conundrumed

I was working with one of Iggy's buddies since childhood. He wasn't lying because I accidentally interrupted a conversation on his truck speakerphone. lol He said, "say hi", so I did and that was definitely Iggy saying "how's it going" back. He said, "I'll give you a call back, this stupid Lames fan (he's an Oilers fan) is going to give me more bad news", which was absolutely correct. That job was a nightmare for them, I was just the messenger, so it was fun for me. Biggest make-work project I've ever been on and that's saying something. There's been many. He told me leaving Calgary was a massive relief for the Iginla family, as the fame had virtually made them house-bound. Take that for what it's worth, but I definitely believed him. He said it's not public knowledge, and no way did Jarome want it to be. But they were really happy to find anonymity in the US. He was with the Avs at the time.

That's a negative. The Oilers overtaking Van would be much better for our Van pick. Unless, course, you wanna pick high 20's vs low 20's. Nux win the div, we get no better than 25th. Lose the div to the Oilers, we're talking 17 to 24 if they lose the 1st rd. Likely more towards 24, but just cheer any team with more points than the nux to also lose in the 1st rd. 20th oa works for me. It would take a lot, but I can dream about it. Last night's results totally sucked.

No question they were clearly outmatched once BC got rocking. Suniev had some nice chances. Big body and great skills, not a lot on that team to help though by comparison vs that stacked monstrosity. Decision time for him and Sergeev. Particularly intrigued if Sergeev makes the jump. Have to assume there's a big hole at G in the A next season.

Currently watching him now vs BC in the Big East semis. 1-1 in the 1st. UMass starting a 5 min PP.

Currently 1st oa in the OHL for assists (77), T1st amongst Dmen in pts (90), T9th oa for pts. I guess, maybe, I should bring up Quentin Musty leads the league in pts/gm at 1.84 in 50 games. He's missed 15 games, or he might be leading the entire league. 50games, 39g/53a/92pts. I may have been really wanting to select him at 16th oa last year.;) Hate being that guy. lol

I don't care about any of that. Van NOT winning the division helps our draft position. Don't win the div AND lose in rd 1, even better. Wildcard teams for Conference final!! Knock that pick up!!

Sorry to offend everyone, but I am wholeheartedly cheering on the Oilers to overtake the Canucks. Making our Saturday game vs said Canucks a must-win. Make it so!! Get us to pick 24!!!!

Is there a Russian RWer, alive today, that doesn't shoot left? lol Is that not allowed in Russia? /s

Well now you're changing the rules. lol Byfield is a known quantity. I would sing like a bird as I traded our 1st and 2nd for him. And a Mangiapane if they wanted a player back. Markstrom with a retain?

You may want to stream some Kitchener Rangers games. I wasn't too high on Brzustewicz last year, but he's really worked on his D game - the O was always evident. This D+1 year I can really see that he has worked on his D game, and it hasn't affected how he drives offence by much. Further, media is nasty. He says: "I think Calgary will be a great opportunity". They twist it into: "He wanted out of Van because he knows that he'll never get a chance with our awesome D depth". It's laughable. I can make a solid argument that he's ahead of Willander. Any idiot can see that the difference between the NCAA and OHL only favours the NCAA by a little. 40 games there, or 70+ in the O more than makes up for that at 18-19. Both are on pretty loaded teams. Willander is about .8ppg, Bruce is about 1.25. Willander is a +24, Brzustewicz is +32. The difference is seriously negligible. I seriously doubt Conroy had an easy time including Brzustewicz. The potential that Van made a mistake is real. Currently, their media is throwing everything at downplaying Brzustewicz. Don't let the 100 pt OHL dman thing get in the way. lol Especially when his D game has really picked up.

