The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

[DrJones]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

RIP, Big Irishman.

[Majingir]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

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He was my fave coach cause he was the guy coaching the Leafs when I first started watching. Some of the best seasons Leafs ever had without winning a cup,came with Quinn coaching them. Leafs teams with guys like Sundin,Domi,Tucker,Cujo and all,with Quinn as the coach!

[ImTellinTim]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

The neat thing about watching the Wild play at Florida is that you can clearly hear the players communicate on the ice.

[gopher_guy]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

The NHL must have talked to the refs and told them to be more descriptive when they give the ruling on reviewed goals.

Good. They have mics, might as well use them for something constructive. I was always frustrated with "After review, we have a good goal!"

[Psyblast]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

Two goals in 4:18 for Stephen Weiss E. Coyote, Super Genius.

[daflyboys]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

Dammit, Flyers! Score 1 goal for your guy who was a stone wall tonight.

[DrJones]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

Thanks mainly to my EA days, I've been lucky enough to bump into a decent number of hockey and baseball people over the years. Pat Quinn was one of the very few who seemed legitimately "larger than life" (Dusty Baker was another). Big guy, cigar the size of a dynamite stick, commanding presence. Some of these people you see on TV, there's just a different feel to them in person. Quinn radiated charisma; you just knew that players would go to the wall for him.

(NOTE: This doesn't apply to all authority figures. I met Marc Crawford a couple times; he does not radiate charisma. )

The Canucks were a joke of a franchise for their first two decades. From 1970 to 1991, Vancouver finished over .500 twice and advanced past the first round once. Quinn was by far the most influential figure in turning the Canucks around, and those early-90s teams are still my favourites today. He will be missed.

[rdnk]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

What was Dusty Baker like?

[DrJones]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

What was Dusty Baker like?

Dusty came up to EA's Burnaby studio (Burnaby's a Vancouver suburb and is Joe Sakic's hometown) in either late 2000 or early 2001.

This was for "Triple Play Baseball" (Jason Giambi cover), the 3rd EA baseball game I worked on. This was a strange year, as it was at the height of EA wanting to broaden their consumer base as far as possible (ie, try to get non-sports fans to buy sports games). Yes, this was as stupid as it sounds, and my head would silently explode at some of the weird things our executive producer would suggest at meetings. (Example: "Austin Powers is red hot right now. We should try to get Mike Myers to do funny commentary for us!" My left eyelid is twitching just remembering this.) Anyway, there was some big function at EAC where they brought up Giambi, Dusty, Chuck D of Public Enemy (he performed a "Triple Play" rap for the game's soundtrack), and flavour-of-the-month popster Vitamin C, who sang "I Know What Boys Like" on the soundtrack. I kid you not.

I remember Dusty actually got into a mocap suit (about as disturbing an image as you'd imagine) and acted out manager arguments, with my fellow producer Nate (who's now the lead producer on EA's UFC game) playing the umpire. We actually got Dusty to go all out with F-bombs galore. Don't recall if any of resulting animations made it into the game.

Afterwards (thankfully he'd changed out of the mocap suit), Dusty did a talk and Q & A with the Triple Play team. Don't remember the exact details, but Dusty talked about his childhood and his playing days, with the themes of leadership and overcoming adversity, that kind of thing. Pretty stirring stuff. Although I, like many baseball fans, criticized a lot of Dusty's in-game tactics over the years (and rightfully so), his motivational skills were obviously off the charts. Very believable as a leader of men.

One thing I distinctly remember: after the talk was over, Nate and I went up to Dusty to ask him what he thought of the Clemens/Piazza incident from the 2000 World Series.

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In Dusty's opinion, did Clemens throw at Piazza on purpose?

His answer: "F*** yes he did! If I were Piazza, I'd've killed that motherf***er!!"

[BlueNGold]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

I think Pat Quinn was the first coach I genuinely liked and was a fan of. Really sad to see him go.

[gopher_guy]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

Just more Edmonton things.

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[Kobalt]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

Edmonton should have picked Tyler

[BlueNGold]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

At this point I just feel bad for Edmonton. It makes thing even worse when they look at Calgary and see how successful their rebuild has gone thus far.

[Kobalt]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

Sooner the Avs trade O'Reilly, the better. He doesn't even try anymore.

[Psyblast]

Re: The Official 2014-15 Regular Season Talk Thread

WOOF, Martin Hanzal. Deer god.