Dabura

Into my veins.

Yzermadman talks about Rasmussen:

He has become too powerful. He must be stopped.

I know who almost all of those players are and now I feel old.

Kulikov and Oesterle. Do it.

Yup. Could be that Francis was like "Y'know what? Just give me a ton of defensemen and let me set up my own economy."

Gettin' real sick of these teases. Entertain me or get off the pot.

lmao

(Yes, I know he was joking.)

I win. Suck it, nerds.

So when do we hit that point where teams start doing stuff? Cuz holy f***ing s*** has the past week ever been a snoozefest.

I agree with the "This is a pretty good trade" takes. Red Wings Boost the Blue Line with Nick Leddy Trade [The Hockey Writers] You know how I've been going on about what a great pairing Luke Hughes + Moritz Seider would be? Nick Leddy is basically a 30-year-old Luke Hughes; they're very similar players. Even if Leddy's Wings career doesn't extend beyond the trade deadline, he's still going to be good for Seider's development and, in turn, our rebuild effort. Hell, even if you remove Seider from the equation, we're getting a player who's good at things our team is soul-crushingly bad at. Specifically: controlled zone entries, O-zone playmaking, power play. As I've said many times before, a league-average power play would be a total gamechanger for us.

Culture matters. Unity matters. Feeling good about yourself and your teammates and your team and your organization matters. You want good energy. You want each and every person to be ride-or-die for any and every other person. You want a great big Family unit. You want everyone pulling in the same direction – because they *want* to. Brotherly blood, brotherly sweat, brotherly tears. When you win, it's a collective brotherly triumph. When you lose, you've failed your family. I honestly think the Babcock era Wings didn't have that. And I honestly think that's the main reason why we only got one Cup out of all those stacked lineups. I can't even really blame Babcock; if you're getting paid to be you (in Babcock's case, an alleged thunderprick of epic proportions), you're not going to try to be someone else. If the players don't like it, they can complain to the GM. My understanding is Red Wings players did complain to the GM...and that the GM's answer was basically "Winning culture. Get f***ed." I've gone out of my way to defend Holland on the basis that Holland = winning culture = good. But the older I get, the more I question that math. Lately I'm thinking the Wings' vaunted winning culture is largely a myth. Suter and Parise, for example. If they are in fact colossal jackwagons, that's something that would've been known back in 2012, when we tried to sign them. There's a behind the scenes clip from this past season that's stuck with me. Gagner was mic'd up for the game. Everyone's in the locker room and getting ready to go out and hit the ice for warmups. He asks how someone's doing, might've been DeKeyser. DeKeyser says, "Doesn't matter." Gagner asks again, ostensibly because he didn't catch the reply. "Doesn't matter," DeKeyser repeats. Can't read too much into a five-second locker room exchange during the back half of a tank season. But I will say this much: Seider and Raymond will be bringing different energy. I dunno that Holland-->Yzerman is an upgrade in the culture cultivation department. In theory, he is. I hope he is.

Cholowski is Kindl 2.0. I can't even be bothered to care.

SAME

[laughs in Brent Burns]

Yeah. I read your tweet as meaning "They were planning on trading Hyman and replacing him with Bertuzzi," but I realize now that you probably meant "They'd have Hyman and Bertuzzi for the rest of the season while knowing they'd likely be losing Hyman via free agency." Hump day is best day drinking weekday. Now you're just making s*** up.

He could be six years younger and I still wouldn't take him. Because of 2012. F*** that guy.

You mean last season?

Sure. I agree that losing Hyman and gaining Bertuzzi probably doesn't move the needle for the Leafs. I was speaking more to the past, i.e. a 2020-2021 Leafs team featuring both Hyman and Bertuzzi. They've both shown they can handle the 45/55 zone starts usage; put them in the same lineup and suddenly you've doubled your shutdown pleasure.

I'm willing to bet Tronna was prepared to overpay for him. Why? Because he's appealing to both stats nerds (Team Dubas) and more old-school types (many Leafs fans and Canadian pundits). I honestly think he could be a godsend for a team that has high-skill scorers but lacks all-situations Swiss Army knife junkyard dogs. (BAH GAWD THAT'S KEN HOLLAND'S MUSIC!) If next season he picks up right where he had left off, and if we're still clearly not a playoff team...I think he gets traded. And I don't think we'd end up missing him all that much. At least, not in the short term. Cuz we're gonna be fapping ourselves raw over the talent at the top of next year's draft class. Oh, and Seider's gonna be stacking bodies like Rambo.

