THE NHL TEA IS SUPER HOT

Entrust me with your NHL opinions, analysis, and gossip

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Before you send in your submission, look if it hasn't been already answered before.

It happens to me on a weekly basis that I get submissions asking about a matter I have already answered that very same or the preceding week. While I understand that you are curious whether the relationship status of a player hasn't changed in the meantime if the last time I posted about him was a month or two ago, please, try not to ask about the exact same thing when I have already answered that question literally yesterday.

You can easily search through my profile if you type in the player's name in the shortened form - the gossip about Tyler Seguin should be written under t. seguin. The "normal" posts that aren't gossip-related are tagged normally tyler seguin.

Thanks for understanding!

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Hi, I don't know if you registered (and you probably did since you're Czech) the interview David Jiříček did for The Athletic. I wanted to ask what you think about him voicing his opinion because as much as I agree with him and believe that he is ready for the NHL and deserves more minutes on the ice for the way he plays, I kind of am unsure about how this could affect his career. I think it's rather unusual step for a young player to talk like this (or at least I can't think of any other young player talking about how they want more time on the ice), especially for a European, so how do you see this situation?

Thank you

To be honest, I do believe that there is a huge influence of his agent in that statement. Allan Walsh is a brutally straightforward and frank person, he ardently defends his clients (naturally, it's his job, but he is really passionate in this matter), and with young guys like David, it is easy to assume that they are more swayed by their agents than older, more mature and established guys, and therefore may be put thoughts into their minds, which they are then urged to voice out loud.

Was it bold from Jiricek? Definitely, I wouldn't be surprised if the Columbus management gave him a hard time for it, but it was also true (which the Blue Jackets clearly don't want to admit, let alone try to do something about it).

Columbus doesn't have six solid defensemen, who would deserve to be there more than he does. This is not a case where there would be insane competition for the spots and therefore defensible that an inexperienced young player like him isn't being favored by the coaches and front office. The team is in no shape or form fighting for the playoffs, there is literally no reason why they shouldn't let a guy like him play, get ice time, and valuable experience in the big boys' league, which would then be incredibly useful in the future. This is the time when you can throw in the rookies, let them do mistakes, and learn from them, but Columbus doesn't seem to understand that.

You don't want him to play in the NHL just yet? Alright, then send him down to the AHL, give him 20+ minutes of ice time, put him into the first powerplay, and let him grow there. What exactly is the point of calling him up, making him a healthy scratch for games, and then suddenly sending him down again, but too late for him to catch an AHL game? You don't even need to have a brain to see how downright stupid this management of a young player is.

So yes, Jiricek was definitely bold with those words, but he is speaking facts, which the front office of Columbus needs to realize if they want to fight for the playoffs in the foreseeable future. It is a pity that a young guy like him needs to be the one attempting to give his team a wake-up call.

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For context:

I swear, this is the last post I will make about this - you gotta excuse us, it doesn't happen every season.

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Honestly this all star roster is the reason I think fan voting shouldn’t exist or should at least have a limited number of players per team that could join. There’s no way 9 players being from only two diff teams is fair. And who tf voted for georgiev!!!!

I am all in for the fan voting because the results usually reflect, who the fans want to see there outside of those, who had already been chosen by the league, but for heaven's sake, make limitations on how many players from each team can come.

As hot as Vancouver is this year, no one (outside of the Canucks fans) wants to see five of them there. Why are we filling five damn spots with players from a team that is nowhere near the most popular in the league? Why are we filling five spots with one team, to begin with?

I can, to a certain point, understand why there are four Maple Leafs since it is going to be held in Toronto (as much as I love him, I don't understand why Morgan was the 4th one "voted in"), but there should be maximum of three players representing a single team, no more than that.

If it was up to me - choosing those 44 players out of 32 teams, those eight allowed goalies are in italics:

Anaheim Ducks - Vatrano and Dostal

Vatrano leads the Ducks in points, it's understandable, and Dostal deserves it for the insane performances he has been putting out lately.

Honorable mention to McTavish.

Arizona Coyotes - Ingram and Keller

Another goalie, whose success the league and fans ignore.

Boston Bruins - Pastrnak, Marchand, and Swayman

This trio has everything - character, skill, popularity. Like Marchand or not, you have to admit that the content he creates for the camera is elite. Exactly what an All-Star Game needs.

And also, let's have the Toronto crowd go nuts because of three lone Bruins.

Buffalo Sabres - Dahlin

Calgary Flames - Lindholm

Carolina Hurricanes - Aho

Chicago Blackhawks - Mrazek (because Bedard is out with the operated jaw)

The only other player on the Blackhawks roster, who is worth watching. A legend.

