Monday's FTB: SCF returns and PWHL Expansion Draft

The Oilers and the Panthers break their tie tonight at 8 p.m.

Panthers rally towels for Game 3 declare that “Rats Rule”

Look closely and you’ll see the logos of the three teams Florida has knocked out during this run @BarDown pic.twitter.com/9ByTe2fLB6
— Mark Masters (@markhmasters) June 8, 2025

At 8:30, the PWHL expansion draft is live on their YouTube Channel.

Each team selects at least seven players to get to a 12-player roster counting their signed players.

The NHL Combine wrapped up with the fitness tests, and if you want the full results:

https://media.nhl.com/site/vasset/public/attachments/2025/06/19060/2025ScoutingCombine_FitnessTestingResults_060725_FINAL.pdf

If you want the top 5 in each event:

Why back in my day, I tell you what...

In all seriousness, that's an article masquerading as someone daring to speak the truth. But it's all seemingly and apparently and maybe this and it could be that. It's not bad, you understand, to not be an asshole per se but it is kinda.

Here's an example:

It’s been said for years that today’s players need far more explaining about why a coach is making decisions, as opposed to the days of my co-host on Real Kyper and Bourne, Nick Kypreos, where he explains that you got the what and that was the end of that. You just did as you were told if you wanted that coveted opportunity. I saw the shift over my own playing career, which ended in 2009, but I’d argue the need for the why — admittedly not entirely a bad thing — has ramped up threefold since then.

Where it is a bad thing is that players don’t just want things explained to them so they get the why. Many also have to agree on the why to buy in, which is crucial in finding team success. With just about every coach working from lame duck status, if they get players who don’t agree, things get challenging.

It starts out with the back in his day and then back in my day, I tell you what... and it's not bad, you know, that [insert horrible old practice that people just won't bloody well put up with these days like when Bill Peters used to kick players on the bench] and it then segues into... what exactly? What is that second paragraph that follows on from the POOMA* stat designed to give it that air of factiness. It sits there unexplored, unexplained, as unproven as any other assertion about why these players today just won't live in a cardboard box and like it.

This "every coach working from lame duck status", though, this isn't proven in this article either. Now I don't actually think the way NHL teams fire GMs and coaching staffs as rituals of every offseason is a good thing, but what's left unproven here is the role players have in this process.

Take the Leafs. You can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results – as false, simplistic, reductive and actually wrong that is – is a line beloved of fans, and unlikely to be a new concept in the boardrooms of the corporations that run the team. Just as they want to deflect blame, so too do fans, in this emotional age of emotional reasons for everything, want to see the coach as having failed to imbue the players with the right emotions and they want him fired right now! Okay not you, you know who you are, you think it's the offensive system. You might be right.

You know, I am a person who thinks people in general of all ages and skills could do with bucking up and getting on with the job a little more (starting from the top down), but this is not that. Maybe he thinks it is. But it is not.

There's no more evidence provided in this article that it's the kids today and not the blokes in the cigar lounge that are actually the drivers of this firing phenomenon. The kids today, after all, didn't invent The Apprentice. The kids today didn't invent the mushroom farm – kept in the dark and fed shit – nor did they conjure up the acronym CYA. But nope, it's them and their entitlement and their need to know why. I see no reason why an elite athlete whose career lasts 5 years on average should want to understand the team plan. Just shut up and play!

Put this sort of rant in front of Leafs fans who are right at the peak of their blame Marner because blaming Matthews is too painful ritual for the last time, and you'll get a lot of nodding along. They're so entitled! They didn't show up.

Why when I was young, you could use your power over others to publicly humiliate them, and they liked it! Kids today... thinking they should get respect.

*POOMA is pulled outa my ass. Where you find the facty-sounding bullshit when you need to prop your knee-jerk squirm at how the world has changed with something.

Anyhow, sorry the man made me rant at you. I like the way Craig Berube engages with his players in public. It's professional and empathetic and kind without being weak in any way. He rewards success and gives the imperfect a chance to try again. He doesn't bench people, and he does hold them accountable, mostly out of sight of cameras. Kindness isn't weakness. Strength isn't domination. You can set high expectations without being a jackass about it.

I know everyone is mad or sad or depressed right now, but turning back the clock to a more authoritarian past isn't the answer.