Thoughts three-quarters in

Among hockey scribes, there is a school of thought which holds that once you reach Thanksgiving -- or "American Thanksgiving," as our Canadian friends more accurately call it -- you can already tell which teams will make the playoffs simply by looking at who would be in if the season were to end that day. According to this school of thought, those same teams are almost certain to be in when the season really does end, with maybe (but only maybe) a couple exceptions.

That sounds kind of nuts, seeing as how the NHL season is 82 games long and is only one-quarter finished at Thanksgiving, but there is actually a lot of data that backs it up. Still, there are always exceptions, which goes to prove what we already know: That's why they play the games!

And having said that, here are my thoughts about the current NHL season now that its three-quarter mark -- and that Canadian National Holiday otherwise known as "the trade deadline" -- has passed:

Turnarounds

On November 23rd, the evening after Thanksgiving, I sat in Amalie Arena and watched my Tampa Bay Lighting dismantle the Chicago Blackhawks by scoring four goals in the first period. At that time the Blackhawks were circling the drain with the third-worst record in the league and seemingly no hope for the future. And when the puck dropped to start that game, the best record in the league was owned not by Tampa Bay but by the Buffalo Sabres.

Fast forward to today and the Blackhawks have risen phoenix-like and rallied to within five points of a wild card spot despite losing all-world goalie Corey Crawford to a head injury for more than two months. Meanwhile, the Sabres have managed to implode and tumble all the way out of the playoff field.

And then there are the St.Louis Blues, who floundered through much of the season's first half with many an observer believing they were dead. But since the calendar flipped to 2019 the Blues have gone an a tear, fueled largely by a sterling run from January 23rd through February 24th, during which they gained points in 14 of 16 games and won 11 in a row. If the playoffs were to start today, they would be in them and would not even be a wild card.

Which brings me back to what I said above: That's why they play the games. All 82 of them. Don't ever let some know-it-all writer tell you who's gonna make the post-season months before it even begins (unless the know-it-all happens to be me, of course).


Conference differences
The Lightning are having an almost unfathomably good season, having become just the fourth team in history (and first in 41 years) to reach the 100-point plateau in fewer than 64 games. Thus they are the prohibitive Stanley Cup favorites.

Which is not to say they will win it, because before we can even talk about teams from the Western Conference, it has to be said that there are a few in the Eastern Conference who are good enough to upset the Lightning in the post-season and take "their" spot in the final. Don't look now, but the Bruins entered today on a 14-game points streak, and those first-place-in-the-Metro Islanders have gotta be feeling good about the fact that their starting goalie, Robin Lehner, has the #1 save percentage in the NHL while their backup, Thomas Greiss, has the #2 save percentage in the NHL. Yikes!

But despite the existence of such formidable in-conference foes, it feels like the Lightning are, realistically speaking, the only truly bona fide Cup contender in the East. Conversely, the Western Conference has five -- count 'em, five -- legit Cup contenders in Winnipeg, San Jose, Nashville, Vegas, and Calgary. Which is especially weird when you consider that: 1) the East is a much stronger conference from top to bottom, and 2) of the teams with the seven best records in the NHL, five are from the East and only two from the West.

Not that that means anything. It's just a little strange, that's all.


Trade musings
Sometimes, orchestrating a big splash of a trade at or near the deadline yields the kind of big results that make it worthwhile. Think Butch Goring, 1980. But sometimes it doesn't, and in fact it usually doesn't if the whole point of the trade is for your team to win the Cup that season.

Just because a certain player fits good on Team A and plays good on Team A does not mean he will gel with Team B when he arrives. After all, we are talking about a whole different group of teammates with their own chemistry, a whole different organization with its own culture, and a short period of time for the new guy to find his place in the mix before the vulcanized rubber hits the post-season ice.

So I am clearly not sold on making major February trades just because media types say you should. But those trades are certainly worth talking about and sometimes they do work out -- and man oh man, weren't those some big big deals that went down in the Western Conference?

By bringing in Brian Boyle and Wayne Simmonds, the Nashville Predators addressed their major roster needs -- size, grit, power play scoring -- and therefore it seems that their already good chances of making a deep run just got boosted... And Winnipeg, by bringing in Kevin Hayes to center their second line, replicated last year's Paul Stastny trade while tackling their own major need of pivot depth... And Vegas? All they did was land 26-year-old Mark Stone, the most highly prized forward available on deadline day, and immediately ink him to an eight-year extension.

