ABC923

Was hoping to get more details today. Hopefully this week.

I agree, I think we can afford to trade Brodie and Stone for picks along with one of Neal and Frolik, and fill in the gaps either internally (ie. Valimaki) or with UFA. Plenty of quality UFAs to choose from this year, so hopefully prices won't be too crazy.

On the bright side, they could go on a run and finish just below the cutoff, leading to a low probability of a draft lottery win.

I'd take a flyer on Talbot in the offseason. Could probably be signed for half of what he currently makes, and I think he's a good candidate for the next Dubnyk (destroyed by the Oil machine). I doubt they trade him to us without demanding more than he's worth (which is around a 3rd rounder imo). I would want him to clear waivers first before acquiring too, as for this season he would be third on our depth chart. He needs to get his confidence back playing in the minors maybe.

He'll be the goat like Talbot by this time next year. I'd feel bad for him, but how bad can one really feel for a guy making 12.5 million a year...

Oilers also placed Rattie on waivers. Some speculation they are trying to clear space for a trade, but it likely has more to do with Sekera returning soon. Still, what a mess of a franchise. If I ran the place, I'd clear house. All management must go. Then you do what you can to clear the stables. The oil have a lot of place-holder talent on the team that don't help you win. The Khairas, Spooners, Lucics of the world are the kinds of guys most teams have 1 of, and the oilers have 8. 8 mostly dead weights on the front end. Just get rid of them any way you can. If all you get to show for it are a couple of 7th rounders, so be it. Next, trade Nuge. Should get you a first. Chiasson has had an okay year, should net you a second and a third. Maybe trade Leon too, that should net you a first and a couple seconds. On the back end, get rid of Benning, Manning, Russel, and maybe Larsson. Those guys might get you a few picks. Keep McDavid and Klefbom, maybe a couple others. Tank hard for the next two-three seasons, sign some short term contracts in FA (maybe Hayes and Brassard for example) and hope things get better by 2022.

Conroy's name has been floated several times in the last couple years when GM positions open up. I'm not sure how important his current role is, but it isn't just the fan960 talking heads raising his name, so he must be doing something right.

Man, a decade of darkness as they call it, one year of hope, and now the beginnings of another lost season. I guess Quenville wasn’t looking for this kind of a challenge yet.

That would do it, thanks for the reminder!

There's been some ups and downs the last few weeks, but following a 3 game winning streak the heat are now 8-7-1, good enough for third in the pacific division. Here are your leaders. Goals: Rychel (7), Kylington (6), Graovac/Mangiapagne/Gawdin (5) Assists: Graovac (8), Kylington/Lazar/Mangiapagne (7) Points: Kylington/Graovac (13), Mangiapagne (12), Lazar (11) +/-: Mattson (4), Lomberg/Peluso (2) Shots: Foo (44), Lazar (35), Robson (33) PIM: Peluso (25), Gawdin (20), Lazar (14) GAA: Schneider (1.12), Gilles (4.55) Sv%: Schneider (.962), Gilles (0.856) Some standout performances should be acknowledged. First off, Kylington has really poured it on as of late in order to sit 2nd in goals and in a tie for the points lead. Very impressive considering he's a defenseman and was not really in the conversation for those ranks at the beginning of the month. The other big shout out goes to Schneider, who has backstopped the heat over the three game winning streak, putting up some impressive numbers. Gilles has brought his numbers down a bit as well, but in his limited showing thus far, schneider has greatly outshone both Parsons and Gilles. Not sure if one of those two guys is hurt right now, but Schneider is making the case to stick around regardless. On the down side of things, Mangiapagne has managed just 1 point in the last 7 games after a pretty solid start. Klimchuk has also really fallen off this year, with only 4 points thus far.

He just needs confidence now. He’s playing the right way imo at this point, just waiting for the dam to burst so to speak. He needs a puck to bounce in off his backside or something.

Ironically, I think the plan may have been too austere. Given that very few new facilities were going to be built, the price tag seemed quite high. I get that costs for refurbishment are generally large these days, but it feels like the value to people just wasn't there. 5+ billion for a new arena and facelifts on a bunch of facilities, plus a couple small infrastructure projects just isn't palatable. 7+ billion that includes more new facilities (Calgary Next maybe, new field house, Calgary West development) and more visible infrastructure benefits (LRT line to the airport?) might have had more support. And maybe some of these things were in the plan, but you know what? The fact that would be news to me speaks to the poor job the city did of selling the games.

