Links News and Notes: Offseason recaps
It's the Thursday edition of the LNN!
- Starting with the one bit of recent Sens news: the team has finally made the Trent Mann firing official, after the news broke last week. It's strange that it took so long for them to announce it, and even stranger that we still haven't heard anything about why it happened (was he really banned from the CTC?) or what the plan is to replace him.
- Nike has announced that they have permanently ended their sponsorship of Hockey Canada, after pausing that sponsorship in October due to the organization's handling of the alleged sexual assault committed by their players in 2018.
- Hockey of Tomorrow wrote a great profile on one of my favourite substacks, To Hockey With Love, and the people behind it.
- Former Senator Connor Brown has found a new home in Edmonton, signing with the Oilers and reuniting with OHL teammate Connor McDavid.
- The former owner of the PHF's Boston Pride spoke to The Hockey News about the changes coming to the league, and the interview includes some pretty damning quotes, including a claim that new ownership wants to move away from the "pride" branding because of its double meaning. If true, this suggests that the league might be trying not to associate quite so closely with the 2SLGBTQ+ community, which made up a huge part of the PHF's fanbase, and to which many of the most famous women's hockey players in the world belong.
- With the offseason winding down, both Sportsnet and The Athletic ($) rated each team's offseason. The consensus is that the Sens did not do as well this offseason as last, but it wasn't disastrous, and really everything will depend on Korpisalo.
- A note of positivity: Claude Giroux spoke to TSN recently about how optimistic he is for the future of the Sens. He had lots of really nice things to say about the young players on the team.
- Finally, Marc Brassard at Le Droit caught up with Thomas Chabot, Josh Norris and Claude Giroux at a golf tournament.
