Appointment practices in the major sports leagues have been under scrutiny recently. Especially in the NFL, where black qualified candidates can apparently not get a job in front of white people who seem to come from nowhere, whether it is fused, or if you the lions you get a guy who spent the last decade slams his head into a door like Goldberg. But it is not budding for football.
Anything related to the NHL is a big problem. Everyone knows that. The league has only one black assistant coach, and one black assistant GM. But maybe before the league can get to a point where it can push teams to hire more minorities, it might have to push teams to hire non-idiots first. And based on the evidence of today, it’s miles away.
The Pittsburgh Penguins have been in the market for a new GM since Jim Rutherford stepped up with the onset of this season. Today they did not just do find one bowl to fill the position who did almost nothing to deserve it, but then they found that the king of the bible was supervising.
First, they hired Ron Hextall as GM. Hextall’s previous stint as GM came with cross-state rivals Flyers, and there’s not much that can make someone get up from their chair and shout, ‘I need this guy!’ His essay record is acceptable, maybe even OK. Travis Sanheim, Oskar Lindblom, Ivan Provorov, Travis Konecny, Carter Hart and Nolan Patrick were added by Hextall. No one has yet completed the article, and two of them have been plagued by physical ailments, yet much promise, but more promise than production.
But none of this made a difference to the Flyers, who in Hextall’s term never finished above third place in the division. And some of his other decisions were staggering. The trade from Brayden Schenn to St. Louis for someone who claims to be called Jori Lehtera and claims to be a hockey player.
G / O Media can get a commission
He fired Craig Berube after one season as coach and then saw Berube and Schenn win a trophy with the Blues two years ago. name sounded like that of Hextall.
It could be argued that the base of this current Flyers team that is currently leading, no matter what teams are still in the Eastern Division, has its fingerprints everywhere in the bag, so maybe we can let it go for now. The Penguins clearly need a few hits in the draft, given the age of their key players and their cap situation, and perhaps they think Hextall’s record is enough to project that he’s the man for it. Debatable, but not a crime.
The real coup is that the Penguins also appoint Brian Burke as president of Hockey Ops. While we should all be happy about the move, Burke and his confused and more confused Don Cherry will have our TVs perform, but how he got another job in the league is amazing. Burke is perhaps the biggest victim of fraud, somehow camouflaged by the hockey media’s love for him because he challenged a man to a fight once in a barn. If it involves a barn, or if you just say ‘barn’, hockey writers will upload it.
Burke’s brilliance comes from GM of the Anaheim Ducks when they won their only Stanley Cup, almost entirely with players who were there when Burke showed up. The only thing he added to the team was recruiting assets he did not acquire or dock for Chris Pronger, who asked for Edmonton. That’s it. And that’s as good as it has become for the ducks ever since.
Burke was able to bring about one achievement and his cruel nature and set up the Toronto Maple Leafs to appoint him as GM, where she opening press conference gave Don Cherry the last erection he ever had (enjoy the rest of your day). And that’s it. He used ‘truculence’ in a sentence correctly. Hang a banner!
The Leafs did not reach a $ 50 ride per taxi in a playoff spot, and included giving up the first two rounds for Phil Kessel, exchanging for Dion Phaneuf’s dead hole, and getting exactly two helpful NHLs in four attempts to draft, Nazem Kadri and Morgan. Rielly. Oh, and then he was essentially an adviser to Calgary for five years, where they won exactly one playoff series. Fucking Midas touch, this guy.
And just for kicks, Burke was a key voice in the composition of the 2014 U.S. Olympic team and the 2016 World Cup that won exactly dick. This man became indignant all the time in a reputation he earned almost nothing.
There’s a clear lack of innovation in the NHL, and that’s because teams only hire the same 40 guys in the GM sphere or in the coaching sphere. Everyone is a ‘good hockey guy’, despite what they did or probably did not do.
As a reward for mediocrity, Hextall and Burke try to get Sidney Crosby another trophy.
If you have one job in the NHL, you get 17.