conundrumed

So are we signing Hanifin soon, or is it another BT holding off to the last possible minute to try to save a few bucks?

True dat, as much as I would regardless

I agree cross, that's a hard debate to have. You don't have the pick of the litter, because every one is in on it. One thing I'd like is a new goalie coach, which is something he can control. When I watch the work with goalies at camp, I find it lame. Take shots on him, that's pretty lame. "Okay let's work on your blocker clears", lame. There's a lot of downtime with the goalies. No reason. "okay butterfly, how many can you do in 2 minutes? When your gloves start dropping because you're tired, I'm ringing shots around your ears". Skate them hard. They have legs. Make the whole team go hard. The point is to make them better, not privileged I think we're mentally soft because we that's how we teach it. It doesn't work..

It's definitely a double edged sword. I think it's a no-win situation, and I don't mean that in a negative. You have to give your guys a shot. Bringing in a safety net still offers no guarantees. It's a rock and a hard place. We are at the point of giving Rittich a vote of confidence and hope it's the right thing. Bringing in another Eddie Lack shouldn't be the message at this point. We have to know what we have, and you'll never know if you're never going to show some faith.

Jesus man. We get it. Smith will be injured and Rittich will suck. Do you have another take?

Excellent job on the bolded Every player should be ranked by how many ems after H. Hmmm. Makes us fans.

If you're going to throw a stick, hit someone, for the love of god. "Did you just throw a stick at me"? Yes I did, and I have an endless supply. Go pout in the shower and stop wasting everyone's time. That's coaching.

Bringing in Lazar, last year's tdl bringing in Stewart? These are Hail Mary's, hardly an attempt at solutions. Wait another year, act all angry. Rinse, repeat. I won't forget how frustrating last year was. So done with building it up followed by excuses.

I have 1. My input is Lehtonen. Save your breath on why not. I don't want to be a hog, so who else?

+10. We don't know where the handcuffs are, but we can sure sense them. All that matters to KK and the owners is the playoff bounty, so I can only imagine where any concept of actually having a vision goes from there.

You mean you can argue? I agree we're better than when he was hired, but the goal is still at least be a playoff team. His proactive moves with the Hams and Brouwer were great fodder at the time but at the end of the day I hope he's learned it NEVER goes as planned so he has to jump on changing hats and being reactive occasionally. He doesn't want to and it's counter to his personality. For me that was hard evidence last year that you have to at least be able to meander through the forks in the road as they arise. I'm hoping BP is more of a hardass because every individual has to meet demands or there is no point saying nice things about them and being pals. They're very highly paid contractors. The whole, "it's about forging relationships" and GG's "emotional bank account" stuff...NO. The players need a boss and to be held accountable. Kid gloves amount to zero respect it seemed like to me with GG. Enough being, "cerebral" for me. It's about hard work. And yeah, lose it on guys playing dumb, lethargic or unmotivated. And don't take him aside for that, the whole team is held to the same standard. I really hope BT's 2nd coach is a lot more no-nonsense than his 1st one.

Yes. "Riding the hot hand" has to be one of the dumbest approaches in Pro Sports. It doesn't even make sense. It doesn't "come and go" or you wouldn't be getting paid millions. All this is, is being touchy feelie with goalies. Don't be. "I'm in a zone, the puck looks like a basketball". Good. Now get your Hash Rate on the bench and show me that in a coupla nights, it's not your start. Countless goalies have played better when they're pissed off. Keep them on edge. You aren't pals, you're running a hockey team. You always hear, "goalies are an odd bunch". That's another retarded view. They aren't. But they just had to focus for 60+ minutes while watching their bonehead teammates struggle to focus for 50% of their 20 minutes. Try that at your own work. Does it make you odd or right? Be tough on goalies, manage them like a boss, not a co-worker. Sure as hell do it with skaters. Hire the most belligerent old school goalie coach you can find. The goalies will be thanking him before long. No kid gloves. Trainers are there to make you better, not be your buddy. Of course in this age of, "oh my, don't hurt feelings", an old guy whipping his stick at you might be out of line. Which I know for a fact would be the case with Smith. <3 net lengths out, "yup, I threw my stick and I'll take the 2 because I don't have a goalie". "Seeing as you're here to stop pucks, how about you pretend you're a dman and I'll just take slapshots at you, seeing as you're good at stopping pucks and all". Point taken. After awhile of that, you really start to respect why someone is being so hard on you. And competition talks about the improvement.

