kipwinger

They’re just soft in general. You should have heard their take on Provorov the other day. Laughably stupid take.

Lucas Raymond is slow. Like, pretty slow. Whoever taught Rasmussen to skate needs to move into Raymond’s house for a year or two.

He actually looked really good last night. Slow as he is he’s still pretty effective on the forecheck. Looked a little like Sundqvist, but then be beat the sh*t out of that guy and I remembered the big difference between him and Sundqvist.

Ken Daniels just called Jonatan Berggren “B-52” and I’m totally here for that nickname.

He still sucks. What else you looking for? Half-joking aside, I saw an article today that said when he returns he will be trying a new curve on his stick. Normally I'd roll my eyes, but Hronek did the same thing in the offseason and his shooting accuracy seems to have improved. I think he's day to day at this point, should be in the lineup as soon as tomorrow.

Lucic genuinely looks like Frankenstein on skates...kinda plays like him too I'd imagine.

I secretly love this Calgary team. They're a bunch of badasses. Kadri is mean as hell, and borderline dirty. Coleman, Taffoli, and Mangiapane are essentially three Tyler Bertuzzis. I even enjoyed old man Lucic beating the piss out of Mathieu Olivier (who stood in there gave a few too). I love that they cheered for Johnny Gaudreau during his appreciation package on the jumbo screen and then booed him every single other time he touched the puck. This team rules.

I've been watching a bunch of the late games lately and I'm seeing tons of guys I've never really appreciated. One name on the list, Rasmus Andersson for the Flames. That guy is a f*cking horse. He's a beast all over the ice. I'm not even sure why I am posting it in this thread because Calgary would be insane to trade him.

I'm not really sure I understand the attitude vis-a-vis Larkin around here. The guy's in the 90th percentile in almost every measurable analytic category, offense and defense. He was last year too. The only thing that has stopped him from being a 80-90 point center the last two years has been injuries. I could understand if the argument was "Larkin needs to be injured less", to which the answer might be to get another center to lighten his load. But I don't understand the "we're never going to win with Larkin" crowd. This guy is really really good. He has never played with a legit top line winger in his career and last year our 2C was Pius Suter. Pretty easy for defenses to key on the guy.

Bertuzzi looking pretty solid for the Wings so far in the first.

For sure, they've only got three Cups. It's not like there are a million legacy Avs fans leftover from the 90s spread all over the country. Remember during the glory days when there was always one guy who'd rock Avs gear in Michigan like a complete f*cking pud? The team was like 5 years old and suddenly every town in Michigan had some dude with really vague connections to Colorado who "always loved the Avs" and was definitely not being contrarian or anything.

I dunno man, I get the animosity from yesteryear, but that team is an absolute unit and those announcers might be the funniest in the NHL.

Watching the Avs vs. Canucks tonight and the Avs announcers are absolutely hilarious. They throw shade at everyone constantly. One of their rink reporters literally got in a shoving match with some fans over a stray puck and they were PISSED and the dude was just like, "I've have a go with em' haha". In between periods they did a highlights package of all the good plays from the previous period and they just fast forwarded through all the Canucks goals and they lady says "we don't care about those". I love these guys.

Speaking of guys I was right about years ago, this guy. Devon Toews is such a stud. He's got to be one of the best defenders in the league. You cannot shake that guy in the offensive zone.

I’d f*ck either of them too. But only one because he’s going places in professional hockey.

And he wasn't getting used properly, and he wasn't getting enough ice time, and he wasn't getting better linemates, and the coach didn't like him, and and and. The story with @krsmith17 was always that he fell in love with players (typically for no good reason) elevated their talent (in his mind) to absurd proportions, then blamed everything and everyone when his own unrealistic expectations failed to materialize. Hence we had "Smith the dynamic offensive defenseman" or "Mantha the elite power forward" or "Veleno the 2nd line center". I've re-posted it many time but there's one old post where he went through the Griffins lineup and projected almost every player on their roster and they're laughably bad. Jurco isn't in the NHL because as it turns out coaches and teammates hate it when you stand around doing nothing, waiting for your linemates to win puck battles, so that you can blow the zone looking for a breakaway.

You might be on to something with Jarnkrok and Smith, but I'm not so sure about Jurco. I think of "over ripe" as a guy who's obviously too good for the AHL but who is forced to spend significant time down there anyway. Kinda like Berggren was for the latter part of last season and the AHL games he played this season. Other guys like that were Howard, Jensen, Nyquist, and Tatar. Jurco was never a dominant AHL player. And he only played about a season and a half for the Griffs before his call up. Some guys spend a ton of time in the AHL because they're just genuinely not very good (Pulkkinen, Frk). I tend to put Jurco in that camp.

Which?

Great first period by every Red Wings except Ville Jusso (who let in a floater with 30 seconds left in the period).

Yeah, that's such bullsh*t. What else is there to do in Moncton on a Friday night? The only difference with tiering would be that s***ty teams would finally have something to play for instead of getting fed to perennial powerhouses every night. Fans of s***ty teams would actually buy MORE tickets if they knew their local team wasn't going to get murdered every single game. And fans of the higher end teams (who are already doing fine) would sell more tickets because they'd see an increase in the quality of the players and competition.

The CHL is suuuuuuch a racket. They basically have these kids in a stranglehold and won't let go unless they absolutely have to. They have junior teams in Europe too. The difference is that if you're good enough to play on the pro team you can. There are no pro (developmental) leagues in Canada any they won't let kids play in the AHL or the ECHL or (for most draft eligibles) the NCAA. So you end up having kids like Wright and Lafreniere who are way too good to play against 16 year olds, but who generate enough revenue that the CHL has no interest whatsoever in letting them go outside the country to play in a pro league. The only people that suffer are the kids. Hell, if they just tiered the CHL and added relegation so that half the league were full of really good teams with older players, and half the league was young players on lower level teams, you'd have a better system than they currently have.

In theory pot should help with pill addictions too. Many folks (not just athletes) get addicted to pills after they begin using them for pain management. This is likely the case with Vrana (coke jokes aside) as he played for a full year with a bum shoulder before even getting the surgery. I was recovering from a broken ankle recently and I ate edibles when the pain was bad, and it seemed to help a lot. I can't exactly compare with opiates because I didn't take any of those, but the CBD in the weed was plenty strong enough to manage that pain. At some point I imagine opiates will be phased out for all but the most debilitating pain and be replaced by CBD oils and the like. Many athletes already use CBD oils and such as part of their muscle recovery program (particularly boxers and mma fighters).

You're absolutely right, in most European leagues they're only allowed so many non-native players on the roster (because they're club teams tied to certain geographic localities). So it would be limited to the better players. Not going to have 3rd or 4th rounders playing over there, but those guys need the extra year in the CHL anyway. American college hockey is another option too, as you've pointed out. But I tend to think the reason it doesn't happen is because A) 18 year olds probably don't want to move to Europe, and B) for some reason people still think the CHL is a good league.