Those teams are going all-in in their quest to win the Cup now, not "someday." The question is will the new additions, for one of these teams, fit in cleanly like game pieces and deliver the goods? Or will the ultimate reward go instead to conference opponent Calgary or Eastern Conference juggernaut Tampa Bay, both of whom opted to stand pat rather than try to chase rainbows by tinkering with things that ain't broken. Only time will tell.


Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
As the trade deadline loomed, everyone who follows hockey heard the drumming in O-hi-o and wondered if there would be tin soldiers and sadness coming to Nationwide Arena. Columbus Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen answered that drumming by deciding it's not getting to the point that he and his club are no fun anymore.

Entering this month, Kekalainen was jammed between a rock and a hard place due to the uncertain upcoming status of franchise cornerstones Sergei Bobrovsky and Artemi Panarin, both of whom are set to become unrestricted free agents when their contracts expire on July 1st. The problem is that neither of them was willing to sign a pre-deadline contract extension; i.e., neither was willing to agree to remain in Columbus without testing the open market. This led many and sundry to debate whether Kekalainen should trade them now rather than risk getting nothing in return when if they leave for warmer greener pastures; or whether he should hold on to them in the hope of making a deep playoff run this spring, seeing as how the Jackets have never gotten past the first round and their current roster, led by Bobrovsky and Panarin, seems to be their best ever.

Like a riverboat gambler letting it ride, the 52-year-old executive from Tampere, Finland planted his stake firmly on the latter side of the debate. On the one hand he did not trade Bobrovsky or Panarin, and with his other hand he dealt away a slew of draft picks to bring in four quality veterans -- all of whom are also on expiring contracts and set to become unrestricted free agents on July 1st.

You can see the benefit these new Jackets bring to the table: Matt Duchesne is an offensive star, Ryan Dzingel is one of the most underrated forwards in the league, Adam McQuaid brings 9+ seasons of quality experience to the blueline, and goalie Keith Kincaid, with his .906 career save percentage, should be a fine backup for Bobrovsky. Theoretically this group makes the Jackets much more competitive than they were a week ago.

But does it make the Jackets a genuine threat to make a run for the Cup, or does it merely raise their ceiling from first-round elimination to second-round elimination? When July rolls around every player in this foursome could go elsewhere, on top of the fact that Bobrovsky and Panarin will could go elsewhere. Then how could Kekalainen restock the cupboard, seeing as how he brought the foursome in by trading away most of Columbus's picks in the upcoming draft (they now have only a third- and seventh-rounder) and seeing as how other free agents are sure to wonder why they should sign with a franchise that couldn't convince players already in its fold to stay in town?

I don't think Kekalainen's gamble will come close to paying off, but I gotta admire the moxie it took for him to make it. Faced with a fork in the road and knowing both directions would have potholes, he chose a direction without flinching and put all his chips on the table without blinking.

The (not) strange case of Jussie Smollett

As everyone knows, Jussie Smollett claimed that at 2:00 in the morning of January 29th he was attacked by Trump-loving homophobic racists while walking home from a Subway sandwich shop.

Anyone who actually paid attention to his account should have immediately been somewhere between skeptical and dismissive of what he had to say.

Here's a good rule of thumb: When a politically animated human being claims to have been physically assaulted by political opponents, and he describes those opponents in ways that amount to a cartoonish stereotype, we ought to examine the rest of his story to see if it makes sense.

To accept Smollett's account at face value, you would have to believe: 1) that when the temperature was nine degrees below zero, a couple of people chose to walk around outside looking for a gay black man to beat up in public in one of the most overwhelmingly PC cities in America; 2) that they would happen to encounter just such a man and know who he was (does this mean they follow Empire?); 3) that while beating him up, they would openly reveal themselves to be members of the political party that the city's power structure opposes; 4) that they would not take his cell phone from him, even though he was talking on it when they jumped him and he could have used it to call the police on them or to photograph them; 5) that in the process of this two-on-one beating, Smollett would not even lose possession of the sandwich he was carrying; 6) that this two-on-one beating just happened to occur in one of the few places in urban America that cannot be seen by any security cameras; 7) that the assailants would put a noose around Smollett's neck but not bother to tighten it even the slightest; 8) that Smollett would then go home with the noose still around his neck and walk past his building's doorman/security without discussing anything; 9) that he would then wait 40 minutes to call police because he wasn't sure he wanted to call them; 10) that despite not being sure he wanted to call police, he would nonetheless keep the noose around his neck the whole time because he wanted to "preserve evidence" for them; and 11) that he didn't think it was important to tell police that his assailants were saying "this is MAGA country" yet did think it was important to tell that to TMZ.

