conundrumed

A 10-0 drubbing over Muskegon. But always a fun experience. I have no idea how you create separation between Will Smith and Oliver Moore at the draft table, I'm going with Moore. The separation for me is first and foremost skating. He explodes wherever he's going. Smith's skating is decent and his edges are above avg. It's at the dot and defensively where Moore comes out ahead. He harasses the puck all over the ice. He's so much faster than everyone else that the opposition is always on their heels and he forces bad decisions. Neither will be there with our wonderful goal of picking 15-16. Ryan Leonard could be, and would likely be a good pick. I'd compare him to maybe Wyatt Johnson. Good shot and works hard/physical. There are a lot of players in that range though. I'd likely want Brindley in that range. He's somewhat hidden in that lethal Michigan roster, but he's also similar to Moore. Fast as f#$%. I'm a big fan of guys that can play at elite speed.

Lomberg was the guy to keep. Hathaway was due to $$$. The annoying part of Lomberg is he was found money by BT. He still plays for league minimum, he was your guy and you gave up on him for zero reason other than what? you wanted him to be a 2nd line guy? I love 4th line players. They're so important in the playoffs to give your stars a rest, to motivate and to chip in on occasion. Having said that, outside of Lewis, our 4th line is 5th liners. Lomberg is fast, hard, annoying and the biggest cheerleader in the league. Our 4th line would be different. A great success story for BT. Just not for us, he's Florida's fan favourite. Maybe they trade with us as a thank you card. Lomberg, then Bennett, then Tkachuk. They took all of our gritty players. Yet we keep trying to play a gritty style...

Man did I mess up. All of the NCAA finals tonight makes me uncertain about Plymouth tonight. dammit!!??!!

Harvard gets past Cornell 1-0 in OT on a goal by Lafferiere in their ECAC semi-final.. It wasn't an exciting game. They will play Colgate in the final tonight at 7:30pm EST. Colgate pulled off the upset over 2nd ranked Quinnipiac 2-1 in double OT. A win tonight and Harvard goes to the Frozen Four tourney(highly-seeded) for the National Championship next weekend. A loss and they await Sunday's verdict on the 10 invited teams. Due to upsets that have already occurred, I suspect Harvard will get in, but a much lower seed. The selections are made at 7pm EST. 6 Conference champs are automatic, then 10 more invite teams are selected. April 6th are the Semi's, 8th is the Final. Should Harvard not get to the final 4, Coronato's season is over March 26th. If I'm a betting man, they won't be in the final 4, but it depends on the bracket. Here's a list of Conference Finals today with National Rank(Top 20) in parenthesis: ECAC Colgate(-) vs Harvard(6) AH Holy Cross(-) vs Canisius(-) CCHA N. Michigan(-) vs Minnesota State(12) Hockey East Merrimack(14) vs Boston U(5) NCHC Colorado College(-) vs St. Cloud State(7) Big Ten Michigan(4) vs Minnesota(1) If you like underdogs, Colorado College(13-21-3) has/have dispatched of W. Michigan(9) and last year's champs Denver(3). The Flames just have to get in.lol

This can definitely be the price of fame when you are constantly under the microscope. I couldn't imagine a life of constant criticism. The continuing saga of, "they're not robots, so stop being an Hash Rate"... https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/oilers-defenceman-slater-koekkoek-details-struggles-with-anxiety/

Vrana for a 7th rder might have been fun. Lighting it up in St Loo. But Sutter would pressbox him for a missed D assignment...

Wow. I was actually joking about her name. Flames fans, be better. Blaming his wife is trashy. Frank Seravelli is trashy. He represents everything that fans should hate about talking heads. Stop following anything he does. He's a clickbait piece of trash. There is a reason he can't break a trade anymore, no one wants to talk to him because his ethics are toilet-level. So now he's the National Enquirer of hockey journalism. He's an attention whore.

