Marvin A Azrak Kevin Durant demonstrated on July 4, 2016, when he left the Thunder to join the rival Warriors, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” That unequivocally is the relationship I have with the NHL points system. While the uniqueness of it is that, unlike the MLB, NFL, and NBA, where you are what your record says you are, hockey hands out a  “Loser point” for losses in extra time. Non-hockey enthusiasts may laud the league to “toughen up,” but the sport is arguably the other three morphed into one, so I’ve been hooked(pun intended) into it ever since. Aside from its trademark speed, hockey also requires the mastery of handling the object from basketball, sizzling shots equal to that of a fastball down the heart of the plate, and the physicality we often see in the game of football. So over the excruciating 82-game campaign, I, too, would try to find ways for a team to take solace out of a devastating overtime/shootout defeat.

  As an avid hockey fan, I couldn’t be more excited about the upcoming Stanley Cup playoffs, peculiarly after the unprecedented regular season we’ve had out  East where all eight teams reached the century point plateau and the chaos that is the  Western Conference playoff race, which will be decided over the season’s final days. Intrigued, I took a peek at the league’s tie-breaking system but came across a horrific sight that shook me to the syllabus of the hockey fan that lies in me. Instead of head-head or even straight wins where you exclude the overtime point leading the way, it was regulation wins. This meant that a team could have won more games yet had the same amount of points as their counterpart, and due to sporting fewer “RW’s,” they would miss the playoffs or finish lower in the standings. While I’m aware this has been the procedure since 2011, it’s infuriating that we’ve gone more than a decade without the topic of a three-point system circulating within the league.

The next tiebreaker is overtime wins, but I commend the NHL for doing so since it excludes wins via the individual skills competition from the equation, which has been in place since 2006 when ties were mercifully banned from the sport. However, the prospect of a three-point system where a regulation win is worth three, an extra-time win is worth two, and the “loser point” remains a system worth enticing for it creates drama towards 60 minutes when instead of milking the clock in a tie game for a point, teams would have a sense of exigency knowing there’s an incentive up for grabs if they can finish things off here. I’ve taken the liberty of converting the  NHL standings heading into play on  April 27th, 2022, and calculated what effects it would have on the playoff picture should this system be in place.

EASTERN CONFERENCE: (parenthesis are how many points a  team has today)

METROPOLITAN DIVISION

CURRENT EAST  PLAYOFF GLANCE:

Florida Panthers vs Washington Capitals(WC2)

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Tampa bay Lightning

Carolina Hurricanes vs Boston Bruins(WC1)

New York Rangers vs Pittsburgh Penguins

WITH THREE POINT SYSTEM:

Florida Panthers vs Washington Capitals(WC2)

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Tampa bay Lightning

Carolina Hurricanes vs Boston Bruins(WC1)

New York Rangers vs Pittsburgh Penguins

OBSERVATION:

The East has been historically lopsided this year,that this system would fit right in, and if anything make these races dramatic instead of handing Florida the one seed and Atlantic division title  as is the case today.

WESTERN CONFERENCE (parenthesis are how many points a  team has today)

CENTRAL DIVISION:

PACIFIC DIVISION:

CURRENT WESTERN CONFERENCE PLAYOFF GLANCE:

Colorado Avalanche vs Dallas Stars(WC2)

ST Louis Blues vs Minnesota Wild

Calgary Flames vs Nashville Predators(WC1)

Edmonton Oilers vs Los Angeles Kings

WITH THREE POINT SYSTEM, THESE TEAMS WOULD BE IN THE PLAYOFF HUNT:

Vegas Golden Knights 124 points (Currently trail Stars by four points with two games left.)

Vancouver Canucks 121 points(Currently eliminated)

Observation:

While it wouldn’t change much, it would make for fascinating hockey until the last whistle of the regular season on April 29th. This would significantly benefit the Avalanche who would control their Presidents trophy fate, instead of fighting from behind  against Florida.

WHY THE NHL SHOULD DO IT:

By this juncture, your thought bubble has extracted the phrase”What difference does it make?”, and my answer to you is that’s exactly why the league should implement it. I understand the traditional system and how it keeps older generations of the game involved, but at the very least the tie-breaking procedure should be changed to reflect what it’s like in basketball and football today. However, since the league has shown no signs of that, this can be something that all hockey fans, players, and owners can comprehend without making things sophisticated as they currently are. Like KD said, “if you can’t beat them, join them”.

The post Opinion: Why the NHL should implement a three-point system appeared first on The Jewish Voice.

Art Moore(WND NEWS CENTER) The Department of Homeland Security is establishing a board to counter “disinformation” that will be headed by a former adviser to the government of Ukraine who declared that Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop was  a “Russian influence” operation.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified to a House panel on Wednesday that the board will be tasked with countering disinformation regarding homeland security, particularly related to Russia and illegal immigration.

Politico reported Nina Jankowicz, who previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank, will head the board as executive director.

Just before the 2020 election, reported Human Events editor Jack Posobiec, Jankowicz highlighted on Twitter the evidence-free claim by 51 former national security officials that the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop, belatedly verified last month by the New York Times, was a “Russian influence” operation.

In another tweet, Oct. 22, 2020, Jankowicz said the emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop “don’t need to be altered to be part of an influence operation.”

“Voters deserve that context,” she said, “not a fairy tale about a laptop repair shop.”

Mayorkas told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Wednesday that “the goal” of the new board “is to bring the resources of the department together to address this threat” of disinformation.

The co-chairs of the board are the State Department’s undersecretary for policy, Rob Silvers, and the principal deputy general counsel, Jennifer Gaskell.

Jankowicz confirmed the appointment via Twitter.