Colorado Avalanche - McKinnon and Makar

Columbus Blue Jackets - Fantilli

Who on earth picked Boone Jenner over Fantilli?

Dallas Stars - Robertson and Oettinger

Detroit Red Wings - DeBrincat

Edmonton - McDavid and Draisaitl

Honorable mention to Hyman. I put Draisaitl there because I am biased as hell and because he is the most underrated jokester in the league.

Florida Panthers - Reinhart

Los Angeles Kings - Doughty

We need those defensemen and everyone knows Doughty. He is a funny guy and he is doing decent this season.

Minnesota Wild - Kaprizov

Montreal Canadians - Slafkovsky

He is always a hot topic, he is a comedian, great personality, shove him in there.

Nashville Predators - Forsberg and Josi

New Jersey Devils - Jack and Luke Hughes

New York Islanders - Barzal

I frankly know the bare minimum about the current state of the Islanders, so Barzal it is.

New York Rangers - Fox and Shesterkin

Ottawa Senators - Stützle

Why is it always Tkachuk? Why not switch it up a bit? Tim is leading the stats in Ottawa, has ridiculous 30+ assists, he is a funny likable guy... Let's boost the Germans in the league and have him and Draisaitl interact properly.

Philadelphia Flyers - Konecny

Pittsburgh Penguins - Crosby

Seattle Kraken - Dunn

The guy is leading the points in that team as a defenseman, he is a total social media catch lately, why isn't he on there? Why haven't the Seattle fans and his girlies voted for him?

St. Louis Blues - Thomas

Tampa Bay Lightning - Kucherov

Toronto Maple Leafs - Matthews, Marner, and Nylander

Gotta make the home audience happy.

Vancouver Canucks - Hughes and Demko

Pettersson was on here for a while too, he definitely deserves the spot, but we don't have enough space on here.

Vegas Golden Knights - Eichel

Washington Capitals - Wilson

Winnipeg Jets - Hellebyuck

Me, reading this list.

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Well, the All-Star line-up is something. Definitely something.

Why do we need five Vancouver players?

Have people really voted for Morgan Rielly and Alexandar Georgiev?

What about Slafkovsky? Stützle? Patrick Kane?

So many missed opportunities to make this event more hyped up. At the end of the day, it is literally an entertainment show, so why don't they bring in players that have a character and hype on social media?

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'Try not to be upset by the Czechs this season' challenge for Canada

The U18 girls beat Canada 4-2 in the semifinals of the World Championship for the first time in history.

Fun fact - the captain of the Czech team, Adela Sapovalivova, is a sister of Matyas Sapovaliv, who was a part of this year's team that sent Canada home in the quarterfinals at the World Juniors. It clearly runs in the family.

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sending this in regards to that submission about philly and the trade . philly did have a poor reputation w management bc it sucked w chuck fletcher but we have new management now which gauthier refused to meet with. id say the management currently is pretty strong. as for coaches idk that depends on ur opinion of torts. he’s a tough coach and a lot of the guys that clashed w him like weren’t great players tbh but i think torts has been great for the team. will agree w the medical part they scare me a bit lol. all in all drysdale is gonna be just fine here. the fans love him already and he knows some of the guys here and torts will helps his game a lot. idk how going from a team nearly in last place to a team in a playoff spot is a bad thing like he’s definitely not the loser in this trade at all

Personally, I don't feel any heartfelt resentment towards Torts. There are undeniably way worse coaches, who shouldn't be standing on the bench - Torts frankly seems just brutally blunt and "I don't give a flying damn, you will do as say because I am the coach" type of guy, which I can see why some players wouldn't like that approach, especially if they are not the best in the locker room and get constantly sh*tted on by him for underperforming and messing up, but it can be effective at times and some players downright need it to perform at their best.

As you said, I think that Torts with his attitude is the perfect fit for the state, in which Philadelphia is currently, if the team wants to improve and stay in the upper half of the standings.

The medical part isn't questionable only in Philadelphia - if I am not mistaken, Montreal literally replaced the whole medical staff like a year or two ago, and yet it didn't really help with the constant health issues like half of the roster experiences. It also needs to be said, that sometimes, the teams are simply unlucky because they have a roster filled with injury-prone players, and no medical staff can really prevent them from injuring themselves over and over again.

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Vince has been dating Daniela for six months so I wouldn’t say quite a while. Just recently became official too, he was seeing other people up until a couple months ago.

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Regarding that blog. There obsessed with maya literally everything is hating on maya.

They started that blog and then 1 day later started talking about Jack has a gf and then the next day they post the blurry pic of the jacket as proof and nothing else.

