kipwinger

Icehogs with 22 shots on goal in the first period. Woof. Cossa standing tall though.

Cossa looking very sharp. Not so much the rest of the Griffins. Big powerplay coming up tho.

Im definitely watching

The amount of really great "secondary" players that Chicago shuffled through was unreal. Their core group gets a ton of credit (and should) but their scouting during that period was unbelievable. Byfuglien, Campbell, Leddy, Ladd, Saad, Teravainen, Versteeg, Brouwer, Shaw just to name a few. In most cases Chicago had good players already in their system, who out performed their salaries, and were let go/traded and replaced internally by other good homegrown talent. That's how they were able to keep winning despite so much of their cap space going to Toews, Kane, and Keith. Toronto doesn't have a luxury because they don't have any homegrown talent in the minors, let alone enough of it to replace guys they trade away with other quality options.

Well the good news is that they just signed William Nylander for 8 years and 11 million dollars so that should help with the defen...err...uh oh.

Lol, if you could clear enough cap space in Toronto to take on Chiarot's contract they'd make you the GM.

How are things going in Toronto anyway?

Oh yeah? Last I heard he was "betting on himself". How's that going for him?

Don't know anything about this guy, or whether he's credible or not, so take this with a grain of salt but...reports that Nate Danielson is heading to Portland at the WHL trade deadline today. https://x.com/jjcritzer/status/1745196509875028059?s=20

Two in the same draft actually. Joe Veleno was supposed to go about 15(ish) spots higher than he actual did in the same draft.

I'd quibble with your characterization of some of these, and for others I think they got as much as could be expected out of the draft position. The only one I think is egregiously bad is the Nolan Patrick pick. His career was sidelined by concussions in juniors and his professional ceiling was in doubt before he was ever drafted. A number of people around here (including myself) had him on their "do not draft" lists that year. They got caught up in the hype just like so many other teams that seem to believe that if the Canadian media starts talking about a kid when he's 15 years old he's bound to be a superstar.

Has there ever been another player in the league who over estimated his own value to a team more than Ilya Kovalchuk? That dude was SUCH a loser. I blame Lou Lamoriello (also a total dips***) for it. Apparently Lou cares a great deal if you want to have a beard or long hair and play for his team, but he's less concerned paying you a zillion dollars to half-ass it every game.

Ken Daniels is such a professional that he could squeeze air time out of a stone. That dude is unbelievably good at his job. Mick is hilarious, and I love him for all the nostalgia and everything else. But Ken is the driving force of that broadcast. I'm absolutely positive he could freestyle an entire segment out of that Russian dude's name. He's already done it with Kostin and Berggren.

Not worried about ASP at all. His legs are the foundation of his game and they're fine. And because they said he's in a "plaster cast" it suggest a bone break and not something terrible like a joint issue or back issue or something. He's good.

Quenneville will be back if he wants to be. It'll just take a minute. All things considered Quenneville's part in the Chicago scandal was relatively minor, it just blew up so much that heads had to roll.

Cutter Gauthier is really good. He was just the 1C for Team USA at the World Juniors. But he left Philly in a bad spot by telling them he wouldn't sign with them, so the return is suboptimal. Drysdale is good but injury prone, hence why the 2nd was thrown in.

This is why I want Quenneville so bad. He's an excellent systems coach (like Jon Cooper for example), but also a total hardass that demands his players work their asses off (like Torts). The league needs to reinstate this guy who Yzerman can hire him.

Torts is the man. Love that guy. I'd really like to see him get another one before his run as a coach is over. Just the other night he shut down a reporter that wanted to ask him questions about Connor McDavid. Like, this is a Stanley Cup winner. A Jack Adams winner. He's coached absolutely legends, Hall of Famers, for a long long time and these people want to get sound bites of him gushing over 27 year olds...or worse, pining for 19 year olds. Thank god Torts has some dignity.

I'm nervous about this one. The team from the first 20-25 games would use the win against Los Angeles as a confidence boost and come out flying tonight. But the team from all of December might get down a goal or two and fall apart. Plus, after this game the schedule only gets harder with Edmonton, Los Angles (again), Toronto, Florida, coming up. I sure hope we look at the last half of that LA game as a blueprint and start getting things figured out. When we play fast and direct we can dominate, when we try to be cute we get pinned in our zone and our defense gets exposed. Also, not sure if Kostin is back tonight or not but he owes Gudas one so keep an eye on that.

I agree that Tavares takes a huge paycut, but the math still doesn't really work for them. Every penny they save on a Tavares deal is going to pay Nylander (and then Marner the year after). So they've still got the same four forwards taking up the same percentage of their cap. Yeah, letting him walk would be a disaster. The time to trade him was a year ago. They needed a hockey trade for a similarly talented, similarly aged, defenseman. I don't know what they do now. They almost HAVE to let Tavares walk completely after next season. Put all that money toward defense and goaltending and look for someone cheaper and/or a young guy on a low end deal to pair with one of the elite guys. Hope Marner/Nylander can drag a loser 2C to a Cup win the way Kane did with Chicago all those years.

Whelp, with that Nylander extension Toronto has basically f*cked themselves for a good long while. They already have no money for defense or goaltending and starting next year they'll have even less. AND they'll need to give Marner and Tavares extensions (or replace them). Marner will make AT LEAST as much as Nylander just got, and Tavares will either have to take a really big discount or else he'll walk and they'll have to find another center that's as good as he is. Either way they'll still have all the same holes and their lineup and less money to fill them. This makes my heart feel happy and full.

All in all I'm happy with the win to be sure. I keep hoping that we're going to come out and look like we did during the first part of the season and I think that's unrealistic in the short term. In order for us to play that fast, aggressive, freewheeling style of game you have to have a ton of faith in your goalie. I think Lyon is slowly earning that trust from the team, but given how things have played out this year I think it's going to take a minute. I also think the team is missing Kostin pretty bad. I realize that seems silly because he's a depth winger, but he was a consistent part of the lineup in the early part of the season and his physicality really dragged the rest of the team into the fight. If, for example, he goes out there in the first period last night and beats the sh*t out of Gudas (it's coming) then I think the rest of their team chills out on the rough stuff, and the rest of our team plays a little taller than they are.

I don't think we looked abysmal or anything, but I definitely didn't like the whole effort. There were parts of the 1st and 3rd periods where Lyon kept us from a worse fate. That said, there were parts of the 1st where it seemed like we were ringing shots of their post every other rush so maybe it evens out. I still don't think we played fast enough, but it was a step in the right direction. And to be fair Anaheim isn't really THAT bad of a team. They made Toronto work their asses off a few nights ago as well.

The Kings are sagging right now, would be a great time for our boys to luck into one. A win tonight would be huge for our confidence.