I have a big enough problem just separating even #1 from 20. lol Let's look at the 2020 draft. 1. Lafreniere 2. Byfield 3. Stutzle So moving along, 4. Raymond 6. Drysdale 9. Rossi 10. Perfetti 18. Mercer 42. Evangelista 58. Lohrei So only Stutzle currently shows a greater impact on your roster. The rest are very nearly interchangeable to your needs, adding 1 skater to 17 others. The only value of looking at re-drafts, for me, is seeing that position isn't all that important. Getting lucky with developing 18yos is really just luck. All and any could go sideways. So if I were offered 4th oa for 3 picks in the top 50, I'd laugh at you. 1 big bullet can still miss its target. 3 smaller bullets, miss the target, you've got 2 bullets in the chamber. To use an analogy, of course. Would you trade Perfetti, Evangelista and Lohrei for Byfield? Another way to look at it. Drafts consistently prove this, so why get hung up on pick #? Just get as many as you can. People get sour on trading down, but it gets you another bullet, and those rankings that you're following are NEVER correct in hindsight, so why give them authority in the present?

I just like framing it that way rather than by round. From 1-10 you should get an A+ prospect, but after that there isn't a significant drop off until around 50, usually. Getting a 1st rd pick at 26 is virtually no different from having 45th oa as far as drafting potential goes. Can argue it's 1-15 or whatever, but the back half of the 1st rd is near identlcal to the entire 2nd rd for potential. So I prefer blocks of about 50 best 18yos in the world after the 1st 10, rather than thinking within blocks of 32. Can look at Zary as an example. 24th oa. Afterwards you still have Evangelista at 42, Faber at 45, Lohrei at 58, Cuylie at 60. Good players that are good prospects in between them, so really not much of a drop-off talent-wise. But of course the hockey gurus would have called taking Evangelista at 24, "a real stretch". And that would falsely raise the fans' ire, rather than being realistic. Because clicks.

Just to bring this thing in, if both picks are between 11-32, MTL gets the better pick. If Calgary's pick is within 1-10 and Florida's is not, MTL gets FLA's pick. The other sub-scenario is dead. FLA's 2024 protected pick to Philly is Philly's, FLA's pick isn't top 10. So we have a 1st rd pick next year no matter what happens from here on out. The worst scenario is picking 11th while FLA wins the cup. We'd pick 32nd. The mgrs meeting should think about addressing just how out of hand *conditions have gotten.

Just to frame it a bit differently, we'll have 3 picks in the top 50 and another at least 2, maybe 3, with as many as 4 in the 50 to 100 range. A good player always gets pushed down a bit. A good forward if teams start panicking into a D push. I can see that happening. Just a question of when the 2nd dman goes after Levshunov. I could see a run on Dmen 4 to 6 deep. Likely before our pick.

In that range will likely be Hage, Lucas Petterson Kamil Bednarik Luke Misa whose brother Michael with Flint will be a hot commodity next year Sacha Boisvert ...for starters. Atm I like Bednarik as a guy that's pretty consistently solid at everything but not great at any one thing. Another high IQ guy. edit But Hage I'll be able to watch next year without the eyepatch.lol Big Ten Network is a part of my cable package:) Great semi-final games btw. Michigan @ Michigan State final this wkend. My bar/recroom will be full. I can't hate on Hage for committing to my U of M boys, fu state. We're about 50-50 between those 2 in these parts. More McGroarty, more Brindley, less MSU hype. Suck it Lansing, Ann Arbor kicks your Hash Rate at pretty much everything.

Nope. lol But Liam Greentree's looking pretty shiny for a RWer on an atrocity of a team. I'm not too worried if we're 8th or 16th. The drop off really isn't dramatic at all. Zack Benson (inexplicably) fell to 13th oa last year and is well on his way to playing the entire season with the Sabres. Most drafts teams make you scratch your head, I'm sure this one will be no different. Anybody feel like a 20 yr old in rd 7? Gazizov from the Knights. I expect the Leafs. lol He looks like a late bloomer. Exceptional puck-handler. Last draft. Camp invite would undoubtedly be Toronto or Detroit. It always is. Might be worth a late rd stab in the dark. But they also have an intriguing 3C in Sam O'Reilly. Likely a "safe" pick that everyone loves(/s) in rd 2 or 3. Not getting the stat-boosting icetime. Doing the grunt work. Adjusting to C after being a Dman most of his life. He'll be a solid pick for someone I'd wager. Great defensively, go figure. Plays big and aggressive, though. Likely a big role at C for the Knights next year. He's in great hands for dev. I'm way more intrigued with what we can do after the first pick. There's always good underrated depth in rds 2 & 3, regardless of how strong/weak drafts are treated. That stuff is more about high end "potential". Things that don't always work out.

