kipwinger

You mean, aside from the one you've got chilling on our third pair below Brendan Smith on the depth chart? lol. How did Ericsson being injured get him demoted to the third pair? He went from our most reliable defensive defenseman to Brain Lashoff because of one signing? Edit: Also, even if we sign Niskanen he wouldn't play on the top pair with Kronwall, since they're pretty much the EXACT same type of player, good offensively and adequate defensively. They're also both undersized for their position. You're far more likely to see Kronall with Ericsson, and Niskanen with Dekeyser. That would make all Brendan's supporters upset, but out of the five he is CLEARLY the fifth best, so he'd be right where he needed to be.

St. Louis was sixth in the league in goals per games. Tarasenko, Oshie, Steen, Backes, Schwartz, all had more than 20 goals per. They had so much scoring they traded Chris Stewart (15 goals this year and former 30 goal scorer) away without batting an eye. We had one guy score more than 20, and you're proposing we trade the only other guy who was close. They aren't going to trade one of the best young defensemen in the league for Tatar and scrubs. They don't need his offense. We, on the other hand, do need it.

Anyone who's watched the playoffs and is willing to pick up Letang's contract has no business being an NHL General Manager. But I'm sure he'll try.

It'll never work, Holmgren only makes shockingly poor decisions when 30 goal forwards are involved (Richards, Carter, Lecavalier, Van Riemsdyk). Simmonds has only ever had 29. To think, one more goal and Holmgren would probably have shipped him to Detroit for Daniel Alfredsson's youth.

I share you concern, but he's not going anywhere and at least Dats would have Zetterberg so it's not like he wouldn't have a quality winger. I don't love Abby up there, but I don't see any realistic alternative either. Plus, you can always make a trade later.

I definitely agree with some of the things you've said. For instance, Holland is notoriously stingy when it comes time to make offers to free agents (remember Wisniewski's 'market value' comment). But I don't think his moves have been as bad as people think. Hindsight has shown that some of them haven't worked out, but who could have known at the time. For instance, it's easy to say that he doesn't attract top flight FA's, but Weiss and Alfie were both at the top of their respective FA cohorts. Likewise, the Quincey move is generally considered bad. But prior to coming back he'd been playing top four minutes and scoring around 30 pts. a season. And he was young and still had development potential. Easily worth a first at the time. With Legwand I'd generally agree we overpaid, but Poile had us over a barrel and we knew it. Even then, we were still getting a very good two way center capable of putting up good numbers. It's mindblogging how he was used, but that's not his fault. Tootoo? Same deal as Legwand. They both just did what they do, no knock on their game. The two worst things that Holland did recently were bring back Cleary and give Sammy a No Trade Clause. The first is defensible because Babs and the team leadership intervened on Cleary's behalf. The NTC is indefensible and was just a plain bad move. Neither of them, it turns out, actually impacted the team negatively all that much, though it maybe have impacted the Illitch's pocketbook (hard to feel bad for them considering they haven't paid taxes in about ten years lol). Very far considering he has no systems training and Babs runs one of the most demanding systems in the league. This kid has zero chance of making the team next season. Letting him learn the system in GR from Blashill is the right call, just not the sexy one.

I would be legitimately happy if Holland did nothing else but sign Niskanen and let all the obvious free agents walk. You can always fill needs at the deadline, but I'd be perfectly happy going into next season with... Z-Dats-Abby Franzen-Weiss-Nyquist Tatar-Sheahan-Jurco Miller-Helm-Glendening Kronwall-Ericsson Niskenen-Dekeyser Smith-Quellet Sproul/Marchenko Edit: Obviously the means trading Andersson, Kindl, and Lashoff for whatever you can get (not roster players).

Dang. Why so acrimonious man? Everything alright at home? And probably right out of Kenny's price range as well. Not that we couldn't afford it mind you...

Well I certainly agree with the second half of your post. But I'm actually a Holland fan. That doesn't mean I don't think he makes mistakes from time to time, he does, but usually his mistakes don't end up crippling the team in any serious way. Think of all his big "mistakes" e.g. Sammy, Tootoo, Quincey, bringing Cleary back, and then think about other people's big mistakes and you immediately feel better. He could have signed David Clarkson to a 5.2 million dollar contract for 7 years, given Ryane Clowe 4.8 million for 5 years despite his history of concussions, or traded away Mike Richards and Jeff Carter and Sergei Bobrovsky and James Van Riemsdyk for Wayne Simmonds/Jakub Voracek/ the Schenn brothers and some picks. In the end, Holland's really done a pretty good job.

I'm not going to try and talk you into liking Holland, you seem pretty dead set against it. But those were close games (on the scoreboard). Only problem is that despite their closeness, we had no realistic shot at winning any of them.

