Ice-Cold Takes Summer Tournament Round 1: Good dogs vs. bad offseason signings

Ice-Cold takes is a weekly humor column diving into what is trending around the NHL. For no particular reason, this week’s column will be the first of a seven-week tournament of summer hockey trends.

The Ice-Cold Takes Summer Tournament of hockey trends is a longstanding tradition…that was invented an hour ago. We take the eight hottest summer hockey trends and have them fight to the death (metaphorically) through the NHL offseason

Before we dive into this fun special edition of the column, we need to cover a bit of legitimately important NHL news. Let’s start with the massive bombshell that dropped over the weekend.

The Philadelphia Flyers have signed James van Riemsdyk. Better known as JVR, this kid is a top NHL talent and perennial 30-goal scorer who is bound to transform the Flyers from third-best team in the Metro Division to third-best team in the Metro Division with perhaps a slightly better record. You just can’t put a price on that (Edit: Yes you can — $35-million).

Oh ,yeah. And that Tavares guy signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs (More on that later). Here’s a live look at Islanders general manager Lou Lamoriello’s conversation with his child-prodigy Kyle Dubas in Toronto:

We’re all dreading the next seven years of Toronto sports media, but at least Auston Matthews might stick around a while longer now that he won’t have to take all of the blame when the Leafs lose in the playoffs again. Remind me again of what Tavares’ post-season record looks like? Yeah. He’s going to fit right in with the Leafs. Now, back to the important stuff.

The Tournament

With only World Cup soccer and MLB baseball on television, we’re seriously lacking exciting competition at this point in the summer. Thankfully, Ice-Cold Takes is going to quench that thirst by focusing on hockey-related trends in bracket format to determine an overall NHL summer champion.

This slight format change will take place over the next seven weeks, where we will work through this bracket of summer hockey trends until we’ve determined the ultimate champion. It’s the tournament you

don’t need

didn’t know you needed.

The eight competitors will be revealed on a weekly basis until the semi-final is set. We start out in the Southeast region with hockey dogs vs. bad offseason signings.

Hockey Dogs

Hockey dogs are quickly becoming a year-round staple around the NHL. Whether associated with a team or trying out for one, (hu)man’s best friend is always welcome in hockey. This good dog is training hard for the next NHL season and stick work is a must if you want to make it in today’s league.

Incredible job! Get this dog some treats right now. That spin-move rivals only Brad Marchand’s and this good dog is sure to make waves for whoever he/she signs with. If nothing else, this cutie is already miles ahead of Alex Burrows in both ability and likeability (and hopefully doesn’t bite).

Speaking of ability, it’s pretty clear that Carolina Hurricanes’ Jaccob Slavin is the second best athlete in his family after seeing what his pup can do off the dock. The more you watch this, the more impressive it looks!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkxiMIGFWJN/

Dogs are ridiculously athletic and sometimes we forget about this fact until we see a video like this. If Slavin is ever looking for a career change, his dog can definitely compete on those cool dog shows that play on the obscure sports channels on Saturday mornings.

Distance: 10/10. Height: 10/10. Sure, she didn’t quite reach the toy but she did far better than this really smart human trying to perform a similar feat:

Bad Offseason Signings

The competition is fierce in the opening week of the tournament as the NHL is never short of a few bad free agency signings. While the story behind Jack Johnson is a wild and sad one and we’re all happy he’s making money, a five-year, $16.25-million dollar deal for someone of his caliber is not good.

Lou Lamoriello and the New York Islanders continue to gather L’s this week as they began by replacing John Tavares with Leo Komarov (slight difference in skill here) and continued by giving up one of their goaltending prospects for

nothing in return

Matt Martin.

Fellow FanSider David Rouben perfectly summed up this acquisition of Martin in his piece about the Leafs/Islanders off-season dealings:

"Islanders fans will be happy that they got Matt Martin, since it’s a homecoming and he was briefly linked to the New York Rangers, but that happiness will subside once they realize that they got Matt Martin."

While we’re on the topic, here’s a real ice-cold take for you: John Tavares to the Leafs was bad for Toronto. Obviously it’s never bad to sign the best player on the market and one of the best in the league, but when you’re already annoying your 20-year-old future star, how the hell are you going to manage two players of that magnitude?

While FanSided Senior Editor (a.k.a. our hockey mom) Michelle Bruton was referring to Tavares’ free agency decision at the time, she was spot-on in regards to the way he will be treated by the media.

Tavares’ every move will be so heavily scrutinized that he’ll be regretting playing in his hometown within a month. Toronto is going to chew up and spit out this team every single time they lose a regular season game, just like the parade gets planned every time they win one. Sorry, Leafs fans, but your incessant media base is too wild for two stars.

Oh, and if you think the media will be bad, the fans will be ten-times worse. Tavares has one bad playoff game and people will be throwing his jersey on the ice, much like they threw a 20-year old under the bus for losing a hard-fought playoff series to a better team last season. Toronto fans are more delusional than Toronto media.

I spent Saturday at a music festival in Timmins, Ontario. Not 30 minutes after Tavares signed with Toronto, this was already going on:

Next: 20 hockey smiles that prove teeth are overrated

Winner: Hockey Dogs!

As fun as it is to see bad signings or ramble on with horrible takes on great signings because you are bitter, the week goes to the hockey dogs. No one works this hard in the offseason!

There isn’t much our best friend’s can’t do anymore and as good as MVP: Most Valuable Primate was, we’ve yet to receive an Air Bud hockey movie.

Disagree? Well that’s just too bad because this whole tournament is going to be made up on the spot. We’ll see you next week when “NHL player vacations” takes on “golf” in the Northeast regional quarter-final showdown.

Keep your head up.