mangiapane can score is ten (five goals that are also the first five goals of the game for the Colts), providing a convenient x/10 scale to judge him.
After counting up the points, we can clearly see which unpaid overtime shifts were Mangiapane’s fault, and which weren’t. In 10 of the 44 games, Mangiapane registered less than two Scorchstack points, indicating that his contribution was less than a goal. He could only score below two Scorchstack points through assists, and not two primary ones. Although not entirely guilt-free, his responsibility in torturing wait staff is negligible in these ten games. Others did more.
Let’s move ahead to the next tier, games where Mangiapane registered two Scorchstack points or more, but less than four Scorchstack points. This indicates that Mangiapane scored at least one goal, or at least had a bucket load of assists, and thus had more of a direct contribution to free wings. We found 19 such games.
One goal might not sound like a lot to condemn Mangiapane, but a disturbing trend has emerged when sifting through the data: he loved scoring that fifth goal. He scored the fifth goal in a 10-3 win on January 3rd, 2015. A month later on February 7th, he scored goal #5 in a 7-1 win. He wasn’t just limiting to scoring that crucial goal, he also assisted on the fifth on four other occasions. Three of those games I just linked too happened in a four week span, perhaps indicating that Mangiapane had a terrible wings experience sometime before January, 2016. He was out to make them suffer.
One that stands out as particularly dickish (but very funny) from this data set is this December 4th, 2014 game between the Colts and the Mississauga Steelheads. With the Colts up 4-3 with time winding down, Mangiapane potted the fifth goal (his only point of the game) with 13 seconds left on an empty net. Picture, if you will, the overworked BWW staff letting out a sigh of relief that there’s less than a minute left in the game and it doesn’t look like a stampede of small town Ontarians are going to be flooding into your place of work. All of a sudden, when it really doesn’t matter, a tiny Italian boy fucks your entire night up.
The final tier is the 4+ Scorchstack Point range, in which Mangiapane registered 15 such games. These are the games where Mangiapane racked up multiple goals and points, and thus could be more easily at fault. Thankfully for Mangiapane, there’s no games where he registered higher than six Scorchstack points. You can never pin the blame entirely on him, but he did do a lot of the work.
In this data set, he’s not even trying to hide his contempt for Buffalo Wild Wings. His penchant for scoring goal number five is not lurking in the darkness, but loudly expressing itself to anyone within earshot. Of these 15 games, Mangiapane scored the fifth goal nine times, and assisted on two other fifth goals.
Mangiapane is not only just responsible for minimum wage worker suffering, he’s signing his name on it. In five of these games, he scored a hat-trick. Every time, he finished it on the fifth goal. January 10th, 2015- hat trick goal is the fifth goal. February 6th, 2015- hat trick goal is the fifth goal. February 13th, 2016- hat trick goal is the fifth goal.
Even the seemingly exaggerated story the ex-fry cook told about Mangiapane scoring three goals late in a 2-1 game is true, even if the details are a bit fudged. November 14th, 2015- Colts are leading the Saginaw Spirit 2-1 with three minutes left in the second. All of a sudden, Mangiapane scores two quick goals in 22 seconds to end the second period, and feeds the crowd 9:16 into the third. This man said they all came within the last ten minutes of the third, but we’ll give him some grace as it’s a CHL game that happened six years ago, so who cares (besides me for writing this and you for reading it).
His animosity for mediocre wings knows no bounds, and he will get that fifth goal even if it’s not counted by hockey statisticians, as evidenced by this January 16th, 2016 game. Tied 4-4, the Colts and the North Bay Battalion needed overtime. When that didn’t solve anything, they went to a shootout which Barrie won. Would you like to guess who scored the shootout winner?
What’s all this prove? Mangiapane may not have just been incidental involved in the exploitation of cheap labour, he may have delighted in it. This podcast guy isn’t just associating one bad memory of Mangiapane with all the other bad times, he’s actually right.
Step 4: How many five goal games actually took place during a school night?
