A bonus double feature tonight – the Western Conference preview, plus the AEW Dynamite preview courtesy .

First, the hockey. So as with the East, we must with the West.

Vegas Golden Knights vs. Chicago Blackhawks: 

The Blackhawks have no business being in this round, except for the fact that Edmonton has used none of their 10 years of high draft picks to acquire a fucking goalie. As the 12th seed, their reward for beating Connor & Co. is the #1 seed Golden Knights. Now, any team with Jonathan Toews & Patrick Kane is going to be dangerous in any playoff series, because they have the experience & skill to compensate for a number of their team’s weaknesses. And hoo-boy are those glaring – an old defensive corps; inconsistent goaltending; salary cap issues that forced the departure of their Cup-winning support network. These Blackhawks are a shell of the organization that won three Cups in six years back in the early-10s. They honestly would have been better served losing to the Oilers & hoping for the top overall pick.

The exact opposite of them right now is Vegas. The team that was an expansion-year surprise has rebuilt after that season and come out even stronger. Firing Gerard Gallant back in January & hiring former Sharks coach Peter DeBoer (who had been fired in December) led to a turnaround in the team’s 2019-20 fortunes – they improved from 24-19 when Gallant was fired to 39-24 & first place in the West under DeBoer. They’ve still got three really good forward lines, and what makes Vegas so hard to gameplan is that the combos are interchangeable. You can’t line match against them. The other team is constantly forced to adapt to whatever combinations they put out, each period. That is a hard way to prepare. Plus, the one soft spot they had was in net, and picking up former Islander & Hawk Robin Lehner has really solidified their cage. They are no longer hostage to the annual case of the yips Marc-Andre Fleury always gets.

Summary: Vegas is too much. Chicago would have been better off playing for the draft pick.

Prediction: Vegas in four.

Colorado Avalanche vs. Arizona Coyotes: 

This series kinda sorta follows the same pattern as the Vegas-Chicago series: One team is overloaded with talent & deserves to be here, the other is Arizona, who somehow beat a superior Nashville team AND their GM quit during the shutdown. The Coyotes have nearly relocated out of Arizona five times in the last ten years, and barely break even only because of revenue sharing. They should have been the Quebec Loup Garous, Houston Aeros (again) or Kansas City Scouts (again) by now.

None of their players got more than 45 points during the regular season; their key forwards are child-of-divorce Oliver Ekman-Larsson and hot dog magnet Phil Kessel. The one thing in their favour is a goalie tandem that kept out most of the ton of shots they faced during the regular season & got hot just as the playoffs started. They actually could be something in a couple of years, but administrative incompetence has been a hallmark of this franchise since it moved from Winnipeg back in 1996.

Colorado is a buzzsaw. Nathan MacKinnon is a fucking animal, fully deserving of his place alongside Sindey Crosby in those Tim Hortons commercials. He had 43 more points than the next closest player on the team, and was seemingly involved in every key play during the regular season. The supporting cast is filling in nicely, and seems set up for 2-3 year run at the Cup. On defence, they are anchored by Cale Makar and Kevin Connauton – the latter of whom has his broken face as his bio picture, which is totally 70s. In goal, they have a true tandem, with Philipp Grubauer getting only two more starts than Pavel Francouz during the year, and their combined GAA is 2.5, so there’s no real difference there. And it’s all overseen by the greatest player in the franchise’s history, Eric Lindros Joe Sakic, who led them to their Cup wins in 1996 & 2001.

Summary: Once again, the Coyotes should be put out of their many miseries by a better team & more professionally run league.

Prediction: Colorado in four.

Dallas Stars vs. Calgary Flames: 

Even though Game 1 has already been played, all it shows is how evenly matched these two teams are.

