Work Text:
Hello! Original text of the fic is in normal text. DVD commentary notes are in these blockquotes.
This fic, as well as the third one in the series, were written entirely as stress relief. Here are my four Sunday Six posts about writing this fic:
-14 June 2020 at 2K words
-28 June 2020 at 10K words
-16 August 2020 at 20K words
-30 August 2020 at 23K wordsBecause this fic is long and I don't have comments on all of it, I'll be snipping anywhere where it goes too long without a comment.
Before we begin, two introductory DVD things about this series that are background info that hasn't made it explicitly into the fic:
-karlsgod is trans
-puckstothenet and diquesdick are in a relationship
puckstothenet:
babe, I just had the best idea
I'm gonna write a Leverage AU
Here we go!
I no longer remember why I was thinking of a Leverage AU specifically.
[snip]
diquesdick:
ugh
fine
what's the hook? what are they stealing?
it better not be the stanley cup
puckstothenet:
no of course not
they are stealing the olympics
diquesdick:
not better.
Please hear "not better" in the same tone as Lonely Island's song
Martin ScorseseJack Sparrow.Please watch this fanvid so you know why I think that song is called Martin Scorsese:
[VID] Martin Scorsese (17 words) by JetpackMonkey
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Goodfellas
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Additional Tags: Vividcon, Vividcon Challenge, Criticism, Fanvids, Embedded Video, Video
Summary:He doesn't always do what you expect.
[snip]
puckstothenet:
None of them would say Nate, but I think a couple of them would say Mastermind
you know what? I bet chants would nominate Jacks as the mastermind
But I don't care, that's obviously Svetlana
my fic my rules
diquesdick:
poor Nate, someone should want to be him
This fic/conversation takes on an extra element now that Leverage: Redemption exists, but to do that version of it, I'd have to watch the second half of Leverage: Redemption, which I have not yet done.
puckstothenet:
look, you know me, I think Maggie should be the mastermind, not Nate
Maggie was such a wonderful, and underutilized, character on Leverage.
and I have no problem making this fic Jacktal and Crash/Svetlana and not any other pairings at all
and you know me and Parker/Sophie
this should not be a surprise
okay so
here's the assignments:
Mastermind (Nate): Svetlana
Grifter (Sophie): Chants
Hitter (Eliot): Crash
Hacker (Hardison): Jacks
Thief (Parker): Buddy
I can work with this
diquesdick:
you can!
puckstothenet:
and some womens hockey player, lets call her Amelie for now, she gets in touch with the team because... reasons
and someone on the team knows Caroline Ouellette
and she's like "I got your back, you can use the diques however you want"
diquesdick:
you know what would be great? if Amelie was dating a surfer, and that surfer knows Crash because she's got Eliot's inexplicable backstory and so surfs on the side
in theme with Eliot just randomly knowing many skills at a professional level
so we keep the surfer connection
puckstothenet:
I like it
ugh what is plot though
diquesdick:
plot is what gives you excuses for banter
There is no reason for this fic other than banter.
puckstothenet:
fair
it probably wouldn't be fair to have Ouellette herself as the client
diquesdick:
I mean, you could?
puckstothenet:
I don't wanna manufacture a grievance between her and the diques
I mean, in reality, she must have several
there's a thing as being too accurate
it's better to have her as an ally here and not as the victim
diquesdick:
okay
puckstothenet:
actually, can I bring Maggie in as Sveta's ex?
diquesdick:
if you think it you can write it, I believe in you
puckstothenet:
that's very sweet but I mean that in a fic construction way
diquesdick:
that too
a heist fic has gotta a juggle lots of characters, so what's one more?
you just need a story niche for her to fill
what's maggie there for?
puckstothenet:
you know when I started this I was sure it was Jacktal focus
and then I lost it for the ensemble and that was okay
but now I want this to be Oceans 8
and Oceans 8 is not Leverage
diquesdick:
it is not
puckstothenet:
Maggie shall be Svetlana's ex in the Oceans 8 prequel I write to the Leverage fic
diquesdick:
that's the spirit
add complication and then split it out to go somewhere else
puckstothenet:
yeah I gotta keep an eye on the scope, I'm already biting off a lot more than I can chew with this
but the focus is that Leverage is heisting for robin hood
and oceans is about heisting for the glamor and the lolz and the moneyz
if Leverage goes to a banquet to steal a diamond, that would be a ruse
it would not be the point to steal more diamonds
leverage would steal the met gala and you'd never know it was stolen
diquesdick:
I mean, they both have insurance people
Which was a somewhat tacked-on storyline in Oceans 8, so much so that I want to blame it on another heist media, like the Thomas Crown Affair. Probably not Leverage, it didn't have the reach.
Maybe Ocean's 8 felt the problem with the movie was that there wasn't enough men, so they added on the insurance guy.
puckstothenet:
true
but anyway
plot beats: they get the client
they make a plan
the plan goes awry
they modify the plan
we have some flashback that annoys me
the more leverage went on, the more those flashbacks annoyed me
they win the day
we have a nice groupshot
fade to black and/or a sex scene
yes?
diquesdick:
you know, you can leave out the flashback that annoys you
puckstothenet:
yeah I probably will
those are harder to do in fic anyway
but golly gee jiminy do I prefer the way leverage does plan changes
because oceans make my head hurt
they don't make sense!
I dare anyone to watch Ocean's 11 and make the heist planning make sense with all the changes, especially since Matt Damon didn't know George Clooney was gonna be there.
but yeah whatever glitz glamor etc
diquesdick:
there is no glitz and glamor in stealing a GM meeting
puckstothenet:
unless it's the bling on chants's watch
okay thank you for talking me into making chants the grifter because now I think the watches are gonna be the key to unlocking that plot element
Chants is gonna grift them as a consultant
Buddy The Thief will go along as his rookie, goddamn thank you this is perfect
diquesdick:
yesssss
puckstothenet:
Crash is security and always underestimated by the misogynists
again, perfect, you are getting credited as the coauthor if you keep giving me good ideas
Svetlana is working the mastermind angle and is in the van with Jacks?
no, Svetlana's gotta be on the floor, she'll be the partner in the consultancy firm, maybe?
okay and what's Jacks doing
diquesdick:
manipulating investor information?
puckstothenet:
I can work with that
he's gotta be doing some kind of hackery thing to support the con
he's the key to the inevitable plan change
he'll come in as an analytics guy in the 4th act, spew a bunch of stats, maybe invent a few
"I call this corsi-course correction," Jacks spitballs while Chants looks on with hearteyes.
Corsi-course correction is the most advanced of advanced stats, because it uses subtraction.
diquesdick:
please please please let Crash beat up Bettman
puckstothenet:
I cannot let Crash beat up Bettman, it would ruin the con
I can have her trip him, though
diquesdick:
excellent
puckstothenet:
I'm gonna need an Eliot Wearing Glasses With Long Hair Academic Look moment
and I'm gonna have to do it to Chants and I'm not sorry
diquesdick:
never be sorry for that
puckstothenet:
crash is gonna be in a suit and a french braid
I'm thinking I'm putting Jacks in a Giroux jersey at the start
and then when he comes in as an analyst...
idk do I lean into nerd or do I lean into "I look like I play pro sports"
because I wanna lean into "I look like I play pro sports"
diquesdick:
jacks's analyst persona has a backstory of wanting to play sports
but then he learned math
and he was like "if I do sports, I can't do math???"
and then the lightbulb moment of "I can do sports AND do math"
but doing sports at a high level while young means sacrificing a lot of education
so he plays some sport at a decent level, as a hobby, and enjoys mathing the pro sports instead of playing the pro sports
puckstothenet:
every single sentence starts "when I was in bantam"
and the nhl dudes are prepped for the bitter ex jock who couldn't make it as a teenager and is now desperately trying to be cool with the nhl in the only way he can
but then jacks's analyst persona ends with, idk
something like "I got my best friend cut from the team because his stats sucked"
and then he smirks
diquesdick:
"when I was in bantam, I never won a game for my team"
"but then I got into advanced stats and now I win every game for my team"
fingerguns
*snickers*
puckstothenet:
analyst!jacks shows up in a suit with a brightly colored novelty tie
firm handshake
totally bails them out of the tough situation
slicked back hair, though?
diquesdick:
definitely
puckstothenet:
how many stealing the stanley cup jokes can I make?
diquesdick:
zero
puckstothenet:
:(
diquesdick:
it's too easy. try harder.
puckstothenet:
jacks has stolen the lady byng
diquesdick:
that's the spirit
puckstothenet:
and chants has stolen the mark messier leadership award
diquesdick:
now that's just mean
puckstothenet:
accurate, though
diquesdick:
make one of them steal the vezina
puckstothenet:
what if that was buddy
he tried to steal the calder but jacks got there first
he tried to steal the conn smythe but was stymied by chants
in revenge, he stole the vezina
there's a rashomon job episode where each of them tries to work out whose stolen which hockey trophy
but okay fine no one has stolen the stanley cup
diquesdick:
no one has stolen the stanley cup because the cup was stolen in 1920something and they all know it
so there's no point in stealing a replica
no honor, no glory, no stanley cup
puckstothenet:
is this a ship of theseus problem
if most of the history of the cup is on a different cup wouldn't the new cup be the real cup
diquesdick:
you are underestimating the feelings hockey people have about thirty pounds of metal
puckstothenet:
I mean, it *is* a pretty piece of metal
also how dare you call me not a hockey person... I can't even keep a straight face
There's a... kind of useless distinction, but a distinction nonetheless, when it comes to Puck. She knows a ton about hockey that she cares about. But she's not a hockey person. But she has three team patches on her laptop bag and can talk for hours about the stuff she cares about.
But what she doesn't really care about is the NHL as an entity or a product or about its mythology or its self-importance.
She's honestly kind of a normal hockey fan. She likes her team. She likes the people she likes. She will absolutely pay 0 attention to the stanley cup final if there's no team involved that she cares about. And the only reason she knows the lady byng trophy is for sportsmanship is because people make jokes about it in fic. I doubt she watches more than 10-15 games in the regular season: she has a day job, she has a life, she has fic to read and write, and these games are long and not always at convenient times, and if there's a great play or something, someone on the group chat will send her a link to a clip. She reads the sports pages to get caught up and some blogs. She might spend more time watching interviews and promotional bits than the sport itself. Because it's hockey vs. hockey fandom.
She knows a ton about hockey, more than the average casual fan. But she is not sentimental about the stanley cup in the way the NHL really wants people to be. If the NHL ever did what the NFL does and has the stanley cup final on a sunday evening, she would go to that party, but if she didn't care about the teams, she probably still wouldn't watch the game, or if she did, only the parts people were getting very excited about.
diquesdick:
oh you're a hockey person? tell me where the coyotes play
My shame, let me show you it. These are all real.
puckstothenet:
I really wish I could say that time I said Atlanta was the product of deranged cold medicine
but it really really wasn't
and I would never lie to you
I honestly thought there was still a team in Atlanta and the Thrashers just got renamed
I have no idea where Anaheim is
Anything that starts with A is all the same place
diquesdick:
in your defense, it does not make the most sense to have hockey in Atlanta
...Arizona. Dammit now I'm doing it.
there's two teams in Florida
life is superfluous and so is half the nhl, it's totally fine
puckstothenet:
I should remember Arizona had a team because there was that whole thing with Auston Matthews
back in the mists of time
let's be fair if there isn't a slash pairing, I don't remember the team exists
gimme some super stars and personalities and I will absolutely remember the St Louis Blues exist
I wrote this the year after the St. Louis Blues won the cup.
if you do not do that, I will never remember that
people complain that hockey fans only like their own team and won't watch the cup final if it isn't their team
you want me to watch random hockey teams without slash pairings I care about?
diquesdick:
they absolutely want you to watch hockey even if there's no angst potential
puckstothenet:
inconceivable
diquesdick:
the idea is you're a fan of the sport
puckstothenet:
lol
diquesdick:
and not just your hometown team
puckstothenet:
I'm a fan of my hometown team! And the diques! And the Rangers, this season!
As established in previous fics, the hometown team is the Penguins.
But there are 34 goddamn teams in this horrible league
32 IRL, as of March 2023. But this fic takes place in a fandom where there's the Nordiques and I'd previously incorporated in the Providence team from OMG Check Please. I don't think I actually counted the teams, though, for this line. I am sure the NHL would be happy to have as many teams as they can shove in.
it is too much to ask for me to care about people I don't care about
do better promo, nhl
then I'll care about some dude on the canucks
I haven't been able to name a canuck since the sedins retired and I stand by that decision
diquesdick:
Lars Laverne
puckstothenet:
okay I can name him too
but this proves my point, because I only know him because of that 300K epic
in person, I do not think Lavvy has his dick pierced
diquesdick:
we can only hope
puckstothenet:
"who's the canuck's captain, puck?"
"fucked if I know"
"who hangs out on the third line"
"SODA FOUNTAIN AU GUY"
The true Hockey RPF experience (tm)
diquesdick:
remind me when I get home to put together a new quiz
I give someone a team
They have to list, in order, the top 5 pairings for that team
puckstothenet:
ooooh
how are you gonna handle crosses between teams and trades
diquesdick:
team crosses counts for both teams
trades... I don't want to have to look at fic publish date but I will if I have to
if all members of the pairing were ever once on the same team, I'm willing to call it that team even after trades
puckstothenet:
so chants/temi is still sharks even though neither are on the sharks anymore?
diquesdick:
yeah
I feel if anyone is still holding out the good fight for chants/temi in this day and age, they deserve to get counted under sharks
it's not like chants/temi would have happened if they never shared a team
puckstothenet:
how would you count jacktal during their rookie season?
diquesdick:
crossover, so counts for both
unless you wanna bring junior teams into this
puckstothenet:
kinda tempted now that it's on offer
there was like that whole year of the rimouski oceanic wasn't there?
Shoutout to everyone writing Erie Otters fic that year about Connor McDavid and his teammates/competitors. You made sure I knew who Connor McDavid and his teammates/competitors were.
diquesdick:
I could not possibly comment
(my Robbie/Robert road trip is still my best fic in terms of hits per bookmark)
A reference to the first fic in this series where I invented a guy called Rimouski Robbie. Continuity!
puckstothenet:
it would be really complicated to figure out BUT
a category for "these two guys never shared a team in their entire lives"
including olympic, world, AND ALL STAR
my mind goes immediately to McDavid and Eichel
but did they ever share an all star game team?
diquesdick:
I do not know but I could probably find out
can the pairing be on the same national team but they never played together?
puckstothenet:
sure but how many of those exist?
diquesdick:
it's a brave new world of six degrees of separation
puckstothenet:
fuck, McDavid and Eichel were on that "team north america" bullshit, weren't they?
My actual reaction when I remembered that.
diquesdick:
oh fuck it, yeah, they were
puckstothenet:
dammit I need another example
I was so happy with that one because they are from different countries
they never should have been on the same international team
stupid bullshit teams
diquesdick:
"and now I give you... Europe Not Including The Four Countries Previously Mentioned"
puckstothenet:
"We call our team Miscellaneous Other"
and now we round back gracefully to Team Leverage
diquesdick:
if Team Leverage were cross-team pairings...
Eliot was on the Flyers, yes, I make the rules
puckstothenet:
Hardison was Florida Panthers, then got traded to the Kings and finished his career there
Parker is a Penguin
diquesdick:
Sophie was on the Capitals
Nate was an original nordique and never lets Chants forget it
puckstothenet:
I like that smooth crossover you just did, very nice
diquesdick:
thanks I try
Luc Chantal RPF is sorely lacking in him getting some nice age difference with someone from the nordiques
I'd fix that but, like you, I don't know anyone on the original nordiques because there's no slash about them these days
puckstothenet:
I feel vindicated
diquesdick:
the internet tells me that there's 4 original nordiques I've heard of
I googled for this line but don't recall who they were. One was Joe Sakic.
no interest in slashing any of them with our captain
puckstothenet:
can I keep Hardison in this fic?
diquesdick:
yes
what's he gonna be doing?
puckstothenet:
you know how the show makes it clear that they all go off and do their own cons sometimes?
Hardison is doing some unrelated con on the nhl
but since Team Hockey AU isn't interfering with his con, he's just in the background doing his own thing and sometimes using their con to distract from his
just a nice little cameo in the background
but then he and jacks can "age of the geek, baby" at each other
diquesdick:
ahem, jacks would say "age of the geek, bro" in return
puckstothenet:
yes you are of course correct
"Age of the geek, baby," says Hardison.
"Age of the geek, bro," says Jacks and high-fives.
"Bro, for sure," says Chants and fist bumps them both.
diquesdick:
does Hardison keep in touch with Jacks
and then bring him in instead of Wil Wheaton when they need nerd backup?
puckstothenet:
yes
very much yes
diquesdick:
okay but what if Jacks is an NHL player and also a conman hacker
not your fic, a different fic
but then Hardison calls him to cash in on a favor
and it would work since Jacks travels so much
so Jacks could be like "catching up with an old friend after the game!"
and everyone's like "yeah, bro, old teammate from juniors, gotcha, have fun"
and then Jacks ends up in the brewpub
puckstothenet:
I like it
what's he getting called in for?
diquesdick:
idk maybe Hardison got IDed and they need another hacker
and Jacks can double as a distraction because he is Famous NHLer Oliver Jackson
puckstothenet:
he is not Famous NHLer in Portland, Oregon, I do not think
diquesdick:
without checking, tell me where the nearest NHL team to Oregon is
puckstothenet:
I hate you :P
seattle, though, gotta be seattle
...right?
diquesdick:
yeah you're fine ;)
I double-checked this on a map.