But wait, let’s go back a bit.
When I first heard this interview, the accusation that Andrew Mangiapane made this guy late for school set off an alarm bell. It tracks that Mangiapane would be responsible for pushing Colts games to five or more goals, but CHL games are more often than not played on weekends. At least nominally, CHL players are also high school students. They have the same Monday-Friday schedule other teenagers in their cities have.
Once again, we have to filter out the muck. The Colts only played 22 games on school nights where they scored five or more goals at home, and Mangiapane recorded Scorchstack points in 16 of them. Seven of those games fell into the two or fewer Scorchstack point category, which we agreed means that Mangiapane’s points were inconsequential to free wings.
So by volume alone, Mangiapane did not specifically ruin school night. Nine games over three seasons of hockey is nothing.
But those nine games? He really saved the pain for those weekday nights. That late, meaningless empty netter I brought up a while ago? Happened on a Thursday. He had a primary contribution to each of the first four goals on another Thursday, too. Burying the meaningless fifth goal in a 7-5 loss? School night. Mangiapane also notched the primary assist on four Barrie goals on December 31st, 2014 which was a Wednesday. School’s on break then, but we’ll count it simply because he ruined New Year’s too.
If anything, Mangiapane definitely fucked with this guy’s social life more than he fucked with his school life. This poor kid missed many-a Saturday night with his friends experiencing the nightlife of Barrie, which in my experiences with that town, is this:
Drinking beer in a bush
Drinking beer in a bush
Chewing tobacco
Trucks
Drinking beer in a bush
What a loss!
So we’ll accept this fry cook’s general truth: yes, Andrew Mangiapane did cause him to work late a lot. Did he cause him grief on school nights? Not as much as he claims, but he definitely had a right to feel targetted.
Judgement:
Well, the evidence is clear: Andrew Mangiapane’s performances definitely made life hell for this kid.
But I think we can all agree that Mangiapane may not have been targeting this fry cook, it’s more likely they didn’t know each other. I think what’s happening here is much more clear: Andrew Mangiapane fucking hates Buffalo Wild Wings. He waged a silent war against the overpriced wings and bro’d out aesthetic of a restaurant with really annoying commercials. Maybe it was a bad experience, maybe it was food poisoning one time, maybe it’s some unknown political agenda.
His motivations aren’t clear, but his goals are even murkier: was he intending to bankrupt the business by making them give out free products on most nights? Was he trying to get everyone so sick of wings that they’d even turn down free ones and never go again? Was he trying to force all the employees to quit due to the constant unscheduled overtime?
The only man with the answers is Andrew Mangiapane, and I think he would drive you to the loony bin himself if you asked him the question “did you intentionally push Barrie Colts games to five goals so that the local Buffalo Wild Wings would suffer?” So we will never know the whole truth, but we can come away with one very important one: fear Andrew Mangiapane.
On a side note, the Flames might want to look into partnering with a downtown area chain restaurant. Just saying.
Pictures of Calgary Flames With Mustaches I'm Forcing Nathan To Look At
It’s rather self-explanatory.
by Floob (@itlooksreal)
I’m assuming you’re a loyal listener to The ScorchStack’s now runaway hit Twitter Spaces post game call in show, Overtime 2. You’re always like “the games are fun, but the only thing we care about is Overtime 2. Please start Overtime 2. We can’t get enough Overtime 2.”
We know that, and we’ve got you, our loyal compadres. It is a sports call in show, but it is also a plugged in, hip, game-changing current events program, and given that we are now in the month of November, our attention can only be focused on one thing: mustaches.
On a previous episode of Overtime 2 - which again, I’m assuming you saw, because you never miss a broadcast of Overtime 2 - Ramz and myself brought up the topic of Flames defenseman Erik Gudbranson, and how objectively terrific he looks with a mustache. Our passionate but somewhat misguided pal Nathan proceeded to explain that the mustache looked bad ON ERIK GUDBRANSON of all people, but also on everyone in general. He means well, but that was quite the admission from a fellow Scorchie who claims to be half Italian.