Calgary has two solid top lines. Natural pest Matthew Tkachuk led the team in both scoring and penalty minutes during the regular season, and shows no sign of abating that behaviour. Actual tough guy Milan Lucic seems to have dropped that “skilled” role he coveted & has settled into the fact that he’s meant to be a force around the net who throws mitts when required. The defence is anchored by Mark Giordano and ably reinforced by Rasmus Andersson & Noah Hanifin, meaning they have two solid pairings. That’s important, because their goaltending is borderline terrible for a playoff team. Nominal #1 David Rittich had a GAA of almost 3.00, and his backup is the equally unreliable Cam Talbot. This puts more weight on the defence to keep guys from testing the net, and if the Flames get into heavy penalty trouble they are in for a hard night.

The Stars are the opposite – a low-scoring team with impeccable goaltending. Leading scorer Tyler Seguin sure looked handsome watching Game 1 from the press box, and the normally reliable Jamie Benn has looked anything but this season, as his points production was down 20 from the same point last year. It also doesn’t help that they have a modest sprinkling of free agent castoffs throughout their offense, with Joe Pavelski, Corey Perry & Alexander Radulov taking up space that might otherwise go to more productive rookies. But in net – boy, are they loaded for bear. Ben Bishop was again the hot hand in net, with Anton Khudobin a very capable 1A option. Because they don’t score many goals, the Stars only opponent is themselves. If they can get more than three per game, their netminding is excellent enough to earn them the victory.

Game 1 score: 3-2 Flames.

Summary: If Calgary can keep Dallas away from the Flames net, this is one series that wouldn’t be considered a real “upset” if the lower seed wins.

Prediction: Flames in six.

St. Louis Blues vs. Vancouver Canucks: (full disclosure – Vancouver homer)

St. Louis is coming off their Cup win last year looking to repeat. The majority of last year’s team is still there, led by Ryan O’Reilly. What has the question marks beside them was how they played during the Top-4 seeding round, as they got relegated to fourth place on the weakness of last year’s playoff hero Jordan Binnington, who gave up a shocking eight goals in the two games he played. They looked bad, a fact made worse that for 59 minutes they were the #3 seed until Dallas tied their game and won in a shootout. Still, this is a team that had a consistent, non-Cup-hangover regular season. Vladimir Tarasenko hasn’t given up yet, and they still have a rock-solid defence anchored by captain Alex Pietrangelo.

The Canucks are a pretty simple group to figure out. They have last year’s Rookie of the Year Elias Pettersson, current RotY candidate Quinn Hughes, and underappreciated forward Brock Boeser. Each of them are spectacular, and the keys to how the Canucks got into the playoffs ahead of schedule. However, none of them are goalies, and that’s where this team has its biggest worries. Jacob Markstrom could best be described as “mercurial” – when he’s on, he’s killer; when he’s off, it’s a five-game losing streak. Future #1 goalie Thatcher Demko can’t yet be counted on, as he’s in concussion protocol every two months, which is always a positive sign in a goalie. Beyond Quinn Highes, the defence is pretty thin, especially when penalty magnet Tyler Myers is on the ice. His nine penalties in four games has already lit up Canucks Twitter

#Canucks pic.twitter.com/HKD2ARYHw3

— Chris Conte (@ChrisConte79) August 8, 2020

and he’s got four more years at $6.0 million per to go. Mismanagement has this team in salary cap hell.

Summary: Crap, I don’t know. Fewest fuckups wins.

Prediction: Canucks in six.

’s AEW Dynamite Preview: Less than Elite – 8/12/2020

Another week of the live stream of men in unnaturally tight outfits punching each other. No, not a Florida Walmart parking lot. AEW Dynamite airs at 8e/7c on TNT.

I’m and this is the news:

Remember my complaints about too much juicing in last week’s show? Especially in the Matt Hardy/Sammy Guevara match? Well, Sammy got legitimate heat backstage after the match. He opened up Matt “the hard-way” (not planned, not gimmicked, legit opened up by the chair). Matt needed stitches after the match. Sammy grabbed the wrong chair and threw it too hard during the spot. Sammy got a very stern talking to by a number of the wrestlers backstage to be more careful. Sammy is still very early in his career, but no one wants that kind of reputation.

