Discord In Winnipeg? Preposterous

I’m not a big football fan, but I do know that everyone I follow on twitter who likes football also hates Mike Florio, the proprietor of Pro Football Talk. I read the hockey version, Pro Hockey Talk, for about two weeks before figuring out that it sucked, but they came up with an absolute gem yesterday.

I don’t like anything that tries to crawl inside the minds of pro athletes and coaches, especially when the writer isn’t in the room day in and day out, but this was an especially nice effort at trolling. Apparently there is something wrong with Claude Noel trying to treat his players like a professional hockey team and not some feel good sideshow act because it’s their first year back in the NHL. As a fan I would be happy with an 0-82 season because I am just happy to watch Jets hockey, but implying that it’s somehow bad for a coach to demand his team play hard is ridiculous.

For the record, I don’t think effort is an issue. I just think this is a bad hockey team. Sure there have been some bright spots: Alex Burmistrov is turning into a pretty good NHL player (and he’s still only 19), and Ondrej Pavelec looks like he’d be a pretty damn good goalie if he only had some defensemen in front of him. But it’s going to take a few years for this regime to erase the mistakes made in Atlanta.

To suggest Noel is “embattled” or that he “doesn’t like his team” is some pretty interesting reading between the lines. Of course, saying you’re reading between the lines can excuse all types of behavior, so reading between the lines I’ll say that PHT is “absolute horseshit writing.”