One of my favourite people to talk hockey with is The Athletic’s own Tyler Dellow. He’s a smart guy who played competitive hockey growing up (and still plays), he was a numbers guy with the Edmonton Oilers for years, and he’s always been an avid hockey viewer/consumer of information. In sum, he knows what the hell he’s talking about — and as a bonus, he’s not shy to tell you to stuff it at times when you should probably be stuffing it. I tend to gravitate to those types, despite being the complete opposite myself.



One of my favourite discussions we’ve had is one that takes some nuance, and we’ve discussed it a couple times. The sporting internet has been at it for years, too: is sport X — in our case, hockey — a weak link sport or a strong link sport? What that basically means is, do the most successful teams have the best players (think how LeBron James can drag a “meh” team in basketball to the finals),...