On it went, the next twenty or so minutes of precious airtime dedicated to trying, in vain, to show Nathan the error of his ways, and even though we were right, we were unsuccessful in convincing our friend on this day.
But I am a petty completionist, and I also don’t have much else to talk about this week, which is why I’m instead choosing to relitigate the topic here on our hallowed Wednesday issue. It’s been a while since we’ve had a good vendetta around here, anyway, and scandal sells copies. With that in mind, here are a bunch of pictures of Calgary Flames looking great in mustaches.
Jamie Macoun
TJ Brodie
Erik Gudbranson
Magnum PI
it counts.
Sam Bennett
Rejean Lemelin
Kent Nilsson
Lanny McDonald
Salvador Dali
He’s an oft-recalled depth defenseman from the Stockton Heat, if you’ve never heard of him.
These are all very important pictures, and I’m glad you got to see them today, but as long as Nathan saw them, and is forced to admit he was wrong, that was all that matters. Mustache’s on your nose, Nathan.
Calculating Expected Bones Day Percentage
The REAL Stats.
by Konnie (@Konnie49)
I know that all of you have been 100% dialed into advanced stats since at least the start of the season when the Flames started to become really good, but even the most knowledgeable nerds can only predict and analyze so much about the game of hockey. Regardless of how good a teams CF% percentage is, or how many expected goals that they should have scored in a game, these measurements can only go so far. No, what we need is real analytics. Real, quantifiable data that will be guarantee team success moving forward.
And we finally have that. Say hello to Expected Bones Day percentage, or eBD% for short.
For those who have not been informed, A bones day refers to a dog on Tiktok called Noodle and whether or not he will stand up at the beginning of the day. If his owner lifts him up and Noodles does get up, then the day is refered to a Bones Day. If Noodles instead sulks back down into bed, then henceforth the day is referred to a No Bones Day. Truly riveting stuff.
Here is where it gets interesting. With the Flames season starting in full swing since the middle of October, the team has been dominant. Due to the nature of Bones Day calculations happening at the start of the day, we can monitor how the team will perform on Bones Days and Non Bones Day.
So far in the season, the Flames are 5-2-2 on Bones Days and have a record of 2-0-1 on Non Bones Days. From that alone, we can gave that the Flames are twice as likely to play a game on a Bones Day than not. With a winning percentage of 62.2% for BD vs a winning percentage of 83.3% on NBD, The Flames will be a dominant force during Non Bones Days and will have to rely on steady play to continue there good fortunes on Bones Days.
And it seems that they will get a strong chance to do so. Since the start of the season, there have 16 bones days to date which rounds out to 64% of all days this season being Bones Days. With results like that, we can expect the Flames to win 62.2% of that time, meaning that for slightly under 2 thirds of the season, the flames will win around 3 out of every 5 games. Extremely impressive stuff.
What’s more impressive is just how dominant the Flames have been on the Non Bones Days. In the remaining 36% of days being Non Bones Days, the Flames winning at a rate of 83.3% of their games (and no losses in regulation), or over 8 out of every 10 games. Shame that No Bones Days happen significantly less, or else the Flames would be easily challenge for the best record in a single season.
Using the calculations we have made above, we can see that the Flames will finish with a Bones Day record of 30-12-12 and a Non Bones Day record of 19-0-9 (plus/minus 1 game), with a total record of 49-12-21, with a winning percentage of 72.56% also known as our exBD%.
With this calculation, we do not need to account of any outside variable of whether or not the team is outshooting their opponents or how effective their powerplay is. We have a simple, yet very powerful tool on our hands to showcase exactly how far this team can really go and what we as fans should expect out of this Calgary Flames team. All thanks to a dog that sometimes can’t get out of bed.
Up Next Week
Nathan grows a mustache
The Scorchstack team is hired by Sportlogiq for eBD%
Scorchstack pivots to spoken word poetry