Quick Strikes: It sure was the last Sunday in July

All the Things

-Tampa Bay Lightning prospect Alex Volkov is here to spread the news: There’s only 83 days left ‘till the Syracuse Crunch home opener!

-New York Rangers GM Jeff Gorton has some things to figure out, says Mike Murphy of Blue Shirt Banter.

Before the deadline arrives, general manager Jeff Gorton needs to make some big decisions. If Gorton doesn’t feel confident that he can get the team under the cap by burying the contracts of Matt Beleskey and Brendan Smith in the AHL and dealing a few players, he has to make a decision about buying out a contract before dinner on Wednesday.

-Kaapo Kakko has an amazing name, so I’m not really surprised that he has some dedicated fans.

It’s not hard to pick out Ryan Mead at a New York Rangers event. He’s the one in robes and bishop’s headgear.

As the self-proclaimed pope of the “Church of Kakko,” he lords over the Rangers’ faithful who are certain that first-round draft pick Kaapo Kakko can help turn things around for a franchise that announced its official rebuild in 2018.

-Former Lightning forward JT Brown finished 6th at a recent Fornite Pro-Am. He donated his $75,000 prize to charity.

The pro-am was one of the highlights of the Fortnite World Cup Finals, a three-day event at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York that attracted the 100 best players from around the globe.

-I once placed all of the Crunch players in Hogwarts houses. Mike Murphy, this time with the Ice Garden, decided to match some top players in women’s hockey with the cutest hybrids alive: Pokemon.

On July 17, All About the Jersey — one of our sibling SB Nation Hockey Blogs — finally brought together hockey analytics and Pokemon. CJ Turturo, inspired by a tweet from Corey Sznajder, used similarity scores to determine which Pokemon best represented members of the New Jersey Devils.

The Ice Garden group saw this and got inspired to do Pokemon equivalents for some of women’s hockey most popular and most talented players.

-NHL referee Tim Peel had a camp this past weekend in St. Louis! Mike McKenna and his father, Terry, joined Peel on the final day of the camp.

-The Lehigh Valley Phantoms of the AHL ran their car at NASCAR’s race this past weekend at Pocono Speedway.

-Here’s the squads Canada’s national juniors team have been practicing with. This summer’s first-round pick Nolan Foote is on Team Red’s second line and fellow Lightning prospect Gabriel Fortier is on Team White’s third line.