[snip]
puckstothenet:
I like the cut of your jib
diquesdick:
I have a great jib
how's your fic going?
puckstothenet:
I'm at the "ugh what is Crash even doing here though" stage
diquesdick:
you have found the lament of the unnecessarily-specific
and thus must become from specific to general
puckstothenet:
ugh
diquesdick:
everyone else is vague enough
but Eliot is a hitter so when he can't hit, he has to fill another role
invent some hidden talent for Crash
this is how Eliot knows how to sing, the plot requires him to do so
what does the plot require ANYONE to do
figure that out, have Crash do it
IIRC I did not realize this about Eliot until I wrote this fic and then it felt way too obvious.
puckstothenet:
the plot needs someone who can recite Yeats
diquesdick:
boom, Crash is now a poetry scholar on the side
puckstothenet:
this seems a poor idea
diquesdick:
when all you have is a hammer, everything you see is a plot hole
no one will question it
Crash is Eliot and Eliot just knows shit
they established it early on, they kept it, it's just continuity
you get to exploit that
puckstothenet:
I do not like this sam I am.
diquesdick:
just roll with it, I promise you it'll be fine
[snip]
puckstothenet:
that's the highlight of baseball for me, how nice everything but the baseball game is :P
diquesdick:
didn't you play baseball?
puckstothenet:
I lasted about three weeks in little league but, yes, it gave me opinions
but yeah
one underappreciated thing (probably, let's be honest, by me) about baseball is, when the weather is nice, just how fun it can be to hang out outside in the shade and slowly watch people throw balls at each other
I have shivered in so many ice rinks, you don't even know
and don't get me started on american football, aka why are you asking me to sit outside when it's snowing
I don't know why they do that either. I guess it started out as an autumn sport and then they kept pushing it and pushing it to have it go longer?
I'm not sure I'm necessarily *eager* to watch baseball, but it can be a nice way to spend an afternoon
plus if you zone out for a while, nothing has really happened
baseball people are aghast
if something exciting is happening, the people around you will be excited and alert you to look up from watching the pretty clouds overhead and the kid in the next section climbing over all of the seats
diquesdick:
somewhere Luc Chantal just started singing my love for you will still be strong after the boys of summer have gone
I think this is at least the second fic I've done where I've used that song to refer to baseball players. I had a vague impression that "boys of summer" actually is a phrase used to refer to baseball players. I think I got that impression from an LJ icon someone once had, and I find out now that this is correct, there's a 1972 book about baseball called The Boys Of Summer. Wonderful. :D
puckstothenet:
and he is absolutely correct
AU where Chants got into soccer instead of hockey, so I, too, can sit outside in good weather, drink lemonade, eat pretzels, and shout at the refs
diquesdick:
outdoor games exist
puckstothenet:
see above: you want me to sit outside when it's snowing???
It's called ambiance, puck.
diquesdick:
AU where we can make ice outside in the summer
puckstothenet:
that's the spirit
diquesdick:
and if you do get into soccer, despite the horrible lack of Luc Chantal in it, I will follow you, Mr. Frodo
I will take the fanfiction to Mordor, although I do not know the way
I love this line. I doubt I'm the only one to come up with it, but it's a good line, no matter how overused.
puckstothenet:
I may or may not take you up on it
the women who play soccer are all really hot
They are!
Amongst the Very Stressful things that contributed to me writing beep boop involved me spending a few days in a hotel room. Whilst there, I watched some soccer. The Orlando and Chicago teams were playing and my eye kept getting caught by Sam Kerr.
but idk I need someone to rec me some fic to really get me into it
and plus I do need a TEAM
I guess this is why I've only ever dipped my toes into it during the olympics, because that just writes itself
diquesdick:
I am amused by the way that we went from "ice hockey is too cold" to "let's get into soccer" and ignored field hockey exists
puckstothenet:
look, devorah
I needed to give the character an actual name, preferably one that started with D, and Devorah it was.
diquesdick:
you're gonna say something about not being able to see the ball, aren't you
puckstothenet:
I'm already in a sport where it's important that the spectators can NEVER see what all those athletes are chasing so furiously
why do you want me in another one?
you may as well ask me to get into golf
or any other sports with tiny balls and grass, I'm sure there's many others
diquesdick:
plus you don't want to
puckstothenet:
that is absolutely true
if you dragged me out to a competitive sports game, probably doesn't matter what sport, and the teams played well and it was exciting, I would probably enjoy it
diquesdick:
because experience
puckstothenet:
because experience!
but I don't know necessarily that I'd go back
and if you want me in the slash fandom, you absolutely have to give me a reason to care
but it is sports fandom so you also have to give me something entertaining to watch, so that I continue to care
because if your sport does not bother to be entertaining, you can try to give some other kind of entertaining around it, but that's diminishing returns real damn fast
I gotta want to care about the latest episode of your sports season and I gotta care about the people doing it
which is why I can only name three fucking hockey teams right now, because they're the only ones with those intersections
diquesdick:
The kings might have something for you to care about next year
puckstothenet:
and then I will care next year
because yeah the additional factor in sports fandom is turnover, so not only do I have to care now, I have to care about more than one specific person, so that I continue to care once that person stops playing
do you remember me caring about the diques before it got Great Storyline Luc Chantal? you do not, because I didn't
but I got on that bandwagon *real fucking fast*
diquesdick:
you did climb that bandwagon with excessive speed and enthusiasm, I recall
I love this line.
puckstothenet:
whereas you cared about the diques because all the great possibilities of a new team and starting over with an existing name
diquesdick:
I did
I came for that but then I stayed for good hockey
because yeah, a good team in potentia has to keep my interest with a good team in actuality
"fair weather fan" or whatever, I don't actually enjoy being bored
I feel there is absolutely nothing wrong with only liking a team when they're doing well.
if the team isn't winning, that's one thing
but if the team isn't playing good hockey, I have other shit to do with my life
watching a season of hockey is a commitment
puckstothenet:
yep
diquesdick:
I'm not actually sure how long I'd cling to the diques if they 1) played many many seasons of boring hockey, and 2) no longer had interesting slash pairings
I want someone I can squee to about it, either in the sports side or the fannish side
if I don't have anything, it's several hours of watching people in matching outfits try to achieve an objective, badly
Which is certainly one way to put it.
puckstothenet:
lol I love you
but like, that's the thing
Chants is gonna stop playing at some point, but if we keep dragging this fandom around, there'll be enough other players I care about to keep the slash going
but what happens when those players all get traded?
Luc Chantal's Rookie Union is a great thing but someday they're all gonna be spread across the country and what will I do then?
I tossed around a lot of terms for Luc Chantal's collection of rookies before coming up with Rookie Union, but I think it fits and is self-explanatory.
am I still gonna care about the diques? probably fucking not.
a sport's not enough. I gotta care about it. Otherwise I may as well watch any team play any other team, it doesn't matter to me that it's this one specific team
diquesdick:
I predict that ten years from now, you are still gonna be writing jacktal
but yeah I make no predictions about anything else
puckstothenet:
jacktal is special because they are legit married
even if something happens, like one of them retires and the other one switches teams, they're still gonna be a pairing
even if they divorce, they're still gonna be a pairing
it's not *situational*, if you know what I mean. A trade won't destroy it like trades have destroyed so many pairings
*sheds a tear for those pairings*
diquesdick:
yeah
and even when they were on other teams, they were still such a big pairing because of their history and off-ice connection
they don't need to be on a team together, they're each other's team
but that's like, them and no one else
sometimes you get nostalgia pairings or everyone is still pretending that it's still one specific year and that one specific team lineup
jacktal will transition into different modes but honestly I think it's gonna be fine
aka we can hang out here for a while and don't have to convert to baseball
[snip]
puckstothenet:
that's depressing
other sports have things going for them, like hotdogs and popcorn and yelling hey batter batter
gambling just makes me think of casinos in movies, which look like migraines encased in architecture
diquesdick:
that's exactly what they are
the leverage hockey AU team get to steal one thing from each major sport and include it into hockey, what do they steal? go.
puckstothenet:
basketball: how fast the game moves
I don't actually know for sure if it does, but basketball is the sport I watch when I'm in some place with various tv channel options and one or several of them are espn
"several are espn" is a very specific mood :P
but yeah, basketball was what I'd watch on the tv at the gym, or Food Network. It's amazing the type of shows that work just as well, if not better, when there's no sound.
and basketball sure seems to move fast
probably because the ball is in the air, but it's fantastic
your turn
diquesdick:
super bowl scheduling. I don't know for sure when the next super bowl is, but I know vaguely when it is and I can google it and find out the exact date
their schedule is fricking *locked in*
they know when things will happen
they know YEARS IN ADVANCE
My note to self by this line was: wiki right now has the date and location set for super bowl 2023
none of this bullshit of knowing barely a week before when the playoff games will be
I want this set in fucking stone. I want to be able to schedule around it. I don't want my team to suddenly go on deep playoff run and me to be ANNOYED about it because it fucks up my existing plans
I want to be able to just block it off on my calendars and definitely always 100% have the stanley cup final be on a weekend especially when it's being played on the west coast
that is what we are stealing from football: the goddamn schedule
next
puckstothenet:
baseball: you gotta be able to do more than one thing
hear me out
now I'm not saying that everyone needs to be able to play both offense and defense
but that is exactly what I'm saying
the thing about baseball is, it doesn't matter how much you just want to hit the ball, go whee, and round the bases, you also have to play a position
This is from having a baseball fan on my flist at one point, who extolled this as a virtue of baseball, that people have to be able to do more than one thing, it's not just a game of specialization.
Anyway, now the designated hitter rule is everywhere.
now, I'm not saying we gotta have top and bottom halves of the innings and make everyone switch and all that
but absolutely I want people switching and all that
"complete player" YEAH BUT CAN YOU DO GOALIE? CAN YOU PUNK?
diquesdick:
no designated hitter, I take it?
puckstothenet:
nope
learn to hit the ball, pitchers. if you only ever wanted to do one thing ever, become a hockey player
so no goalie exemption. Goalies gotta go score some goals.
and your star forwards have to have pucks shot at their faces
gotta walk a mile in someone else's hockey pads
this team is here to steal the vezina and by god they mean it
diquesdick:
ha
puckstothenet:
your turn :P
diquesdick:
uh, soccer's turn, I guess?
hmmm
okay actually what I want to steal from soccer is how global a sport it is
everyone knows soccer
petition to just start calling it football all the time and make other people have to specify "american football" for the other one
puckstothenet:
I'm on board with it but it may cause some confusion depending on who you're talking to
but yeah, down with the absurdity of calling that sport football, they throw the ball with their hands
diquesdick:
I'm declaring that you have to steal something from tennis now
puckstothenet:
davis cup!
diquesdick:
that... took you less time than I'd thought
One thing that was very hard to do with this fic was get any sense of delayed rhythm; there's no real way of indicating how long or fast it takes for the other to respond, and if topic changes are immediate or if the chat lulled for a week or so. But this is absolutely meant to be "davis cup!" immediately after D says that.
puckstothenet:
davis cup is great because it makes all these individual athletes in a very individual sport have to figure out how to play for their country
it's perfect
tennis is so cross-country that you've got all these random doubles teams up just for the olympics because that's just about the only time you have rules about being from the same country
this is just not a thing in tennis!
and then there's the davis cup and guess what YOU ARE THERE FOR YOUR COUNTRY
I picked this up from someone at some point when I was in tennis. It may have even been one of the McEnroes, since at one point Patrick McEnroe was doing US Davis Cup things.
diquesdick:
so how are we gonna work that into a sport that's already got a world championships every year?
puckstothenet:
we would, by god, make people go to it :P
aka we would stop fucking scheduling it against the playoffs
we can work this in with your regular & set playoffs schedule also so we know when the playoffs are, they aren't going until t-shirt weather, and then we can have worlds
diquesdick:
there is no way we can make players go to worlds
puckstothenet:
we can at least give them the option
and if we have set playoffs, maybe we have a shorter season, so this isn't a case of "we went all the way in the playoffs and you want me to play MORE HOCKEY? my offseason isn't long enough for me to rehydrate as it is!"
which sport has a short season? let's steal that from that sport
diquesdick:
well that one's not tennis, even I know their season is brutal. I'm not entirely sure it actually ends at any point. It's gotta, right?
puckstothenet:
presumably
My vague impression, back from when I was watching tennis, and I have never checked since, is that it ends in December. But I don't think there's any real actual off-season.
However, tennis players do get to pick which competitions they go to, unlike players in leagues where you are given a schedule and you play every game they don't sit you out for. So there is theoretically more control, but on the other hand, tennis players have to play a lot to maintain rankings.
diquesdick:
you know what? I feel like american football has a short season. Their playoffs end in February, but doesn't it only start in September or October?
screw it I'm not checking
I just feel like american football players don't play that many games
especially compared to baseball where they do doubleheaders and that bullshit
but the last time the local american football team was trying to build an arena, I remember someone saying their number of home games was fucking tiny
something like 16? 18? whichever it was, it was a lot smaller than the impression that I had
puckstothenet:
it's worse than that, I think it's 8
It is, in fact, eight, which is INFURIATING, from a "hey taxpayers fucking pay up for our stadiums for us to play eight games there" perspective.
diquesdick:
it cannot be 8
american football is so fucking dominant that there has got to be more than 8
puckstothenet:
the reason it seems like it's so much is 1) college football, and also 2) every game is broadcast
it's not like some sports I may mention where you may have 4 games in a day but good luck watching them all on the television
diquesdick:
you are blowing my mind but also I call bullshit, it cannot be 8
hockey teams play something like 40 home games
puckstothenet:
yeah, and who goes to all of them?
I think american football is targeting quality over quantity
diquesdick:
fuck me over and feed me chicken soup, I can't handle this
I love this line.
if you are correct, we are SURE FUCKING shortening hockey's season
more doesn't equal more, when american football prints money on that kind of schedule
puckstothenet:
also I still want to shift their schedule, let's have them start in July and end in October
who knows, if you do that, I might go to a game
okay that's not true, I'm still never going to a game
diquesdick:
I can't believe you just made me google american football game schedules
I'm goddamn agog at this
they don't even play every other team each year
I found that out while writing this fic, because I don't follow american football
puckstothenet:
huh, guess not
diquesdick:
this is what I get for never paying any attention to this sport
puckstothenet:
and yet you know vague things about it, like when their season finale is
diquesdick:
the power of marketing
and that power is very powerful because fucking hell I never knew any of this
suddenly all that bullshit about the stanley cup being the hardest trophy to win starts making sense
puckstothenet:
eh, I mean, I still think baseball plays more games than hockey does
but you can't make me google it, you cannot, I refuse
I've already fallen too far down this rabbit hole
all I wanted to do was steal good stuff to help out hockey
how could that have backfired so badly
diquesdick:
this is the part of the leverage episode where we cut to commercial and then come back to a new plan and strategic flashbacks
puckstothenet:
fuck me you're right it is
COMMERCIAL BREAK
HERE ARE THE MESSAGES FROM OUR SPONSORS
BUY SOME SHIT
and we're back!
anyway what I'm gonna steal from golf is the golf carts
diquesdick:
good decision I approve.
puckstothenet:
you know when you watch boat races and there's people, like, biking next to it? I think those are either coaches or refs?
I have steadfastly refused to ever find out who those people are.
instead of biking, they should be in golf carts
also it undermines swimming races when you see people walking next to the pool
you're trying to convince me these people are going so fucking fast, and meanwhile someone's just ambling along
admittedly they are going fast for swimming, I sure can't swim at a walking pace
but still, the optics: not great
diquesdick:
what I am stealing from swimming: "technological doping"
the idea that which swimsuit you wear matters if you win or not
it's such a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with the world and with capitalism and did I mention with the world
some suits are good! some suits are bad! because they give you too much good stuff! and the margins of victory are so fucking small that actually, yes, it matters
fucking absurd
and yes I know this is stealing to give to hockey, I don't care, I'm going to steal it and then lose it so no one can have it
if the margin of victory is so small that what kind of speedo you're wearing is the difference between gold and last place, just call it a tie and also maybe stop competing in that sport
because there's no competition left to have
everyone is great at it! the only way to have an edge is ... well, we're gonna call it cheating because we don't like it
declare that humans have victoried over swimming and let's go home
puckstothenet:
seems legit
diquesdick:
we are stealing photo finishes from EVERY SPORT and reintroducing the concept of ties
Amen.
Like, in theory, I guess I'm not too against photo finishes in general? If you can stand by the side of the race track and take a photo and it shows that one person's body is visibly ahead of the other one? Yeah, sure, okay, fine, if you insist.
That nonsense at the Olympics where they had Michael Phelps and that other guy touch a touch pad a tiny split section ahead of each other and it was a whole big thing? JUST CALL IT A TIE. THEY TIED.
we can take them from soccer if we need to
soccer fucking loves ties
puckstothenet:
oh, hockey could use that, too
I don't know why hockey decided to hate ties
diquesdick:
the thrill of victory! the agony of defeat!
For anyone who did not have to watch The Wide World Of Sports on ABC, that was a big line in their opening credits.
When searching for a video example to link to, I found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY9SBzAXqWE, which is an hour and a half of the broadcast from January 16, 1988. The description says it's "With the Calgary Winter Olympics just around the corner, Pairs competitions from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and the World Cup men's downhill event from Kitzbuhel, Austria are this week's highlights on ABC's Wide World of Sports. Includes commercials as recorded off WTAE in Pittsburgh."
Watch it before it gets copyright yanked! (If you have never heard Peggy Fleming and Dick Button do figure skating commentary, and you want to, this is your chance.)
puckstothenet:
also, taking away photo finishes doesn't count, you gotta appreciate the contributions other sports can make to hockey :P
diquesdick:
the contribution swimming can make to hockey is spandex
puckstothenet:
fully reasonable assertion, I agree with you
diquesdick:
now you gotta say something nice about track and field
puckstothenet:
oh if we're including field, I am totally stealing the idea of throwing stuff
Field sports are fun!
