Since some people may find it interesting here the main points of his speech (im trying to remember everything important but some thing were really technical and my memory is shit)
Quite a long post ahead
He briefly talked about the origins of his career in the kart championship cause he really loved the kart tracks here in italy but one of them in particular was quite challenging yet was still his favorite (now it doesnt exist anymore cause there is a shopping mall where it was)
He then talked about being in the same team as Schumaker and the chaos that would ensue from that (He told a little funny story that involved Michael's phone obsession, a toilet and a race but for his dignity's sake I wont talk about it here lol)
That period in Mercedes was a really positive one for him even tho he really felt the competion with Michael since he already was a f1 champion
Then he spent quite a lot of time talking about Lewis. He didnt talk about the early days of their friendship (sadly) but he recalled what happened in the 2013 season and the years after that.
He specified what happened that started all this drama between them (like the problem with this new button on the steering wheel the team proibited them from using and yet Lewis used nonetheless)
(He didnt say that out loud but he is still pretty pissed about that whole situation and about Lewis attitude back then)
Lewis wrote an apology letter addressed to him and the team but he said he read it though Toto cause he never received it first hand
After that the tension in the team built on so much the two of them had different mecchanics for their cars and none of these mecchanics had any info on the other pilot's car. The team had to switch mecchanics to balance out the disinformation inside their own team
(the host desperately tried to move on from the Lewis part but Nico just wasn't going to stop ranting about it lol)
The situation wasnt improving so, when he finally got the 2016 win, he decided to retire cause he felt it was the time to think of his family (his daughter in particular) and didnt want to end up kicked out by the team like it happened to other pilots
His mama was happy he stopped racing, his dad not so much lol
When asked if he and Lewis ever thought of fixing this whole mess before it was too late he said back then they never talked face to face about it and he kinda regrets that, cause at some point Niki Lauda was the only intermediary between them (like Niki wanted to meet them both at his house but as soon one entered the other just left)
He actually approves Lewis choice to join Ferrari (he wasnt glad to answer this question for the millionth time tho)
He was asked to come back to f1 some time ago but he refused
He is now happily working with startups and little enterpraises and thats his job now i think
charles you are so beautiful and sexy and talented and sweet and hardworking and beloved and kind and you hold a special place in everyone’s heart we missed seeing you so much. fred you are bald. carlos
charles you are so beautiful and sexy and talented and sweet and hardworking and beloved and kind and you hold a special place in everyone’s heart we loved seeing you so much this season. fred your hair will start growing back tomorrow. xavi
just got a second official warning for my use of "from the river to the sea, palestine will be free" on the OTW volunteer slack
people are also currently asking board to ban saying that the founding of israel was colonialism—equating this to saying racial slurs—and were complaining about my status back when it was "palestine will be free", too
suffice to say, fuck that place, don't give the OTW your money, and don't fucking volunteer there
(the second screenshot is from the warning I got a few days ago)
I'm reading about how Israel, in the immediate aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, deliberately replaced olive trees and other indigenous flora with European plants. This ecological disaster, which is now proudly hailed under the banner of 'making the desert bloom,' was done to 'de-Arabize' the landscape, and to cover up - often with fast-growing European pine trees -the ruins of Palestinian villages that were destroyed by Zionists forces.
And I just need everyone to read this passage from Pappé, because the symbolism of what happened to those European pine trees in the desert speaks for itself:
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappé (2006, p. 227-228.)
Can you explain why people don't like Matt Duchene?
i am definitely not the person to ask because my answer is literally just 1. bad vibes, 2. @starscelly doesn’t care for him and i trust cel’s opinion so natch i don’t care for him also, and 3. i do not understand why we have him at all. somebody else has done some kind of something about why we don’t like him but i am frankly just vibing my friend. n e body know anything ?
disclaimer i am silly and a fool and welcome any more knowledgeable ppl to correct me !!!! i am not a douchene expert etc etc
but afaik a lot of people - especially avs fans - feel very icky abt duchene mostly for his behavior on the avs!! he played there for like almost a decade and towards the end was like. i want to play playoff hockey. and they just had a super disastrous season and he had completely lost faith. which you know, would be cool and fine if he just was Normal and quietly requested a trade or - if he did have to go to extremes - at least still treated his team with respect. the bare minimums. but he did not!!! he ignored his teammates, wouldn’t engage in team activities, and i think at some point even literally refused to use the locker room with them?? (ALLEGEDLY allegedly. i was not there. personally)
keeping in mind this Was five yrs ago people can grow etc etc but like. throwing a temper tantrum like that at the ripe age of like? 28? 27? crazy! and also really scary to bring into a locker room i think, like you’ve established a weird reputation, he’s like kind of largely accepted as one of the notorious locker room cancers now
has a goal been taken away from your team due to a missed offside call when entering the zone? undoubtedly yes. and matt duchene is the reason for that. kind of.
in 2013, matt duchene scored a goal while having been extremely offside. the linesman missed it and, since there was no video review/coach's challenge at the time, the goal stood.
the nhl's solution was to implement a coach's challenge for offsides. so, because duchene was like 2 feet offside, your team's goal can be taken away from them for being offside by an inch, which would have in no way affected the opposing team's ability to defend. is this actually duchene's fault? ehhh but you know how we like to have someone to blame
It must be said about Matt Duchene that he loved the Colorado Avalanche.
