Official Hockey discussion thread

E. Karlsson to SJS! OTT gets a shit ton of picks! Where do Duchene and Stone go from here? OTT admits being in full rebuild mode.
 
There were legit people in my office who were walking around stunned and with tears in their eyes yesterday.

Ottawa got barely better than a bag of pucks for the best defenseman in the world. Sad, so vey sad. Stone is gone. He's barely shown any loyalty to the team with the way things have occurred, there is 0 chance he resigns after Jan 1. Look for him to be gone by the deadline. Duchene has said he'd like to stay, but if he does, he pretty much guarantees that he won't win a Stanley Cup ever. I don't think he necessarily will want to leave...he will be traded, most likely. This team is garbage.
 
I believe it. A good friend of mine practically disowned them yesterday. Also, Zetterberg retired and some Wilson dude from Nashville got suspended 27 games for off-ice shenanigans, but can’t find the article.
 
Zetterberg was done anyway, his back was killing him, and yeah I saw that Wilson was suspended for domestic abuse. But Karlsson...two big trades this week, both from franchises that seemed to forget how to treat their franchise players.
 
Ottawa may the worst team of the past decade this year and won’t even have a top pick as compensation.
 
San Jose moved a lot of bottom line pieces to add yet another superstar to their collection of legit superstars, but Karlsson may very well walk. That would mean quite a lot of pieces sent away for no gain, but San Jose can survive that, and becoming an instant contender may even be worth it. Ottawa traded their one true elite player for a collection of players who might break into the top 6 on a weak team, but would be bottom 6 on any other team, and a 1st rounder that won't be very high up since, you might have heard, San Jose just traded for Erik Karlsson.

The winner here is Colorado, who just won a legit chance to have Jack Hughes.
 
Due to the conditional pick? That and IF they win the lotto. So sad what happened in OTT. They've put legit teams on the ice before, in 07 with Alfie as captain and as recently as 16 when they were a goal away from making the finals again. Incredible helter skelter with this club.
 
Well, the pick Colorado got in the Duchene pick was conditional, but they either gave them the 2018 1st or the 2019 1st...chose to keep last year's, which was dumb, considering they'd already made the choice to blow up the fucking thing.
 
Brian Gionta Retires. Will work with Buffalo Sabres.

Shea Theodore signed a 7 year 5.2M/year contract with Vegas

Seattle gets approval for a $700M budget for their building.

Season hasn't started yet and we're getting pretty wild news. Few things will top the Karlsson trade at this point, but still, Season needs to start! AH!
 
It's the first Saturday night since the season started, and you know what that means - Coach's Corner is back! Don Cherry was in fine form. He called Lars Eller a little shit for getting his face caved in by Brad Marchand, and blamed the guy Tom Wilson nearly killed for being nearly killed by Tom Wilson.

For those who don't know Don Cherry, here's his greatest hits:

 
Been watching the games that I can, recaps of the rest. Man, unless it is a game between two powerhouses (Pens v. Toronto, SJ v. Predators), the games are pretty slow going. Playoff hockey spoils a person lol. Toronto has been very exciting to watch, much more so than EDM since outside of McDavid tearing it up, they have little to nothing going for them. Same with the Bruins. Outside of their first line of Pasternak, Bergeron, Marchand, they haven't impressed much... yet. They have flashes and McAvoy is legit, but they need to up the secondary scoring if they want to make a deep playoff run.

Already plenty of articles hailing Mathews and Tavares the new Crosby/Malkin 1-2 punch. Everyone seems to agree McDavid is the best player, but even the analysts are taking Mathews over him based on TEAM performance. I was telling my brother Toronto has been setting up the pieces for a while and throughout the organization, not just the on-ice product. Yes, they got lucky literally winning the lotto to acquire Mathews, but they worked their ass off with their management, trades and other picks.

Edmonton on the other hand has pissed away not one, not two, but THREE #1 picks IN A ROW! 2010, 2011 AND 2012. Taylor Hall never found his footing in EDM and Tyler Seguin was a beast his three years in Boston and continues to be an elite player in Dallas, Hall is playing catch up now that he is in NJ. Nuget-Hopkins is a bust and Yukapov isn't even in the NHL anymore. McDavid was a no-brainer like Crosby, Ovechkin, Stamkos and Kovalchuk. They have a good coach in Maclellan (sp?), finally a legit #1 star in McDavid, a serviceable #1 Goalie in Talbot, but that's it. No D, no depth... It's going to take them a while.

Vegas is struggling. My brother said he isn't surprised, he expected it. I didn't, I didn't think they'd struggle this badly. Otherwise... no surprises so far. Well, just a frustrating one with Matt Murray getting his THIRD concussion. WTF? Richter retired after ONE. This kid isn't 25 yet and already has 3. So sad, hopefully he isn't a Dipietro pt. 2. Great potential, but always injured.
 
Toronto put a lot of this together with really smart drafting. A Matthews was nice, but he only accelerated their build; I think they would have still lured Tavares without him - considering they would have likely gotten Patrik Laine if they didn't get Auston Matthews.
 
I agree, which makes the state of Edmonton that much Sadder. They had decent teams in the early/mid 90s, but they've been struggling for decades. They're like the Canadian Islanders in that they have both been mismanaged and wasted picks.
 
Edmonton's drafting over the last 10 years has been really poor, too.

