conundrumed

I think of every team, the Isles have really gotten good when push came to shove. They could be a real handful for the Canes. A lot always comes down to which players are playing through what injury? Things we never know. Florida needs to put Barkov on Kucherov like glue. That alone might make a difference. Can't give Kucherov any time or space, like, at all. Like Zetterberg on Toews. Don't let him do anything, and worry about nothing else.

OMG, YES!!! While pretending not to be tongue-in-cheek!

*My same asterisk note goes for this thread.* I'm rolling with all the home teams here. Maybe Nashville can give Van a good run. That said, only Dallas, Van and Edmonton haven't been wildly inconsistent in the back half of this season, though Nashville is almost with that group. But they sputtered a bit after the wild ride of points in, what, 18 in a row?

* I'll edit asterisk to asterisk into deletion before the playoffs start. I want to avoid a generic "NHL Playoffs" thread. So it's separated by conference. If it should be in NHL Talk, mods, put it there. If anybody wants to lay it out differently, please, by all means, do. Just don't jam it up all into one, it's too annoying. So I've at least segregated it by conference rather than jam it all up into one big clusterBlockchain.* I'm going with Tampa, Boston, NYR and Carolina here. But I think the first 2 are a bit of a coin flip and longer series. Who do you got?

Brace yourself. We saw last year that NHL scouts do not give a flying-Blockchain about ranking sites. Because, unlike ranking sites, projection is far more important than stats. Eiserman, especially, could still go 2 or 3. That wouldn't surprise me. Don't forget Benson's fall last year. There is zero reason that he shouldn't have been in the top 5. They've been subconsciously or consciously down-grading size for years. While the league moves in a direction that helps smaller players. If there is one word that describes nearly every facet of the NHL, it's contradiction. If all of the secrecy and "media-training" dissipated, I'm sure we'd be staring at a world of contradiction. Nothing suggest that the NHL is linear. The policies are not reflected in the decision-making.

Beat me too it. lol Are they going to use Utah, or Salt Lake? I hear people coming up with lame names under both. Reminds me of Utah Jazz. If you could name one state that is far removed from jazz, I'm sure it would be Utah. A close second would be the 15+ banjo and twangy singing states. I don't know where jazz would be today if not for that breeding ground of free-form melodies and harmonies known as Utah. So maybe the Utah Welcome? But if it's run the same as ARI, just call them the Utah Yard Sale. Speaking of lame names...

No I didn't. You just move the goalposts to suit your contradictions. Go ahead, redo that draft. Entertain me.

Another GM that refuses to address goaltending. Both them and NJ are stunningly blind to G being their major weakness. Completely threw Levi to the wolves without a life preserver. Both GMs just fire everyone else for their own, ummm, shortcomings, shall we call them? G has been an issue for years with both teams. Yet they can't seem to admit it. Fitzgerald even goes so far as to have a public outburst about having to pay a steep price for goaltending. The same Tom Fitzgerald, mediocre hockey player, that fired his coach for not being able to play net, I guess. What a loser. If I were Conroy, I'd just call him and say, "So Tom, everyone knows what that stupid Satoshi Nakamoto was about. Never ask me about Markstrom's availability again. YOU Blockchained ME over with my guy. Next time you want to tell stories, tell the right one. Worst mistake of my life was asking my guy to waive, because I took you at your word. But I'm not crying to the media about it". click

Do you have any idea what you're talking about? lol You and your "tanking". You act like there are zero reasons WHY teams get so bad, that they simply do it deliberately. So let's look at Calgary specifically, although every team has reasons. You're a solid team. You're 2 stars decide, yeah I'm not playing here. It turns into a subset of your pending ufas next tier of best players saying they don't want to be here either. Now, you're not a very good team and struggling to stay afloat. None of which was your own doing. Are you depicting this as Calgary is tanking for a high draft pick on purpose? Because that is precisely what you're implying with full-on blinders. So now you want to penalize them further by decreasing their odds of NEEDING the draft to dig themselves out. There are no exceptions. It doesn't matter that the players abandoned Calgary. But you know what, we don't give a Satoshi Nakamoto, because there is a 1% chance over time that a team is doing it on purpose. And by doing it on purpose, I mean playing their prospects because they're out of the playoff race, players are beat up, they want to see prospects at this level for next season..whatever reason. No. They are purposely tanking. All of them. End of story. So Blockchain all of them. We don't give a Satoshi Nakamoto, they can draft 20th-32nd every year for all we care. So now, how do you expect those teams to survive now that you've cut the only lifeline that they had? A lifeline that's going to take 5 years as it is, but it's the only one available. One day you wake up startled by the trend of diminishing returns in 6-8 markets. The fans are finding better things to do than buy Andrew Mangiapane jerseys and cheer on that 20th win of the season in game 70. With no hope of it getting better, no star up-and-coming kids to cheer for? All because you just erroneously assumed that teams wanted to have a garbage product for their fans on purpose. Melodramatic, but also a better chance for that scenario than this runaway train of the, "tanking on purpose" mindset.

