kipwinger

Columbus has the 2nd largest population amongst midwest cities (behind Chicago) and the largest population growth according to the US Census Bureau. However, they do not have the largest "metro area", which is what I previously said. My mistake. I think my original point is more than valid though. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-largest-cities-in-the-midwest.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Midwestern_cities_by_size#cite_note-1 https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus-among-fastest-growing-metropolitan-areas-as-smaller-ohio-areas-shrink/

Columbus Ohio is now the 2nd largest metropolitan area in the Midwest, behind only Chicago. There are A LOT of potential fans in the Columbus viewing area. So logically the NHL rigged the lottery to give a generational player to a team that primed for massive revenue growth right? Nope, they'd rather he go to a team that sells out every game without Bedard and then spend the next year answering questions about why Chicago still had the 1st round pick to land Bedard after the sexual assualt scandal. THAT'S totally good for business.

People can't even keep their idiotic conspiracies straight anymore. I just saw fans online wisecracking that the league would have a meltdown if Seattle or Vegas ended up playing Florida or Carolina in the finals. As if Gary Bettman spend the last 30 years expanding the NHL into non-traditional markets only to be agitated when the plan finally bears fruit. Likewise, fans think that the league conspired to rig the lottery to give a generational talent to a team that has no problem selling tickets or getting national exposure without him. The NHL has revenue sharing. Why on earth would they want to send Bedard to a team that generates massive amounts of revenue without him? Wouldn't they want to send him to a team that doesn't generate revenue, hope he increases ticket and merch sales, and then split that new money amongst themselves?

Why are fans so obsessed with "no tanking"? Who cares? We tanked and literally everyone was in favor of it. Chicago does it, and gets luckier in the lottery, and now we have to regurgitate this same "tanking is bad" narrative again. Most rebuilding teams tank. We did, Edmonton did, Ottawa did, Buffalo did, Arizona perpetually tanks. Why do we have to have the most convoluted draft order of any major professional sport to combat something that pretty much everyone (except Gary Bettman) agrees is good to do once in a while? Just do reverse draft order and if teams like Edmonton want to be bad for 15 years in hopes of landing a McDavid one day, more power to them. Meanwhile a lot of non-McDavid teams are out there competing for and winning Cups. If nothing else this year's playoffs has shown that generational guys don't really make your team more competitive. Seattle has no players of that caliber. Vegas has a few high end guys, all of whom they traded for, and none of whom required winning the lottery. Same for Florida, Carolina, and Dallas. Edmonton, Jersey, and TO are the only teams that A) tanked, B) won the draft lottery, and C) are still playing hockey. And none of them are performing well enough to suggest that this strategy is some sure fire way to build a winner.

Only thing I can think of is that he doesn't really fit in an up tempo, transition based, offense like Jersey has. He's lethal off the cycle, and it seems like that's when he's most effective. But that isn't really Jersey's thing. Regardless, he's been bad. 1 goals in 9 games. And his qualifying offer is MASSIVE. This is not as clear cut a decision for Jersey as it might have seemed at the trade deadline.

Here's a thing I've been wondering (but haven't seen rumored anywhere). New Jersey is getting DOMINATED. Their defense is trash and they're about to lose Severson to make it worse. They've also got no cap space and need to re-sign half their team (it seems). With that said, do you think they qualify Timo Meier at 9 million? They don't need the offense, he's been terrible for them (seems like he doesn't fit their system), and he'd cost a fortune to keep. A fortune better spent trying to bolster their defense. If they choose not to qualify him and trade his rights instead, are we back in the hunt? Surely they'd want to get a 1st back, and thankfully we have a couple extra 1sts. I think there's a reasonable chance he's back on the market prior to the draft. Thoughts?

Here's a fun thing I just noticed. 14 of the 16 best defensive teams in the regular season made the playoffs this year. Two others (Edmonton and Florida) were just outside that group, and two other top defensive teams (Calgary and Nashville) just missed the playoffs. BUT once you get to the playoffs the trend reverses. All the top defensive teams have lost, or are losing, to the better offensive teams. It's almost across the board. So the old adage "defense wins championships" seems a little bit too simplistic. You HAVE to have a good defense to get to the playoffs, but once you're there the high flying teams seem to perform better...at least this year.

Finally, someone not speaking loser. Wanting to lose bad enough to draft a Canadian twink is the epitope of “small dick energy”. Give me some Euro who plies his trade getting his ass kicked by adults in the best leagues in the world outside the NHL. Just like Seider and Raymond and Edvinsson, and Kasper before him.

I understand your argument and I think you’ve won me over. But if it’s true that a less talented goalie can get on a heater and beat a more talented counterpart it only highlights the A) razor thin margins between NHL goalies, and B) the inherent unpredictability of the position.

Keven Weekes (whose schtick is getting really old) spoke for 30 seconds and mentioned Bedard being a “24/7 player that eats, sleeps, and breathes hockey” about 3 times. I wonder what narrative the NHL is trying to push? “Hey, we know this kid has no personality but that’s because he’s the idiot savant of the ice”.

