jjgallow

Yeah I am not overly concerned with what Conroy says, but quite interested in what he does. "Our assets have little value" is something he is unlikely to say nor do I ever want him to say , even if it's true.

"45% of players had never had an eye exam" wow lol. That is a cool study, thanks for sharing. Would not be surprised if 20 years from now vision is actually taught from a young age. Probably by another name.

This is why the best Oilers players always skate towards their own net

Often we see and hear about players who have great "vision". It's not well defined. But....I think it should be a major factor in rankings. Maybe higher than skating and shot. After all, best player to ever play the game relied almost entirely on this. I feel like some players have it and others don't. That it's not very teachable. Or probably more accurately, we don't yet know how to teach it effectively. If there are coaches who are exceptions to this rule, we should definitely hire them lol

100% Means nothing if you can't do 10.5 years

wrong time for sure yes.

There's that regular season "win now" mode kicking in. Hopefully he fully recovers. They're certainly not the only team in this boat. Usually by round 3, half the teams are on backup goalies.

I would be shocked if they get past the Kings. Even after that 1st game. I would be double shocked if they succeeded in the 2nd round. Even in that first game... you just don't succeed in the playoffs letting 4 goals fly by you.

man. Congrats to.... @cross16? If I read this correctly. I don't think I've ever been so destroyed in one of these before. I really should have read how the points system worked lol. I figured I nailed it. nearly got the (Flames) standings right. Correctly guessed they wouldn't make playoffs. But no nearly dead last lol 😅. Starting to wonder if I should have read the instructions

I would hope they are doing both scouting and analysis. My guess is they are. Lots of reasons to be optimistic right now. I prefer to be optimistic because of reasons, not for the sake of being optimistic. Right now, I am. In general, optimistic. And a tentative fan of Conroy (check back after the draft). Shoring up the scouting dept is big. The addition and serious scouting of Russians, as one example, is big. Not everything is perfect. our draft selection, and failure to trade Markstrom stand out as the big two there. Doesn't mean Conroy is a slouch because I have seen lots of positives that outweigh this. But there's also no reason to turn a blind eye to it. Pointing it out doesn't mean we hate Markstrom, or Honzek. Just means we are being honest and transparent. Because everyone sees it including you. And nobody's giving up on Honzek, nor should anyone here need constant reassurance of that. I think some people here just get low on sleep is all. This is as it should be and hopefully not a revelation for anyone here. Nor is it in any way relevant to who we should have drafted. Not even part of that conversation. Anyone we draft should be afforded time. Pretty straightforward. Let's keep that in mind when we take our top 10 pick this summer.

I personally think Sutter did amazingly well with what he had lol. As a coach, that is. But I'm equally bewildered by Ruff. Still wonder if we have staff or players to poach from Buffalo. Nothing really pops out for me other than Dahlin. Maybe Power? I was never a fan of him though. Komarov? amazingly i see very little that we need, other than their draft picks.

Yup. Don't get me wrong, I will be very cool drafting a D in the top ten. But we should be on this all the time, any way we can. I say we don't have an elite D prospect. But, what i mean, is a high probability one. We do have some potential surprises, like Brzustewicz. We just need more.

there's a first for everything

you guys are so mush lol. it's cute. When they draft Tij, I'm gonna make a Huge thread about how horrible of a pick it was and force you all to defend him lol

Well there's Fox and Hamilton 😅

my guess is 5-7. and I'm okay with that.

that's only because if we talk about anything other than last decade, the response is "way too soon to make a call" that's all fine but I remember your reaction to Honzek quite clearly.

dude Ortio is still NHL bound, just late bloomer. wait for it.

General comment: There is a lot of talk about how important it is for us to draft an elite D this year. IMHO, while that's possible, it should actually be more in this topic. The hard nuts of it is, we need to Acquire an elite young D prospect. Quite frankly, two of them would be better, if we set our sights a little higher. IMHO, the draft is only One way to do this, and if it happens that would be nice, but I really believe the focus at draft time should be "not screwing up". Because for sure, in that top list of D, there are more than a few future duds. We simply need to get the right guy. Whatever position. We need to get the guy that we think will go highest in a redraft 10 years from now. The need for an elite D is a Real issue, but I don't think it should influence the draft decision in any way unless there is a literal tie between two players. Of course D always imho should be rated a little higher than they are at the draft, but that's a separate convo. I feel like we should be looking at it like this: We should be actively pursuing an elite D. And quite frankly should already have them by now, easily before the TDL. We should be actively pursuing it instead of just hoping for the draft. If we acquire an elite D and then we get another elite D at the draft, great. Then we would have two, and something to get really excited about. We should always be looking to move players to get elite D prospects until we are good here.

The worst case is the Flames pull a Honzek/Jankowski. And based on recent history, it is also uncomfortably likely. Flames haven't got the 1st round right since 2016 imho. You can debate 2017, 2020. And that's totally fine, not looking for a fight there. But, the chances of them going completely and wildly off the board, are much higher than we'd like. Maybe in the 50% range based on recent. We are all worried about drafting Tij, and that's a debate for sure, but at the end of the day, I'm worried about drafting a guy rated in the 2nd round lol. We should all just lower our expectations a bit and pray that they do something reasonable with the pick.

I wonder actually if 2027 could be an even better year. Highly unlikely, but if any team does massively struggle for 2 years in a row you could end up the makings of a modern day dynasty.

They get the Russians and Swedes and destroy everyone.

I dunno. Haven't thought that far lol. But I think what you pay is a function of number of fans, not amount of stars. Obviously there is a relationship between the two. I would like to think that such a system would generate more genuine interest in the sport, and thus more fans, thus more revenue. I might be wrong. But I feel even in Canada there is room for a lot more growth.

Hamilton should happen. Do some limits, like one player a year. I dunno. I feel it could work better than it is now. How could it possibly be more unfair than shipping them all off to Edmonton to be slaughtered?

@cross16 alluded to this being something about nothing. I would say, maybe, something about something else. The reason the NFL and most leagues don't have this issue, is they don't draft 17 year olds. This whole convo is about the problems around bad organisations drafting kids. Raising the age would solve more than half the problem.