Gilles currently has almost a 5 GAA and .85 save percentage in the AHL right now this season. Some of that is due to the weak defense on the farm this year, but those numbers don’t inspire any level of confidence. I’d stick with Smith over Gilles at this point. Again, Gilles is worse. If we want to send a message to Smith, that’s easy. Give Rittich more starts. I actually see some value in Smith, in that it takes the pressure off of Rittich by having Smith around. Rittich was great last season until he had to be the guy. Maybe as the season goes on, we slowly increase his start %, ease him into the starting role. He’ll become the starter, maybe without even realizing it at first.

So the city really wants to use McMahon for the opening and closing ceremonies again? Are they trying to embarrass us? I don't care how much lipstick you put on that pig, it's still an old pig. McMahon is like your room in your parents house. Sure, it's good enough for you. Comfortable, familiar, has most things you need. But do you really want to invite your friends or lovers over to hang out at your parents house when your over 30 years old?

So things have improved over the last week. Stockton is now 4-4-1 through nine games, good for fourth in the division. Trending the right direction. Here are the team leaders as of today. Goals: Rychel (5), Gawdin/Foo/Mangiapagne (4) Assists: Graovac/Mangiapagne (7), Robinson (5) Points: Mangiapagne (11), Graovac (10), Rychel (8) +/-: Mattson (0), all other active skaters are in the negative... Shots: Foo (28), Lazar/Mangiapagne/Rychel (21) PIM: Lazar (12), Lomberg/O'brien (10) GAA: Parsons (4.91), Gilles (5.08) Sv%: Gilles (0.846), Parsons (0.831) Defensively, the team is pretty bad, and the goaltending is not good enough to cover them. Offensively though, we seem to be getting some nice contributions. Mang is heating up a bit (4 points in last 3 games), and Rychel is showing to be pretty good depth as well. Graovac has also been a nice surprise (at least to me).

I don’t have a problem with smith not watching the footage. When a game is that ugly, chances are you just weren’t yourself. It’s not about tweeting this or that, so it’s best to forget and move on. i don’t however appreciate how he throws his team under the bus. ‘You can’t control some of the things in front of you’. He follows that up by saying it ‘to blame guys would be the easy way out,’ but is he talking about himself or his team mates? I get the sense he feels hung out to dry and that it’s not his fault he has terrible numbers. Even though that is true to some extent, it’s not like he’s been making a bunch of game breaking saves either. It’s a team sport; the defense does need to be better at preventing grade A scoring chances, but the goalie needs to stop them every once and a while too.

Through six games, the Heat are 2-3-1 and in 5th place in the division. Not stellar. Here are your current leaders: Goals: Rychel (4), Graovac/Foo (3) Assists: Graovac/Mangiapagne (5), Robinson (4) Points: Graovac (8), Mangiapagne (7), Rychel (6) +/-: Graovac (2), Watson (1)...Everyone else is zero or minus (Foo at -7, yikes!) Shots: Rychel/Foo (17), Lazar (14) PIM: Mangiapagne (8), Lazar (6), Graovac (5) GAA: Gilles (4.79), Parsons (4.91) Sv%: Gilles (0.852), Parsons (0.831) Those are some ugly goaltending stats...

The rest of the money is expected from other sources. I think the IOC has promised to kick in something like 900 million or a billion, and the rest was supposed to come from the private sector.

Next summer could be interesting. We don’t have any big salaries expiring, so space will need to be made for Tkachuk. Hopefully BT can unload Stone this season, and while I still think Frolik has game, he’s become expendable. That gives you the space you need for Tkachuk. Bennett is also up next summer. If he spends most of the year playing 4th line minutes, he will probably be lucky to put up 10 goals and 20 points. They will probably trade him for whatever they can get, maybe a 3rd rounder. If he can’t reach those numbers, I could see him not getting a qualifying offer and walking away. On the other hand, if he sticks to the third line most of the year we could see him turn in a typical Bennett season (15 goals, 30 point range), in which case we probably keep him.