As George Will might say: Well.

Schoolboys and schoolgirls can be forgiven for swallowing this bill of goods without a second thought, but not grown men and women who claim to seek and report the truth (i.e., journalists) and not grown men and women who are elected to public office by the citizenry. Though of course, this was not the first time a wholly implausible story has been knee-jerkingly accepted by journalists and politicians alike.

To have believed the University of Virginia rape story would be to believe that a young woman could be raped by multiple men on shards of broken glass without sustaining any cuts or bruises -- and to also believe that when she told her friends about the rape, their primary response was to warn her that she might become less popular if she snitched.

To have believed the Covington Catholic narrative would be to believe that an anti-Trump activist traveled to DC to take part in a protest, but once there he did nothing but stand stoically still and mind his own business without saying a word and without being provocative. In other words, it would be to believe that at that one specific moment in space and time, this one particular political protester suddenly behaved differently than every other political protester known to man.

And those two examples do not even begin to scratch the surface, for fake reports of hate crimes and fake reports of nooses are so common that they've been saturating our airwaves all of my adult life.

Last Thursday Jussie Smollett was taken into custody, one day after being charged with disorderly conduct for filing a false police report. The phrase "filing a false police report" sounds somewhat benign, but as Jack Crowe reports, the charge "is a class-four felony and typically results in a prison sentence of one to three years." (emphases mine)

With the narrative having, as they say, shifted, many who very recently supported Smollett now find themselves conflicted and/or confused. Some of them have fallen conspicuously silent while others have switched their outrage by making him its focus. Alyssa Milano provided a prime and gripping example with her February 17th tirade on Twitter: "If that man staged his own attack he is wrong in so many ways. No one could be that hurtful? To stage this? Right? To fuck with all of us by playing into our weaknesses & make it even harder for victims to come forward?! No one could choose to be that hurtful? Right?! RIGHT?"

Smollett must be experiencing whiplash over the fact that Al Sharpton, of all people, is calling for him to receive "the maximum" penalty, since Sharpton himself rose to prominence by fanning the flames of the Tawana Brawley hoax 32 years ago.

Over the past few days it seems like I have heard a thousand people -- we'll call them Milano types, I suppose -- say things like "why would he do this?" and "I don't understand how he could do such a thing!" Please. Assuming Smollett did make it all up (which he still denies) there are multiple psychological theories that explain why he would do such a thing, and every one of them makes sense. And there is a plethora of benefits he would gain if he got away with it. But I am not going to get into any of those things because they are not the point of this post.

For the record, I do believe he made it all up, and it does not surprise me at all that a person would do that. It's fascinating that so many people were so eager to believe him that they checked their brains at the door, but when it comes to Smollett himself, I am so indifferent that my needle doesn't even begin to move from zero. Instead I am reminded of what Kevin Williamson wrote about another entertainer a half-decade ago: "I was an admirer of Philip Seymour Hoffman's, but I was not surprised to learn that he had died as the result of a heroin misadventure. Not that I was in any way privy to Mr. Hoffman's private life, it is just that I am never surprised when somebody dies from heroin... Every few years I read about how heroin is making a comeback or about how there's a new surge of heroin addiction, but I am skeptical. Heroin never makes a comeback, because heroin never goes away."

If my belief is correct -- i.e., if Smollett did something bad by perpetrating a hoax that was founded on bigotry -- none of us should be surprised because all of us have done bad things, for the age-old reason that we are sinful by our very nature. I have absolutely done bad things, and so have you. So too has every pastor that has ministered from a pulpit, and every statesman that has given speeches from a rostrum. We are driven to sin, because, repeat, we are sinful by our very nature.

And yet we are also driven to do good by our very nature. Just because good and bad are opposites does not mean they are mutually exclusive, especially when they come wrapped in human skin. Like the great Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in 1973, "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being." Or if you prefer, like the great philosophers Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder sang in 1982, "there is good and bad in everyone."