Dabura, your posts are too long for me to respond to all your points. So, a couple of things... Niskanen having a career year in a contract year worries me too, but in addition to coinciding with a contract season his explosion also coincides with the average trajectory for defenseman development, as well as the Pens losing their top guy and giving Niskanen the opportunity to shine. But again, dually noted on the correlation. If they Pens can sign him after all the money they've spent the last couple of years I'll be blown away. The whole post about fetishizing the streak was right on. Dream big with the Simmonds thing. Ain't happening.

Just an observation... I think the reason you're finding such antipathy to your ideas is because many of your posts have been matadorish and confrontational. I assure you, we're all perfectly reasonable people who would gladly hear what you've got to say and respectfully debate with you, provided you would stop being so insulting during the exchange.

(Spoiler alert: I'm going to talk about James Wisniewski a lot in this post. I'm not pining for him, or lamenting any past decisions. I'm just using him as an example to explain why we should pursue Niskanen. If your response to the post is, "Wisniewski suckz!" you missed the point). I don't want to get into the weeds too much on this issue (that's what this summer is for), but I do think we should sign Matt Niskanen. Sure you'd have to overpay (a little) for him, but we've got the money and he fills a TON of needs. He's an up an coming young, right handed, top four, puck mover, who's very good on the pp. He's also coming into the age were d-men finally hit their stride. All summer everyone will nitpick and find reasons to not like this move, just like they did back when we were all debating about whether to acquire Wisniewski a couple years ago. They'll say the contract is bad, they'll say it's an overpayment, they'll put a microscope on each and every one of his shortcomings. But at the end of the day, the amount you'll overpay will less than what you'll pay all the scrubs you'll bring in trying to find a cheap alternative. Think about it this way, using Wisniewski as an example. Let's say he's getting paid a million more than he's worth (he'd be worth every penny of 4.5 million for his pts., aggressiveness, and pp shot alone). Over the life of his contract you overpaid him by six million dollars. How much did we pay Commodore, White, and Colaiacovo total? A good bit more and got worse players. At the very least the 51 extra points and physicality might have been nice this season.

When are teams going to stop promoting franchise greats to be their GM's. It almost never works. There are only a couple times in recent memory when this has been successful (It remains to be seen whether Sakic pans out).

While you're at it, ask the Capitals how great forwards and average defense works out. If you want to go to extremes then any position is absurd. I voted for defense first, but the truth is, there's no exact recipe for success. I would, however, venture to guess that every Cup winner in recent memory was pretty good at both (even L.A.'s offense picked it up in the playoffs).

I've heard that that David Legwand has an extensive knowledge of wines and is quite the conversationalist. TOTALLY worth it! Wait, we're talking about dating him right? If not, then no, no he wasn't.

Backus? I wouldn't trade Emmerton for him. That guy is terrible!

I understand and agree with your overall point, but I will say that after watching most of that series, Fleury is being hung out to dry. Columbus has some quality offensive players and they're allowed to basically walk in on Fleury any time they've got the puck. That team has, so far, skated the Pens into the ground.

Blowing a 2 goal lead was a game, and series changer which actually happened in reality. Speculating about whether we'd have scored on a powerplay that was ultimately negated is just that...speculation. There's a lot of reasons why we're being mauled in this series. The one you just mentioned ranks pretty low (mostly because it's predicated on something that didn't even happen. e.g. scoring on that PP).

I agree. He looked good. Kudos to the old man.

You seem to be contradicting yourself here. In the bolded sections above, you suggest that Babcock's coaching "steered" the kid line, and the success of the kid line got us into the playoffs. And you use this as evidence to suggest that Babs is a great coach and isn't responsible for the loses in the playoffs. But you don't mention that Babs broke up the kid line after making the playoffs (as well as the Nyquist-Franzen-Legwand line), and they didn't play a single shift together against Boston. If putting them together was a smart move by Babs, which ultimately led to success and the playoffs; then breaking them up and not having success would be a bad coaching decision which negatively affected the team's chances of winning, and Babs would ultimately bear responsibility for that decision. Again, the same is true of Nyquist-Franzen-and Legwand as well. We didn't overcome a 3-1 deficit against Chicago. They overcame a 3-1 deficit to beat us.

I truly hope Bert has one last insane series left in him and he propels us past the Bruins. Just so that everyone who talked s*** about him all year (including me) can suck an egg. Also, so that he'll get the Cup handed to him first before Alfie.

I heard they were doing something like this...

What's been more ineffective about him than anyone else? (note: this is not a rhetorical question, I missed large chunks of games 2 and 3 and I'm wondering if you noticed something I didn't)

I'm only ok with the roster change if Bertuzzi does this to Lucic...