On the plus side, I always complained that I kinda had to cheer for Tkachuk. Now I don't have to. JG married a girl named Meredith. Has anyone ever had success with Meredith's? The name itself comes with certain connotations and implications. If it were a Jane, Sally, Louise, Charlotte or names like that, this would have never been a problem. I'm kidding in case anyone is taking that seriously. 5-0 Sting halfway through, that's all that matters.lol

Might not be a bad plan actually. A better plan would have been Nashville's. Gather up picks for players. That seems to have sent a message to their team just fine. "The red-hot team is 7-2-1 in their last 10 games, as the injection of youth following the trade deadline has made the playoffs possible". Imagine that...

Lousy way to get a torn ACL, hit a rut in the ice. Nobody around him. I'm cheering against the Rangers the hardest. I get that players "earn" the right to choose where they go. I don't have to like it. I may as well cheer on massive upsets for fun. I'll be disappointed.lol

There are really no examples of star Russians not coming to play in the NHL. Especially now when all of their heroes have done it.

No. Russia and the NHL don't have a transfer agreement so they hold the rights indefinitely.

Carolina minus Svechnikov for the season.

I'm positive that we can get some good prospects up front and hidden gems in later rounds.

They'll look at his contract and forget that almost every prospect takes 3 years minimum. Developing in the K or SHL is better than the A.

Went to bed after the 1st thinking, "I'm not staying up until 1am for an OT loss... But Keller's 2nd goal via highlights reminded me of how his edgework reminded me of Gaudreau in Keller's draft year. *don't look at his skates don't look at his skates* "dammit I looked at his skates". Not gonna harp much on the loss. Just get out there and play river hockey. Nothing left to lose. Just have fun and be entertaining, it's been 65 games of watching misery-on-ice. Deploy this method Sutter

Bare in mind tankathon's rankings aren't great/are older. He's ranked 4th due to fear I think. So he may drop from there. How far who knows. But it will have nothing to do with hockey skills. He's the closest thing to Bedard imho.

Close game, sloppy sloppy.

Do NOT mess with Imama.

I cling to the 1%ish chance that we jump 9 or 10 spots in the draft.lol If not, I hope we don't play the common consent game and just "reach" on Nate Danielson. He'll likely be ranked around 20th.

*cough cough* What? Our chances of beating out Nashville aren't even okay. We're a .500 team and have been for a long time. Not like we didn't have our chances and blew them already. I applaud your positivity.

Well, got tix for usntdp for Saturday. Couldn't resist. $US12. They're having a record setting season so gotta see them once this year!! They've only got 2 games left. You can watch any of the 5 Nations Cup games from their site if you're bored. In case you didn't know but wanna see a bunch prospects and top prospects. https://www.usahockeyntdp.com/watchfivenations

The lottery is teams 1 through 16. The chance at #1oa ends at the 11th place team at 3% chance. The chance to move up is 2.5% at 12th, 2% at 13th, 1.5% at 14 and 0.5% at 15 and 16. Here's a probability chart if we finish 14th. https://www.tankathon.com/nhl/pick_odds

It's more than that. The kids leagues are insane in Minnesota, add in the many private prep schools that focus on hockey. Think of the US' football-crazed states like Ohio where the high school fields are way nicer than the CFL, then think of applying that level to hockey. That's Minnesota, and why I can never hate the Wild. Every year, there are more NHLers from Minny than any other state. You could treat Minny as a country and they're probably top 5 in producing NHL players. This tourney is like the movies where the old guys are put on a pedestal for winning State in 1978. For these kids, it's exactly the same. Which brings me to a humourous interlude. I saw this folk singer in both Calgary and Edmonton. He's typically not this "country"...but his shows are typically 3 hours because his stories are endless between songs. Highly recommended.

For the many line combos we've seen, all I ever asked from the outset was Huberdeau-Lindholm-Dube. So now I'm just bitter. So let's do this.