Her story changes so much to she let his gf 1x saw her 2/3x then changed to met her a couple times then switched to friend of a friend

If you have time I’d suggest you go through her blog for a laugh these aren’t the only inconsistencies

Anons please add more if I forgot anything else

The blog has a few decent and informative posts that seem credible, however, I am personally not a fan of someone being interested only in a particular portion of gossip because that always leads to unnecessary nit-picking and that blog is 80% about Barzal and Maya, practically answering every submission about them as it seems like, whether it's meaningful or downright stupid.

Having scrolled through their Jack Hughes tag, the whole "he has a secret girlfriend" situation also seems iffy to me. Solely because it's Jack Hughes, we are talking about here, and there is no way his girlies wouldn't find out about him having a relationship, especially if the girl showed up to a game and hung out with the other WAGs there, low-profile or not.

But hey, look, this is the gossip Tumblr. Never take stuff you see on here completely seriously - it is the same gossip you experience in real life, meaning that information gets twisted, made up, and misunderstood all the time.

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is vince dunn single?

No, he has been in a relationship with Daniella DiRenzo for quite a while. She started posting about Seattle and him 17 weeks ago as you can see in her Seattle highlights on Instagram.

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My Liebling is an All-Star

And this bulldog too.

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thoughts on the jack wag jacket? i think its fake because i swear there is a fangirl that custom orders them for herself and i swear this jacket thing is old news

Can someone brief me about this entire situation? I have received several submissions about it, which are confusing the hell out of me because they all say something else about this entire matter.

From what I have understood, there is supposed to be a girl, who made/bought the Devils' WAG jacket and is (presumably pretending to be) Jack's girlfriend - or at least that's what a new gossip blog, which is supposed to be interested in the tea around New York area, is saying.

(Funnily enough, the blog in question has interacted with a couple of my posts in the recent past, so they will probably read this too.)

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Different anon would also like to point out re: the Cauthier-Drysdale trade that Philly has a really, really poor reputation with regards to coaching, management, and medical care - deservedly so (their coach is Torts and this is the cancer zamboni team, and there have been some unacceptable/suspicious player health outcomes as well), which was likely the primary reason why Gauthier decided not to sign and which is particularly concerning given Drysdale's injury history. The real loser of this whole thing seems to be Drysdale (and Zegras as I do believe that their friendship means a lot to him), which is a shame.

Has Gauthier really said the exact reason why he refused to sign with them? So far I have only seen speculations from fans and journalists - that he allegedly doesn't want to play for Torts, that he doesn't want to play in the AHL, and a ton of other stuff - not any definite reasoning coming from his mouth.

Personally, I wouldn't have viewed this trade as controversial if it wasn't for the poor way Gauthier handled the communication with the Flyers,

Yes, he is still a kid, we shouldn't be expecting overly mature decisions from him, but you are nineteen, not fourteen, you can't be childishly avoiding responsibilities like this. If you are too scared to go tell your team that you don't want to sign with them, then send your agent or your parents, or send a bloody text. This is not a DM on social media where you can ghost people and get out of things, you don't feel like sorting out, through simply ignoring them.

I am all in for the young guys refusing to sign with the teams that have drafted them if they have serious reasons for doing so (if I were Bedard, I would have never signed my life away in Chicago, for example). I have actually been wondering why it isn't happening more often because, at the end of the day, both teams can end up benefiting from it if a solid trade happens as it did in this case.

Overall, as I have already said, I feel bad for both of them, though at the moment, probably more for Gauthier because he is a dead man in Philadelphia (going to get dragged as soon as he steps into that arena) and bashed by a ton of other hockey fans for his attitude. Drysdale, from what I have seen, has received a warm welcome in Philly from his new teammates, management, and even the fans.

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The Bruins are effortlessly funny - or the aftermath of Poitras being sent home from the Juniors by the Czech team

"In case you don't know the Czech national anthem, Lauko will sing it for you. You have probably heard it at the end of the game." - Montgomery

Reference to this Twitter teasing from Lauko after Canada's loss:

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nykki (martin necas' girlfriend) just posted some sort of q&a on her youtube channel and from the translation of the title, she should be talking about the nhl too, could you perhaps watch it and translate the interesting bits for us since its in czech?

This video was actually really interesting.

I have said it in the past already, but Nykki is genuinely one of the most sensible, down-to-earth, and level-headed WAGs I have seen on social media, so her answers were impressive and definitely worth hearing:

She answered the question about how she and Martin met:

Said that it is the most-asked question she gets - "My theory is that some of the people, who are asking me that, probably want to date a hockey player and they don't know how to do that. Personally, I wouldn't go for a hockey player." (she is so real laughing her ass off during that last part)

She would really want to have some sort of romantic story, but they literally started dating because he was constantly liking her photos, then DMed her on Instagram, they started texting and FaceTiming for several months before they actually saw each other in real life and started dating like two months after.

