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hey Ken Daniels is commentating on Washington Columbus game. Pretty neat

1. Calling the Rangers a better team to support your argument is pretty weak. They finished a whole 1 spot above Detroit in the east and also missed the playoffs easily. Detroit was 2-0-1 against the Rangers this season. The Rangers were 3-11-2 in games that Ryan Sproul played. Also, your statement that Sproul beat Daley in every statistical category per game is inaccurate. 1 goal in 16 games is not better than 9 in 77. 2. This statement is completely unsubstantiated. The team's performance for an entire season can't be blamed on one player (unless it's the goaltender, in some cases). 4. We already know what we have/had in XO, Sproul, and Jensen. XO is passably responsible, but has little offensive upside and is always the slowest skater on the ice....I'd just assume play Lashoff at this point - I think they have the same ceiling. Sproul is the defenseman equivalent of Tomas Jurco (a LGW super-hyped prospect that turned out to be a fringe-NHL player). The fact that he couldn't stick around here over XO speaks volumes about his time in the organization. Jensen I actually like, but I like him only if he is a bottom pairing or #7 defenseman on the team and continues to get paid essentially the league minimum...again, though, he's already shown what he is. I agree that it would've been nice to see more of Hicketts at the NHL level this season (since he's the only one of those you listed for which the team would need to figure out "what they have"), but for me that's as simple as waiving XO.

Literally nobody said that. All people have suggested is you dont rush prospects if they're not ready. Especially if your main goal is to develop youth and not win now. There are players like Larkin who are ready and there are players like Turgeon who need more time. Surround them with quality leadership and good role models at both levels and they should have a greater chance to flourish. It's not a new concept.

Right. There's the rub again. AA + late 1st for a quality defenseman sounds reasonable enough...but when you start combing through organizations' depth charts and you consider the way GMs are fetishizing young defensemen, there are exceedingly few realistic matches that would clearly justify moving AA and the late 1st, i.e. we're probably not getting a solid top-four defenseman or a defense prospect who's more promising than Hronek or Cholowski are right now. At best, we're probably looking at a lateral move, a wash. It's kinda depressing, but it's safe to say it's the reality. Middle-six winger with an ego who can't win board battles and is bad defensively and will probably end up in the KHL + late 1st just doesn't get you much these days. Then again, Marc Bergevin and Peter Chiarelli are GMs. Don't stop believing.

AA and Vegas' 1st might get a quality d-man.

#1 No it did not. Ryan Sproul not being good enough to make this team caused Ryan Sproul to be moved out. Are you honestly suggesting Ryan Sproul is a more valuable player/better Dman than Trevor Daley? I'd like to pin that fact down before I even begin to approach that one. #2 I've explained this in multiple posts now. Feel free to reread. I'm not rehashing everything in every post. #3 Perhaps I used the term building block to loosely? Silly me. I also clearly referred to Daley as a stop gap. Hopefully that description eases you. #4 Yes, I agree, our D is indeed unstable, and removing Daley would make it even more unstable. Are you suggesting you would like an unstable defensive core? To your last point, yes, we can agree on that. In theory, it doesn't make a ton of sense for a rebuilding team to sign veteran complimentary players. Unfortunately, theory often comes up short in a pragmatic sense. These are not just contracts on paper or numbers on a screen. This is a team of men with a culture and a confidence that needs to be massaged, and an enterprise who's primary goal is to make money, not win a cup. If you want to be a purist and go full scorch the earth with this team, prepare for continued disappointment. Holland is going to add pieces he likes if he can get them at a good price. I don't think you'll see any Weiss or Nielsen type deals for the foreseeable future (overpaying to keep the streak alive) but I fully expect that Holland will explore bargain deals like Daley if he sees the opportunity arise. Holland's not just retooling this teams roster, he's rebuilding the culture as well. At the end of day, my original point was that I think you're being completely melodramatic by protesting this board over the Trevor Daley signing. I'll hold to that.

