kipwinger

I can't tell you who did, but I can tell you who has two thumbs and doesn't get pissed on by hookers enough.

Gretzky played across multiple eras with multiple "supporting casts". In 1990-91 he scored 163 points (ten better than McDavid's best) at age 30. The next best player on the team was Luc Robitaille, a one-way winger who's career numbers (even at that age) were comparably worse than Draisaitl's. During these two seasons (McDavid's best and Gretzy's best with LA), goals per game were higher in 90-91 but so where save percentages. So if we exclude ALL of Gretzky's best seasons he was still better, for a worse team, in a comparable era at age 30 than McDavid has been in the very best of his prime years.

This is silly. You're telling me that McDavid is the best ever because he scores a lot (but doesn't win) on mediocre teams? He has no records, he has no championships. He just scores. Cool. Fine, I'll play along. Forget Edmonton and forget winning. Gretzky's five best seasons with Los Angeles were SO MUCH better than McDavid's five best with Edmonton. If scoring on bad teams makes you the best player ever then Gretzky IS STILL better than McDavid by your own metric. The only thing McDavid does better than Gretzky is skate. He's a better athlete, I'll give you that. In every other conceivable metric he's less accomplished.

Saying McDavid is the "best" player is like saying Chara had the "best" shot. McDavid scores a bunch, there's no debate about that. But the point of all competitive sports is to win more, not score more. The history of the league is flush with players who sacrificed scoring for winning. If McDavid doesn't start getting with the program he's going to end up being the Dan Marino of the NHL.

That clearly merits some extra attention from the NHL's anti-doping folks. It's not clear that Perry wasn't abusing amphetamines. McDavid certainly LOOKS like he is.

Nice goal and assist by ASP today in SHL action.

As of today they'd have to play Vegas in the first round. I'm not confident they beat Vegas. Nothing is different about Edmonton. They're the same team with the same plan they've always had. What's different from last season? They're starting to remind me of the prime San Jose Sharks. They just keep running back Thornton, Marleau, Pavelski, and Couture hoping for a different outcome. One day, when McDavid is 50 years old and out of the league, everyone will realize he was always Pavel Bure and never Wayne Gretzky.

Is he gonna play goalie too?

Don't get me started. Ever notice how MacKinnon and Draisaitl get appreciably better in the playoffs and Mathews and McDavid don't? I wonder why the Sportsnet folks never remember to add that context in whenever they talk about McDavid/Matthews being the top centers in the league?

For the most part I agree. On a side note, I can't wait to see Matthews goal scoring fall off a cliff yet again when he gets to the playoffs and he's got someone like Matthew Tkachuk running him through the boards every shift. Never ceases to amaze me how superstars like Matthews and McDavid can't find their offense the minute the refs let people check them tightly.

This is going to be a tough, but winnable, game. Colorado is 5-5 in their last ten games and are playing on the road. This is about as beatable as that team gets. Huge test for the boys tonight.

EVERY team would fall off a cliff if they lost their top two centers, best and defensive forward. It's a truism. You might as well be saying "if we have to play with 5 fowards for the rest of the season we're doomed". Yeah, no s***.

Here's another reason why it won't be Kakko: He's a f*cking loser. I swear Red Wings fans drive me crazy sometimes. Fans: Michael Rasmussen is a bum who never lived up to his draft position. He scores at a .4 ppg rate and Yzerman needs to give him a "change of scenery". Also fans: Now that Puljujarvi is off the market we should target Kakko. I mean, he scores at a .4 ppg rate and just needs a change in scenery to thrive. Yay!!!

You mean a "greater" shot at making the playoffs right? Because we already have a great shot at making the playoffs by doing the exact opposite of what you're proposing here.

What a coincidence! I do something similar. I like to imagine that the LCA has the LED roof that was presented to the public. And I like to imagine that there are blocks and blocks of urban development around the arena as promised. Oh, and the low income housing. And, of course, the retail space for local businesses. TLDR: I like to imagine that the Ilitch family did what they said they were going to do instead of taking public money to build a tacky strip mall in Midtown.

I never cease to be amazed by this whiz kid. He's doing the same thing he did in Toronto, but with players that are 12 years older. What a brilliant hockey mind.

According to The Athletic's trade board, Pittsburgh is shopping Reilly Smith. Anyone who has been around LGW for a while knows I love me some Reilly Smith. I'd imagine the acquisition cost would be reasonable too considering Pittsburgh has no picks or prospects in their organization at the moment and Dubas has so idiotically built this team that it's become necessary to strip the thing for parts less than a year after his "master plan" was initiated. Talk about a dude with playoff experience.

Never a bad idea to bet on Toronto to win in the playoffs. That's easy money.

nvm

If you go back and look at Tampa's possession metrics during their peak you'll notice they're very "Detroit-like". I don't think that's accidental. I don't really think Yzerman cares about shots, and I know Lalonde doesn't. I think they operate under the assumption that a professional caliber goalie will stop shots that he sees. As such, the job of your defensemen is to be big enough to win battles and clear the crease, and skate well enough to get the puck out of our zone. Now look at our defensemen. The other thing I'd say is that every team in the conference has serious flaws, except maybe Florida or the Rangers. If that's the standard then every team is just as good/bad as we are. But you can't escape the unavoidable fact that when we play top end teams around the league we win far more often than we lose. I agree that it only takes "a bad run of games" to fall out of contention, I just don't think we're any more likely than other teams to experience that. Toronto is currently riding high on the back of a goalie that they waived a few month ago. Is that more stable than what we've got happening? Boston has been so bad since December that they lost their stranglehold on the division and Florida has overtaken them for 1st. I agree we have flaws, so does every team. But I think we're much more critical of our own flaws, and we downplay our own strengths more than we should.

Not my forte. I’m more of a bottom.

You're a pessimist (perhaps purposely). The season is 5 months old and I'd say we were as good as the Leafs for 4 of the 5. Same with Tampa. We dropped points in a month were we were missing our top two centers and had a revolving door in goal. Otherwise we've performed as good or better than both those teams. At our current trajectory we'll finish ahead of Tampa by 4ish points and should fall right below the Leafs (assuming they don't self destruct in goal). Something tells me neither Tampa nor Toronto would be sitting where Detroit is if they were without their top two centers for a month like we were in December. We're a really good team. We consistently beat other good teams more often than they beat us. We are currently 6-4 against the four teams ahead of us in the Atlantic Division. I know it's more entertaining to write "We Suck!!!!!" posts all day everyday, but the reality is that we aren't significantly worse than any of the teams in our division despite some key injuries and a pretty tough schedule so far.

I'd flip a 2nd and depth prospect (Cross Hanas) for Chris Tanev. Why not? He's not going to command a 1st and the value of a 2nd (in terms of moving our rebuild forward) is pretty minimal. I think Chiarot-Tanev would be a pretty tough 2nd pair to deal with.

I like seeing the Leafs lose just for the heck of it. But really we should only care about Tampa or New Jersey losing (or ideally both) on any given night. We aren't likely to catch the Leafs given that they're 4 points ahead of us with a game in hand.. But because of games played we can easily pass Tampa and/or NJ can lose enough that they aren't seriously threatening us for the 2nd Wild Card. Those are the only two teams I care about.

I don't think that's the case. Ras was an RFA without arbitration rights. He basically has no leverage at all. This is a pretty good raise considering Ras got much better defensively, and regressed a little offensively, from last season. I think the term also reflects recognition on the part of Rasmussen that he's a big part of a winning team and that he's in an excellent position to continue to build his game and cash in as a UFA at the end of this deal.