kipwinger

Agreed. And it's not like we don't have the guys to do it. Sure Raymond, Debrincat, and Kane aren't going to run anyone, but guys like Sprong, Ras, Fischer, Copp, and Veleno sure as well should be able to. Those are big, strong dudes. I'd have had all our forecheckers running guys and Klim Kostin in the lineup every night to make sure anybody who gets butthurt about it can catch a beating too. Anybody remember this:

Neither Chiarot nor Petry are especially good defensively. Petry should be a 7th defenseman and Chiarot should be paired with someone who can actually defend. Also, it wouldn't kill Chiarot to actually play physical (with someone other than Raymond) once in a while. The two most frustrating things about this team's play (not roster construction) are their half-assed passing and their absolute unwillingness to finish a goddamn check. If you're not counted on to score you better be grinding guys down. I have to think that Derek doesn't want guys doing it because there's no other reason why Ras, Veleno, Fischer, Copp, Chiarot, Petry, Maatta, Walman, or Fabbri don't finish checks. It drives me absolutely crazy.

I don't worry too much about expansion drafts. They've basically got it set up to where no team loses any of their elite talent or newly drafted players. Hypothetically if we were to lose a Walman but keep Seider, Edvinsson, and ASP does anyone really care too much? Edit: The other thing I've noticed with Vegas and Seattle is that neither organization was trying to be too good right off the bat. They didn't really take the best players. They took guys on the best contracts. Basically loaded up on guys who either could be flipped at the deadline or were on such good deals that it allowed them to have a zillion dollars in cap space to work with. Not sure if that's a trend that would hold, but it seemed to work for both those organizations.

Maybe. But maybe not. If every team has the money and roster spots, then there's a greater chance that Draisaitl or Makar or Marner or whomever hits free agency because some GM somewhere is going to be willing to pay them like they're McDavid, MacKinnon, or Matthews. And does McDavid score as much without Draisaitl to pass to on the powerplay? Does MacKinnon score as much without Makar acting as a one man breakout and zone entry? But I think that depends on if they keep the salary cap or not. If you have 40 teams and two or three of them can stockpile talent then I agree with you. It's too hard to predict without knowing the other specifics. I do know there won't be enough good goalies to go around, so scoring should increase pretty dramatically for that reason alone.

As long as it's reasonably competitive I don't care. I hate superteams in the NBA and MLB. I don't like seeing New York or Los Angeles based teams win all the time because they can spend a billion dollars on a team irrespective of how good they are at drafting and developing. You look at the top teams in the NHL this year there are maybe 5-6 teams that could realistically win the Cup (Edmonton, Colorado, Florida, NYR, and maybe Vegas and Toronto). That's good enough for me. I hate leagues where you know Lebron's team is going to play in the finals before the first game of the season is even played. As far as your matchup argument, I'm not sure I agree that parity is the problem. SY and Sakic didn't meet every year in the playoffs because other teams in the Western Conference were weak (i.e. lacking parity). St. Louis and Dallas were both really strong teams during that period too. But I'd certainly prefer true bracketing and re-seeding after each round to ensure that the best teams don't see each other until later in the playoffs.

Good question, I don't really know. It probably would necessitate a change in the draft rules. You'd have to make sure no one team could hoard talent the way that Edmonton or Buffalo has. Edit: I also think guys would just come into the league earlier, and stay a little later.

The owners split the expansion fees between themselves when a new team is created. $500 million for Vegas and $650 million for Seattle. That's roughly $40 million dollars per owner for those two teams, plus a share of any future revenue. My guess is they're fairly enthusiastic about it. Edit: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolschram/2023/10/07/after-vegas-and-seattle-successes-the-nhl-eyes-additional-expansion/?sh=ddfdea65f457

The players love it, the owners love it, and Bettman will be dead or retired by that point. The only people that don't like it will be the fans and the "big business of sports" stopped caring about what fans think forever ago.

I'm basically fine with the way Kane has performed. I just don't understand what the point was? Like, how was SY planning to take advantage of the fact that Patrick Kane chose to sign here? What was he hoping to get out of it?

Can anyone tell me what the f*ck the point of signing Patrick Kane was? What were we trying to accomplish?

