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Well, Thursday afternoon has been fun so far.
First up, the insane ramblings of John MacKinnon on Willis on Dellow. If you've been under a rock, you can catch up here and here, which leads us to today.
John MacKinnon took exception to the piece by Willis (the interesting part is whether the word "prick" was actually used, leading one to believe that MacKinnon either knows who wrote it, or wrote it himself). He leads off with a cute little story about how the media uses these little things called zingers (like it's unique to them) and they often make quips that can be difficult to appreciate without context. He gives an example from when Mark Spector tweeted out the question about where would the Oilers be without Dellow after another Oilers loss.
He then goes on to chastise the Dellow Defenders (trademark pending) for being too quick to jump all over Spector for what he feels is a harmless comment, including specifically mentioning Tyler's girlfriend, but instead of acknowledging she's in a relationship with him, refers to her as a "self-appointed protector of Dellow".
The problem with all of this is that it doesn't match history. Mark Spector has had a rather vocal dislike for Dellow for a long time, predating Dellow's hiring by the Oilers. When there's been that sort of animosity, it's very hard to perceive that sort of comment as anything other than an attack.
Further compounding the issue is that he rags on people who are defending Dellow, when Tyler really might not be in a position to defend himself. I assume the team was aware of the rather rocky relationship between Tyler and the media, so it's pretty conceivable that he was told to not engage the media. When someone can't speak for themselves, it shouldn't be that difficult to understand why others would come to their defense.
Perhaps the most irritating thing about all of this is that MacKinnon infers Tyler stopped writing bad things about the Oilers and tried to get into Eakins good graces because he had other career goals in mind. Again, this doesn't mesh with history as Dellow, up until a few weeks before he was hired, was posting statistical and video analysis of what the Oilers were doing right and wrong. Further to that, Dellow's criticisms towards the team before that often focused on player acquisition and management, rather than coaching tactics.
Shortly after this, the fantastic Chris Johnston (@reporterchris on twitter), dropped a bombshell in regards to the Evander Kane scratch-gate (sorry).
BREAKING: Evander Kane failed to show up for #NHLJets game in Vancouver, @Sportsnet has learned: http://t.co/PWsjYEwIl0
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) February 5, 2015
I recommend reading it, but apparently Kane got into something with some teammates and then sort of just vanished until an hour before the game.
What's really incredible about this is that Chris is based in Toronto, nearly 4400 km from the incident in question and managed to scoop both the Vancouver media and Winnipeg media on this story. Were they sitting on it waiting for something? Who knows, but the optics here aren't great.