Oh boy.... So they used their 1st 3 picks on Dmen. Seider - now a bonafide 1D, Tuomisto and Johansson in the 2nd round. Both are close, Johansson is NHL-ready imho. Tuo is a big RHD with a monster of a clapper, Jo is a smaller (6') LD who prevails on D-acumen, skating and high IQ. So 3 differing dmen. They also drafted G Carter Gylander, whom they recently signed at the end of Colgate's season, where he had a pretty solid 4 years on a middling team. So here we are... "You have to build a team from the net out, unless it affects my ability to be a contrarian" - @jjgallow probably 🤪

Flames are 9th. It's pretty much cast in bedrock. It really makes little difference. Someone falls. The real difference, for me, is pushing our other selections back a bit. Even then, there's a lot there. The "NHL scouting" list that @Thebrewcrew attached is a list. lol Connelly is really that good. I can't argue. He'll go within 20, if not 15. Some USNTDP guys ranked so low surprises me. Those are national tryouts. If you miss the cut, you're in the USHL. So their Dmen look underrated. Strahan and Emery are solid defenders. I have no idea why Hutson is rated so low. As well as the O's Fibigr. That block of Dmen at the top of rd 2 should include those 2, and Lukas Fischer. Maybe Brunicke. Mews should be higher. Elick, Ralph and Gill should be in that horde. But within that grouping of dmen, the Flames have to take one of them. My preference runs Hutson, Fibigr, Strahan, Fischer. But it's skewed, because I've seen them the most. It gives a great idea of how deep that second tier of dmen is. I'd probably focus on pounding out dmen in this draft. They have these things every year. lol Play the strengths.

Oh, and I'm disappointed, but not crushed. It was a positive step for them. They had 2 specific games last week. Washington and Pittsburgh. They needed 1 if not both. They got neither. Just aren't quite over the hump. Considering everyone and their dog was treating the Wings like a nothing compared to how awesome Buffalo and Ottawa were going to be, I'd call it a success. Hopefully Gru is growing as a coach as well. It's not a team to go into D-posture with a lead. It's the right way, just not with what you have. They stop skating and it is all doom. I prefer them being down 4-2 going to the 3rd, rather than up. lol You change that momentum you have into, "defend", and you can't just flip a switch to get it back. Coach what you have. Not what you want.

