The 2022 NHL Scouting Combine is taking place this week at the [insert whichever bank name it is now] Arena in Buffalo. The famous fitness testing portion of the combine will be on Saturday, where these buff teenagers will be ogled by a bunch of overweight NHL scouts in their 50’s while they do gym workout tests which have basically no correlation to how good they will be at NHL hockey.
Much more fun for us are the stories about the interviews with the NHL teams. There’s always some weird questions the players are asked because teams think this tells them something about the players’ personalities. It doesn’t, but they keep doing it anyway. This season it looks like there’s a new question which is getting attention:
NHL Scouting Combine: A popular question by some NHL clubs looking to catch a prospect off guard during the interviews is what animal would best describe him as a hockey player. Most say 'lion.' Juraj Slafkovsky today told me he responded 'Wolf'.
— Mike Morreale (@mikemorrealeNHL) June 1, 2022
Because of course they all say lion. There’s no creativity in hockey.
This made me wonder what animal would our Maple Leafs players be? I’m sure we can come up with some more interesting animals to describe them. For example, I would say Auston Matthews is a rhinoceros, Mitch Marner is a mongoose, and William Nylander is a kangaroo.
Oh, and Pierre Engvall is a giraffe. I mean, that one is a given.
Other News
The New York Rangers convincingly won their first game against the Tampa Bay Lightning last night, finishing the game 6-2. Andrei Vasilevskiy seemed powerless to stop the goals, including this lightning bolt of a shot from Mika Zibanejad.
Tonight is game #2 between the Oilers and Avalanche. We’ll see if this one is as crazy as the first game. Game time is 8:00 p.m. ET.
Martin St. Louis officially named head coach of the Montreal Canadiens - Eyes On The Prize
Interim no more, St. Louis will remain behind the bench with a new three year contract.
Numbers Game - Fifty Two
Big data already changed the way cricket was being watched. Now, machine learning is transforming the way it’s played. [SPECIES: A long form article about new kinds data analysis arriving in another sport. Understanding cricket is not required to read this one, which is good because who understands how cricket works anyway?]