“Cat’s out of the bag: here’s what I’ve been up to the past two months, and why I’ve been quiet on here,” she tweeted. “Honored to be serving in the Biden Administration @DHSgov and helping shape our counter-disinformation efforts.”

Posobiec also pointed out that Jankowicz was the overseer of Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute, a Washington non-profit.

In a Jan. 13, 2021, tweet, Jankowicz commented on President Trump’s speech regarding the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol in which the president said, “I unequivocally condemn the violence that we saw last week.”

She said the speech “is definitely the most presidential thing he’s ever done, but still missing a disavowal of disinformation and conspiracy theories.”

“And once again for the people in the back: the ‘free speech vs censorship’ framing is a false dichotomy,” she wrote.

Jankowicz lamented that earlier this year, Twitter stopped limiting speech about the 2020 presidential election.

“Considering the long-term damage these lies do to our democracy,” she said she was “dismayed about this decision.”

Elections are “an inflection point” rather than an “end point,” she said, and social media companies “need to reflect that” in their governance of speech.

Obama’s disinformation tour
Former President Barack Obama currently is engaged in a campaign against “disinformation.”

The New York Times reported last week ahead of an appearance at Stanford University that “in many private meetings and public appearances over the last year, the former president has waded deeply into the public fray over misinformation and disinformation, warning that the scourge of falsehoods online has eroded the foundations of democracy at home and abroad.”

In his Stanford speech, the paper said, he was “expected to add his voice to demands for rules to rein in the flood of lies polluting public discourse.”

It was under Obama that the Justice Department and the FBI pursued the now debunked Trump-Russia collusion allegations adopted by establishment media as the unassailable truth. In his probe of the Obama investigation, special counsel John Durham has presented evidence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign peddled disinformation from Russian sources to try to win the 2016 election.

Last week at Stanford, in a direct appeal to the Silicon Valley tech giants to censor “misinformation” on social media, Obama unwittingly affirmed the contention of critics of the COVID-19 vaccines that the fact that clinical trials have not been completed makes the people who have received the shots part of an experiment.

“Despite the fact that we have now essentially clinically tested the vaccine on billions of people worldwide, around one in five Americans is still willing to put themselves at risk, and put their families at risk, rather than get vaccinated,” he said in a speech at Stanford University.

“People are dying because of misinformation.”

Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@wndnewscenter.org.

The post Biden DHS creates unit to police speech appeared first on The Jewish Voice.

( JNS) The modern-day State of Israel must not allow “the dangerous gene of factionalism” to dismantle it from within, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Wednesday.

Speaking during a Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day opening event at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the prime minister said: “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is rightfully considered to be the pinnacle of Jewish heroism—an impossible battle of a handful of Jews against many Germans. We all grew up on this legacy. Less talked about was the tragic fact that the two Jewish organizations that fought the Germans did so not as one body, but rather as two competing organizations that failed to cooperate amongst themselves. Those two organizations were the Jewish Military Union, which belonged to the right-wing revisionist movement, and the Jewish Fighting Organization, which belonged to the left-wing Socialist movement.”

“Yes. My brothers and sisters, even during the darkest chapter of Jewish history, during our people’s inferno of extermination, the left and the right did not find a way to work together,” he continued. “Each of these groups fought the Germans alone. I am trying to understand what ideological gap was so important that it was able to divide two Jewish organizations that were fighting such a desperate and heroic battle? What internal animosity justified such a division? My brothers and sisters, we cannot—we simply cannot—allow the same dangerous gene of factionalism to dismantle Israel from within.”

“Today, thank G-d, in the State of Israel, we have one army, one government, one Knesset and one nation—the people of Israel. When we are united, no external enemy can beat us,” stated Bennett.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Bennett pointed out that “the Holocaust is an unprecedented event in human history. I take the trouble to say this because as the years go by, there is more and more discourse in the world that compares other difficult events to the Holocaust. But no.

“Even the most difficult wars today are not the Holocaust and are not comparable to the Holocaust. No event in history, cruel as it may have been, is comparable to the Holocaust—the extermination of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators,” he said. “Unfortunately, history is full of cruel wars, brutal murders and also genocide. But it is usually a means designed to achieve a goal, some sort of expectation—military, political, economic, religious. The case of the extermination of the Jews is different.”

He continued: “Never, in any place or during any time, has one people acted to destroy another in such a planned, systematic and indifferent way, from a place of absolute ideology and not out of utilitarianism. The Nazis did not kill Jews to take their jobs or their homes. The Nazis sought to hunt all Jews and exterminate every last one of them.”

Holocaust Remembrance Day began on Wednesday evening in Israel and lasts until Thursday evening.

The post Bennett on Yom Hashoah: ‘We cannot allow gene of factionalism dismantle Israel’ appeared first on The Jewish Voice.

( JNS) The Israel Defense Forces General Staff held a study day dedicated to commemorating the Holocaust at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Monday. Israel marks Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, over the course of 24 hours starting on the evening of April 27.

The General Staff, headed by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, studied the experiences of Jewish families during the Holocaust.

“I see ethical, symbolic and educational importance in the IDF command dedicating a study day to the issue of the Holocaust every year,” Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan said during the meeting. “Remembrance of the Holocaust is a significant aspect for every citizen in Israel, and the story of the Holocaust is relevant to every IDF soldier and officer.”

Kochavi said in his remarks that “this day again reminds us of the significance of service in the IDF, and of the significance of being a commander in the IDF. The IDF is an explicit expression of the principle of self-defense and of determining our fate in our own hands. Beyond everything, this day brings out for each of us the significance of our lives.”

The opening ceremony of Holocaust Remembrance Day is scheduled to begin in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening in the presence of leaders including Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Holocaust survivors and many others.

The post IDF General Staff visits Yad Vashem for day of Holocaust education appeared first on The Jewish Voice.