4 more yrs of Ryan at $7.25; 3 more of Gaborik at $4.875; 2 more of MacArthur and Boedker at a combined $8.65. There's 25% of your cap on hot garbage. I don't care who the owner is, you're at a standstill waiting for bad contracts to go away. They have to trade a Karlsson just to sit and cry about what they have on their cap. Total devastation by mgmt. If I were Melnick, I'd go through the roof too.

That's poor mgmt practice if true though.

Now Hamilton having value has returned Hanafin and Lindholm. So that's worth watching, no saying they don't make us that much better. Having traded Hamilton, it is yet to be decided. If I say it was for Barzal, Forsbacka-Karlsson and Dunn that would hurt my feelings. But as you say, the likelihood that's how it would play out isn't realistic.

Regardless, it has to be managed. The alternative we seem to run with is every game is a must win and it has to be Smith. It would be nice to get away from that and have Smith max out at 60. No reason Rittich can't play 25-odd. You don't gain confidence in uncertainties by ignoring them. Rittich isn't Eddie Lack. He looked great as a backup. Gave him scant starts, Smith gets hurt and expecting him to go alpha is unrealistic. My personal opinion is Rittich deserves more credit than he's given. The skaters on the other hand...if you're going to be a contender, you win games in spite of goaltending. Occasionally.... Not, never. They have more to prove than Rittich imho. Good teams get good goaltending, bad teams that don't know how to score, notsomuch. Niemi won a Cup for god sakes. He's just as good now as he was then. 21 skaters definitely flattered him.

Like giving Familton a one way to watermark who gets one ways? Then piss and moan that everyone wants one ways? He wants to use benchmarks when it's favourable to him, but would like to forget his own benchmarks. It was that signing that kept Jankowski/Hathaway off of the starting roster last year. Freddie Hamilton on a 1 way

Hindsight is 20/20. We weren't supposed to be a lottery team. But again, our GM really over-rated our fwd ranks and did nothing to address it no matter how obvious it became. A year of struggles from Backlund and Frolik is really all it took for the wheels to come off, and that's not on them. That's more a GM having a rosy outlook that career years will come from everyone. BT says himself, "first and foremost, it's on me". He is 100% correct. He had no solutions when things were falling apart. When Plan A doesn't work, there's 25 more letters. I struggle to see that he even used a second letter. I'm all for patience, but not when the writing is on the wall.

He's yet to build a contender so he currently has a failing grade. Throwing picks for the Hams is fine if that's where you are as a team. But we weren't there so it turns into more filler in a wall full of holes. Why he didn't address the forward ranks earlier is beyond me. It was evident to EVERYONE that there wasn't enough skill here. He turned goaltending into a fiasco to the point BH is telling the media he's NOT carrying 3 goalies. It was obviously out of his hands. I think what will lead to his demise is he's too cerebral and too tied to known commodities. What I mean by that, is he overthinks solutions and the latest example of hiring a coach and bringing 3 of his players in (so far). Quite honestly, he has me scratching my head. We missed the playoffs last year because that isn't a playoff roster. Just consider how many games Smith won. If not for that, the Isles would have gotten one helluva pick. Time to stop glorifying what has actually been failings to the point he's now repairing his earlier paintings. He did a lot this summer, but we are definitely NOT automatically better, we only SHOULD be. If last year taught us anything, we just weren't a good team.

It's the way to go imo. Give Smith a milder workload over the first 60 vs the last 20. Tell him beforehand, I'm sure if you leave it open he'll take everything. Put him on a schedule.

If I'm a young player and my coach used to throw up 30-35 like this, I'm liking him. He knows what it takes.

He's a player's coach. You're allowed to make mistakes. He coaches because he played under great coaches. Kept the good, left the bad. He's likely the best coach in the league. Players can youtube him, he isn't asking them to do more than he did. He gets how things can go wrong. I think that's very important. He's really respected by his players.

Just watching Reaves' hit, I think I did too, lol.

Whaaat?

I'm 30 years from being a goalie, coached. In the 70's-mainly 80's, here's how it worked. Please please please don't be a 60 yr old with a buzzcut. It almost always was. Butterfly was all the rage so do 30 in 30 seconds. Up down up down. No? Dry land training, get out of my face. I recall, blocker work. Shot was a little closer to my body, so I reached across and grabbed it. My catcher went to the corner and I spent the whole time with my bare hand behind my back. I was 14. Where do I apply? Edit Mind you those musty old military pricks made me a goalie. I played everything and was athletic as all get out. Nobody could tell me anything. Goalie coaches, on the other hand...THAT was work. You work for your "atta boy". Trust me on that one. It rarely comes around, if ever. But we run with, "goalies are a different breed". Sure.