Gonna hit you dudes with another random hockey thought since I'm bored today. See what you think. Pretty much everyone thinks that in order to win the Stanley Cup you have to have "elite talent" right? But do you really? I was just thinking about Nick Lidstrom. Almost everyone agrees that he's one of the two or three best defensemen to ever play the game. The elite of the elite. And pretty much everyone agrees that defense is a really really important position right? So for 22 seasons we had the best player at an extremely important position. So why did he only win 4 Cups? The knee jerk reaction for most people might be "maybe he was on a bad team". But he wasn't. He never missed the playoffs and he played the majority of his career with other legendary players (Yzerman, Shanahan, Fedorov, Konstantinov, Fetisov, Larionov, Hasek, Chelios, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Hossa). He was also rarely ever injured. So why only four? I have an answer, but I want to hear your thoughts first.

I was specifically talking about the analytics crowd and their fans. THOSE people seem to be okay with a plus/minus system centered on shot attempts, but openly mock the old school plus/minus system based on goals. I'm wondering why they'd embrace one and reject the other.

Alex Debrincat might never score again. I think there's a real possibility he's never score another goal again.

If they're that fragile it's their GMs job to know and sell at the deadline. The f*cking Flyers are in a divisional seed and traded a top four defenseman for a 1st at the deadline. Presumably their GM has a better handle on the team than ours does. I don't think we should bridge either of them. They're both studs. Seider's being worked like a mule and he's still scoring half a point per game. If he started in the defensive zone 10% less he'd be in line with all other 1D usage and he'd score 60 points. Same with Raymond. He's going to score 60-70 points and he's (inexplicably) on the 2nd powerplay unit and forced to play half the season with JT Compher as a center. They're both part of the solution, not the problem.

I mean, if you start with the premise that we were playing unsustainably well in January and February and then you take the best player (at the most important position) off the team it's easy to see how they'd fall apart. And I'll reiterate for the millionth time that by not doing ANYTHING at the deadline Yzerman might as well have waived the white flag. "I believe in your guys...just not enough to do anything at all to help".

I keep thinking about that super testy interview that SY gave on deadline day against Arizona when he was pissy about our "team defense". In other words, the guy responsible for assembling the defense was complaining about the defense, after he opted not to address the defense, on the very last day to do anything to improve the defense. That's almost as bad as watching Ville Husso play too many games last year and then decide to address that problem by signing two goalies who aren't any good. Lyon playing WAY above his head (unexpectedly) is the only thing that kept this from happening sooner. And THAT'S almost as bad as Derek Lalonde saying he can't play Sprong higher in the lineup because he's bad defensively and then starting the last two games with Kane, Debrincat, Berggren, and Raymond on the wings in the top six.

I do, and did. But you can look back at my old posts and see all the times I said something like "and we're in prime position to address our needs at the deadline". Never did I ever feel comfortable with James Reimer as a backup goalie, or zero power fowards, or Petry as our 2nd best RHD. I never ever thought SY would just let it ride and do nothing to address any of these issues.

Berggren draws a ton of penalties.

All of our "best" wingers are midgets that can't win puck battles. Our "best" center has scored less than half a point per game in his career. Our "best" goalie has played 53 games in his career prior to this season. Our "best" defensemen are forced to play 70% of the game in the defensive zone otherwise we get scored on even more than we already do. We had a flawed roster that was playing way above its head for most of the season and our GM decided that he "liked his team".

He had a goal and an assist last game and has scored more than Kane, Raymond, Compher or Debrincat during our 0-5 losing streak. You're reaching.

Rasmussen hasn't been scored on tonight. What are you talking about?

Who knew that having only one good defenseman, no good centers, and 25 tiny wingers wasn't a recipe for victory? I had no idea.

Question, in the era of analytics why hasn't plus/minus seen a rehabilitation as a useful stat? The possession argument is basically that if you're on the ice and your team gets a shot, or a shot attempt, or a blocked shot, or a missed shot then you get a "plus" because your team had possession in the offensive zone. Even if you did nothing to contribute to the shot attempt. And if you're on the ice and the opposition gets a shot attempt you get a minus, even if you did nothing to help give up the shot. So why not a goal for vs. a goal against? I never hear analytics bros going to bat for +/- as a stat and I don't understand why?

No idea, I'm just regurgitating what I saw.

I’m paraphrasing here but I read an interview with Alan Walsh, a big time player agent. He said this Canada vs. US debate is blown out of proportion because any agent worth a damn hooks his clients up with accountants than can more or less manage the money such that the tax burden ends up being negligible. Take it for what it’s worth. Here it is. https://x.com/walsha/status/1307480088800182272?s=20