I wanna see people throw that puck at the net
I want to see distance, I want to see technique, I want to see form
I'm on board with puck throwing hockey
so that covers, what, two field events? maybe more? they blend together
oh and the jumping ones! I wanna see if anyone can jump over the net without toppling it over
field events are fabulous even if it would take me five or ten minutes to remember all of them
track, on the other hand, is people running in circles, and if we put that into hockey, it's just speed skating
diquesdick:
hmmm. what contribution can speed skating make
puckstothenet:
shoving being against the rules
Although speaking of speed skating, if shoving really is against the rules, then short track speed skating should just race in lanes and not all on top of each other, so they stop having races, someone wins, and then they review the race and disqualify half the field for touching each other.
diquesdick:
heresy
puckstothenet:
hey, you asked
diquesdick:
Anything else from the track and field genre? I know you are offended by the very concept of marathons.
puckstothenet:
That is correct
I will stop hating marathons when they stop holding them on city streets.
diquesdick:
I like the baton races where it seems like none of the highly trained elite athletes have ever seen a baton before. I'd compare that to nights certain left wingers seem to have never seen a puck before and have no interest in changing that
puckstothenet:
Meanie head
What did Isaackson ever do to earn your disdain?
diquesdick:
The three different overtime losses, for one
puckstothenet:
One player doesn't lose, the team loses!
diquesdick:
Great, the entire Seattle roster never saw a puck before
puckstothenet:
That's the spirit
Poor Mark Machado, he deserves better
let's campaign to get him traded to a better team
diquesdick:
which one?
puckstothenet:
Rangers, they could use some wingers, all they have are centers and d-pairings and one and a half goalies
diquesdick:
I don't know if the rangers count as a better team than seattle this year
puckstothenet:
it's all about the build and the future and I can't even say it
yeah whatever hockey sucks let's all go watch baseball
does baseball have the same bullshit that hockey does where if someone is over 30, they are the most old that ever olded?
diquesdick:
they definitely have people who have very long careers
I don't actually know how often that happens because I don't follow baseball, but yeah, that's the impression that I get
but I do not know how annoyed they are when someone dares to have a birthday
puckstothenet:
alas
diquesdick:
olympic sailing has some old people in it, if you want long careers
Every Olympics or so there's articles on the oldest and youngest competitors and it's like:
Youngest: gymnastics or diving
Oldest: sailing
puckstothenet:
I am not rich enough to follow sailing
diquesdick:
true
puckstothenet:
are there any other sports in the world?
diquesdick:
nope we've covered all of them
puckstothenet:
cool
Crash taps me on the shoulder and said what about surfing
I'm not taking anything from surfing for hockey
my brain isn't working
is yours?
diquesdick:
surfing... has a coolness factor to it? people do it for fun?
"learning to surf" is a legit bucket list item for folks. "learn to play hockey" generally is not
puckstothenet:
true
although if we wanna talk barriers to entry, wow, surfing has Many
diquesdick:
hence the bucket listing
puckstothenet:
yeah
diquesdick:
do you ever wanna go surfing?
puckstothenet:
I am realistic about my balance, my swimming ability, and my ability to see without my glasses
aka no
but if you wanna go, I'll hang out on the beach
diquesdick:
I'm meh on it.
the only bucket list involving a beach I have is a bucket for a sandcastle
one day once I have control of the nhl's schedule, we'll get tickets to the final game of the stanley cup playoffs and you'll get to see the cup awarded and boo bettman in person the way you've always wanted
we'll book tickets in the closest hotel to the rink months in advance, so while everyone else is trying to get out, we'll just walk over to the hotel bar
toast predictable schedules and the ability to make advance plans until sunrise
puckstothenet:
that sounds fantastic
but you are never gonna get anyone to agree to not doing a best of whatever series
never ever
diquesdick:
american football doesn't and neither does proper football, the world cup is sudden death after group stages and it's still the most popular sporting event on the planet as far as I know
hockey will just have to get over itself and join the feetballs
puckstothenet:
come to think of it, a best of whatever series wouldn't be insurmountable so long as it didn't keep moving around between games and the site was picked in advance, none of this home ice stuff
so we'd camp out for a week in, like, Hartford
Hartford is very specifically picked here because it's not a huge market or a gigantic city where the Cup would get overshadowed, or it'd be too expensive/too hard to get hotels, but it still has an airport.
games every second day, and we'd spend the off days doing the tourist stuff in the area
that would be a really great vacation, now I've talked myself into it
tourist stuff one day, scream yourself hoarse at games the next, and then someone gets a big shiny bowl at the end
then we go home and never go back to Hartford again, we've seen all there is to see
and repeat again next year in a totally different city
dammit. Now I really really want this.
but probably the closest we can come to this is the olympics. I know the world cup is across multiple cities, because... I don't actually know why. Probably enough arenas, plus the crowds.
but you've talked me into this.
diquesdick:
see? it's a great thing to steal
puckstothenet:
okay you know actually wait
because I think you've found a solution to the thing where I stop caring about the playoffs once teams I care about lose
if you divorce the stanley cup final from the teams playing it it, and make it its own thing
like, that thing is the important thing, and the teams are honored to get to play in it (and honestly that's half their marketing already, that's not hard, this league doesn't promote players, that'd be foolish)
but it's like how my moms have hosted a super bowl party for the last 12 years and last year I asked Mama Lillian who was playing in it, and she didn't know
I did once, in fact, get invited to and go to a super bowl party, and have no idea who was playing.
but they've got friends over, they've got food, there's the game on in the living room and people can watch it if they care enough to
it's an excuse to hang out and be social
and it's low key since no one there actually cares enough about football to be mad if their team loses
imagine we had a stanley cup final in some random city, so it was about the cup and, hey, maybe about the history of the city, their own hockey achievements, famous nhlers who came from there, whatever
and then some teams showed up and played a game
and it was enough of an event that even I'd watch it, even if it's the preds again
because, again, with your scheduling, this is on a weekend afternoon/evening, we've got enough lead up for promo and preparation, we got the hype going, everything is awesome
THAT is how I will care about your playoffs enough to watch them even if I have no skin in this game
never again will I repeat the experience of waking up on a thursday, look blearily at some texts on my phone telling me the avs won, stumble to work, and only an hour later realize y'all meant the avs won the stanley fucking cup
I ended up incepting myself into this whole idea by writing this. God, wouldn't it be great.
diquesdick:
you were a zombie that year, sending me the weirdest zombie texts
"is the sun inside out?" - puck griffin-schwartz, 2024
puckstothenet:
I stand by that
but god yeah also I think the playoffs went more than two full fucking months that year
How long do playoffs go for? So long I had to check wikipedia just to verify that yes it really was two months.
Me: It cannot actually be two months, that is hyperbole
Me: *does the most basic google*
Me: *counts on fingers*
Me: ...WHY DO THE PLAYOFFS GO ON FOR TWO FULL MONTHS
it was a long slog at work and it was probably an even longer slog for anyone paying any attention to hockey
whose idea was four best of seven rounds anyway? it's not gripping theater, it's a game of chicken with exhaustion, injuries, and fan burnout
"the goalie might get hot" yeah well then the goalie got hot, I don't know how to tell you but the goalie is on the team too, it sounds like a team doing well and not stealing a win
I do not understand this dire fear that a goalie might be good at his job.
diquesdick:
best of three is probably the most I'll go for multiple rounds, if I can't have a knockout tournament (please give me a knockout tournament)
because I like your fantasy of let's go to some place for a week, we'll have 2 or 3 games to watch, 2 or 3 days to hang out and/or day trip, and then we leave
I think that's a good mix
puckstothenet:
yeah I like rounds of 3, if we must have rounds
I just don't like that you could play a full tournament of march madness while we're still figuring out conference champions
ugh
I love how I sound like I don't like the playoffs when really it's the regular season I don't like :P
but taking a snip to that, too, might make me care. It's just so fucking long and has so much filler
maybe players wouldn't hate the all star game so much if it wasn't dangling the idea of a break in front of them and then snatching it away and tell them, go skate around meaninglessly
at least the playoffs mean something
I won't say "every game counts" because best of 7 means even there you could have two or even four games of filler
best of 3 gets it down to essentials. No wasted games. No wasted effort. Can you win or can't you? Like, sure, best of 1 would do that even better, but there's sure a lot of hockey people who want to talk to me about coin-flips and flukes or hate that goalies are important (because only forwards should be important??? fuck those guys)
diquesdick:
so how about this:
october: preseason
november - mid-february: season
late-february: playoffs
march: all star game
april: worlds
may: it's nice outside, we're going outside
in olympic years, we will push the playoffs to late march (2 week olympic break, 2 week finishing regular season as a break for the players who went to the olympics not immediately have to go into playoffs) and not have an all star game
OR we could have olympics, then an all star game that no olympic player goes to, so they can have a break
then we can capitalize on olympic promo and be like "hey did you like olympic hockey? good news, you can now watch more high quality hockey, here's a 2 week playoff whirlwind"
I have now solved every problem the NHL has
puckstothenet:
I like how you're giving the all star game an entire month
diquesdick:
players get a month to rest and heal up and maybe they can go to the ASG to have some actual fun and blow off steam
but having the ASG after the playoffs makes a million more sense than shoving it halfhazardly into the season
it's an exhibition! do it after the season to exhibit your good players! and with a shorter season, maybe the best players won't be so broken down that they won't mind taking a victory lap in a pressure-free game
have the team who won the cup host the ASG a month later, really get that victory celebration cemented and keep the marketing going in the home market
puckstothenet:
this does sound really nice
diquesdick:
I know, I'm a sports genius
puckstothenet:
now just become a leverage genius, steal the nhl, so we can make this happen
diquesdick:
lol, I'll definitely get on that
how goes writing?
puckstothenet:
chants and jacks have to distract someone so they have a really loud fight about who is the best player between two
not sure which two, though?
diquesdick:
mcdavid and draisaitl
puckstothenet:
thanks
(mcdavid wins, though)
diquesdick:
(lol)
(who is better, chants or jacks?)
puckstothenet:
(they're both the best at their positions!!!!!111!!!)
diquesdick:
(yeah but for real)
puckstothenet:
(don't do this to me. I'll pick Generational Talent Luc Chantal and hate myself forever.)
(please pick Also Generational Talent Oliver Jackson to make me feel better)
diquesdick:
(I can absolutely do that)
(did you get into a fight again?)
puckstothenet:
(if someone is gonna be asshole enough to come up to me and say "you don't really like oliver jackson, he's only good when on a line with luc chantal", they had it coming they had it coming they had it coming all along)
Cell Block Tango from the musical Chicago.
Here are some fun versions!
"Cell Block Tango" - Broadway Backwards 2015
....AND today I just discovered that searching for this on youtube gives me 1) the movie, 2) some genderbent stuff for charity, and 3) high school/non-pro versions.
So instead, here's a great We Both Reached For The Gun.
[snip]
diquesdick:
or is this like you thinking it's insulting to the rest of the competitors if only a couple of the competitors think each other's a rival?
puckstothenet:
it's an external application of rivalry onto something
yes!
you know me well
diquesdick:
it is not insulting for the top competitors to consider themselves in a competition of their own
puckstothenet:
but when someone breaks through and beats one of them, it is deserved or is it resented?
because the competitors MAY NOT mind, they may be totally fine with it
but the TELEVISION PEOPLE? god it's like someone punched their cabbage patch kid if someone disrupts the narratives they've built
I have some unresolved issues with how sports are broadcast on television. :P
my problem with rivalries, yeah, I guess, is that I've only ever seen them imposed from the top down, in order to market a competition
there's some competitors who are trying to be the best and may have never given another competitor any attention at all, because they are focused on their own performance
but then external forces show up and want to SELL THE STORY
and then try to get the competitors on board with them to SELL THE STORY
especially when it's an international competition, and each competitor very well may have a rival, but it's a rival back home, it's someone they're competing against to get into the international competition
they may not give a fuck about the person next to them on the starting line who they only ever see once a year, or quite frankly may never have actually met before
diquesdick:
ah, I see, you're still holding a grudge about the 1998 Olympics
This is a very general complaint, but 1998 was picked for this line because Tara Lipinski Deserves Some Respect, and that may have been the first Olympics when I was aware of the construction of media narratives.
puckstothenet:
let's be fair, I am holding a grudge about every Olympics
it's the one time every four years people discover these sports, but instead of treating it like an opportunity to experience new sports, the presumed experts get handed a sheet of paper with the storyline they're going with, and then if someone dares to be good at their sport, it is a problem
they have fluff pieces put together! won't somebody please think of the fluff pieces!
diquesdick:
I do not think of the fluff pieces and neither should you
puckstothenet:
yes. any time they are showing fluff they are not showing the sport
I personally do not mind a well-done fluff piece, but most fluff pieces are not well-done.
you know, the thing we're all here to watch
but then I just happen to catch someone saying something stupid and I remember it FOREVER
diquesdick:
this is why you are only allowed to watch sporting events that have commentary while muted or with commentators who speak in languages you don't understand, unless it's the bbc
Watching sports by network, in order:
1) BBC
2) Eurosport or maybe CBC
3) A language you don't speakNot ranked: US television
I used to watch a lot of figure skating from Japanese TV. I do not know Japanese. I did learn to identify some words, but that was it.
During the season when the figure skating judges suddenly decided they cared what edge the skater was on when they started the jump (this is the difference between a flip jump and a lutz jump), I watched an explainer from Japanese TV that explained the issue. It was perfectly clear and understandable, despite me not knowing the language. Meanwhile, on US coverage, the only person who cared at all about the edges was Tracy Wilson (it may be relevant that she's Canadian, but amusingly, she's an ice dancer; correct edges for jumps is not something she had to worry about). The rest of the commentary crew had an attitude of "who gives a fuck if they're doing the jump correctly". Well, this season, the judges give a fuck.
US commentates would rather live in a fantasy world full of the narrative on the paper in front of them, than pay any attention to what's happening on the ice. This is true across most sports I have watched on US television (Mary Carillo is memorable for actually being good at her job.)
plus, we all get to learn important vocabulary in other languages. Is it important to know the words for win and lose in four languages? Who knows, you never know when that could become useful
puckstothenet:
one day I'm gonna actually learn French and then we'll all be in trouble
diquesdick:
yes, we will be
puckstothenet:
Important cross-language vocabulary: I'm just here to do my best and have fun!
Unimportant cross-language vocabulary: Pardon me, can you please point me in the direction of a grocery store?
diquesdick:
Unimportant cross-language vocabulary: this is a shock! No one could ever have foreseen this outcome!
"Just because you're upset about it doesn't mean it's an upset", I repeat over and over again to sports commentators on American television.
(Who is worse, Al Trautwig or Dick Button? On the one hand, Al Trautwig is so horrible, I hadn't even heard of the controversy that finally got him kicked off of Olympic gymnastics coverage, because I long ago stopped watching the Olympics on US television, and yet I still despise him for everything that came before it. On the other hand, Dick Button did actual damage to US womens figure skating for decades with his biases presented as absolute fact.) (Hey, Dick Button, the rules on the layback spin have to do with the position of the back, not the free leg!!!!)
puckstothenet:
*head turns toward that with the unerring direction ability of outrage*
diquesdick:
Which is why it is unimportant!
puckstothenet:
lol, fair
you have valid concerns about enjoyment-watching suddenly becoming unexpected!hate-watching just because someone says something enraging and destroys the fun I was having, mood ruining whiplash in my neck
diquesdick:
I mean, I get it, you're annoyed at false expertise
people who are put up by their position as being the arbiters of correct sports outcomes and you know more than they do enough to know they are wrong
puckstothenet:
but they're wrong in ways that show they didn't even try!
diquesdick:
and that offends you because you respect expertise, or, at least, you respect that other people have put in the time and work, and then there's these assholes spouting off like they know stuff when all they have is good researchers who gave them a script
they can't extemporize because they don't know shit
which bugs you
but sweet puck, their job is not to know things
yes, that is a midsummer night's dream reference
their job is to talk in the background
it is not their fault you got into a wikipedia edit war with someone who believed them and tried to cite them as experts
Scott Hamilton tried to give Midori Ito's accomplishments to Mao Asada and someone believed him.
puckstothenet:
it damn well is their fault
diquesdick:
you're the first one to say that sports is an entertainment product, well, they're part of the entertainment, they are not sports scholars
most of them have played the sport but that doesn't make them an expert in it, and it doesn't mean they know all that's going on like actual fans do
puckstothenet:
okay but the most egregious examples are the ones who don't know rules changes made 15+ years ago
This is @ a lot of people, but I think the one I was angriest about when I wrote this was Christopher Dean being a talking head on the BBC during the 2018 Olympics about the pairs competition and being SO SO SO WRONG about how the scoring system worked.
Christopher Dean works as a choreographer. He choreographed for Sachenko/Massot, who ended up winning the competition! But he thought they had no chance because they were 4th after the short. THAT'S NOT HOW THINGS WORK ANYMORE, CHRISTOPHER DEAN.
I, who have broken up with figure skating multiple times, should not know more about the scoring system than the guy who choreographs for folks who compete at the Olympics.
diquesdick:
and their job isn't officiating, where they would have to know the rules
their job is ratings, ratings, ratings
if their job was being good at the sport in a non-playing capacity, they'd probably have a kind of job that would be a conflict for a commentating position
puckstothenet:
those who can, do, those who can't, work for NBC?
I used to belong to a forum that made an actual rule that, in live watch threads, you could not complain about NBC because then the entire thread would be filled with complaining about NBC
but my joy was every so often, someone would be VPNing and this would be their first experience of NBC and they'd discover with horror that we were not being hyperbolic in our kvetching
FSUniverse had (probably still has, I haven't logged in in years) Play By Play threads where people who are watching the event write about what happens. Then the mods go through afterwards and consolidate all the PBP details into an overall thread so people who couldn't watch it could read it as it happened.
One of the mods (who lived in Ireland, so did not have to deal with NBC in his daily life) would get very mad at all the NBC complaining, especially at events when everyone in the thread is watching it live and talking about it, rather than describing it for others (and paying for the privilege, since this all was in a subscriber-only section of the board), and pointed out that there was no actual PBP in the PBP thread, just complaining about NBC.
And yes every so often, there would be a made-for-tv competition that was only on NBC so people would VPN so they could watch it, rather than being able to watch it elsewhere, and see that we were Not Wrong about how bad NBC is at actually showing a sport.