Pospisil is an almost ideal middle 6 RW. You need the guy that everyone hates playing against but wishes they had. He creates space for his linemates while annoying the crap out of everyone. The real fun is that he's only going to get better at it. Mangiapane is an adequate placeholder, so no rush. Kuzmenko is a snipe but I'd likely lose him first due to little else in his play that is worthwhile. Coronato just needs an offseason training year. She ain't 30 games a year anymore. He's going to be a great RWer, just takes time to adjust to zero down time during the hockey season. In the meantime per Mangiapane, Parker Bell is a prospect that I just can't stop liking. 6'5" doesn't hurt either. lol Still have Honzek too if he is more than constant IR some day.

I'm not sure how to coin it, but just a different build works for me. He has Huberdeau, Kadri and Weegar longterm so not much to do about that but work with it. It's only 3 players, and they aren't a downfall by any stretch. Conroy stated he wants big and fast so you can see already that those elements are being added with Sharangovich, Pospisil and the D prospects. Not taking some plug's lousy contract back to elevate the pick for Tanev, as was rumoured, is tidy work. You can't be mixing mud into your paint, so to speak, it Blockchains your palette up when you need a clean slate to work with. I'm still a little reticent with the $9 for Lindholm and $7.5 for Hanifin extension rumours, if true. Our roster was so capped out yet nothing but vanilla. Like biting into an avocado for the first time after everyone has told you how awesome they are. I had no idea about Pospisil, but that kid has bite. As does Zary in a different way, as his bite is more often than not making the right play. Give me a roster of high IQ guys that make the right play and I feel you can get away without superstars. Smart players can frustrate them. It's pretty much a game of limiting mistakes.

Nightmares of Feaster and that other bloke thinking they're 4D chessmasters is a thing long past, but not forgotten. Conroy knows why he has scouts working for him. He even mentioned his pro scouts just kept feeding him Russian dmen so that's how it happened. So he knows that his scouts know way more than he does. He'll be a great GM, simply by letting those around him do their jobs and give him solid intel. He trusts them, obviously. There are no greater employees than the ones that feel wanted and needed. Let me maybe point out some huge positives: 1. He's added solid pieces to our pro scouting staff 2. Took advantage of expiring contracts to alleviate the cap hell, respectfully towards the players, while not taking pointless contracts back 3. He has begun giving the amateur scouts more ammo, so they feel re-invigorated. This one, I know it's true. So now we've built up a respectable D prospect pool, have $19mil in cap space for next year, and have added a healthy handful of picks at top 100ish range. Add in some come uppance of Zary and Pospisil, perhaps Wolf. The great add of Sharangovich, return of Kylington, Weegar flexing, it's looking a lot better than the disaster that we were likely surmising. It's fun watching Conroy making it his own style and front end staff working as a team.

Well said. Clearly time to give him the ball. Should have happened with Markstrom's first injury. Wins and losses don't matter. Him getting a workload is way more important than draft position. If he goes 10-0, great. We need to know. If he gets lit up, put him right back in. We're past the point of being shy with him. We're growing a team and he has to grow with them.