I'll have to think about that. My knee jerk reaction is to disagree because there have been a lot of mediocre goalies who have outperformed their more dominant peers. Corey Crawford has more Cups than Lundqvist, Luongo, and Price combined, for instance. BUT you take any Cup winner in recent memory and go back through their playoff wins (or losses) and you'll find a million examples of moments when goalies made (or missed) huge stops that changed the complexion of a game or a series. It's an interesting take.

He's gone man. He's gone.

I'm never quite sure when you're being a smartass or not, but I do think there's something to this. It's been proven over and over that players reach their peak production at a pretty early age. But most teams don't win Championships until their top guys are a little older. So you score more when you're 24, but you win more when you're 28 (more or less). I think a big part of that is learning how to win. And part of THAT is learning what you're willing to do to win that Cup. Because once you get to the playoffs every single team is good. You're not going to skate circles around playoff teams like you did during the regular season. The difference between winning and losing in the playoffs might be whether you're willing to lay down and block a shot on the PK, or bust your ass on a backcheck, or get run through the end boards by a forechecker to get the puck out of the defensive zone for a change. In other words, gumption. We didn't win in 2008 because we had the best players. We won in 2008 because Henrik Zetterberg would rather die than get scored on during a 5on3.

I think there's an argument to be made that having super duper stars like TO or EDM have inhibits the ability to add that kind of depth. Or at the very least, if you're going to pay more than one guys 10+ million dollars you'd better hope they don't all play the same position.

I think he's a center all day long. He's too good defensively and in the FO circle not to be used there. He's also one of the younger players in the draft so I still expect a lot of physical development in addition to his skill development. I think he's going to fall down to where Detroit is drafting because he's super young and playing in a tough men's league so his number's aren't as good as some of the popular Canadian and American kids. But against his own age group he's absolutely dominant and has been for years. He checks a ton of boxes for the Wings. Big, center, well rounded, high offensive ceiling, goal scorer, developed in Swedish men's league. If he can add some speed I think he's got really high offensive upside in the NHL. Edit: The flip side of the coin is that if you want a center who has all that AND speed you might as well draft Brayden Yager.

I will lose my f*cking marbles if we draft Reinbacher.

I think he’s taking a center. If he doesn’t move up he will take one of Moore, Yager, Danielson, or Dvoraky with the 9th pick. I’m coming around in Dvoraky a lot. I didn’t realize how young that guy was. IMO all the knocks on him can largely be explained by the fact that he was playing in a men’s league when he was 16/17. His game reminds me a lot of Sean Monahan. I'd be giving him a long look at 9OA

To be honest I forgot he was hurt. But he's day to day which is about as healthy as you're going to be in the NHL playoffs.

Totally. Barely any NHL teams need top four, right shot, point producing, defensemen. I can't believe he's not in Europe already.

They were absolutely NOT right about Hronek. They absolutely sh*t all over that guy for years and then (surprise surprise) when he wasn't completely saddled with losers like Marc Staal and Danny Dekeyser he had a career year. What a surprise!

Those guys are SUCH puds. Their takes are hilariously bad, and they are routinely proven wrong, but that doesn't stop them from doing it all over again the very next episode. Their boy Prashanth Iyer does the same s***. Some highlights: -Filip Zadina is a "dominant" top six forward with an elite shot. -Filip Zadina is better than Robbi Fabbri -Michael Rasmussen isn't even an NHL caliber player. -Seider was a a bad pick -Edvinsson was a bad pick -Kasper was a bad pick -Hronek is average at best and a liability at worst -(and my favorite) Brenden Smith really is "that damn good". Anybody with even a shred of intellectual honesty would spend a little time trying to figure out why they're so consistently wrong. It's always refreshing when you see re-drafts or (better yet) articles devoted to figuring out analytical blind spots. Not these guys. They're on to the next bad take. I wish I was in a business where I could take my professional legitimacy on a really bad take, fail miserably in my predictions, and then never have to answer for why I'm so wrong so much of the time.

They're still in really good shape. They split 1-1 on the road and are heading home for two with a healthy roster. They could very easily take the next two.

Huge opportunity for Johansson (and to a lesser extent McIsaac and Wallinder) coming out of camp.

I try to distinguish between "flashy" and "effective" in my mind when thinking about a guy's ceiling. Fans and hockey media types always conflate the two. To me having a high "ceiling" just means that you'll be very effective, it doesn't say anything about HOW you'll be effective. Without significant increases in pace and physicality it's hard for me to imagine Sodorblom being especially effective in the NHL in a top of the lineup role. To me he's a 3rd line scoring winger and powerplay specialist right now. Without significant increases in pace and physicality I just don't see him making an impact at 5on5. So I think his ceiling is higher than a guy like Zadina (bad at everything) but probably lower than a guy like Fabbri (a little above average at everything). Unless he makes huge strides in his skating in particular I don't see him being as good as Rasmussen even because you'll have to shelter him half the time.