I did play by play for a time but eventually gave up after doing it for the novices at US Nationals where another poster would chime in after every time I posted to correct the jump identification but wouldn't do any other PBP, even just posting the jumps alone, it was only in correction to me and the one other person doing PBP for that competition. And with competitions starting to post the protocols right after the competition ended, and then doing it in the middle of the competition, I didn't see any point in doing jump or spin identification, and so I only ever did general impressions and how things went. By the time I left figure skating fandom, I felt like PBP in general was getting less and less important because there were enough people doing livestream video capture that enough competitions had videos available after the event anyway; it was no longer a case where if you didn't watch it at 2AM your time through a VPN, or if you weren't there in person, you would never see it. I have no idea if that's trickled down now to novice level competition. (For those who don't watch figure skating: novice level is still a very high level, and if you're as allergic to quads as I am, the only place to avoid them in men's singles.)
I know I say "entertainment" a lot, but there's sports entertainment, and then there's sports entertainment that barely bothers to show the sport
no one tunes in to a sports event to watch the sport, assumes NBC
I watched some endurance competition once on NBC, it might have been Ironman, I don't recall. It was a 2 hour package. It was mostly fluff about competitors who had Overcome Challenges to be there. They showed very little of the actual event.
NBC does not think you watch sporting events to see the sport. They think you watch it to decide who deserves to win by who has the most tragedy in their background.
ugh. tell me something happy-making.
diquesdick:
I've been working on the pairings examples for the Same Spot In The Draft challenge
puckstothenet:
hard mode: no top picks
diquesdick:
yeah, we're covered on crosby/ovechkin and crosby/fleury, plus the many edmonton options
puckstothenet:
are there any at all outside the first round?
diquesdick:
it gets really hard once you go past the first, oh, ten picks
we may have to invent some pairings
new challenge: ship two people who got drafted at the same place in the 3rd round
puckstothenet:
new challenge: find two people who got drafted in the same place in the 3rd round, who are full-time NHLers at the same time
diquesdick:
I would 100% need to build a database for that
I'm very curious about this but not enough to try to figure it out myself.
puckstothenet:
it amazes me how picks seem to get thrown around in trades, when picks seem to be mostly worthless in the long run, and someone who has shown they can play in the nhl is much more valuable
I'd love a longitudinal comparison of picks vs. players they were traded for. I know there's been some cherry-picking over the years for off-season articles but I'd really love to know how many of those draft picks never made it full-time to the NHL, or at all. But, again, not enough to do it myself.
diquesdick:
ah, but it is the hope of the future they are trading
you never know when you'll pick a guy out of the 6th round who'll win you a stanley cup
This was a reference to someone in particular but I cannot remember who it was. Based on wiki, this may have been Nick Bonino, who was a 6th round pick and ended up winning two Cups with the Penguins (but they didn't draft him).
It also could have been Patrick Maroon (6th round of the same draft as Bonino), who won the Cup in 2019, 2020, and 2021, and who was not drafted by the teams he won the Cup with.
So it's a coin toss if this was Maroon, based on me listening to Puck Soup so I'd osmosised that detail, or if it was Bonino, based on me knowing Penguins.
is it likely? no. But is it the dream of the future of every GM? sure.
I'd have an easier time of Slash The Undrafted than Slash The Third Round, but that's not this challenge, alas
puckstothenet:
the future is always ahead of you and therefore always filled with possibilities and wins
except yesterday was five years ago's bright future, but shhhh
diquesdick:
yes but 5 years ago was a different GM, and 5 years from now will be a different GM
puckstothenet:
someone really *should* steal the nhl, just for its own good
you'd think good long-term planning was what the owners were for, but who am I kidding, nhl owners are not value-added
diquesdick:
team doing well: let's sell the team and make a profit!
team doing badly: let's sell the team and cut our losses!
team breaking even: does not compute.
puckstothenet:
team breaking even: let's dump our contracts, tighten payroll, discover that getting rid of reasons for fans to show up does not magically increase revenue, team is now doing badly, let's sell the team and cut our losses
diquesdick:
"I know, let's fire our entire marketing department, fans will really show up if they don't know anything about our games!"
puckstothenet:
I don't even know which team you're parodying there since that could be, like, ten of them
diquesdick:
yep
puckstothenet:
one day, just one day, when a team cries poverty, we all get to see their books
I would very much like this.
diquesdick:
trauma flashback to the time a few years ago you decided you wanted any team that had been a cap floor team for more than two years in a row to be shut down
puckstothenet:
I wasn't wrong, though
I wasn't saying "shut down the blue jackets no matter what because they have offended me"
I was saying hey maybe the fact that the team administration doesn't care to either pay the players or make a good team is them ripping off the fans and we should have a mechanism to make them stop
like, "shut up and make a good nhl team", you know?
cap floor teams are just saying fuck you to the idea of quality and it really really is an insult to the players, who are the parts of the team you're supposed to care about, right???
and it's saying fuck you to the fans also, so anyway, folks shouldn't have been mad at me, I was standing up for their interests as fans :P
don't be mad at me, be mad at their teams's front office, that took them (AND THEIR CASH) for granted
but if the team is saying we can't afford to have a good team and pay for it, well, you wanted capitalism? here's some capitalism for you. Your franchise is over.
like, being loyal to the end, despite good times and bad times, promotions or firings, whatever life throws at you, is great in a relationship with a human being
but this is a sports team that doesn't give a fuck about you on a personal level
This is of course massive hyperbole and a strawman argument and all that, but that said... I don't know that I disagree on the merits :P
diquesdick:
so really what you want to steal from real football is the concept of relegation
puckstothenet:
YES
let's incentivize teams not to suck
diquesdick:
concept: the nhl introduces relegation, the diques have a ton of injuries, lose everything, get relegated to the ahl
puckstothenet:
omg that'd be amazing
And this right here is the distinction between being a fan of the sport/team and being a fan of the fandom.
Actual fan of the Nordiques: oh my fucking god it would be TERRIBLE if they got relegated, what are you talking about???
Puck: THINK OF THE FANFICTION POTENTIAL
So I guess the point is, Puck might be in Ted Lasso fandom these days. (But on second thought probably not because that show revolves around the conceit that that sport-specific expertise doesn't matter.)
diquesdick:
??????
puckstothenet:
YES can you IMAGINE
they then have to dig their way back to the top! it'd be so good to watch
also, yes, I know, so many practical reasons it wouldn't work at all, BUT
just
imagine that happens
imagine they do really great the next season
THE COMEBACK
THE MOVIE RIGHTS
WATCHING SOME ACTOR WHO HAS NEVER SEEN HOCKEY IN HIS LIFE TRY TO PLAY LUC CHANTAL
the interviews where he says he's had two hours of ice time and now ~~understands the role~~
diquesdick:
the moment the studio is like "okay but who's the love interest" and has to deal with ALL THAT
puckstothenet:
omg
someone being like "this'll be easy, Svetlana Volkov--"
diquesdick:
"they broke up, actually"
puckstothenet:
"but she's still in a show called hockey WIVES"
diquesdick:
"she's a supermodel who is connected with hockey, are you kidding, of course she's on this show"
puckstothenet:
"are we SURE they're broken up? maybe they had a dramatic reconciliation"
diquesdick:
Crash ends up the love interest, probably
Luc Chantal: "...did you guys forget I'm married to Best Hockey Player Oliver Jackson?"
puckstothenet:
no no no, they need conflict, they need drama, they need Chants and Jacks huddled at the end of a hallway, having a seething argument about Vital Hockey Things
but they also need the love interest
trying to have Chants and Jacks as having Hockey Leadership Problems *and* also having Married People Relationship Problems is too complicated. It's overlapping storylines, it won't work
you need to reconcile with the bro over victory, and ALSO have romantic success
having it be the same person will confuse the audience
diquesdick:
no, the hockey is a METAPHOR
I sought long and hard for a summary for this fic and that was what I decided to use. I guess it's clear enough from this line what the fic is about: it's 1) a chat fic, 2) about hockey, 3) that is not taken seriously in the slightest.
this is a relationship drama and also a sports movie but at the same time
the team got relegated = jacktal are on the outs, oh noes
the team has a dramatic comeback = jacktal are off the couch and are having valentines day dates again
puckstothenet:
I'm into this
fuck it, one of us should write this
diquesdick:
I nominate you, I wanna see you write the outsider POV story of the development on this film
puckstothenet:
I will get right on that after I finish stealing the nhl on behalf of womens hockey
diquesdick:
how's that one going?
puckstothenet:
I still have more notes than words
I may end up eliding the actual heist goal entirely
heist itself = fun? lots of banter and suspense
the details of what they're doing and why = im-fucking-possible
"we succeeded in our goal, let's go celebrate"
I get depressed when I'm forced to confront the intrinsic corruption in rich people systems, and the nhl is a corrupt rich person system
fuck it let's steal it
but hockey was already stolen by these assholes and that makes me sad
:(
diquesdick:
yeah definitely just focus on the fun parts on the heist
if the leverage team shows up, there's already been a major failure
they are the bad guys who are the only good guys you get, they are self-aware that this whole thing shouldn't be happening, but hey, since it is, they're gonna help
they will help you but if someone gives them a good story, they'll also convince you that you're having hallucinations or about to die or that you live in inception
the genre requires the audience to feel like the villain has it coming but sometimes the leverage crew, uh, does not reach that burden of audience sympathy
anything extra-judicial has gotta be balanced between Cool And Unusual Punishment and Stop Hitting Him He's Already Dead
for hacker!Jacks, I'm having the villain be someone who is leaning on the folks to both fuck with the puck tracking data and also with the ~~insert minor league here~~ players to throw the game
so the villain is a villain to just about everyone and is doing it just for cash purposes
we are not playing on or exploiting anyone's fears of how easily all things in a technological world can be taken from you without you having a way to do anything to stop it
This was a serious problem with the show.
That last line in particular, though, is because of a specific fic (from a different fandom) that honestly would give me nightmares.
puckstothenet:
I appreciate that
diquesdick:
I suppose one lesson of Leverage is that vulnerable can't stop themselves from being exploited by the villains or by the crew, but that the collateral damage of the ones the leverage crew does is supposed to be worth it
it hurts you but helps someone else, although I guess you don't know it was for that
puckstothenet:
leverage is really great, I really like it, if I think about it too hard, I start sobbing
diquesdick:
for your birthday, I'll give you a fic where there's a secondary team that goes around after the leverage team and cleans up their messes
puckstothenet:
they provide... coverage
heh
diquesdick:
lol
puckstothenet:
"did the leverage team make you think you were about to lose your job and so you didn't buy a house you found that was close to a grocery store and a playground and you lost your chance? we'll find you a replacement and pay your mortgage and give your kid that scholarship to math camp!"
As I recall, that was the baseball episode.
diquesdick:
"did the leverage team get you fired because they grifted you into doing something in violation of company policy so they could get access to private or classified information? Here's 12-months severance and the assistance of a top-notch recruiter to get another job, plus we'll remove the "not eligible for rehire" mark in your old job's HR system."
This was A Lot of episodes.
puckstothenet:
"did the leverage team lie to you that they'd found your cat? We'll find your cat."
That happened in... idk, somewhere in season 1? A flight attendant? That one was pretty egregious, especially because it would be so easily and quickly disproven.
diquesdick:
lol yeah
honestly though the number of people who probably get fired in the wake of leverage jobs who didn't deserve it is probably... high
puckstothenet:
new concept: someone posts on one of those message boards that the leverage folks troll for new cases and is all angry about these grifters who came in and, idk, destroyed their one big chance at a break through, costing them years of work and maybe even their career
and the leverage team digs into it
and is like "...oh"
diquesdick:
"I was in charge of organizing my company's face-to-face, which I didn't even want to do, but I'm a woman and so that's what happens, and then the magic act I booked kidnapped the CEO in one of those magic boxes and used him to break into a secure room and so I got fired for not doing due diligence and background checking and all that, and now I'm behind on rent and my car broke down and my dog ran away and my kid needs braces and no one will hire me, please, leverage team, help me, please make this right"
puckstothenet:
Nate: "look, I can explain"
you know the one I always wonder about? the mob wedding episode where they dump a duffel full of mob cash in the newleyweds trunk
I want a spin off just for that
diquesdick:
one thing that would be nifty, actually, is one where one of their freelance gigs come back to bite them, did they ever do any episode on that?
since they all do extra-curriculars on vacation
puckstothenet:
except for Eliot, who vacations by working as a mercenary for the US government
we all *wish* he spent his vacations just stealing the mona lisa
Fanon and one of the showrunners claim that Eliot spends his vacations doing a crossover with Stargate SG-1.
Which is still being a mercenary for the US government, and he'd be better off stealing the mona lisa instead.
[snip]
puckstothenet:
ugh you're right, I can also hear it. But I may also just be hearing people doing Sean Connery impressions saying that.
wait, I bet you Eliot is the one doing the dissertation on the Portland sourdough starters
hidden depths
diquesdick:
smash cut to Eliot inside a kitchen with 5 bowls of bubbling things in front of him
Parker: is something wrong with Colonel Yeastifer?
(Hardison named it.)
I love the name Colonel Yeastifer for a sourdough starter.
puckstothenet:
they just got back from doing a job involving a flour mill
Eliot came back with a lot of different samples
this is For Science
Hardison is assisting by setting up cameras to capture events
Parker makes pretzels
everybody wins
diquesdick:
someone give me sourdough pretzels right now
puckstothenet:
same
next season on leverage: let's go steal... some light refreshments
diquesdick:
perhaps some light refreshments to eat at the ballpark as we watch baseball, which we are stealing
puckstothenet:
at this rate, I think it'd be easier to get me to write stealing baseball than stealing hockey
plus baseball already has some stealing in it
hockey doesn't really have stealing bases
but it should
diquesdick:
it definitely should, somehow
puckstothenet:
no, wait, I've got a great idea
the client is Jack Eichel or another sufficiently fucked over hockey player, we can change the names to protect the innocent
Eichel finally got himself out of Buffalo! Yay!
diquesdick:
David McConnor
heh
puckstothenet:
but it's some guy who is so good at hockey and had so much promise and has seen years and years of his life, his prime playing career, fucking wasted, while other people profited
and he knows he'll never get a cup
and he knows he'll never get those years back
and he knows no one will ever relegate his team to the minors or force his team to close, despite my best efforts
he knows that his dream is squashed and he knows there are so many others like him
and he knows the NHL does not fucking care about him
and he wants the buffalo sabers, I'm sorry, I mean, he wants his team to regret it
and by the team he means the owners, since the owners keep firing pretty much everyone but oh look, how interesting that nothing really changes
it's almost as if the owners priority isn't creating a great hockey team and contending for the cup
it's almost as if nhl owners are not value-added
diquesdick:
well, they're not
This line added just to break up the rant, for rhythm.
puckstothenet:
and this client points his finger at that villain and says to the leverage team, I want you to make this right
I want you to steal it and I don't want you to give it back
diquesdick:
(I think we call those hostile take-overs)
puckstothenet:
because that's what the team does a lot of times? they steal things for a moment and then that moment's over
but even if something great happened, you aren't getting those years back of his life
and the way the nhl rewards teams who are doing bad doesn't differentiate between "had a bad year but will rebound" (aka the sharks) vs "had a bad year because they're badly managed and that won't ever change" (SO MANY)
(aka the sharks) is because of Superstition-verse stuff, tanking to get Chants, not in reference to any tanking the RL team may have done.
so all those top draft picks going to teams that will waste their talent and potential, won't develop them properly, won't give them good line mates, won't give them great chances, and will shame them if they ever want to leave
the nhl has a monopoly; it's not like they can go get a job somewhere else
"oh yeah so we squandered your elc years but we totally promise you we'll change, now sign for 8 years"
and there's no consequences on those teams for sucking, none at all, the ones who pay the price are the ones who could have been a contender, but got drafted to some asshole team
"oh, draft bust" did you perhaps. ever consider. that you sent that high draft pick. to a terrible team.
Teams are never at fault, the players are.
diquesdick:
this season on leverage: the crew goes trust-busting
puckstothenet:
they should!
diquesdick:
actually, you know what? it's that player's fault
if they REALLY want to make the playoffs, they can do it themselves and drag their team along behind them
because ice hockey is an individual sport
puckstothenet:
the funny part is the the only position that could conceivably do that is goalie and yet goalies get no damn respect at all
and if a goalie DOES do it, it's called a hot streak and a fluke and it shouldn't count and that's why we need 7 game serieses, just in case a goalie is having a good week
diquesdick:
at some point, everyone decided that goalies should never be drafted high at all, because c'est la vie say the old folks it just goes to show you never can tell
Chuck Berry - You Never Can Tell. I googled to make sure the lyric was right. IIRC I'd originally left out the "just"?
but there is no more valuable player on the team, period
but they don't wanna waste roster spots on draft busts
puckstothenet:
suggestion: let teams have more than three goalies, or whatever that tiny number is
diquesdick:
works for me
puckstothenet:
speaking just as an employee in a department that doesn't do sports but does hire more people all the time: it suddenly strikes me as weird that "expansion" doesn't mean "adding people to teams", it means "adding teams to the league"
the new teams will have full rosters, sure, but at no point is anyone going "we need to expand head-count in our department and hire more people to keep up with the work" when it comes to roster spots
why *can't* we added six more roster spots for each team?
I also incepted myself into this when writing this.
diquesdick:
I honestly have no idea
like, the answer is probably "cap space" but other than that, I don't have god's honest clue
puckstothenet:
the season's pretty long, people got injuries, why not carry more people on the roster instead of having to use call-ups?
diquesdick:
but then the call-ups won't be suitably grateful for the opportunity and the regulars won't be worried about losing their roster spot
but I agree with you that having more people and rotating the folks out to give them rests would probably help out a lot, since the season is so long
puckstothenet:
I have a great idea. We reduce the owner's cut to 25% (and, fuck 'em, they shouldn't even get that much, they're fucking useless), and shuffle things so I don't have to care about what escrow is, and we'll have 6 roster spots added to each team
and up the league minimum salary
diquesdick:
also, never overestimate the number of people who actually work for the team
you do not need a very large conference hall to convene everyone who works for the pens, for instance
I think when writing this I found out the ballpark figure for how many people actually work for a team? I don't recall the exact number but yeah, it's not huge.
puckstothenet:
hot take I never expected: the pittsburgh penguins are a small business
diquesdick:
probably not technically by whatever the actual definition of a small business is, but I suspect neither of us have ever worked for a org that small
puckstothenet:
I am but a mere hockey rpf writer, thanklessly shipping the employees of an international small business
are players employees or contractors?