2008 - 12th overall - pick lost in compensation for the Dustin Penner signing, bounced around 3 teams to Buffalo, who drafted future Calder winner Tyler Myers (D).
2009 - 10th overall - Magnus Paajarvi-Svensson (F). Played parts of 3 seasons with the Oilers, putting up 58 points in 163 games. Traded to the Blues, ended up in Ottawa last year which seems to have been the coup d'grace on his career. Other players they could have had: Ryan Ellis (D, Nashville), Ryan O'Reilly (F, Colorado) - that's pretty much it. Garbage draft. Though Ellis would have been the #1 blueliner that Edmonton has been dying to find since Chris Pronger fucked the local reporter and got traded, and he was only picked 1 pick behind MPS.
2010 - 1st overall - Taylor Hall (F). Hard to make the argument that they picked the wrong player here, considering Hall's recent success (not in Edmonton). However, they could have had Tyler Seguin (2nd, F, Boston), or Vladimir Tarasenko (16th, F, St Louis). Really, the management of Hall was the worst part. When someone doesn't become a complete player until they leave your team...
2011 - 1st overall - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (F). In this draft, Adam Larsson was the top ranked European skater. Imagine if they had picked Larsson and then never felt the need to trade Taylor Hall. Nugent-Hopkins has been fine, of course, 313 points in 457 games, all with the Oilers, and is a career second line center. Of course, that's not exactly what you want with your 1st overall pick. This was another weak draft year, but do you know who went at #7? Mark Scheifele (287 points in 366 games). Or what about Dougie Hamilton (though his high museums-per-60 stat might have impacted him in Edmonton).
2012 - 1st overall - Nail Yakupov (F). This is the bad one, one of the biggest draft busts of all time. 350 games, 136 points, out of the NHL in 6 years. When we talk about 1st overall draft busts, the two markers are Patrik Stefan and Alexandre Daigle, and Yakupov is worse than Daigle, but he doesn't approach Stefan bad. This wasn't a deep draft, but some players who were available include Filip Forsberg (F, Washington), Morgan Rielly (D, Toronto), or perhaps Andrei Vasilevskiy (G, Tampa).
2013 - 7th overall - Darnell Nurse (D). Tried to get a franchise top pairing defenseman, got a stay at home top 4 guy. Rasmus Ristolainen, Ryan Pulock, and Shea Theodore were available. Ristolainen, who went one pick later, has been a great player in Buffalo.
2014 - 3rd overall - Leon Draisaitl (F). I actually think Draisaitl was a terrible choice. He's underperforming on his huge 8.5 million dollar contract already; the team was already supposed to be set at centre with Nugent-Hopkins, and his contract needs helped make Hall expendable. Again, the Oil needed a defender, but this year, none were any good. I mean that, only like a handful went in the top 3 (Ekblad #1 of course, but otherwise guys that haven't developed yet). But at #25...David Pastrnak. Imagine if the top line on the Oilers was Taylor Hall - Connor McDavid - David Pastrnak right now. Ugh.
2015 - 1st overall - Connor McDavid (F). Yeah, ok, they got this one right.
2016 - 4th overall - Jesse Puljujarvi (F). This was just before the Taylor Hall trade, and I honestly wonder if they already had the trade in the works, because they should have selected a fucking defenseman or goaltender. Mikhail Sergachev (who I don't want to talk about in depth, but went 9th overall and ended up in Tampa after Montreal traded him) and Charlie McAvoy were available.
2017 - 22nd overall - Kailer Yamamoto (F). OK, this isn't a super high pick (first pick outside of the top 10 since 2009). Suspect they will wish they picked a D.
2018 - 10th overall - Evan Bouchard (D). Maybe he'll turn out.

But seriously break this down. Edmonton could have had the following combinations:
Hall - McDavid - Pastrnak
Forsberg - Scheifele
Ellis - Ristolainen
Sergachev

I mean, those combinations would be enough to push the Oil into contention, right? They'd have to be?
 
Exactly, thank you for expanding on what I was driving at. Your last point, the potential line-up, literally made me get a drink lol. My head hurts from frustration, lol. I agree with the Stefan Daigle comparison for busts. Daigle at least had like a 12 year career, above average in length, but way below average on expectation. Oh well. Let's see how the rest of this season shapes up.
 
Sooo, majority Islander owner, Charles Wang, dies at 74. Sooo, I'm a huge asshole, because I literally felt nothing. Nope, I'm worse than an asshole, because I did feel something. Hope. Hope for a struggling franchise that might get a decent owner that can right the ship.
 
Charles Wang has always been in a hard place, I felt. We'll see if they have a Chicago-style turnaround on the death of the owner.
 
OMG! Watched EDM v PIT last night and it was everything TOR v PIT wasn't. It was FAST, HIGH scoring and a great Crosby v. McDavid duel. One of those games where the team with the best effort doesn't always win, but as the cliche goes, good teams find a way to win and the Penguins did. Not only that, their best players were their best. Crosby opened and closed the scoring (more on that shortly), Hornquist 2 goals and Olesiak surprised with 2 of his own. All the while Haglin, Malkin, Kessel created opportunities and pressured.

Of course this was billed as a McDavid v. Crosby bout. Old v. New. The player that USED to be the best v. the player that IS the best (according to media hype and interviews with the "old guard."). Crosby showed who is STILL the best with his two goals, winning more face-offs and being more defensively responsible. McDavid was great too almost scoring on a breakaway, getting a PP goal and an assist.

But that Crosby OT goal. Takes the pass from Johnson, keeping it by the boards, passes it to himself through Strome's legs and backhands it in. Showing Edmonton who is still the Alpha LOL. I really enjoyed the game if you can't tell hahaha.
 
Crosby needs to play better this year to keep his crown, I think. But he was disgusting, both of them were grand in this duel. I'd love to see more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top