Bertuzzi is a very solid player who's young enough that he could conceivably still be a very solid player for us four years from now, when we're a better team (knock on wood). ...On the other hand, "How well is Bertuzzi going to age?" was a reasonable question even before the back problem. And, even without the back problem, you could make the case that his age (27 in February) puts him outside the "impact zone" for our rebuild timeline. ...On the other hand, we're trying to build something, and that means icing good lineups, and Bertuzzi is far and away one of our better roster players. ...On the other hand, if you can get a really good haul for a 26-year-old who's got some injury and/or aging baggage...you should probably do it. The cool thing about Bertuzzi trade rosterbation is Bertuzzi has the GRIT! factor that can make GMs do goofy stuff. Jim Benning's looking to shake things up. Chuck Fletcher's looking to shake things up. The Leafs were (and probably still are) in on Bertuzzi. The Habs would love Bertuzzi. The Jets are surely looking for playoff performers with a pulse. (Bertuzzi has no NHL playoff experience, but he was a legendarily clutch postseason guy at lower levels.) Oilers and Ken Holland. Isles and Barry Trotzian hockey. Blues and Blues hockey and trying to keep their Cup window open. The list goes on. If it's TOR, I want Rasmus Sandin (+). If it's PHI, I want Cam York (+). If it's WPG, I want Peyton Krebs (+). If it's VAN, I want 9OA + Jack Rathbone. If it's LA, I want two of 8OA, Tobias Bjornfot, Rasmus Kupari. You get the idea. I think that VAN ask hits the sweet spot intersection of HYPE! and plausibility. I'm really bullish on Jack Rathbone. If Benning says, "I'll give you 9OA + Jett Woo. You're not getting Rathbone without adding," throw in hometown kid Cholowski and a pick.

It's always damn near impossible to know how hands-on any given GM is when it comes to scouting and drafting. Which is, of course, by design. (Guarding trade secrets and whatnot.) Like, Yzerman's messaging has basically been "I defer to my scouts." Which is cool and all. But literally every GM says that. Picking Seider was metal as f***, and it was even more metal if Yzerman's people didn't want Seider and he had to tell them to get f***ed. (Not sure that that's actually how it went.) But didn't it come out that we had Hughes, Kakko, Dach, and possibly Byram (?) ranked higher than Seider? ...And didn't it come out that Ken "Idiot Boomer Who Had to Go" Holland was fully prepared to take Seider at 8OA (hence Yzerman not trading down)? ...And, if we're being honest...aren't Cozens, Zegras, Knight, Caufield, et al. looking like pretty smart picks for their respective clubs? What's my point? I dunno. I guess it's that everyone should maybe pump the brakes on Yzerman being a draft wizard. I think his body of work suggests he's a guy who knows what he wants in his players and that he wants his scouts focusing on players who fit the profiles he likes. I think this has produced a number of hits...and a number of misses. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Better to have Niedermayer-Pronger and not need it than to need Niedermayer-Pronger and not have it. I know what you're saying, though. It's why I think center is a bigger position of need for us. If Seider's the player we think he is, he'll probably excel with anyone. LD1 doesn't necessarily have to be another Seider. Buuuuut... Fully agree. That's exactly why the thought of Hughes-Seider gets my HYPE! juices flowing; Hughes fits that profile to a T. I've been saying it for a while now: Yzerman very clearly "has a type" when it comes to defensemen. That type being big, mobile, smart, steady, efficient, effective. Seider types, basically. I do wonder about Yzerman's record with drafting defensemen, though.

My thinking is basically this: "It's looking like we found a Norris-caliber cornerstone defenseman at 6OA, against all odds. Now, what if I told you we could cheat the gods again and double our winnings on that front? What if we could come away from Year 3 of the Yzerbuild with an all-world D pairing? What if we could come away from this draft having secured that elusive 'X factor' advantage that could soon have Wings-hating analysts saying, 'Well, *of course* Detroit has to be considered a Cup contender now; any team that can roll out [Hughes-Seider] has to be considered a contender'?" It's greediness on my part. [Crusty vet]-Seider would probably be ok. But why settle? Why not pair him with a high-end left-side defenseman who perfectly complements him?