My current understanding, which may be wrong, is they are employees with employment contracts and those contracts allow them to be transferred to other teams, and then those teams take over those contracts, and then that's what trading is. But how that works in with someone's "rights" or not, I still am not clear on. I suppose that's a different contract they sign. And "waivers"? IDEK.
However it's interesting to me that when I've tried googling this, I have found a lot of confusion and discussion of the subject, but not a single clear explainer from any league at all discussing the nitty gritty of how this all works. We're just expected to accept that it does work. I'm not finding any transparency at all.
diquesdick:
I'd assume contractors but never given it much thought. They'd have to be contractors, right? They are definitely not regular employees.
Now my head hurts.
puckstothenet:
the nhl and pro sports are weird anyway, because normally, if you get fired, you can then job search, whereas in hockey, if you get fired, your ex-boss tells you who you have to go work for next, or else
this is not normal employer behavior
plus you can't really quit the team without quitting the league? it's weird.
"sorry, boss, I can't stand this department anymore, my coworkers drive me crazy, I'm going to go sign with the khl."
diquesdick:
okay it turns out they're employees and my head really really fucking hurts
puckstothenet:
are they employees-employees or just employees for tax purposes?
diquesdick:
I do not know. It also might vary by team????????? god this is nonsense.
There was some article I found that indicated that it definitely varied by team, but I don't recall which sport that was.
puckstothenet:
if it varies by team, it is *definitely* for tax purposes and the different jurisdictions dictate it
or maybe not, maybe also employment law in those places?
;askjfa;slkjfa;lksdj
yeah whatever
diquesdick:
I get that they're unionized employees, but I don't understand how this is working at all, unless they're not employed by any team, they're just employed by the nhl
anyway, I do not know that there is a straightforward answer, which is... weird?
puckstothenet:
"Welcome to the team, Mr Chantal! We hope you'll love California! Sorry to take you away from spraying water on yourself, but we need you to fill out this W-2. Please provide your passport or two forms of identification."
As justanotherfacet pointed out in comments, yes, this should be an I-9.
diquesdick:
lol
Chants is like "I'm verified on twitter, does that count as an ID?"
puckstothenet:
"no but it counts as creating your brand and curating a fan base, which we hope you'll continue to do during your time with our team, which we hope will be your entire career!"
but yeah, I know there's reasons all these folks pay accountants, but I thought it was because they had to pay taxes in every state they play in, plus all the international issues?
it's been forever and a day since I actually looked into this, though, so who knows what the fuck is what, you know?
diquesdick:
they are for sure a small business, then. Everything is teetering on whatever local law is, on edge cases and lawsuits. The NHL is only not illegal because judges are sports fans.
Opinions of the character vs opinions of the author aside, I truly believe a lot of this (ex: sports drafts) are only legal because judges are sports fans.
I should have made Uncle Eugene happy and gone to law school, maybe then I'd understand this
I guess it makes sense that they're employees with employment contracts now that I've spent too much time thinking about this, but dude.
maybe the rules don't ban THEM from getting hired somewhere else, it just bans everyone else from being the one to hire them? it binds the teams not the player? because the nhl has a monopoly?
puckstothenet:
we are supposed to see the players and be like "TEAM YAY I LOVE HOCKEY" and at no point wonder what their paystubs look like
but now good golly do I wanna see what their paystubs look like
diquesdick:
also don't forget we're supposed to be angry that players get paid
puckstothenet:
oh right that too
how dare the person I pay money to go see get any of that money
diquesdick:
it's true. I personally hate it when people get paid
when my boss hands me a paycheck, I say no, I'm doing it all for the pure love of project management and no compensation is required
I had to pick a job for her for this line and said sure, why not, fuck it, project management.
puckstothenet:
you love nothing more than that in your life, doing your job is its own reward
diquesdick:
absolutely
plus I have all that family money, so I can live on that while pursuing my project management hobby full time at an elite level
puckstothenet:
because who doesn't, right?
diquesdick:
right!
everyone I know sure does have all that cash to pursue their weird hobbies, like project-management and nhl hockey
puckstothenet:
the best part is, I hear the "love of the game" argument from people who know how expensive youth hockey is, so I guess they think if the parents can afford their kids to play hockey when they're 10, they can afford for their kids to play hockey until they're 40
which I'm sure is how it works, it's just logic
diquesdick:
I can pay for my niece's violin lessons so of course I can pay for her to go to Juilliard
While writing this, I looked into how much it costs to go to Juilliard and their financial aid info pages and, wow, they do not even pretend this is anywhere close to what anyone can afford to do.
puckstothenet:
surely this is nothing but the truth
also every story we see every year about rookies using their first big paycheck paying off the mortgage or finally replacing that minivan that's older than they are, that's just a sign that hockey is a really cheap sport to play
diquesdick:
no silly they paid off that mortgage with their second job they have to have so they can afford to keep playing hockey for free
oops we came all the way around again to womens sports
puckstothenet:
ah it ever was thus
diquesdick:
everyone who wants "love of the sport" and "amateurism" can just watch womens sports
they're not gonna, but they could
puckstothenet:
plus pick-up games
next time we kick a ball around the park at a cook-out, I'll invite ESPN to come broadcast
I'm sure they'd be delighted
diquesdick:
no, once ESPN is there, it's broadcast rights, it's contracts, money is changing hands
we gotta treat it like a childrens recreational league
if you wanna watch, you have to sit on lawn chairs on grass on the other side of marks spraypainted onto the ground to show what's out of bounds
you have to bring a cooler with snacks for everyone to eat afterwards
you have to shake everyone's hands and say "good game good game good game"
there are rules, puck, dammit. Rules.
puckstothenet:
the refs are high school students, with the occasional older sibling
diquesdick:
if one team doesn't have enough players show up that day, players from the other team swap onto that team so the game can happen
I truly don't know how common that is. This happened in my own extremely-recreational youth sports stuff, where it was fully possible that not enough kids would show up from a team to actually play the game.
RULES
puckstothenet:
also, "puck dammit" is now the name of my new hockey blog/podcast/clothing line
it is the true slogan of everyone around me
diquesdick:
:P
the best part is your family will completely understand
puckstothenet:
it's what they get for naming me robin, they're well aware :P
if they hadn't wanted me to make everyone call me puck since I was 8, shouldn't have done that
qed
diquesdick:
I still think that was Mom Sheila playing the long game
She knew she couldn't convince Mama Lillian to name you puck right out, but if she named you robin and then strategically fed you shakespeare, you would turn out like this
When doing edits on this fic, I discovered I'd spelled Lillian two different ways and had to pick a spelling to standardize. Oops.
puckstothenet:
tbf, Mama Lillian might have been playing the long game of getting me to like hockey would also have nickname effect
diquesdick:
Mom Sheila, probably: Robin's a lovely gender-neutral name for our child!
Mama Lillian, hiding a hockey rule book behind her: it sure is!
Puck, in utero: *takes notes*
puckstothenet:
that's absolutely exactly how it happened
no, wait
Me, in utero: how can I make everyone think my gender is hockey fanaticism?
Every single time I get a coworker who knows what hockey is: "...you go by Puck? And you have patches for three different teams sewn onto your laptop bag? You are the biggest hockey nerd I've ever met."
Me: "IT'S AN ENGLISH FOLKLORE JOKE. Also yes, I enjoy watching the exciting sport of ice hockey. Luc Chantal is very pretty."
This extremely-belabored joke was only possible because in previous installments, I'd had characters call her Puck, not Pucks, and yes, I did check to make sure it was Puck before doing this.
diquesdick:
He *is* very pretty
puckstothenet:
my favorite coworker is the one who told me that Dunsworth was prettier. I appreciate anyone who meets a fellow hockey fan and takes the opening to de-escalate "which hockey team is the best" down to "which hockey player is the prettiest"
diquesdick:
that is not always de-escalation
puckstothenet:
true
I will allow that Dunsworth is the prettiest 6th overall pick currently playing
okay but actually
you can snark "that's a hostile take-over, not a heist con" at me BUT
like
diquesdick:
the word you're looking for is "scope" ;)
It's an hour long show, sometimes two hours if it's a two parter
plus time for commercials
puckstothenet:
but what if there was a season long arc of them actually trying to make things work better?
instead of heisting and taking down villains?
right. because then it's a completely different show
diquesdick:
stealing the nhl = an entertaining show that can be wrapped up in 45 minutes
making the nhl not suck = a lifelong endeavor
puckstothenet:
what was that cheerleading plotline?
diquesdick:
I think scholarship money or Title 9? no, wait, safety standards and corporate exploitation. I think.
puckstothenet:
Leverage: let's do an episode about how cheerleading isn't treated as a sport
Me: this isn't cheerleading, this is a subsection of gymnastics. Cheerleading is on the sidelines of a completely different sport, which they are cheering for.
Leverage: it's like you never watched this episode :(
diquesdick:
they did spend their plot minutes on changing laws, yes, true. I remember that part.
okay, I remember Sophie's grifting, it was really epic that time
title 9 got brought up because it would take money from other sports?
as you could tell, the leverage team did not necessarily convince *me* either to care about the con that week. I think the way it ended, they really didn't need to have congress at all since they took down the evil corporation anyway and could have just done that all along?
tbf, "this corporation is exploiting and injuring people" is at least 2/3rds of all leverage villains, so probably they wanted some variety in plotlines
I had to rewatch the episode because I completely forgot everything but Sophie's grifting and the law aspects part of it.
puckstothenet:
but the through-line is the exploitation of teenage girls with flexibility skills so it is DEFINITELY a gymnastics subdivision
Little Girls In Pretty Boxes by Joan Ryan was foundational to me, although with a "hilarious in retrospect" that the author used Michelle Kwan as an example of a disposable teenage girl, when she had a pretty long competitive career in the end. However, the point is still very valid. And figure skating and gymnastics's disposable teenage girl problem has never ended, and in many ways it's gotten worse.
okay, sure, also figure skating
probably also ballet
any kind of dance
anything with teenage girls at all
anything with any athletes
sports are exploitation
love the Extremely Accurate progression here of this digression
but the happy ending of that episode was getting something redefined from an activity to a sport, yes? like that is supposed to help at all? does the leverage team know what goes on in sports????
diquesdick:
the leverage team had previously done the concussion episode, so yes, they know what goes on in sports
thank you, episode order lists
in retrospect, that episode may have been more about "the leverage team does schoolhouse rock" than "the leverage team fixes high school sports"
puckstothenet:
I'm just a bill, sitting on capital hill, waiting for sophie to come and steal me
The first two parts of that sentence are paraphrased from Schoolhouse Rock - I'm Just a Bill.
it makes sense, though. Cheerleading is about supporting another sport. So then the cheer episode was about supporting another plot?
if it was really about safety, they should've just heisted the controlling corporation, boom, problem solved
you can tell me that changing the law was meant to be a long term solution but I know too much about gymnastics to believe you at all
plus it *is* gymnastics, so it was already a sport
I am not sure why Cheer isn't considered a subset of gymnastics. Because it's a team sport and gymnastics is individual? But that would be the difference between singles figure skating and synchronized skating, and synchro is considered part of figure skating. And acrobatic gymnastics has groups, and acro gym is considered part of gym. Is this all political in how cheer developed and that it developed outside of the gymnastics universe?
so wait, is the hockey episode the only leverage sports episode about the actual sport?
since the baseball one was about public corruption
and the cheer one is, I suppose, about creating public corruption
Let us please ignore the public corruption in that episode and in the San Lorenzo one.
diquesdick:
leverage international, or, the ends justify the means
imagine the client for that job. "I asked them to fix the company so that they weren't exploiting athletes. They... fixed it by getting a law passed. I hadn't realized I'd hired a lobbying firm."
puckstothenet:
"I may as well have called my congressional representative."
speaking of, did they get it passed in both the house and the senate? were they modifying an existing bill? do I care enough to find out? I do not.
this was a schoolhouse rock episode with a very dissatisfactory moral
diquesdick:
and if that company was the only one doing cheer competitions, congrats, you just shut down the only company doing cheer competitions
(it's not a high school sport? then why was the education budget involved? I'm not thinking about this)
puckstothenet:
so what you're saying is, this episode is the key to unlocking how to steal the nhl
(yeah, I don't know from school sports either.)
diquesdick:
this episode is the key to unlocking how to shut down the nhl and then passing a law outlawing it
puckstothenet:
hmmm
tempting, except I imagine it wouldn't scale
diquesdick:
nothing scales
the wrestling episode was about wrestling
This came from looking at a list of leverage episodes and remembering that episode existed. (it was mixed martial arts, not wrestling)
puckstothenet:
the wrestling episode!!! how could I forget about the one sports episode where it made sense that eliot knew how to do that sport at the level required for the con
diquesdick:
the leverage show runners: eliot can do whatever he needs to do for the episode
someone pitching a script: this one is about wrestling
show runners: oh thank fuck we don't have to stretch
puckstothenet:
list of things eliot has done in this show, from descending order of likelihood
parker should have ended up doing cheer, since eliot got all the other sports roles in those sports episodes
parker's too old to pretend to be in high school, yes, but don't some american football teams employ cheerleaders?
diquesdick:
let's go steal.... the nfl
puckstothenet:
the inevitable sequel to whatever the hell this nightmare is
diquesdick:
yes please
I don't understand cheerleading but hey if it's gotta exist, it should be leveraged into being better
puckstothenet:
5 sports that were stolen by the leverage team, and 1 sport that was already perfect (aka pool, which was already fixed by professor harold hill)
From the musical The Music Man (from which all the next few references are)
diquesdick:
yes, I learned about that one at summer camp
truly a great man, so many trombones
puckstothenet:
and the piccolo! the piccolo! and the uniforms too!
Rock Island (it's the first song, the one on the train, with the song being the train sounds, I don't know why it's called Rock Island but it's my favorite)
diquesdick:
you got trouble my friend
puckstothenet:
trouble right here in quebec city!
diquesdick:
with a capital T
puckstothenet:
that rhymes with D
diquesdick:
that stands for diques
puckstothenet:
(that stands for diques!)
[snip]
diquesdick:
"Dear Ask A Manager, my coworkers and I are like a family, where several members of the family are regularly kicked out of the family for miscellaneous reasons, sometimes related to job performance, sometimes related to salary concerns. A coworker from another department hit me on the head and gave me a concussion. The company gave that coworker a week off work unpaid. Then my husband assaulted that coworker while on the job. Everyone thinks this is normal. Is it normal?"
puckstothenet:
"Dear Mr. Jackson, your company sucks and isn't going to change."
diquesdick:
"As an addendum, I play professional sports."
puckstothenet:
Can NHL players get workers comp?
diquesdick:
It wouldn't shock me.
IIRC this came from someone in another sport getting workers comp for an injury gotten during a game, but I don't recall the details.
puckstothenet:
"In response to your addendum: your sports league sucks, maybe you should see if the NHLPA can change it."
laugh at me, I just forgot the Habs are officially the Montreal Canadiens
This was me, doing my lying-down physical therapy exercises in bed while listening to Puck Soup. I was SO SURE for that moment.
diquesdick:
eh, that's a reasonable one to forget
puckstothenet:
me, full of confidence: the team name is totally Les Habitants of Montreal or whatever
and I was wrong
diquesdick:
there's a Canadian team called the Canadiens and a Canadian team called the Canucks, I declare that you are allowed to forget one of them exists
it's like if baseball had the Yankees and also the Yanks, but they played on opposite coasts, and the one in New York was called the Hudsons by fans more than the Yankees.
you are allowed this one team name problem for free
puckstothenet:
smash cut to me falling into an interdimensional rift, wandering through Times Rectangle, and cheering for the New York Hudsons.
diquesdick:
bring back some merch
puckstothenet:
I will!
diquesdick:
And the other New York baseball team is the Jets, I assume?
puckstothenet:
lol absolutely for sure
diquesdick:
Announcer voice: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to New York City, home of 4 airports! You have Newark Airport, not in New York state at all! You have John F. Kennedy airport, named for someone from Massachusetts! You have LaGuardia airport, thankfully named after someone who had anything at all to do with New York! And you have.... *drum roll* Baseball Arena, home of Your! New! York! Jeeeeeeettttttttttssssssss!
puckstothenet:
*waves foam fingers and pennants excitingly*
(can I send to Mama Lillian?)
diquesdick:
(please do!)
I added in these parentheticals late to make it clear that Puck has permission to screencap the chat to send to her mom.
I'd keep going and announce the starting lineup but I don't know any baseball players except for Sandy Kauffman
puckstothenet:
Sandy Koufax
The Sandy Kauffman -> Sandy Koufax was me, too, forgetting what his last name was while writing this fic and having to check.
However, I declare it still counts because, like the other names listed, I know both that he's famous AND why he's famous. (except for Joe DiMaggio, I don't know why he was famous except for Being Good At Sports. The other ones I know what part of the sports they were good at.)
diquesdick:
okay turns out I don't know any baseball players
puckstothenet:
it counts, you know who he is, and got most of his name
I can also list Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa
I did, however, have to check how to *spell* McGwuire
phear me
diquesdick:
those last two don't count, their names always went together
puckstothenet:
so do many players! they should still count
diquesdick:
Yogi Berra, right?
puckstothenet:
I think so?
That is one of those situations where I heard of Yogi Bear and knew him well long before I heard of Yogi Berra so, like... it's as if the Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires guy was also a well-known track and field star
This is how I ended up genre savvy by the age of nine, probably. I watch too much parodies aimed at children who didn't know they were parodies. It had benefits but man could it be sometimes confusing.
diquesdick:
"oh so this is what Bugs Bunny was quoting"
insert What's Opera, Doc here
At present, this is the best I can find on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJXBZbi2RJc
There definitely used to be a good full version on youtube :(
puckstothenet:
*hums ride of valkyries*
"I know the plot of this and everything else but also I think Yogi Berra is a cartoon character, it evens out"
diquesdick:
I only knew the Marley and Marley song from the Muppets Christmas movie, so I didn't realize there was only one Marley in the book
Guilty.
