i’ve put off a lot of my mourning of matt niskanen, but then i started thinking about the fact that he won’t be paired with dima anymore and that was the final straw, it’s time to mourn the dima-nisky bromance and cry about it
these idiots were d-partners for three years, complemented each other’s strengths perfectly, and were a fantastic top pair. they were murder partners who love each other
when asked who he would bring to a desert island to help them survive, matt niskanen replied “Dmitry Orlov. He’s my partner.”
nisky also calls him snarls out on the ice, as captured in mic’d up footage from the 2018 eastern conference final
in a rinkside update prior to the preseason game against the blues on 9/18/19, dima spoke about the loss of nisky and said the following: “We have a still good team even though we still lose a few guys, and especially my D-partner you know Nisky, who I play with a long time and I think most of the time we’ve been good you know, and it’s kind of tough for me.”
and it seems that even after the breakup, nisky can’t stay away from russian number 9′s, as he’ll likely be paired with ivan provorov in philly this season. nisky said that hopefully they “can develop some chemistry like I did with Orlov.”
i’m mourning them so much i delved back into old articles and found some gems that hurt me. here’s one from september 2016, right before they got paired up, titled “Matt Niskanen could be a great defensive partner for Dmitry Orlov,” and talks about how they have the potential to complement each other perfectly; in hindsight this one makes me real emo.
and one from may 2017, right before dima got his big extension, and nisky spoke very highly about him at length:
“I think people were a little shortsighted and not seeing his potential and I think we saw his potential come out this year.” "It was a coming out party for him I think. He turned into a stud. He was our best D-man on many, many occasions this year, by a long shot sometimes. I was really proud of him and the way he handled it.”
and in that same article, dima said: “I play with Nisky most of the time. He's a great player and he great teammate. He knows he can help me and I look at him how he play, try to learn from him. Everything kind of was good.”
so if you weren’t in the know before, i hope you can look at this and see how good it was. and if you were in the know, you can join me in mourning that this sweet thing is gone