It has been said that part of the reason Jussie Smollett's co-workers were quick to believe him is that whenever someone has been needed to make public appearances or do promotional work for Empire, he was the one who would do it eagerly and without complaint even if it meant going out of his way and getting little to nothing in return. Based on what I know of human nature, it is not inconsistent to believe that Smollett could authentically be "that guy" while also being "the guy who perpetrated a bigoted hoax about a crime that never took place." We human beings are messy, complicated, internally contradictory creatures.

While it is true that people should be held to account for their bad acts, none of us would ever want to be judged in such a way that our worst moments become the ones that define our entire lives. We must never forget this, including those of us like me who are on the "receiving end" of Smollett's political prejudice; i.e., us straight white men who vote Republican because we lean conservative. We rightfully want Jussie Smollett to be held to account, but before we go any further we should stop to realize that he is already being held to account, and that the accounting is going to get worse for him no matter what the outcome of his trial (or plea bargain) happens to be.

Smollett has more money than me, but he is not wealthy. With him we are not talking about a high-profile celebrity, but we are talking about a high-profile crime with intense media coverage, which means the legal costs associated with his defense will probably destroy him financially -- and will do so at the precise time that he has fallen out of favor not only with the general public but in the entertainment world as well, meaning his finances will be destroyed at the precise time that his chances of finding new work go down precipitously.

His future on Empire is in jeopardy, for in the wake of the felony charge against him, his character has now been removed from the final two episodes of the current season.

Maybe he has a couple real friends who have not written him off, but I don't know that he does. What I do know is that his one-time friends and supporters in the entertainment world are now cold-shouldering him in disgust -- see Alyssa Milano's tweet -- and that has to put him in an extremely lonely place.

And the mere fact of being "in contact with the justice system" (to borrow a euphemism attorneys like to use) is far more punishment than most people realize. The American justice system looks good on paper, but in practice it sucks, and I am using "sucks" as a euphemism.

At some point in the future, Smollett with either stand trial or agree to a plea bargain. Between now and then he will awaken every morning knowing that somewhere out there, a team of extravagantly funded and extraordinarily powerful prosecutors is working diligently to put him behind bars. And he will know that they are doing that work in a nation where prosecutors almost always get their way, often by using foul means and rarely with any fear of recrimination.

He will feel like a target because he is a target, and unlike some targets he will not have a cadre of supporters vouching for his character and pleading that he deserves mercy. Having an X on your back with prosecutors on your tail is terrifying, leaving aside the question of whether it was you or they who put the X there.

Those of us not "in contact with the justice system" tend to think too much in terms of whether you are eventually convicted or acquitted, or whether you get a "reasonable sentence" if you are convicted. But that is to miss the point, because in our justice system the punishment does not necessarily come from conviction and sentencing, but from the process itself. It comes from the psychological and economic toll that the system ruthlessly imposes on every person who comes "in contact" with it, regardless of whether the person is guilty or innocent.

Never forget that. The process itself is the punishment, regardless of whether you are guilty or innocent. When you are forced to defend yourself in the justice system, you are inexorably punished and there is no guarantee you will ever recover.

Jussie Smollett's punishment has already begun and it will continue no matter how his trial or plea bargain ultimately works out. It was fun to share mocking memes about him for a couple days. I know because I did it. But now we should lay off him and leave him alone.

If any "macro good" can come from L'affaire Smollett, it is for bipartisan criticism to make it clear that there is no room in polite society for making up false accusations of heinous acts. Fortunately it appears that mission is on the way to being accomplished, based on the reactions of the Milano types.

On the other hand, if any "micro good" can come from L'affaire Smollett, it is to help Smollet (and others like him) realize that those of us who disagree with him do not want to harm people or reintroduce Jim Crow. Good can come from helping him realize that we are just as appalled by hatred and violence as he fancies himself to be. Therefore, we should lay off him and leave him alone.

Shouting for a man to be punished when he is already being punished is not the civilized way to go, so instead let's go another way and try a little of that "hate the sin but love the sinner" thing we've all heard about. Or let's at least get as close to that as we can -- after all, I certainly don't love Jussie Smollett, but I can honestly say that I feel kind of bad for him even though I detest the sin I think he committed.

And that's all I have to say.