Talked about what it is like living as a (European) WAG, who moved to the US because of her boyfriend:

The players are away for half of the month during the season, so they don't see each other as often as people may think.

It was really hard for her to make friends among the other WAGs in the first year.

Overall, she expressed that she really struggled the first year and even thought that she wouldn't be able to live like that, wanting to go back home.

She also found it really hard to understand the "NHL lifestyle" (said that the term alone seems silly to her to this day) - "It is an extremely particular group of people. Even among the girls, in the room where we meet during the games, there are so many unspoken rules. I am an open book, I like to share my thoughts, and I hate small shallow talks, but I understood quite quickly that it doesn't work like that here and you can't trust everyone. It is everywhere like that - when you come to a room where there are twenty-five girls, at the end of the day, you only get along with a few of them, and I didn't understand that in the beginning. I kinda burned myself."

She can't have a work permit in the US and neither can all the European WAGs because their visas are officially under their partners - said that it is extremely hard for everyone to get a work permit in the US, but for them, it is practically impossible. A lot of other WAGs have tried, they poured a lot of money into the lawyers, and no one, she knows, has so far succeeded.

Where it is possible for the WAGs to obtain work permits, is in Canada - during this part, she also joked that Martin doesn't have a contract for the next year, so maybe they could move there.

Because of this whole work permit issue, she started doing social media, producing music, and writing scripts for some sort of company (the last two I understood are jobs in the Czech Republic, which she does online), making her own money.

She also said that life in Raleigh, North Carolina is quite uneventful compared to Prague, where she is from - however, she is also aware of the fact, that Raleigh is a quite safe place to live and that she can be glad for it because it's not like that everywhere in the States (as she knows from the experiences of other WAGs).

She also answered money-related questions as many people think that her boyfriend pays for everything in her life:

It is crazy for her that some people think that she is dating him only for the money - said that she didn't move across the Atlantic, away from her family and friends, and the established life she had in the Czech Republic, because of designer bags.

Said that all the WAGs (not just hockey ones) always showcase their life on social media to people who follow them in a manner that makes it seem better than it actually is - posting how they go to the games, how they all have their hair done, designer handbags...

She emphasized that they do have it really easy in a lot of things, and that it actually bothers her (personally she wouldn't be able to bear being financially dependent on her boyfriend - at least that's what I think she meant), but that there are also a lot of disadvantages, for example, if she is going to have kids one day in the States, their grandparents aren't going to see them because they are on the other side of the Atlantic.

At the end of the NHL-related segment, she brought up the question "what would you do if you broke up?"

She emphasized that she is one of the lucky ones because she has managed to find a way how to make a living on her own so this question doesn't really worry her because her life would simply continue, just back in Prague, not in the USA, but that many of the girls are studying in the States or just living there with their boyfriends and solely because of their boyfriends, and that once they break up, it is extremely difficult for them.

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When men get emotional about their bromance being torn apart:

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Thoughts on the Drysdale-Gauthier trade? I think its a win for Anaheim despite a certain part of hockey twitter saying otherwise lol. I hope JD can stay healthy in Philly..

That certain part of the hockey community is against this because this trade single-handedly broke apart their favorite ship of Zegras and Drysdale, and also sent their favorite boy Jamie to a team, barely anyone follows willingly.

Those injuries are the main factor why the Ducks went for this trade. If Drysdale didn't have health issues, they wouldn't even think about trading him because they desperately need at least decent defense so their goalies wouldn't have to deal with 50 shots per game, however, Jamie played only ten games this season, and they have a couple of solid defensemen growing up in San Diego that might able to step up in the foreseeable future, so there you go with the rationale behind wanting to trade him, in the first place...

However, I still think that this trade might not be a complete win for Anaheim. You never know how those young guys are going to turn out, and they just acquired a guy, who hasn't played a single game in the NHL - the fact that he was good at the Juniors and at the University league, doesn't necessarily mean that he will be good in the big boys' league.

Also, he is most likely going to have to transfer from the center to the wing because Anaheim has enough of centers on the roster.

Jamie will definitely be given more space to shine in Philadelphia if he gets his health under control (hopefully he does), but at what cost? Playing for a team players don't want to be playing for and which doesn't have even remotely bright future ahead of itself as Anaheim does...

To a certain point, I frankly feel bad for both of them because Gauthier will now be dreading getting anywhere near Philadelphia or the Flyers, and Drysdale is inevitably stuck in Philadelphia as he has a contract till 2026-27...