But also worse because I only knew the SONG, I had not seen the Muppets Christmas movie either.
puckstothenet:
see, this is what I mean. I know so much! But also I think every famous literary character is a dog named Wishbone.
diquesdick:
this is why all my cultural osmosis ended when I stopped watching PBS kids shows
puckstothenet:
you joke but this is true
oh hey wait
where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you, ooooh ooooh ooooh
and shoeless "say it ain't so, joe" jackson!
One of those was the White Sox cheating thing and the other... I wanna say a Yankee
For me to remember a baseball player, there's gotta be a quote for that, I guess
diquesdick:
and be named Joe
puckstothenet:
that does help
you're gonna ask me now to name hockey players named Joe and I'm going to fail miserably and publicly
diquesdick:
I'll give you Joe Thornton for free
puckstothenet:
nooooo, he's the only one I know
diquesdick:
Joe Sakic
(tbf I remember him because of looking at former original-Diques)
True.
puckstothenet:
I acknowledge the expert with great applause
I sent Mama Lillian your New York Jets promo and she tells me that the New York Jets are an american football team with New York in its name that plays in New Jersey, so instead of a joke about the Mets, it's a joke about team names shifting sports
I had to put this in because I did google New York Jets after writing the joke and discovered that's the name of an actual team. So my joke about the Mets being renamed the Jets in the alternate world doesn't work at all.
she says nothing about if the New York Jets do airplane jokes, but I have to assume they must
I'm confused since I thought the New York football team was the Giants but I guess New York needs multiple of every kind of sports team
diquesdick:
such generic names
I guess they can't all be the Knickerbockers
puckstothenet:
every time I say knickerbocker, I get a cole porter song in my head, I think it was called don't monkey with broadway?
Yes, it is! Here's a version from Broadway Melody Of 1940, whatever that is.
but yeah, knickerbocker is so specific, even I can remember where that team is from
I love the penguins, honestly, but penguins do not live in Pennsylvania
[snip]
puckstothenet:
ugh team names.
you'd get the impression that I have a terrible memory but honestly it's just that I don't care
diquesdick:
no, I know that it's because you don't care ;)
puckstothenet:
because you know me so well :D
I'm secure enough in my masculinity that I don't need to pretend I know anything about the nhl more than I want to know
diquesdick:
you have resisted the siren call of marketing and also paying any attention to who the other team is that your teams are playing against
puckstothenet:
okay now you've made it sound bad
when the teams are right in front of me, sure, definitely... um. A lot of the time. It's three letters in the corner or whatever and usually I am capable of discerning those
it's just, like, pop quiz, puck, name the western conference
diquesdick:
or the eastern conference
puckstothenet:
name the actual names of the divisions these days
diquesdick:
tell me what mascot goes to which team
puckstothenet:
ask me which coast Anaheim is on
diquesdick:
demand to know who Mitch Marner currently plays for
I wrote this while he was on the Leafs with the full confidence that he was definitely gonna leave them at some point.
As of March 2023, he is still on the Leafs. But there's time! This fic takes place at some vague point in the future!
puckstothenet:
accept the futility of sports trivia without having flashcards and/or trading cards to aid in memorization
diquesdick:
accept the futility of sports trivia on something too trivial to be a jeopardy category
puckstothenet:
"I'd like NHL teams that haven't won a cup in twenty years for $400, Alex."
diquesdick:
you actually DON'T like those teams
puckstothenet:
lol yes true
although really the answer will just be the Maple Leafs
you can game Jeopardy pretty well by knowing the Most Knowable thing about multiple categories and knowing literally nothing else at all about it
This is a fairly well-known and well-accepted part of gaming Jeopardy.
but you know the bit of it that comes up on Jeopardy
Jeopardy will ask you where the 1968 Democratic Convention was ten times a year, but will never in the world ask you where the 1972 one was.
"--Polish composer--"
"Who was Chopin?"
"Correct."
or, if it does, it'll be like "this capital of Maine was the site of this thing you don't know anything about; the question you have to answer is, what's the capital of Maine"
diquesdick:
horribly true
every so often, though, I do know the part they don't expect anyone to know, and I feel good about myself
you just know that question would be, like
either "The Maple Leafs of this Canadian city have not won a Stanley Cup since 1960whatever"
or "The Toronto Maple Leafs have not won this ultimate hockey trophy since 1960whatever"
I did actually check when writing this when was the last year they won it, just to verify the date for the joke, but didn't change the 1960whatever :P
in which case, you guess "what's the most famous Canadian city" and then people either are like Toronto or some smartass thinks when in doubt, go with the less still-famous city and guesses Ottawa, but you have the answer within one wrong answer. The hard mode would be them not saying the Maples Leafs were from Canada and you had to know, but again. Superficial knowledge will save you.
and the second question really is "what is the only thing anyone knows about hockey and famous sports trophies"
what's the name of the trophy of ANY OTHER SPORTS LEAGUE, do you know what it is? no, you don't
At some point after I posted this fic, Jeopardy did in fact have a category about other sports trophies, so I can tell you now that there's some... sailing? one? I think. But there's other sports trophies notable enough to be on Jeopardy. (I don't remember if anyone got that one correct, but I think someone did?)
puckstothenet:
I mean, it's me
but
diquesdick:
but
yeah
puckstothenet:
american football has the... Heisman?
but frankly I don't know if that's college or pro
I don't THINK that's what you get when you win the super bowl, so it's probably college
diquesdick:
I've heard someone referred to as a Heisman winner but until this day I did not know that was a physical object you won, I thought it was something like All-American, which I also don't know what that is
I have never known what All-American is and at this point I'm just refusing to google.
puckstothenet:
I think it's MVP, too, so more like the Conn Smythe than the Memorial Cup. I don't think the team wins it, just a person.
So the team isn't competing for the glory of winning that trophy.
and so we are back to nope, I don't know any other famous sports trophies that are like the stanley cup
lots of sports have big shiny things for the photos. I know Wimbledon gives out a big trophy to the winner and the runner-up gets... a shiny plate, I think? But I don't know if those have names.
I don't know why they get a plate but, look, it's in the pictures.
but are those trophies valued in and of themselves? do people write erotica about them? do people throw them into swimming pools as rites of passages? I think not.
diquesdick:
the only sports award other than the cup that I know for sure has erotica is olympic medals
puckstothenet:
yes that
even beyond the usual "let's have sex wearing our medals" normal stuff
there is absolutely humping an olympic medal porn, as god intended
diquesdick:
a walking, throbbing IOC branding violation
puckstothenet:
if you can't piss off the IOC by fucking your medal, when really can you
it's just wasting a perfect opportunity
diquesdick:
you miss 100% of the porn you don't write
puckstothenet:
this is true
devorah I just had a revelation and now I feel like an idiot
Accurate depiction of me writing this fic and realizing this.
Luc Chantal's nickname
THE STOLEN ONE
(also the best thing ever is that we have video evidence that he *answers to that*)
diquesdick:
look we already know who stole luc chantal
puckstothenet:
it was oliver jackson! who stole his heart! right?
diquesdick:
absolutely
puckstothenet:
but oh my god there already was a heist luc chantal was involved in
he just was the macguffin
my mind is blown
diquesdick:
maybe jacks was the villain of that heist all along. He wanted Chants in his conference so they'd play each other more often
and so he arranged The Great Luc Chantal Expansion Draft Pick Of 2026
My timeline notes from this file:
summer 2023: entry draft
2023-2024: rookie year on the sharks/phillies
2024-2025: second year on the sharks/phillies, jacks's concussion, luc's scoring streak
2025-2026: third year on the sharks/phillies, olympic year, olympics golden goal for jacks
summer 2026: the expansion draft
2026-2027: nordiques first season
2027-2028: second season of nordiques overall, jacks's first on nordiques, cup win
...EXTRAORDINARILY BELATED REALIZATION, as in, after I posted this: he was not on the Phillies. The Phillies are a different sport. He was on the Flyers.
[snip]
diquesdick:
++domestic jacktal
And on the nth time through this commentary, what was intended to be one last check to make sure I didn't miss anything, I realized that this joke probably does need explained. ++ is pre-increments in C but it's ALSO "double-plus" in Newspeak from 1984 by George Orwell. That's the language that gave us "double-plus good" as an intensification of "good", or "double-plus bad" as an intensification of "bad". So this is "double-plus domestic jacktal", meaning "YES YES YES LOVE DOMESTIC JACKTAL"
can't get enough
puckstothenet:
you can't have sex every minute of every day, but you can be domestic every minute of every day!
except when you're playing hockey, I guess
or doing your physical therapy
or in meetings with management
or recording advertisements for your many sponsors
or doing press
or...
diquesdick:
puck, allow me to tell you the plot bunny that ate my head of That Time They Bought Twelve Dozen Eggs In One Day because Luc put his grocery list on the shared calendar so others could add to it before he went shopping after practice, Jacks thought it was for him since Luc had a meeting, Buddy thought it was his turn, the rookie thought he was being hazed and went along with it, and Sveta was already at the grocery store anyway when it was added to the calendar
puckstothenet:
Buddy's BFF who house-sits during road trips: *looks at the backyard chickens like he's on The Office*
diquesdick:
I do not know why they are raising those chickens but no way it's enough to fill their egg requirements
I think it's just because someone in that house likes chickens
puckstothenet:
it's a pet who contributes to the household.
and the cute factor
that ESPN or whatever clip it was of Chez Russecois with the baby chickens, oh my heart
Luc Chantal came for my ovaries that day
also I bet you they get groceries delivered, so the coordination fail they'd be expecting would be they set up 5 orders for that day and didn't realize, they were not prepared for your calendar shenanigans
This is puck juggling the "yes and" instinct against "okay but you're seriously wrong to have this plot bunny, NONE OF THESE PEOPLE GO TO GROCERY STORES TO DO THEIR WEEKLY SHOPPING". So it's a "yes and" that attempts to toss a detour in, instead of a "no but".
imagine just truck after truck after truck comes by with hundreds of dollars worth of groceries to stock up that house for the week
diquesdick:
and that was the day Jackson was truly thankful that his mother had told him to get a third freezer for the basement
puckstothenet:
you need one stand-alone freezer for each elite athlete, that's the rules
diquesdick:
A camera pans along their basement, showing nothing but freezers
puckstothenet:
can you get those restaurant walk-in freezers for houses?
I actually googled this and found sales/promotional videos.
diquesdick:
with how much Chants and Jacks can pay? probably.
I do love their "the more the merrier" communal living situation
puckstothenet:
yes for sure
diquesdick:
every other hockey player, buying a 5 bedroom house: and this is the gym and this is the other gym and this is the trophy room and this is the media room and this is the one guest room, I guess, for when my parents visit
Jacktal, buying a 5 bedroom house: we don't have space for a guest room, guests sleep on the sofa
puckstothenet:
Jacktal's motto: if you spend more than one night in a row here, we add an addition to give you your own bedroom
diquesdick:
every single time Luc Chantal does an interview where he explains that the rookie who is carpooling with him back to his house is not actually his rookie, it's someone else's rookie, the rookie is just staying with him for reasons
puckstothenet:
And the rookie nods along and then mouths at the camera "I'm his rookie"
diquesdick:
Jacks, trolling the comments section "he's the captain, of course all rookies are his rookies!"
puckstothenet:
it's team building and by team building, he means greenhouse building, now get back into the backyard, buddy's greenhouse fell down in the storm
diquesdick:
buddy, as luc's eternal rookie: I moved out!
luc: you moved next door, that counts as an addition to this house
puckstothenet:
slowly but surely, the nordiques take over that entire street
diquesdick:
maximum carpooling efficiency
puckstothenet:
just charter a bus to get everyone to practice
plus, they can string a bunch of tin cans together out of all their windows and chat that way
diquesdick:
or flash their lights in morse code
puckstothenet:
"he's typing something out, let me write it down... F.... U.... um. I don't think I need to read the rest of this, I get the point he is trying to make."
diquesdick:
he will have to respond, of course
all methods of communication go both ways, except for skywriting
I was having some bitterness IRL about communication with someone and going "you know what, the telephone works both ways". So naturally since this was the venting my stress fic, I had to do a riff on methods of communication that are not both ways.
puckstothenet:
sending letters without return addresses
diquesdick:
pasting leaflets to street lights
puckstothenet:
spam calls
diquesdick:
messages in a bottle (subsection of letters with no return addresses, but with the built-in time delay, even if there is a return address, it may be no longer relevant)
puckstothenet:
did messages in a bottle exist in nature before someone put them into some book and inspired people to do it? was this ever a thing that existed by itself?
diquesdick:
probably they did? but imagine the immortality of being like "oh yeah I invented that"
puckstothenet:
it's such a precarious form of communication, I love it for the Romantic potential. Also it's littering. It really does tick all the boxes.
okay but also
bored skywriter writing "marry me" and then a phone number and seeing what happens
diquesdick:
Canonical Freeform Tag: Hijinks & Shenanigans
which of them is the skywriter and which is the equally bored person who calls him?
puckstothenet:
let's be honest, Luc Chantal as a skywriter just writes out better plays over the top of outdoor games
diquesdick:
Jacks leans over his shoulder and helpfully tells him to write out "shoot the puck!!!11!!!"
puckstothenet:
absolutely
diquesdick:
that's the next job we have to put into the NotNHLer Jacks bingo
screw stats guy, screw Luc's supportive best friend who works at a bookstore, we have to get a square on there for "goodyear blimp driver"
puckstothenet:
you have the control, you can do it
diquesdick:
I am going to. Watch me.
puckstothenet:
Yay!
diquesdick:
although, I gotta say, the problem with doing all these pairing challenges is I'm really starting to wonder if the best way to win a cup is to not be a top pick
To be fair, the best way to win a cup as the top pick is not to give in to the pressure to sign a second contract after your ELC if the team has shown no real progress toward improving as a team. They had to suck enough to get you, okay, but if they don't turn it around in three years, get out of there and go somewhere else.
Which no one does, of course. Because you need to be a team player.
But yeah, if you put all your eggs into one team for your entire career, and never try to move to a better team/a team that's actually trying to win, your odds are not gonna be great.
puckstothenet:
because top picks don't tend to move around?
diquesdick:
right. And while lower picks have a harder time overall in breaking into the league, they're also more likely to be traded
puckstothenet:
the more teams you're on, the more chances you have, instead of being stuck forever on a team that just can't get it together?
diquesdick:
yeah like your McDavids of the world are dealing with their teams trying and trying and trying to build a winning team around them, and failing and failing and failing
your journeymen are the ones who are moving around with trades or free agency to become those pieces brought in
and if it doesn't work one time, they go on to another team. But the franchise stars don't tend to move
if you are lower down in the draft or undrafted, if you are not a star enough that they ever let you hit free agency, if you get traded, if you move around, you have more chances than putting all your bets on one team
puckstothenet:
this is like how Number One Overall Sidney Crosby has 3 cups, but Undrafted Chris Kunitz has 4, isn't it
I deeply love this factoid, especially since Kunitz got no respect in the Pittsburgh sports press.
diquesdick:
yeah
the only problem is all the new kids coming along every year to bump off the old journeymen
so you have to be GOOD to keep moving around between teams and being used to fill holes in the lineup
you don't have that 8 year contract in your back pocket
but while I think you have more of a chance of getting a cup if you're undrafted than if you were picked in the 5th round, I think it might also be possible that... you are fucked if you're a star player and your team spends 15 years not getting beyond the second round of the playoffs
you end up with those guys who are, like, 39 years old and have spent their entire careers in one spot being like "look, guys, I love this town, I love this team, now send me to one of these three specific teams so that I can finally get a godforsaken stanley cup"
and everyone respects those guys and that choice because they have spent their lives being the faces of a franchise but the franchise never got them to the pinnacle, so it's time for the franchise to pay them back by acknowledging they suck and get their star a shot somewhere else
puckstothenet:
the problem with that always is when they don't win a cup in their One Final Chance
diquesdick:
yup
sure sucks it was their only real chance, doesn't it.
But, hey, most players don't get cups.
puckstothenet:
but for bang for your buck, you might be luckier if you don't spend your entire career with one team?
diquesdick:
plus, most players move around, it's the rare player that actually does spend an entire career (and a lengthy career, not a cup of coffee and then back to the ahl) with one nhl team, so that confuses everything even more
so I'm suspicious but I haven't actually looked too hard at it. But since most of the roster of any given team isn't a franchise player, and the way cup teams tend to shed their rosters the year after the win...
there's a lot of random hockey players floating around with cup rings
last year's stanley cup winning team, by draft location: 11 from the first round (two in the top 10), 8 from the second round, 5 from the third round, 1 from each of the fourth and fifth rounds, 2 from the sixth round, 2 from the seventh round, and 3 undrafted
goalies were 2nd, 3rd, and 5th rounders
This is the 2019 St. Louis Blues.
I refuse to do year-before and year-after to see where each player came from and ended up going to, but you get the idea
it looks way better to be undrafted than go after the 3rd round, just because the bias that if you make it into the nhl after not being drafted, you're a really good player and also you have more options about where to go
puckstothenet:
you also refuse to do who was the one who drafted these players :P
diquesdick:
REFUSE
there are so many places on the internet that will give you players stats. None of them wanna show you their draft position next to those stats
because draft position is irrelevant after the draft, amiright? no you are wrong
puckstothenet:
also, because of expansion, some of these might have been in different rounds based on the pick number if you just use pick numbers *helpful*
diquesdick:
lol yes lots of these guys were drafted before vegas joined, even
puckstothenet:
Veteran Presence In The Room
diquesdick:
something like that
puckstothenet:
They Know How To Win
diquesdick:
god not that one
puckstothenet:
winning is a very rare skill
diquesdick:
you know what's a rare skill? being a professional hockey player
puckstothenet:
it's such a WEIRD skill, think about it
diquesdick:
lol
puckstothenet:
seriously, were your parents the type to let you spend that much time in middle or high school on something that wasn't academics? were ANY of the parents you knew the type to let you do that? and how many parents do you know NOW who'd treat sports as anything more than a hobby that takes up a couple hours a week at most?
