Welcome to a new series I would like to start weekly called, as the title suggests, “Overreactions”. Where we delve into a couple things across the league that catches my eye and I would like to talk about whether that be trades or results during the week. I’m going to keep it to a short 5 topics with honorable mentions thrown in. If any of you read Matthew Berry on ESPN, I personally enjoy his super long intros on whatever he wants to discuss that week in the real world and then talk about it with a mini-lesson. So feel free to skip over the intro and get right down to the article or read it if you like. My friend recently broke up with her boyfriend, pouring tears out of her eyes. Her thoughts on the memories they shared together, how she’ll miss the soft caress of his hand on her back when they cuddle. The head kisses before she sleeps. The drunk facetimes about how much he loves her and misses her. I’m currently 19 years old attending university in the middle of a pandemic. Throughout my entire life I would always sit and dream about the time in college where I could join a frat, go party and make my lifelong friends. Instead I’m stuck missing my ex whom as we too often see, continue to have off and on communication where each passing week goes by hoping this will finally be the one we reconnect for good. I guess this is something that is way too familiar to the older player base in LG, if I’m not mistaken the average age of the LGNHL is 23. Maybe instead of dealing with heartbreak you’re dealing with getting fired from your job or since there’s a massive pandemic in the United States, on unemployment. Where now more than ever your life is at a standstill, and direction is uncertain. My friend facetimed me crying her eyes out asking me for help. How can I help? I barely knew the guy and this pain is something it takes weeks, months, years to get over. So I just sat with her and listened, she explained everything that was making her upset, I played music on my laptop (A lot of Juice Wrld and Khalid) and made jokes with her to keep her head up. At the end of the call she thanked me and said that I was the only person who sat and listened to her without ridiculing her, saying her parents just told her to get over it and focus on school (another issue in itself). In times like these we tend to only see the negative, a daily life where we wake up, watch lecture in our room, workout, then go right back to laying in bed scrolling through tik-tok. It’s a never ending cycle which drives you mentally insane. On my run today I couldn’t get my mind off of her and constantly had to stop myself and focus on the positive, though what positive was there to see? That leads us to now, me and that friend of mine have challenged each other to see the positive in each day, my mile time increased by 6 seconds yesterday. From 8:07 to 8:01, maybe that was me going faster just because I was outraged, but who cares, it's something I can build on. She made her first omelette today, sure something older people would see and laugh at as an accomplishment, but fuck what other people think. What progress you made to yourself is all that matters, if you improved 1% today then you can be proud of what you’ve done. So maybe today you sitting here reading this haven’t done anything to be proud of and are upset at the world for having a pandemic which ruins your Friday and Saturday nights since you can’t go to the bars and get shit faced while a girl throws it back on you. Or like me are hung up on an ex, or unfortunately have just gotten fired. I challenge you to do a little more today to take away as a positive. In that workout do one more rep, or make dinner for your wife tonight. Making these small changes will lead to an improved mental health and when it’s all said and done and the virus is over you can look back and appreciate it for showing you where you needed to improve in your life to truly be happy. Don’t overreact to the small setbacks in life, and always focus on constantly moving yourself forward, and being that person you always strived to be. #1 Atlantic Division These boys came out READY to play. Tampa Bay, the 4th place team in the division- would be first place in any other division. I know this is called overreactions but I don’t see this division slipping from being the best in the entire league. With Ottawa, Detroit, Tampa, Florida, Toronto, and Montreal having top flight management, Buffalo, and Boston being respectable there is no one stopping them from having the best overall depth. Literally, Florida, Detroit, and Tampa have the best goal differential in the entire league. Semi-shout out to my boy Ovi, going 1-2 on Tampa keeping them from a 9-0 week. Step it up my boy HAHA. #2 Nashville Predators MikeScott came into this season with the expectation that his team was not going to challenge at all for a playoff spot. Much like my team last season they started out 5-3-1. Though this is promising, I wonder if this is due to matchup’s or if they truly won against some tough line ups. (Note - they beat some legit lines). If MikeScott continues to build and develop his team with trades would this be the biggest surprise of a manager making playoffs in recent memory? #3 Carolina Hurricanes Unlike MikeScott, JClaus has expectations every season of championship or bust. Especially with grabbing PtP as GM, they started to slow out the gate going 4-5. Rather than it being close where as a manager you aren’t worried, they lost 4 of those games by 2+ goals. While yes Claus went 3-0, the depth looks like there is a serious problem on this team. Along with the overall depth of the Atlantic potentially taking up 2 of the wild card spots, this Carolina team may be in trouble of even making the playoffs. #4 Kopi This man has an OEE (Own-End-Efficiency) of 23 minutes. In the 3 games he played he let up 1 goal. It wasn’t like he was playing straight scrubs too, he was playing legit lines and clamped them. I can also assume he was leading the breakout due to his TA/GA numbers. After making the switch from forward to defense is he an early favorite for the Norris? Also shoutout to DDW, Shockz, and CT for snagging a top flight Dman in him at just 3.25 mil. #5 Goon166 After going 3-0 on a line with 98 and Jared uhh Prince my bad. With 6 points and anchoring the slot as a center. There comes loft expectations with going straight from the C to a line with a bunch of NHL vets and he met each and every one of those expectations. Once again, it’s not like he put up good numbers against scrubs they beat tough outs in, Toronto, Buffalo, and the Islanders. Is he an early favorite for the Calder? This ends it for me today, I’ve spent about an hour and a half writing this and need to get back to lecture. Thank you for reading my distraction and if any of you would like to discuss your life, maybe a small change you made you just want to get off your chest feel free to PM me. All love, JC Enterprise