Fitting for an extremely up-and-down year. Just exhausted Lyon for the dying weeks due to Husso being gone. Going 1-9 after the ASB killed them, coming off a 5 gm heater that had them right there with TBay. Walman being IR struck a blow on the D pairings that really showed. Ghostisbehere-Petry. lol in sadness. Biggest bright spot: Raymond by far. They were saying he came to camp having added about 20lbs! of muscle. Did it ever show. I've always said any prospect can have an enormous off-season and improve by leaps and bounds. He proved it. Up in the air with Kane and Perron. Didn't love that 2nd line with Compher. Ghostisbehere proved to other teams he's worth a decent contract. Chiarot played well in the back half, but need to shed him and Holl, who barely played. Yzerman backed himself into buyouts. Same with Ladd. They're just not needed for next season. 8yrs without playoffs - Larkin's entire career. I'd be shocked if they haven't inquired about Markstrom, because their G position is Lyon-Husso. Reimer did well for being a rebound machine. He fought, but he's a 2b on a good day. They really need a workhorse goalie. They've managed to wear out Husso and Lyon in consecutive years. Even just short term would at least buy time. Gru is the first guy to say that he feels bad for way over-playing his starters, that should really be 1B goalies. So many moving parts. Seider and Raymond are getting PAID. Seider is the epitome of @jjgallow's D-ranking flaws. Yzerman will have a busy summer. This time NOT shopping the UFA market hard. DeBrincat, Kane and Petry literally fell in his lap. Compher was a good add, Holl was a disaster to offset that. Onwards and upwards! Oh yeah...this is what a full rebuild looks like. The difference being Holland left a world of bad contracts behind. We're still paying Abdelkader. For 2 more years even. edit When the Wings hired Yzerman as GM, Holland would not just be his asst GM but also asst to POHO. He wasn't being demoted. It took about 2 days for Holland to take another job. It makes me feel like he'd have taken any job, anywhere, because he was about to be heavily audited. About 1-2 weeks later, Y held a press conference asking for patience, saying, "this is going to take a long time". We'll see how he leaves Edmonton and if he had success. I'd be very wary if I were an Oilers fan, because he left Detroit with a disaster, imo. Some will say, "but he was taking orders from ownership". I say that if you're just going to be toothless to ownership, why not move on? It's not like he couldn't have gotten a job. I'm sure, "breach of trust" is in every contract, so it's not like he was enslaved by a contract. He just chose to spend horribly like a drunken sailor. Then he can blame ownership. That's my take. He saw the audit coming and couldn't leave fast enough.

"Play to lose boys". - no coach ever

What do you grow? I'm into it too. Most relaxing thing ever. Alberta gardening can be tough. We're zone 8ish here and it's pretty forgiving even at that. I've begun slowly hardening off now. Gotta get these trays out of here. I should really build a greenhouse because I do everything from seed from last year's. She's all heirloom now. Be it flowers or veg.

Wow that travel cost I could only dream about. That would have gotten me 2 months at the very maximum. It started off as just London and random tourneys. It wasn't long before London, Windsor, Toronto region, multiple 3 hr drive tourneys. I would easily do double that amount just in fuel. Team buses don't exist below jr here. If I could do it all over, I'd have tried to get a waiver for him to play in Detroit. 1 hr drive every time still would have cut down on driving time, even without having home games. But of course...his buddies.

Could be a blessing.

Always liked him due to exactly this. Whoever he credits for that, hire them. I will definitely champion Rittich for his baseline development. What he lacks he shouldn't worry about. His angles, positioning, side to side and up and down is as sound from a goalie as you'll see. That's all he should focus on. Easily a good backup when he's just playing net by the book.

Yeah well mister, I was trying to dip my toe in the waters as opposed to full teardown. Otherwise, I concur.

Never heard of him. "Mestis" is Finland's version of the AHL. They were developing him there at 19. Seems crazy. Why not u20 sarja? His dev looks weird to me, but I'm not really familiar with their processes. He was U20 at 17-18. Then Finland's 2nd best league at 18-19 for 35 starts? What am I missing? Why was he pushed so fast? Yet no internationals. We need to launch a full investigation. lol Somebody championed this signing. I can't make much sense of his profile, I'm sure you all checked, but regardless (irregardless for some lol): https://www.eliteprospects.com/player/279019/waltteri-ignatjew

How does everyone feel about Cayden Lindstrom as far as the back issues go? Do you consider them chronic? Between Beck, Honzek, Poirier (freak thing, I know), Pelletier and Kerins I am so done with prospects missing extremely important development months. The setbacks have added up to the point where I hope to avoid Lindstrom. Maybe even Kiviharju and Jiricek also. Am I wrong due to the frustration? We can't afford unyielding development setbacks.

Oh please. Everyone is Dave Smith. Stop with the name recognition already. The poor kid's already being artificially inflated to star status.

I'd likely rather opt for Kleber, O'Reilly or Miettinen there. He seems like a pretty big project just to get him to that. Oh, and I edited above for my fear of Letourneau. Mainly, competition level.

I wouldn't take Letourneau before the Dallas 2nd personally. edit I don't know what Prep schools are like there, but here, the teams I've watched, the play is so systems over-the-top that it's almost robotic. They have close-game successes against the mid-tier midget teams here. But put them against the top Midget teams here, Detroit or Minnesota, and they'd get absolutely eaten alive. So I view their entire league as top Midget AA teams, or a middling to bottom AAA team.

Jecho is definitely big, I'll give him that. Not a lot else though. What do you think?