Years ago, I had a moment of bonding with an intern in our office over Academics Are The Most Important Thing in both of our cultures, which also led me to thinking "well, of course academics is the most important thing, that's true of all cultures, right?" *points and laughs at self*
diquesdick:
one girl in my class did one (1) gymnastics meet that I knew about. We were ten.
One other girl did travel soccer? I don't know if that lasted into high school at all.
so, no.
I do not know anyone whose parents valued them developing that kind of skill instead of something that doesn't tend to lead to broken bones and head injuries
and while I know some parents who are into their kids doing sports, it is absolutely on the level of "one recreational soccer/basketball game every weekend with the local kids league", with the kids dropping out as they lose interest and want to do other things with their sundays. Who has *time* for more than that?
puckstothenet:
the wildest thing anyone in my class ever did was do a science fair project that, at the fair, get told she really really really should have gotten human subjects approval for
diquesdick:
oops
puckstothenet:
yup
you know, this is one of those things that don't ping anything at the time but in retrospect thirty years later, I am somewhat concerned about all parties involved
last I heard from her, she was a professional chemist, so if anyone was going to do a science fair experiment I still remember, it makes sense it'd be her
diquesdick:
I'm reminded of that NCAA commercial series where they touted athletes and had them in board rooms and said "some percentage (95%?) of our athletes go pro in things other than sports"
So I tried to find this now and it turns out there have been multiple with this tagline, although I couldn't immediately find the one I remember. But yeah the slogan was "going pro in something other than sports"
but your classmate went pro in science
puckstothenet:
it's a lot easier to go pro in science than in sports
that's such a bizarre commercial idea. "The NCAA is sports training at colleges for sports people to not do sports professionally"
aka you will do a sport at a high level and your only payment is a college education, at best. Which is not guaranteed by the NCAA.
you may as well have spent all that time sportsing on studying, if you were gonna go pro in something you study rather than practice
diquesdick:
I think they were trying to sell the NCAA as a benevolent college scholarship program
puckstothenet:
legitimately, if the NCAA is a college scholarship program, it is the hardest scholarship to actually get and actually keep
I got various scholarships and I know folks who got other kinds of scholarships, and those all have guidelines on how to apply, how it all works, how you can lose it, etc
none of that involved someone visiting my high school and scouting me
I don't know if Leora actually wants to go to Juilliard or not, but I'm willing to bet the admission requirements there are clearer than NCAA bullshit
also you know what? every scholarship I got didn't say I could never have made any money beforehand and wasn't allowed to make money during college
do they wanna say they're work-study? because people who did work-study got paid in their jobs, because that's the point
diquesdick:
you will not make sense of something that doesn't make sense
puckstothenet:
you are wise, babe
diquesdick:
next time I have to watch one of your beloved fluff pieces that talk about how an athlete's parents drove them to practice at 4am and sacrificed so much, I'm going to have mini Puck on my shoulder going "who ARE these parents"
puckstothenet:
they must exist since professional athletes exist
diquesdick:
I'm gonna scrutinize the parents at the next diques parents weekend, squinting at the screen going "why did you let your 14 year old move away from home to go play junior hockey, don't you know about the SATs"
D, the ones who aren't American may not know about the SATs :P
puckstothenet:
I guess because you could always come back to academics, but athletics have such a tight time frame for having your shot at doing it? School will still be there? idk. It sure is a mindset.
diquesdick:
Jacks at least is pretty damn honest that his mom isn't like this, that he's only playing pro hockey because *Luc's* parents had the time to be hockey parents for him
puckstothenet:
do you remember that time Jacks mentioned that someone in his family wanted him not to do major junior so he could go NCAA instead? At least there was one person going "hey maybe this hockey thing could unlock doors for him to get a college education"... for Oliver Jackson, who is the one hockey player I would fully believe already had the grades for that and also iirc if you play major junior and don't go pro, you can get college scholarships? I have no idea how good those scholarships are, but, like, they exist? Like, you really can have it all. Which is probably why Jacks didn't go NCAA.
I've never actually been able to find real information about those scholarships, such as how much they're for, etc. All I can find out is they exist.
diquesdick:
A while back, I read a book about the medalists in a team event at a Winter Olympics and it traced their paths to get there. Two of them (gold and bronze) had state-sponsored programs, the third (silver) did not. It described their struggles and hardships to be able to train to that level and on the one hand, if you are just comparing flat out as "who suffered more and so who deserves it", the bronze medalists are far and away the deserving winners on the suffering scale. But. Anyone who has the bronze medalist's kind of struggles in the silver-medalist's situation is never getting anywhere near the Olympics, because when the cost of getting an Olympic medal is borne by the parents instead of by the country, only those with parents who can afford it will have kids who can get there, especially in a winter sport. If the bronze and silver medalists had switched countries, the bronze medalists wouldn't have gotten to the Olympics in the first place.
In other words, I came away from that book thinking more about how different countries fund their sports teams and how that leads to access for a variety of people, than I did about Who Deserved It.
I think the book didn't know how to balance it entirely either. It had these stories of true suffering and poverty and hardship, and on the other side, it had, like, rocking the suburbs. By trying to show all these lives in contrast next to each other, I think it said more about the countries than the athletes. IDK if it was trying to say the silver medalists had it easy and so had an advantage, but... while that's true, I think it's missing all the people who could have been the silver medalists. I think it's saying more, if you want to be in this position to have the easier road to the Olympics, you already had to have been born halfway there. But there's no path at all for anyone in the bronze medalists position who don't have state sponsored programs.
It may be easier in the summer games, especially the ones where you don't need too much specialized equipment. But even there, the training time, the costs of competitions, the costs of qualifying spots to the Olympics and making the standard... none of this is cheap. Who pays?
We didn't know anyone whose parents valued sports enough to pay actual money for them to do it. But even if we did, did we know anyone who could actually afford it if they wanted to? No.
This book is The Second Mark by Joy Goodwin
I've elided the gold medalists, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, who started out in a state sponsored system (USSR) and then lost it when the USSR ended. They also had a tough time of things. But Shen and Zhao really take the award for Hardest Path To The Olympics.
puckstothenet:
yeah, it's kind of a mess
A few Olympics back, there was one athlete who I had one of those Olympic love affairs over? Like, didn't know who the fuck he was the day before the Olympics, watched him win his event, watched some interviews, fell into youtube holes
Then I found an interview where he said he resented having to give some of his prize money back to the national federation. The national federation. That paid him a stipend. So he could afford. To be an Olympic athlete.
He wanted the money. He didn't want to give back. Because hey, he earned the money, right? He earned the stipend with his competition results. And he earned the prize money he got from those competition results.
And then I fell out of love :P
Alistair Brownlee (triathlon) at the 2012 Olympics. It was a one line mention in a short article, I think at the BBC site but it might have been the Guardian.
diquesdick:
does he want to only do "give back" events where his name is on the sign and everyone can see him explicitly helping the next generation follow in his footsteps?
puckstothenet:
don't know don't care. Guys who can't understand cause and effect, fuck 'em
four years later I watched the sport again, because as far as I'm aware, it only exists once every four years, and I saw him win it again, and I said to the television, oh hey look it's that asshole who doesn't understand the social contract
diquesdick:
you hold the pettiest of grudges and I love you for it
puckstothenet:
like whoever it was on galaxy quest, I have one job on this stupid ship and it is stupid but I'm gonna do it
diquesdick:
you have gone pro in petty grudges
puckstothenet:
yes
I trained for so long, my entire life, and I am so proud to have been drafted first overall in the petty grudge league
all the sacrifices I made and that my parents made to get me to this point, all the schoolwork I didn't do, all the friends I didn't make, all the opportunities I missed, all of it was worth it for this day, to hear them call my name, and to wear this jersey
my life is complete
I have no more goals left
diquesdick:
*sheds a beautiful tear in the audience reaction shot*
One of the signposts in the fic that they're in a relationship (the other main one being the fantasy of a vacation to go boo Bettman)
puckstothenet:
okay but also, non NHLer Jacks, like, sitting in Luc's audience section at the draft
Luc: "I'm so glad to have all my family here today."
because those boys are not anymore in the closet even when they aren't both in the nhl
diquesdick:
accurate
puckstothenet:
and then it's Luc who is doing everything he can to get back to the eastern conference so he can be closer to Jacks
diquesdick:
Chants at the pre-draft stuff: I WANT TO BE A FLYER PLEASE
Chants from our universe: bro, are you okay?
puckstothenet:
yes
diquesdick:
weren't the Habs fourth that year or something?
smash cut to Luc Chantal after the draft lottery being like, how can I drop several places in the draft despite everyone having known for two years that I'm gonna go first
puckstothenet:
"I need to hire a heist team to steal the entry draft--"
"so you'll go first?"
"so I don't go first."
diquesdick:
"That is not usually the request we get."
puckstothenet:
"You miss 100% of the heists you don't make."
diquesdick:
"Have you tried being less good at hockey?"
puckstothenet:
"Why would I ever do that?"
althoughhhhh if Luc does want to decide where he goes, he does have to go NCAA and graduate and then get his Get Out Of Who Owns Your Rights Free Club card stamped
He would have had to decide that earlier, though, because that would be too late for him to do NCAA, since he was already making money.
I have no issue with OMG Check Please (aside from the parts where the font size is too small for me to read the words) but that part of Jack Zimmermann's backstory bugs me. He's not NCAA eligible.
so he just has to pick a college, go there NCAA, while Jacks also goes there, they can be college boyfriends, and then four years later, they can pick where they wanna go
because it's there or being a holdout and no one can convince me he'd ever do that
diquesdick:
yeah, not happening
He'll just get drafted to where he gets drafted and then they have to see if Jacks can transfer somewhere near there sophomore year
or decide that Jacks will stay in one place and Luc will play out his ELC and then refuse to sign a contract extension unless it's with a team he and Jacks have agreed on
puckstothenet:
that would be epic and I would want to see that
Luc Chantal: first top pick franchise rookie breakout star in a million years to be like "actually no, thanks for the memories but I'm going somewhere else"
diquesdick:
they would absolutely trade him if they can't sign him
they can't lose him for nothing
at what point do they pull that lever and trade him? do they think he's a pushover and have hope until the trade deadline of his third year?
or do they resign themselves over the summer?
If they wait until the trade deadline, their options are much more limited.
puckstothenet:
Chants is many many hockey cliches about being a good kid, a team player, loyal, etc etc etc
they absolutely still have hope until the trade deadline
the question is, with the trade deadline approaching, do they KEEP having hope or do they realize that Chants is not gonna sign?
diquesdick:
two days before the trade deadline: "hello Edmonton? do you want another bright young star to ruin?"
puckstothenet:
"we don't think he'll sign with you but this will give you more time to try to negotiate with him, so that should be worth you sending us a decent player in exchange"
would Chants tell the Sharks the location he and Jacks have decided on?
diquesdick:
eh, why make it easy for them?
There's no actual reason not to tell them. Chants had a good relationship with the Sharks. But these fans have an adversarial relationship to the Sharks, on behalf of Chants, due to reasons I invented for the previous fic to explain how the Nordiques were able to get Chants. ;)
plus the Sharks would have to make that trade work
puckstothenet:
in every universe, the sharks lose chants for nothing? ;)
diquesdick:
100% that
puckstothenet:
but my eyes are opened. Yes, Luc Chantal would be like "I need to arrange the location I play hockey in so I can follow what's best for my husband's career" instead of being like "my husband has a portable job, it doesn't matter were I get traded to, we'll manage"
hockey is not the most portable but Luc does have options if he's willing to just not sign a contract with a team he doesn't want to play for or in a location he doesn't want to live
he'll get paid less by any team he goes to, though, I'd bet
diquesdick:
I was about to say "yeah, they wouldn't have been holding cap space available for him the way the sharks were" BUT
puckstothenet:
lol yeah, the sharks not holding cap space open for him was the entire fucking problem there
he'd probably sign a one year or two year deal and then renegotiate? or maybe he'd find a place eager to snap him up and give him seven years, giant contract
diquesdick:
if he went free agent ever in his life and got some bidders, he'd have that, but if he wants to pick the team, he's got work with their cap space, which may not be the most friendly to him getting a huge payday
puckstothenet:
Jacks plays in the local rec league, Chants is his cheering section. "Dude, is your husband in the NHL?"
"depends on if someone will sign him."
"He went first in the draft!"
"correction, it depends on if the local team will sign him."
"the local team can't keep a goalie"
"some things are more important than stanley cups"
diquesdick:
god, Luc Chantal deciding his relationship is more important than chasing a cup. I need that. Because if he had the choice, he'd totally pick Jacks over the cup, I fully believe that. He never had to pick, but I fully believe he'd choose his husband.
like, yes, this guy has many rings, but I fully believe he values his wedding ring above his cup rings
puckstothenet:
+1
diquesdick:
Luc Chantal at 38, an Old Guy Without A Cup, giving an interview where he's like "sure, getting a cup would be fantastic in my final season, but I wouldn't go back and do things differently."
puckstothenet:
dude makes choices and commits to them
and also, I think it might be good for him? Like, Chants does not have non-hockey hobbies. His non-hockey hobbies are cheering for his friends in other sports.
for him to instead frame his life around being with Jacks instead of framing it around being the best at hockey and living the hockey life
diquesdick:
this is why his relationship with Svetlana Volkov was so good for him. All his other relationships are so Sports, you know?
puckstothenet:
they are so very very sports
diquesdick:
but Svetlana is not Sports
puckstothenet:
*sings a whole new world*
also one reason to love his relationship with Svetlana is that... she doesn't seem his type? At all? From everything else Luc Chantal has done in his life, everyone else we know he's dated... and then there's Svetlana Volkov
because life is more than hockey and so is Luc Chantal and that's beautiful :D
diquesdick:
Luc Chantal's '26 season tagline: in which Luc Chantal moves home, becomes a captain, and learns there's more to life than hockey (it is, in fact, modeling)
puckstothenet:
yes
although, consider
Chants decides he doesn't want to play for the nordiques, quits hockey, becomes a model, THEN meets Svetlana
diquesdick:
intriguing
puckstothenet:
also, then Jacks is a hockey player who married a model and I find that so hilariously perfect
diquesdick:
Jacks: nowhere in our vows did it say "for hockey or not for hockey!!!!"
puckstothenet:
lol yeah
those vows were more like "for hockey in one team or in another team, until we can get a trade to be on the same team"
diquesdick:
"our marriage vows involve not being traded to the blackhawks and nothing else, do you hear me, Chantal"
puckstothenet:
WE SWORE WE'D LIFT THE CUP TOGETHER
diquesdick:
"Jacks, bro, it's chill. You win the Cup and we'll lift it together on your Cup day."
puckstothenet:
"GET BACK ON THE ICE"
diquesdick:
poor Oliver Jackson. Chants got himself an Olympic gold medal and then fucked off to a second career focusing on how pretty he is instead of how good he is at hockey
puckstothenet:
oh man just imagine
because hockey is not one of those "olympics are everything" sports
and in those "olympics are everything" sports, YES absolutely so many people drop out after the olympic year
that's the natural point for them to drop out
diquesdick:
the turn of the quadrennium frees them from the question of "but won't you just hang on for three more years so you can try the olympics again?"
puckstothenet:
yep
anyone who quits a sport in a non-olympic year is a quitter, those who do it in an olympic year are going to the next phase of their lives
it's weird but whatever
but just, like, imagine Luc Chantal fucking did that
his first olympics were in his THIRD SEASON
Chants doesn't sign a bridge contract, doesn't sign an extension, fucking leaves the nhl after 3 fucking years
he would never ever do that but oh my god imagine
imagine Luc Chantal has been harboring a tiny secret love in his heart
a tiny secret love for something other than hockey
diquesdick:
GASP
what horrors are you speaking, puck my darling
Luc Chantal knows of no life that isn't hockey
puckstothenet:
BUT WHAT IF
Chants is like, "you know what this world needs? models."
or even, he wants to go to school for nutrition, because that probably is his second love after hockey
...third love, I do remember Jacks exists
diquesdick:
lol
tbf, hockey and Jacks are intertwined
puckstothenet:
and then he fucking quits hockey to go back to school and, like, goes to UPenn
This is pure "Puck is from Pennsylvania" continuity because Penn State = Penn, University of Pennsylvania = UPenn.
Everyone I meet from outside of Pennsylvania does Penn State = Penn State and University of Pennsylvania = Penn.
diquesdick:
he is not getting into UPenn
I don't know how UPenn handles applications from Olympic gold medaling hockey players. It's fully possible he doesn't need the grades.
puckstothenet:
he could! remember, in this world he has ANOTHER LOVE burning his heart
and that would have made him do better at school
plus, dude can afford tuition
diquesdick:
you just want the nonsense of Luc "I hate Philadelphia" Chantal choosing to move to Philadelphia
puckstothenet:
I do
plus the Flyers were clearly grooming Jacks to be their next captain, if he hadn't signed the offer letter, he'd've been named the Flyers captain a month later
Jacks has NEVER been Luc's captain
I want Jacks to be Luc's captain, okay
I don't care if it doesn't count because Chants is out of the nhl, it still counts in my heart
diquesdick:
it would for sure still count in Chants's heart, too
he takes captaining very seriously
puckstothenet:
he is a Serious Hockey Player and this is serious hockey things
even if he is not playing nhl hockey anymore... you can take the boy out of hockey but you can never ever ever take the hockey out of luc chantal
like, luc chantal is the only person who sees the words "team-building" and doesn't goddamn groan
boy builds teams
that is his ethos
this is his life
even nutritionist luc chantal would be like this
diquesdick:
nutritionist luc chantal would be INSUFFERABLE if he were like this
A very necessary reality-check :P
there are only so many places where luc's aggressively team approach works at all, and they are 90% pro sports, 5% childrens sports, and 5% misc other
this has no place in the workplace
puckstothenet:
Chants's second career as the guy they bring in for team building exercises
*angry hissing at the words "team building exercises"*
diquesdick:
nope
puckstothenet:
RELENTLESS POSITIVITY
diquesdick:
the only good thing about that would be he's got a loose idea of what dress code is
puckstothenet:
naw, he knows exactly what dress codes are. It's a rule that he can figure out how to follow and so he does that
he's got great suits because probably at some point in juniors, someone said "Future Number One Pick, today you are going to learn suits, and by learn suits, I mean, your tailor is your coach and you listen to your coach"
and this is why he has great suits that look fantastic, because he is not making any choices at all with those
all that athleisure he wears? uniform of an athlete. Fits the dress code.
but hand to god there is no way Luc Chantal would rock up to a place that says the dress code is "business casual" and have a fucking clue, at all, ever
diquesdick:
he'd find someone to ask what that is, someone would look him up and down and say an oxford shirt and slacks, and in some places a tie without a jacket, and he'd nod his head and move on with his life
Luc Chantal does not have to figure out what "business casual" is in the womens section and for that I hate him just enough
puckstothenet:
also sometimes a polo shirt!
