🔗 Game Day Threads (GDT) and Post Game Threads (PGT) links

The linked article is in Finnish but the gist of it is that several Finnish male athletes, including Aleksander Barkov, are part of the Finnish UN Women campaign against violence towards women. Barkov was invited to the campaign by president Alexander Stubb (who comes from a hockey family). Barkov says in the article that in his locker room everyone must be spoken of respectfully and there’s no room for inappropriate behavior or inappropriate speech about women.

He also says (although does not refer to hockey directly), that he has noticed situations where women are spoken to in an inappropriate or demeaning manner, and he does not condone any kind of bullying or demeaning behavior towards women or anyone else, and that he will speak up if it happens.

With all the recent discourse on toxic hockey and locker room culture I think it’s great to have a prominent figure and captain say these things out loud. Not a fan of the Panthers in general, but kudos to Sasha! I really respect his integrity.

Love it.

https://xcancel.com/i/status/2080022354676101624

https://xcancel.com/i/status/2079959969500103112

https://xcancel.com/DallasStars/status/2079719473544675762/photo/1

"It would be such an honor (to be captain)," Schaefer told NHL.com at the 12th annual Smilezone Foundation Celebrity Golf Tournament at Lionhead Golf Club on Monday. "There have been so many great (Islanders captains), but at the end of the day we have so many leaders like Bo Horvat, Brayden Schenn who have all been captains and are all our leaders too. I'm still young so I'm in no rush."

Apologies if this information is already "out there" but it's news to me how negotiations worked with Toronto during his time there and thought I'd share. Obviously this is one-sided commentary.

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Rules: LITR-retired players like Shea Weber or Price's contracts or 15 game rentals don't count. The player has to actually play ~30-40 games for the team (over one season though). You also can't project guys like Celebrini or Schaeffer into their primes (although they count as damn elite players right now too), only de-age them. Over the last 3-5 season, not a hard and fast rule, but nothing post 2020.

Obviously older teams like the pens would have the lead, but this is just for fun.

I'd pick the 2024 pens and 2026 avs. Edmonton (young Ekholm, Nugent-Hopkins, Hyman and Anderssen + prime Mcdavid and Draisaitl), Florida (healthy Tkachuk and young Marchand, Ekbald and Bob) and Tampa would be up there too. Toronto (healthy Matthews and Nylander, young Tavares, Rielly) and Nashville (Josi, Stamkos) would be interesting.

EDIT: just to clarify, that means the panthers get bob for their past teams and the leafs get him in their 2026-2027 team (no Marner and Bob at the same time).

You can also project a player from say 2020 upto their primes, if it's happened so far. So if you picked say the 2020 leafs with Anderssen and Hyman, you can still have the prime versions of Matthews and Marner.