No, really. He grew up a die-hard Avs fan, had posters and jerseys of Patrick Roy and Joe Sakic growing up. He was ecstatic when they drafted him in 2009 third overall, behind John Tavares and Victor Hedman and ahead of Evander Kane, Brayden Schenn, OEK, and… huh, Nazem Kadri. His fellow draft picks among the Avalanche that year included Ryan O’Reilly and Tyson Barrie. Of all the names I just listed, only one won the Cup with the Avs, and it was the one drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs. How’s that for irony?
Anyway, putting aside how weird and cursed the 2009 Draft was in general (I feel like it somehow doesn’t get talked about enough), here’s an abridged version of What Happened With the Unlikable Matt Duchene and the Colorado Avalanche:
A lot of it came down to timing. It’s strange to admit, but Duchene got drafted onto a team that sucked before most of the later key players got drafted that would make it good, and he did his time (as he would no doubt put it) on the Avs while those players were still developing. The Avs traded for EJ in early 2011 (while he was still recovering from a devastating knee injury), drafted Landy in 2011, Nate in 2013, Mikko in 2015, and Cale (who would be drafted as a direct result of The Matt Duchene Ordeal) in 2017. Duchene was the Avs’ star rookie and one of the Avs points leaders for years after he was drafted, and had a salary to match.
Which is why I imagine the trouble started when Gabriel Landeskog was named captain in 2012.
(It might’ve been before 2012 that shit started getting rocky; Patrick Roy, by all accounts, was as terrible and mean coach as he was a fantastic goalie, and maybe Matt Duchene should’ve listened to the old adage and never met his heroes. Alas, he did, and it was a slow decay into misery from there.)
When he was named, Landeskog was the youngest captain of all time (younger than even Crosby), and only got the title taken from him by Connor McDavid, years later. Landeskog was drafted second overall, and was a good and promising player, but he was younger and wasn’t as developed as Duchene. I imagine it was a bit of a blow to Duchene’s ego, when everyone knew how dedicated he was to the Avs franchise (his childhood Avs fandom was truly trotted out a lot, and unfortunately, Duchene seemingly developed Main Character Syndrome in a pretty unappealing way because of it, as it would later turn out). Duchene got to play with Avs Legend Paul Stastny, for Pete’s sake!
(I am being pretty facetious and overdramatic here, but yeah, he is also super duper intensely Christian by the way. Prayed during the anthem before every game, apparently, and belongs to an organisation called “Hockey Ministries International” that helps hockey players “uphold Christian Values in hockey”. Not joking, unfortunately.)
The cliffnotes are: The Avs kind of sucked a lot. In the nine full seasons Duchene spent with the Avalanche, they made the playoffs twice; once in Duchene’s rookie season (09/10) and once in Nate’s rookie season (13/14). In early 2013, he shot the offside goal that would revolutionise the game (derogatory). He got the limelight stolen from him first by Gabe, then Nate, even though in those years he had much more steady points totals than either of the other two (Mikko was off developing until 2017). By all accounts, he was frustrated and fed up by 15/16, had a deeply contentious relationship to the front office (including his childhood heroes), and asked for a trade in 2016, citing the famous old “I want to play playoff hockey” line.
The Avalanche, who wanted to wait for a good return for one of their points leaders, did not immediately trade him, and instead gave him an A to pacify him and see if he’d change his mind. And then 2017 happened.
Calling the 2016/2017 Avs season a disaster would be putting it kindly. Mikko wasnt quite finished baking, Nate had an abysmal season because he hadn’t discovered the concept of therapy yet, and the Avs ended up with one of the worst records in the history of the NHL. Dead Last. Duchene, by all accounts, basically decided that if he wasn't going to get what he wanted, neither was anyone else, and started being deeply openly dissatisfied and a douchebag with the team (see the above listed shenanigans noted by starscelly), and when the Avs drafted Some Fucking Defenseman fourth overall who wanted to stay with his college hockey team to develop for another two seasons, I think he kind of lost it. Duchene started being openly hostile to start the 2017/2018 season, taking his issues with the Avs public, and all of this culminated in an extremely dramatic mid-game trade to the Ottawa Senators in October, where he had to be pulled off the ice because of it. I did say he had a way with timing, didn’t I?
With Duchene gone, it was like a curse was lifted. The pieces received in return for Duchene built a huge part of the Avs team (Sam Girard, for example), a newly-therapised Nate put up the best season of his career thus far, Mikko started showing up in a big way, Gabe was great, and that “Some Fucking Defenseman” ultimately turned out to be Norris Winner Cale Makar. It’s common conensus among Avs fans nowadays that ironically, Matt Duchene was a key reason the Avs won the Cup in 2022, just not in the way anyone thought he would be.
Duchene, for his part, went on to be involved in a scandal in Ottawa where an uber full of players was recorded badmouthing their coaches and management, Duchene loudest of all. After what happened with the Avs, it wasn’t a good look. I would say more about his apparently deeply unpleasant personality, but I think the facts pretty much speak for themselves.
In the six seasons since he left the Avs, he’s now been on 4 teams, overpaid on each of them. The Sens stuck it out with him for almost two seasons, the Blue Jackets managed half a season, and the Preds managed all of four before buying him out. Apparently this off-season, he signed with the Stars. As for “playing playoff hockey”: he has gone to the playoffs four times. He made it to the second round that one time with the Blue Jackets, and never made it past the first round in the three times he went with the decaying Nashville Predators.
I guess if you wish for playoff hockey, you better not do it with Matt Duchene’s monkey paw.
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