I had a boss once who, on game days, would wear a jersey OVER his suit
but he still had the suit on. You could see the tie underneath.
diquesdick:
just in case a client came by?
puckstothenet:
probably but knowing him, he'd keep it on in a client meeting
it was probably more like "as the boss, I do sort of have to set an example, so here I am, wearing the business uniform, but it's game day so I also am wearing the sports uniform as well."
as you can tell, he was not a boss who cared that much about dress codes in general.
diquesdick:
I bet you do not remember the name or number on that jersey
I am only 80% confident on the sport of that jersey. It's possible he did this with multiple sports. I'm most confident of the football one, though.
puckstothenet:
correct
but actually scratch that, Chants would suck as a team building professional, he's too competitive
diquesdick:
IDK, he might be able to tamp it down
puckstothenet:
lots of the diques's team building stuff is doing other competitive things, like video game tournaments and also golf
they build a team by creating a meticulous hierarchy based on game ability, but it allows those who are less good in hockey to contribute to the team as being better in other aspects
so, balance
diquesdick:
a lot of ego to deal with
puckstothenet:
yeah like every rookie that was ever older than the captain
diquesdick:
every single nhl player was once the best player on any team they were on and at some point that stopped, and the point at which that stopped fascinates me
It is legitimately fascinating. And important to remember that even the worst player on an elite professional sports team is an extremely good athlete who is better than nearly everyone else on the planet at their sport. It's just that "nearly everyone else" isn't "absolutely everyone else" and they play the sport against that tiny fraction who are better than they are. And they have to deal with people calling them terrible at their job and insinuating that they can do it better (spoiler: they cannot)
is luc chantal the best player in the world? honey sometimes I'm not sure he's the best player ON HIS LINE
puckstothenet:
one day luc chantal and oliver jackson combine into one body. "thank god," we all say, "now we know who the diques mvp is".
would they play center or wing?
diquesdick:
um. wing. I think.
it's just that every other forward, you can be like "okay at some point in the past, either very recent or somewhat-less-recent, someone had them shift positions and the one they ended up in was their best one but they've at least DONE the other ones"
but chants and jacks have been on the same line forever; the only thing that might ever shift is which side luc is on
I forgot which side Chants played and I didn't bother checking.
puckstothenet:
no one drafts luc chantal first overall and decides to try to make him a center. if they wanted a center, oliver jackson was right there to draft instead.
diquesdick:
yeah
and if the flyers had had a different configuration MAYBE they'd have tried to shift jacks??? but having a star center is such a big deal that even then, they'd keep jacks where he is
so like have either of them played any other position since, idk, a summer training camp when they were thirteen???? Street hockey doesn't count. Messing around in practice doesn't count.
if I put Chants in the middle, he could probably handle it, but how well would he do? where would he rank????
puckstothenet:
all I know is, better than he would if you decided he was a dman
diquesdick:
dman luc chantal: most incomprehensible and unbelievable AU
I'd believe him as anything else before I'd believe him as that
puckstothenet:
one day chants is going to wake up and realize the power of a good defense
but today is not that day
tomorrow isn't looking good either
diquesdick:
also honestly an AU where Luc Chantal as a dman means it's an AU where jacktal is a d-pairing. How do you expect me to handle that?
puckstothenet:
there's never any need for a third! all they need is each other! no need to find them another person to complete them!
is this a metaphor about polyamory?
diquesdick:
hockey is versatile
puckstothenet:
their lives as dmen... look I know that sometimes dmen go first but everyone loves forwards?????
would we get TWO dmen as the top two picks??? would the hockey gods ever let us have that again???
According to wikipedia, the last time this happened was 1996.
diquesdick:
like, legitimately, if they were a d-pairing, I'd think one of the Sharks or the Flyers would have actually tried to get the other one
not at the "let's get both the Sedins" level of getting both at the draft, THAT'S never happening again, but, like, trading and stuff
if you had a chance to get a superstar d-pairing that you know works, would you ever NOT try? That wouldn't just be a franchise forward, that would be franchise changing
puckstothenet:
"you'd thought the Sharks were tanking for chantal beforehand, just wait until you see them tank for jacktal"
it amuses me that they both ended up with a team that didn't exist when they were drafted, after ALL THAT TANKING
diquesdick:
when life gives you expansion drafts, make expansion draft-ade
puckstothenet:
I don't know if Chants embroiders, but if he does, I'm sure he has that on a pillow
diquesdick:
god don't make me write jacktal as d-pairing
puckstothenet:
I have no power over you!
diquesdick:
lol
puckstothenet:
but, y'know, if they WERE a d-pairing
diquesdick:
omg
puckstothenet:
just work with me for a second!
diquesdick:
do you remember what 2026 olympic selection was like? do you remember what it's ALWAYS like for Canada land-of-the-million-nhl-players?
I have so many opinions on Olympic spot selections for sports I care about, which I guess is why I'm glad I don't currently care about -- whoops, got distracted being mad again about something from over a decade ago.
Olympic spot selection is a blood sport.
puckstothenet:
I do recall many strenuous arguments on if jacktal should be picked and if so, should maybe only one of them
okay and by one of them I mean if jacks should stay home because canada didn't need another center
diquesdick:
if they were a d-pairing, this would be worse
puckstothenet:
that is true
but, I suggest to you: jacks still gets the golden goal in his first olympics
diquesdick:
yes because he'd be one of those dman who think they're a forward
puckstothenet:
you gotta dress for the position you want, not the position you have
okay but I say that, but honestly, if Chants was a dman, he'd embrace it. He'd be a defensive defenceman
he'd be doing so much defense you'd think he's the goalie
diquesdick:
luc chantal has one speed and it is "commitment"
puckstothenet:
luc chantal's one speed is commitment so much he got married at 18 to his childhood sweetheart and when we found out about it five years later, we all went "...okay in retrospect he was never in the closet"
he never said anything about it except for all the stuff he said about it
diquesdick:
yup
if they were a d-pairing, my life is over and I have no dreams left but figuring out if their line name actually would be jacktal
puckstothenet:
of course it would
you think the coach is gonna say Jackson-Chantal over and over again? It's jacktal by the time they're eight.
diquesdick:
do they wait longer to get married?
puckstothenet:
that depends on if the teams tanking for jacktal actually do the impossible and get both of them
because if that happens, maybe they are not so desperate to be together that they road trip to vegas and get drunk married because they're so scared of losing each other
if they know they're gonna be together and not on opposite sides of the country, maybe they're like "maybe we'll wait and plan a real wedding"
of course there's also the chance that they got married as soon as they could do it legally on purpose because they wanted that piece of paper saying they were important to each other
diquesdick:
they already had a notarized contract saying that
puckstothenet:
that is true
you know, this is one pairing where you do an arranged marriage, childhood betrothal thing and it's like how is that any different from reality, c'mon, did you even do an AU
diquesdick:
"AU where Jacktal didn't want to marry each other", step too far, bad characterization, close tab
It deeply amuses me that these fans would consider what actually happened to be an implausible AU.
puckstothenet:
it would only work if, like, they wanted to marry each other, had a fight over ice cream that lasted a couple days, and those couple days where jacks screamed "I won't marry you if we can't have milkshake dates anymore!" is the focus of the fic
just the total misery of a friend break-up that will be resolved by the end of the week
diquesdick:
5 Times Jacktal Broke Up Over Petty Reasons And 1 Time They Stayed Together
puckstothenet:
also like, canon-compliant arranged marriage, where the parents agreed the kids would get married, the kids were like "yep, sounds good", ended up getting married, BUT we maintain canon continuity throughout it
aka, Chants called home the morning after and said "Mom, Dad, good news, we got married like you promised Jack's mom. Bad news... uh. We got married?"
diquesdick:
"You got the paperwork signed. We're still gonna have the real wedding when you get home. Now put your husband on the phone, we want to say hi to our son-in-law."
[snip]
puckstothenet:
yeah I don't know if Chants is still keeping up a tradition given to him by a juniors teammate he hasn't seen since that season ended lo these many years ago
but Jacks would be special either way, I think?
like if Jacks had quit after junior, he'd still be Chants's best bro
diquesdick:
true
if Jacks had been like "I can see the future and it involves a bad concussion, I'm gonna go find a nice university in California and room with Chants", first of all, I've read that fic at least sixty times, and second of all, Chants would be even worse because Jacks would be there, sitting on the couch, being like "Chants, bet you you can't score three goals in three minutes, and if you can't do it, it's your turn to do laundry for the next year". And Chants can't retaliate, except maybe like "Jacks if you don't ace that lab report, I want a foot rub after practice."
I would read this fic so hard. I want to live in a world where this pairing is a huge juggernaut pairing and there's entire fic fests of Non NHLer!Oliver Jackson, and trope bingo cards for it.
puckstothenet:
Jacks goes to home games when he can and heckles.
Jacks, in the stands: I could play better before my voice cracked!
Luc, helpfully: he's right
diquesdick:
The Sharks get to know Jacks as That Guy Luc Always Talks About, and then they meet him and it's like "you seem a normal guy, why are you living with THIS"
And Jacks shrugs and is like, "he's got really great cheekbones."
puckstothenet:
AU where Luc Chantal is just hot for hockey player and not Actually Hot
diquesdick:
in that AU, everyone would be trying to convince us that Chants is Actually Hot
puckstothenet:
and failing, failing so much
diquesdick:
but legitimately, do you think he has fewer endorsements or media presence?
puckstothenet:
I'm not sure he'd have that much watch commercials, no. His crossover appeal is a lot shallow and only a little Famous Hockey Player Trying To Break Through
like, yes, he would be at the Sidney Crosby level of "name any current hockey player at all"
BUT
okay, so, you know how everyone thinks that Michelle Kwan won the Olympics? Because they've heard of her, and if they've heard of her, she must be an ogm.
If this fic is the reason you know Michelle Kwan didn't win the Olympics, you're welcome.
the "stuff everyone knows" about the single athlete everyone knows from that sport is really really tiny, it's basically just their name, vaguely their decade, and that's it
no one would be able to pick him out of a deck of trading cards that were just him and hockey players who got dubbed the next in the line of gretzky
he would have endorsements and beneath those endorsements, not only would it say his name, but it would also say hockey player and ogm and stanley cup winner and captain of the diques
it would have a resume, is what I'm saying
it would not just be LUC CHANTAL FOR $COMPANY
it would not assume you would know who he is
in the US, I mean. Canada cares about hockey.
[snip]
diquesdick:
once they're on the same team, though, they'll have to Perform Team with each other, they'll have to try not to publicly hate each other
foeyay where everyone knows it's foeyay but they have to pretend it's broyay
puckstothenet:
delicious
diquesdick:
also since it's foeyay jacktal, they also foeyay with other people
This is just how polyamory works, right?
puckstothenet:
omg i love you
diquesdick:
think of the hate fucking after one of them scores a playoff winning goal and the other is so mad that they just assisted on it and didn't get the actual goal
puckstothenet:
I am definitely thinking of the hate fucking
would they move in together to hate fuck more efficiently?
diquesdick:
of course this is them
but most importantly, they never stop being foes
this is not some "enemies to friendly lovers" plot bunny, this is "enemies to hate fuckers who stay enemies"
puckstothenet:
while playing house with each other
diquesdick:
yes
puckstothenet:
Chants keeps feeding smoothies to Jacks because he needs him to stay healthy and competitive so that Chants can still compete against him and try to win
if Jacks gets traded, Chants can't beat him again
except, well, on a team level (because rivalry is fucking pointless in a team sport!!!!!!111111!!!)
but yes if they're on the same line, which of them has better stats MEANS SOMETHING
I mean, no, it means nothing, but this is foeyay
diquesdick:
in which Oliver Jackson knows everything there is to know about Luc Chantal and likes none of it
This would be a great fic summary, in a universe where this was a juggernaut hockey rpf pairing.
puckstothenet:
in which Luc Chantal talks about everything he hates about Oliver Jackson for thirty minutes while Temi tries to escape the team bus
"I know you hate him," says every teammate. "I would perhaps like to know LESS about how you hate him."
diquesdick:
Luc has a couple days break in between games during The Concussion and flies to Philly to threaten Jacks into getting better
puckstothenet:
Jacks: dammit, Chants, even your bedside manner is terrible
Chants: I'm taking this opportunity while you're out to beat you for the Art Ross, better get back on the ice soon, loser
diquesdick:
someone tells Jacks that if he can't think of anything good to say, say nothing at all. So the next time someone asks Jacks to compliment Chants, he just stares into the camera and then says "I've got nothing to say".
puckstothenet:
okay but also they still got married before rookie year EITHER just to make sure the other was aware they were watching them, OR it really was every single "got drunk, woke up married to enemy" you've ever seen
except if it was the second, they'd've gotten it annulled by noon the following day
diquesdick:
"My marriage vows are to never go to bed happy."
puckstothenet:
lol
you know what? I'm into this.
jacktal foeyay maintaining the foeyay throughout their entire relationship, perfect.
diquesdick:
*bad romance plays somewhere in the distance*
puckstothenet:
+1
sometimes it's like "have I spent too much time contemplating all the ways these two guys could love each other" and then I realize I have not considered ENOUGH ways these guys could love each other
diquesdick:
life always contains room for improvement. Slash is life. Ergo...
puckstothenet:
makes perfect sense
the length and breadth of slash is truly limitless
diquesdick:
you can do what you want!
want them falling in love? we have that. Want them to have never met? We can also do that.
Want them as spaceships? Also that too.
We can even do futurefic and give them more cups.
puckstothenet:
lol yeah guilty
GUILTY.
diquesdick:
that is always the question with futurefic, yeah. Do you give them cup wins? Do you give them Olympic medals? Do you relegate them to the minors?
puckstothenet:
only thing I won't do is write career ending injuries again.
diquesdick:
because of that Davey fic?
puckstothenet:
yep, never again.
I got too much from folks who seemed a little bit too happy about the idea of him being out of the game and never playing again
I didn't like how that felt
worse, they thought I was one of them, that I didn't like Davey so much, I'd use rpf to write out some kind of revenge wishful thinking curse on him, because how dare he be a good player
really didn't like that. Not doing it again, the hurt/comfort isn't worth it.
diquesdick:
puck: *writes a fic about someone she loves finding life and purpose outside of a sport she thinks is toxic most of the time*
puckstothenet:
All of the time!
but yeah, ugh.
you have never seen anyone happier than I was when Davey won the Cup and then when he got into the triple gold club JUST BECAUSE of that
like, great for Davey! and also fuck you, everyone who thought I wanted him to suffer so your fave could get his olympic roster spot
but still, never doing that again
despite appearances, sometimes I can, in fact, learn my lesson
diquesdick:
happy endings have lots of different forms
puckstothenet:
yeah if he's gonna stick around this stupid sport, he may as well get what he wants out of it
and now he's retired and I pay him no attention, because I want to be serene in the knowledge that he got what he wanted from this sport and is now doing other things he enjoys
I don't want to find out how his bad hip is doing, I want to pretend it's all fine
diquesdick:
last I checked, he had no social media presence at all, so I can only assume he is happily living his retired life
okay, this time google shows he got married last year
puckstothenet:
good for Davey!
in fifteen years, nobody ever tell me how Luc's knee is doing
I'd say screw it and go follow a sport that doesn't have injuries but I can't think of any
The role of Davey in this fic is being played by Evan Lysacek, complete with me googling him for this to find out he'd gotten married the year before.
diquesdick:
the stock market
puckstothenet:
not a spectator sport :P
diquesdick:
several business channels on cable beg to differ
puckstothenet:
ugh I forgot those existed
Me, too.
okay so this is the only sport that hurts the spectators more than the participants
espn shows card games sometimes, I guess now's the time for me to really get into watching poker
diquesdick:
you would never ever ever watch competitive poker
you would, however, gleefully watch any person ever play solitaire
puckstothenet:
...you know me too well
diquesdick:
competitive solitaire heckling is absolutely a sport for the whole family
puckstothenet:
it would be!
solitaire is absolutely an activity and/or a game, not a sport BUT
like
it can be a hobby that's more fun for people to watch than to do :P
diquesdick:
low-stakes PICK THAT CARD, NO, WAIT, THAT OTHER CARD, NO YOU FUCKED UP
puckstothenet:
and if you fuck it up, well, you're only playing against yourself
if you lose, you win?
diquesdick:
it's foolproof
puckstothenet:
and no injuries, it's everything I could ever want in a sports fandom
diquesdick:
all it lacks is the ability to watch it :P
puckstothenet:
that is the most minor of all minor details. I am full of over-confidence and shall persevere.
diquesdick:
I believe in you, puck. I really do.
puckstothenet:
I appreciate that!
now, just to figure out... everything about this
diquesdick:
lol
puckstothenet:
also, ahem, your attention please
"And that's why we," Jackson said, slinging his arm around Chantal's shoulders, "have leverage."
Exeunt!
*takes a bow*
diquesdick:
*\o/* *\o/* *\o/*
The end!
Happy to chat about any of this, or any of the parts I snipped out for space.