Weekly Takes - Monday, May 30 Edition

Weekly Takes - Monday, May 30 Edition

1. It is greatly disappointing to see the Maple Leafs not have success with Jason Spezza as a player but it is fantastic to see him stay involved with the team in a management role, for both him and the team.

The Leafs are a better organization with Spezza it in than not.

2. It is hard not to think that the Panthers’ Stanley Cup window is now shut.

Claude Giroux, Mason Marchment, and Ben Charriot are all free agents. Alexander Barkov’s mammoth contract kicks in next season. They do not have a first-round pick until 2025 and have only one second-round pick in that timespan. Jonathan Huberdeau and Mackenzie Weegar are free agents a year from now, and the cap charge due to Keith Yandle’s buyout increases to over $5M next season.

Never mind the fact that they won 16 games in overtime this past season, which is… not sustainable.

3. Rooting interests are great to have but we should all take a step back and truly enjoy the Avs-Oilers show that we are about to witness.

This is a dream series for the sport of hockey.

4. My Avs-Oilers prediction: Avs in six

5. The Lakers, surprisingly, made out quite well with the hiring of Darvin Ham as their next head coach.

Ham was the most deserving head coaching option on the market.

6. Jimmy Butler may end up going down as the greatest playoff performer in sport to never win a championship.

What a crushing game seven loss for the Heat, who are slowly having their championship window close.

7. My NBA Finals prediction: Celtics in seven

8. The Steelers made out quite well in hiring Omar Kahn to be their next general manager while bringing in Andy Weidl to be their assistant general manager.

Khan would have been borderline irreplaceable if he did not get the job and then left for that exact reason, while Weidl is the perfect complement to Kahn and the perfect replacement for Brandon Hunt.

Some tidy business by the Steelers.

9. It is hard to keep a weekly sports blog all about sports when just to our south, 19 children were assassinated while attending school all because an 18-year-old was able to legally purchase multiple AR-style rifles, for whatever reason.

The U.S. is broken. This can and does happen anywhere, but nowhere does it happen more than to our south.

Why? Because no matter who is in the White House and no matter who controls Congress, the gun lobby is the one that truly runs America.

AR-style assault weapons should be banned. No one with even the tiniest bit of criminal history should be allowed to buy a gun. The waiting period after initially inquiring about a gun of any kind should be months, not minutes or hours. And mental health services of all kinds should be free.

Will any of this happen? No, because Republicans, who have a special place in hell waiting for them, say it is not about the gun, but rather, the person behind the gun, only to completely dismiss the idea of treating mental health as a public health crisis.

This – kids being decapitated in schools – is nothing more than a game to these people. They will offer their thoughts and prayers, whether the media backlash for a week or so, and will then go back to doing whatever the NRA tells them to do, so as long as they continue to fund their campaigns.

Then, they will go back to offering their thoughts and prayers again, when this happens down the road with thousands of smaller mass shootings mixed in between.

The saddest part in all of this, though, is that even if Republicans were not soulless ghouls, and did everything I just listed, the number of deaths caused by guns in the States would still be breathtakingly sad, because of how many guns are already out there.

These measures would greatly help but the only true way to eliminate this issue is to confiscate every gun there is.

And that will never happen because of the second amendment, something written in 1791 and millions of mass shootings later.

Just as, I’m sure, The Founding Fathers wanted.