Random Thoughts

Explaining Dominik Hasek Popular View The reason you probably clicked on this link is because the popular view of Dominik Hasek is that there is no explanation for the things that he did. His style was so unorthodox that it defied easy pattern recognition and left almost everyone who watched him scratching their heads. If you google "Dominik Hasek goalie style" you will get all sorts of explanations about how he was simply willing to stop the puck with any part of his body, or that he was extremely flexible (that he had a slinky for a spine), or that he was just really competitive or athletic, etc. See below for examples of these kinds of explanations from Wikipedia and Reddit. You may even believe one of these or have your own somewhat related theory. Obviously, I disagree with all the conventional explanations and I hope to convince you by the end of this post that Hasek's style is as definable as the butterfly and you could even teach it! Who Cares? Before I get into a...

  The Day After Just like in 2019 I thought I'd share my thoughts and analysis of the latest Alberta election. I would have loved to share my predictions for it in advance but given my job I try to refrain from public comments during the actual election (however my last guess before the polls came in was only 1 seat off!). Best-on-Best? Before I get too far into politics we're going to take a digression into hockey...you may have heard that just this month Canada won the IIHF World Hockey Championship . On the other hand there's a pretty good chance you didn't hear that and an even better chance you didn't watch any of the games. The reason is that this tournament is not well timed and many of the best players in the world are in the middle of the NHL playoffs. For that reason many of the best hockey players in the world don't compete (for example Connor McDavid was not playing for Canada) and therefore hockey fans don't pay as much attention to it as the t...