That's the rub. Can Holland find a return that'd justify moving AA in the first place? (Assuming AA doesn't say he wants out, forcing Holland to settle for whatever he can get.) If we're looking for a young defenseman in return for AA, Carolina's probably the best fit, unless the Wings and Hurricanes are still refusing to do business with each other. But even then, we're talking, like, Haydn Fleury, who I like but don't necessarily believe is going to be a really good top-pairing defenseman in this league. Maybe Jake Bean. I don't think AA or any package built around AA gets us Jusin Faulk. The Flyers would probably trip over themselves to make a Robert Hagg-AA swap happen, and I fear that Holland might actually find that kind of trade palatable. Point being, AA doesn't get us a true stud defenseman. Unless we take a chance on a decent prospect who exceeds all expectations and blossoms into a stud. I think the realistic return for AA is a Boone Jenner or a 2nd-round pick in next year's draft. I firmly believe his trade value is low. We like him because he shows flashes of brilliance and he can be really exciting and we're sorely lacking stuff like that, but at the moment he's really nothing more than a middle-six winger. Every team has a middle-six winger that can give them 16 goals and 35 points. Maybe he does really well alongside some elite talent, but that possibility isn't enough to get a team to cough up a young high-end NHL defenseman.

Oh, I know. Just sayin'.

It’s going to be hard to not cheer for VGK considering their Cinderella story season- even if Tatar isn’t helping them lol.

Y'know what'd be funny? Us not getting Andrei Svechnikov and being sad because no bro teamup but ultimately ending up with an even better bro teamup in Quinn and Jack Hughes. I know I'm looking too far ahead, but imagine having Jack Hughes and Dylan Larkin as your 1-2 punch at center. So much HYPE! Soooooo much HYPE!

It's gonna be really interesting seeing how the second half of the 1st round and the first half of the 2nd round play out. Does a guy like Serron Noel go in the middle of the 1st? Near the end of the 1st? Does he slide into the 2nd? I honestly don't know. There's so much to like in the top two or three tiers of this draft class that it seems wide open once you get past the top 12 or so.

Didn't watch the game, but I skimmed the recap on NHL.com. Seems the Pens scored two power play goals five seconds apart and then they scored again right after that. So maybe the Flyers were just fed up with the refs in general? P.S. Elliott is not the guy, Flyers. You know what must be done.

I have negative zero interest in a multi-year deal. Next summer Holland will have the opportunity to walk away from Kronwall, Howard, Nyquist and maybe put that cap space towards signing one of the many high-end UFAs that could be available. No preemptive handcuffing plz. I think the best argument for bringing Green back on a one-year deal is that we could flip him at the deadline. But I imagine that's a big reason why he probably won't sign a one-year deal, certainly not one without trade protection. He'd have to be pretty desperate. Maybe the neck thing scares teams away, but I've gotta think someone's gonna offer him a pretty tasty deal. I just hope it's not Ken Holland.

My concern with Green is that he seemed to regress this season as compared to last season. He still put up points, which is a big deal (especially for our blue line), but the underlying numbers weren't flattering. I liked him more last season, when he held his own in a more demanding role and looked like someone who was propping up our defense group and keeping it from collapsing in on itself. Daley kind of assumed that role this season, forming a decent(ish) shutdown pairing with Ericsson that played tough minutes and provided some insulation for the other defensemen. Would I really mind having Green back on a one-year hometown discount deal? I wouldn't kick and scream about it, no. But, at this point, I think I'd rather give two of Hicketts, Hronek, Cholowski, Sulak, and maybe a 2018 draftee an actual shot at making the team out of camp. The $4-6M we'd save could also come in handy. Real talk. I'm beyond tired of the defense logjam. I'm beyond tired of the mediocrity and stagnation. I'm beyond tired of stopgaps. Holland can trade all of Ouellet, Jensen, Hicketts, and Sulak for all I care. Even if you get rid of all of those players, there's still Lashoff, Russo, Renouf, Saarijarvi, McIlrath. We are hoarding mediocre defensemen.

Ken Kal liked this on twitter today (Ken Kal f***s) HYPE