^{(see: Jax, Nia)}

In other news, Brandi Rhodes blocked off her Twitter account. Odd behavior for the Chief Brand Officer of a major wrestling promotion. In a segment last week that I completely ignored, she announced AEW Heels, a community for female wrestling fans. Apparently, when people tried to join, they learned it was a subscription service ($50 per year) and lashed out on Twitter. Then her Twitter vanished. Cody then came out and said she left Twitter because she was receiving a ton of racist messages. As he put it:

Leaving a social app because you open your phone to an absurd amount of n bombs is respectfully understandable. No place for that.

Which is the true story? My guess is both.

This week’s wrestling story:

Back in the 70’s, kayfabe was very, very serious. Kayfabe is the idea that everything in the ring is absolutely real. Heels really hate faces, female managers are always in love with their wrestlers, etc. My dad worked a second job as a bartender at night at a bar that was near the arena where we got our local AWA shows. Even though all the wrestlers would come in together, laughing and joking, if there were “civilians” in the bar, the faces would drink with the faces and the heels would drink with the heels. At opposite ends of the bar. Most of the time, all of these guys were rooming together and driving together from show to show. In some cases, faces and heels were related in real life! But not in front of civilians.

This week’s preview:

• $7,000 Obligation Match – “The DemoGod” Chris Jericho vs. “Freshly Squeezed” Orange Cassidy
• TNT CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH – “The American Nightmare” Cody(c) vs. Scorpio Sky
• AEW WORLD TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH – Kenny Omega & Hangman Page (c) vs. Jurassic Express (Luchasaurus & Jungle Boy w/ Marko Stunt)
• TAG TEAM GRUDGE MATCH – The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson) vs. The Dark Order (Evil Uno and Stu Grayson)
• Fall out from MJF attacking Jon Moxley during last week’s match with Darby Allin

I know all the story lines so feel free to ask. Let the show begin!

One more thing:

“Me and BeerGuyRob”:

Back when I had a job, I had to travel to Vancouver to visit one of our repair facilities. When I traveled, I always tried to do something local and fun, especially live sports. Flyers, Lightning, Blue Jackets, Flames, Lehigh Valley Phantoms, Calgary Hitmen, Louisville Redbirds, Charlotte Knights, etc. While planning the trip, I noticed the Vancouver Canadians were playing while I was in town. I also remembered that BeerGuyRob worked the games selling beer. So I reached out and said I would be at one of the games that week. He reminded me that he is the vendor that always wears Hawaiian shirts. For having a random internet American dipping into his DMs, he was very gracious. As we got near the end of the game (the Canadians were getting pounded, as I recall. This will be important later), we sat and had a wonderful chat.

He kept trying to give me free beers. Eventually, I accepted one. I have no idea how I got back to the hotel. I never did find my pants.

Having served this fine gentleman beer at a baseball game, I can vouch for his ability to spin wisdom. And his hips.

Tonight’s sports:

• NHL:
  • Philadelphia Flyers vs. Montreal Canadiens – 8:00PM | NBCSN / CBC / Sportsnet
    • may start late due to schedule pushback because of Bruins-Canes OT
  • St. Louis Blues vs. Vancouver Canucks – 10:30PM | NBCSN / CBC / Sportsnet

• NBA: playoffs start August 17
  • Toronto Raptors vs. Philadelphia 76ers – 6:45PM | ESPN / TSN
  • Los Angeles Clippers vs. Denver Nuggets – 9:05PM | ESPN / TSN

• MLB:
  • Kansas City Royals at Cincinnati Reds – 6:30PM | FS1
  • Miami Marlins at Buffalo Blue Jays – 6:30PM | Sportsnet1

• Wrasslin’:
  • AEW Dynamite – 8:00PM | TNT / TSN2
  • NXT – 8:00PM | USA

• Futbol:
  • Liga MX Soccer:
    • Tijuana vs. Club Atlético de San Luis – 10:00PM | FS1

Big thanks to brother Jake for the wrasslin’ commentary. I’m always down for sharing the responsibility if anyone has something they’d like to add to the previews.