It must be nearing April and time to get hung up on draft position and the importance of having as many, "can't miss" top 12 picks as we can muster. Until we select Zadina and Kravtsov. Then we forget any of that ever happened and clamour for more top 12 picks in the following years. Then there's the Wyatt Johnson, David Pastrnak, Brock Faber, Luke Evangelista, Jordan Kyrou, Tage Thompson, Brandon Hagel...I mean, those 18yos past about pick #15 almost never work out. But Lafreniere, Wright, Slavkovsky, Dach, Bennett, Juolevi, Turcotte, Kotkaniemi...those guys are going to be bonafide perennial all-stars, just wait and see. Sorry for the sarcasm, but let's not get carried away that we absolutely need to pick within x and need as many picks within x to guarantee success or have a 82.7% chance of it working out. They say 78.4% of statisticians hate their job so much that they entertain themselves by seeing how many people buy made-up ones if they mix them in at 42.6%. The only accurate dataset I've ever seen regarding anything is that if it's raining out, there is a 100% chance of rain. If it's not raining, I've seen 80% chances be wrong. lol Data out is only as good as data in, which never accounts for everything. My one hope is maybe let's pick ahead of St. Louis. Their draft history beyond the top 15 is as good as anyone's. I don't want them in the way!! Beyond our 1st pick, there is quite a bit to be intense about with our Van and rd 2-4 picks. There's a lot of 17yos not getting the stat-boosting reps because older players reduce them to 3rd line roles at this point in time. That's where the scouting happens. There's a specific big LD that I see a lot that I hope everyone hates that I quietly want us to take with maybe Dallas' 2nd rd pick. He's on a terrible team that might be local to me and a great kid/athlete...he's hiding a bit, but he's in this write-up which is decent: The Sting are awful. don't bother scouting us...

Conroy-Stillman was 2000. Fleury was traded for Reggie at the '99 tdl. I had to stretch it out to get everyone in '98.lol Bah I screwed up, no Savard until '99. Andrew Cassels is a big step down!

Well, how about the, "what could have been" 98 Flames? St. Louis-Savard-Iginla Stillman-Nylander-Fleury

I agree, that part gets me too. I worry with O-minded dmen that having them grind away fixing their d warts affects why you drafted them in the first place. One thing that I place the most importance on is skating. The skating is so high end now that avg and "needs work" is about the last thing that I wanna see. Though Mickey Redmond made a couple of great points. One, the speed is why you see a lot of injuries. Flying around with danger out there, everywhere, is how he explained it. That, and why don't they call charging anymore? Only boarding when the recipient is vulnerable. 4 steps to crush a guy used to be charging. They've pretty much done away with that. She's a dangerous league and you have to be great on your skates anymore. The skating and puck control at speed just blows my mind these days. One bad pass and it's gone in a second. Go chase them.lol I chuckle at some PP commentary. By the time they've said a 3-syllable name there's been 2 passes and it's in the net. We need auctioneers and carnival barkies.

You're going to like what you see. Detroit drafted his older brother Shai, 36th oa. Both are at Denver. Zeev was on that great U18 team last year (Dec. birthday). He's a very good skater and dogs pucks noticeably well. Great passer and rushing dman. He doesn't have a great shot but makes up for it with his passing and being deceptive. I think I'll end up with him around 10-15th oa. The downside is his D. He's a pretty good defender, but it'll need work. He's not physical at all, but makes up for it with puck movement. He's close to Dickinson due to his play with the puck. Heavier competition but stacked team, like you say. Yet he gets top minutes as a freshman, so that deserves recognition. He really makes things happen pretty consistently. Yet another product of Shattuck so good dev path. As they say, "you can teach defence", but I'm more of the mind of goading offence out of solid defenders that are great skaters. My preference is at fwd with our first 1st, but Buium wouldn't be a bad pick at all. Dickinson is the only Dman I'd want that high though. If Zeev were drafted last year, which is actually his age group, he'd have likely been a mid-late 2nd rder, so bare that in mind. Can maybe consider EJ Emery (Ray's kid) with Van's 1st if we're D-hunting at that point. RHD that plays a shutdown game with size and dad's aggression gene.lol Maybe he's even there at our 2nd? He's currently Cole Hutson's safety net partner for the US U18 team.