Ice Cold Takes: NHL rivalries, Super Bowl picks, RELEASE THE KRAKEN
Ice Cold Takes is a weekly humor column focused on what is trending around the NHL. The perfect column to close out the year-long month of January.
What a week. What a month! It feels as though someone has hit pause on January and is just now letting us get through it. The NHL is back in business after it’s All-Star festivities and it feels nice to be heading into February.
With the season about to start ramping up to the important parts (deadline, playoff pushes, etc) it seems like a good time to remind you that FanSided has some actual intelligent NHL coverage, such as Seattle choosing the correct team name, the faltering Winnipeg Jets (shout out mom and Zach – your team sucks) and trade deadline rumors.
Speaking of Seattle. It took TWO YEARS for the Seattle NHL franchise to leak the ONLY name that makes sense for their NHL team, the Kraken! I wrote about this in 2018 and if we’re being completely honest, it was hard to read. Holy boring, Bruin. Just look at this:
"Seattle Emeralds – This sounds like the name of a soccer club. Or a new limited-edition drink at the famous Seattle coffee shop, Starbucks. “I’ll get the triple-soy low-fat emerald latte, please.” No thanks."
HAHAH no. Christ. Apologies to anyone who was with me in the early days. “At the famous Seattle coffee shop, Starbucks.” Was I pushing for a higher word count? Never diving into past articles again.
The point is, “Kraken” was the right choice. Bravo Seattle.
Big Save Dave!
Goalie stick flips > Everything else.
Battle of Alberta
If the NHL playoffs started today, you could not schedule better series’. Series? No. A better set of series? A better set of series’? Mary, help me out here. It’s Friday. I had a few brews last night so no one is allowed to kill me for my inability to pluralize.
Editors note: (For readability’s sake, I’d change the wording entirely to ‘first round match-ups’ to provide more clarity and less confusion about the possessive form of ‘series’ – Mary)
Obviously a lot can change between now and April, but let’s assume most of these teams stay on course. Here are a few first round playoff match-ups we get to look forward to:
Edmonton Oilers vs. Calgary Flames
The battle of Alberta is back and better than ever. I guess we have Matthew Tkachuk to thank for that. Thanks for being a little sh*t, Matthew!
Tampa Bay Lightning vs. Florida Panthers
The battle of Florida! This is the rivalry we didn’t know we needed but both Florida teams are legit and they would have a hell of a first round series down in the swamp. It’s a win-win for the fair-weather hockey fans in Florida because they can just swap jerseys to whoever makes it to the second round.
Pittsburgh Penguins vs. New York Islanders
A rematch of last season’s surprising first round sweep by the Islanders over the Penguins. This has become a healthy NHL rivalry and watching Barzal vs. Crosby would be technical stick work heaven. “Booiioioing” – Skills trainers everywhere.
Boston Bruins vs. Toronto Maple Leafs
Okay, so I fudged the numbers a little for this one but obviously these two teams are going to play in the first round again. We know what happens next…
Magic
Stick work is getting ridiculous. I don’t understand enough about physics, or whatever science explains these magicians and their tricks, but wow are they ever impressive. It’s okay to live life knowing you’ll never be able to do something like this. Here’s Canadian super
star
hero Nat Spooner defying gravity.
https://twitter.com/NHL/status/1222921161291505670
We reached out to Nat for a comment on how she’s able to make gravity seem non-existent on the ice, as well as the recent success of the women’s three-on-three event at the all-star game.
Obviously she didn’t answer. (Boom! That’s a throwback for all you day one readers)
NHL Super Bowl picks
Here’s the run down for you non-football fans. The Kansas City Chiefs should win the Super Bowl. They can score in a matter of seconds. The San Francisco 49ers have a better defense, but their ridiculously handsome quarterback hasn’t thrown the ball since like, Week 6. The Chiefs are so good that they spot teams big leads before making them look stupid. That’ll be tough to do against a solid 49ers defense, but expect to see Patrick Mahomes win the game on a final minute drive. 36-33.
Here are your favorite NHL players’ picks:
Chiefs: Ryan O’Reilly, Jordan Binnington, Roman Josi, T.J. Oshie.
49ers: Noah Hanifin, Eric Staal, Brenden Dillon, Connor Hellebuyck.
The rest of the league is probably close to a 50/50 split. It’s as close a Super Bowl (on paper) has been in a long time. Most importantly, I hope the players have fun. As long as everyone has fun, we all win.
Gemel Smith and Patrice Bergeron
We’re ending this column with an inspiring story about Gemel Smith, Patrice Bergeron and the importance of reaching out. If you haven’t seen it yet, click the link below and watch the video.
For the span of those three games with the Boston Bruins last season, Ice Cold Takes was the biggest Gemel Smith fan page out there. As far as I’m concerned, the Bruins are still perfect in the Gemel Smith era (3-0). All the best to Smith throughout the rest of his career. Great stuff.
If you think a friend/coworker/person may be feeling down, reach out. Talk to them. You may be surprised at how much of a difference you can make.
Keep your head up!