We rag on our defense too much I think, and under appreciate just how bad we were at finishing last season. Here are the top five teams from last season for generating high danger scoring chances at 5v5, vs how they fared in giving up high danger scoring chances. 1. Rangers (30th) 2. Oilers (28th) 3. Penguins (25th) 4. Flames (8th) 5. Hurricanes (18th) So the Flames were one of the best teams in generating high danger chances, AND one of the best at limiting them. In fact, the Flames had the second best ratio in the league last year at 5v5. So what gives? Here of the five teams with the worst sh% in high danger chances last season. League average was held by the Rangers at 12.65%. 1. Coyotes (10.18%) 2. Penguins (10.51%) 3. Flames (11.17%) 4. Sabres (11.19%) 5. Canadiens (11.20%) The flames also had the tenth worst Sv% in high danger chances. Not catastrophic, but still points to goaltending rather than poor defense. If the flames were average last season, they would have potted between 11 and 12 more goals through the season while preventing 3-4 goals. Where things change is on special teams. The flames were the second most penalized team last season, so unsurprisingly we gave up more high danger scoring chances than most (4th most). That said, we still gave up fewer pp goals on the year than average, so we got decent goaltending and defense in that game state. The powerplay on the other hand was atrocious. Surprisingly, we generated the second most high danger chances on the PP in the league. Probably because we had more time to generate them, as we couldn't score (penalties end once a goal is scored, so not scoring extends the PP time). We had the third worst sh% on the PP, and the seventh worst high danger sh%. Long Story short, statistics say our defense is actually pretty good. We give up fewer chances and high danger chances than most teams. Our offense was also decent at generating chances. But the end of the day, it's goals that count, and the flames wiffed on those chances at a much higher rate than most other teams.

Andersson yes, Rittich not yet. Havent been able to watch the games, but it seems like defense has actually been pretty decent. Not many shots allowed, chipping in offensively, etc. Hanifin sounds like he is adjusting pretty well too.

So, Sam Bennett, the new Sven Baertschi? Plays minimal minutes on the fourth line, never scores (never on the ice after all), eventually traded for pennies on the dollar and maybe has a career somewhere else? Looks like it.

I'm not a fan of Calgarynext. Never have been, never will be. Not in favour of the Olympics either. But if we must have the Olympics, CalgaryNext makes a whole lot of sense. The land is there to create the entire Olympic Village centered around the facility. Are we really going to hold the opening ceremonies in an uncovered stadium again, let alone McMahon? That would be embarrassing as a city, but I don't see anywhere in the budget for a major upgrade on that facility. McMahon is fine for us local schmucks to go watch the stamps, but it's not a place I want to parade out for the world to see. Calgary Next gets us the facility to hold the ceremonies in, and maybe could double as an event venue. You could possibly build a new cross-country ski trail system along the river that ends in the stadium or something. We would get the field house, upgrade the transit system over there, get affordable housing built (olympic village), and leave a real legacy. The plan as is nets us upgrade on current facilities at only marginal savings over building something new. If we are going to do it, if we really must, let's do it right. So here's my suggestion: Have the federal, provincial, and city governments split the land remediation 3 ways. Get the Flames to pony up a bit more money (I think they were low-balling anyway, could probably get them to pitch in closer to 500 million total), and get the thing done right. The city could wind up paying as little as 1/3 the cost for CalgaryNext if they played their cards right.

Why not the west village? 1 billion+ tax payer dollars, that’s why. Even worse during a recession. Sure, it was meant as an opening volley, but it was an amateurish move by the flames. Let’s say you are a car salesman. You want to sell a vehicle to a customer, and the lowest you will go is $25,000, and you know the most you might be able to negotiate is 30,000. Is your first offer to say the car costs 35,000, or 100,000? One starts an honest negotiation, the other causes the customer to walk immediately. As far as the Victoria park proposal goes, the flames want the city to pay 2/3 of the cost upfront, with the flames contribution being paid back to them over 30 years of waived rent payments. In essence, the flames don’t pay anything in this scenario, they just front a 30 year loan to the city. In exchange, they get a brand new building to play in for free, get to raise ticket prices, get all revenues from concerts and other events, and likely start lobbying for another new building in 20 years or so. Oh yeah, and the owners are looking to make a killing in real estate by building condos around the new arena wherever it winds up. Probably one of the reasons they wanted west village in the first place, as the land there is relatively undeveloped and would come at a lower price, thus increasing profit margins.

Are there any goalies that have improved under Sigalet? Any that have tread water at least?