travel_dude

I don't dispute the logic of a safe pick, but we have little in the way of high risk high reward players. I liked Raty.in the 2nd, but it's hard to tell yet if he will be better or worse than Stromgren. Wyatt Johnson was high risk because of the lack of games played. Coronato could still be better than him, but the early returns look good. One thing that has gone against us is the tendency to over-ripen prospects. It's not always the right thing to do. 2019 and 2020 pick and they would both start as Calder eligible rookies this season. We barely have any picks playing at the NHL level from 2017 onward. In fact we have but 2.

When has the safe pick worked for us? Coronato and Zary were safe. Both could have high ceilings but they appear to be middle 6 tops.

Wolf gets the 1-0 win tonight, so game 5 is Friday all tied up.

There is no good answer. If they do COL, the team will be mad. Pacific was the toughest division this year.

KC could probably use the existing one. But it's kinda close to STL. Yes, Houston makes sense, but you don't move all the top teams to one division. WPG is less of a contender and would fit in with the Alberta teams. Too many CDN teams in one division?

It's not just punctuation, it also depends on what you are responding to. If I was talking to someone that suggested a minor retool or a rebuild, I would start with minor. If you are contrasting costs, you start with the lowest if you are upselling, to show the little differences. Good, better, best. Music is funny. When they talked to John Lennon about the impressive use of certain types of notes, chords, hooks and such, he said it sounded good. English language is funny to. Some things sound right but are not correct. Write down or record a speech and someday someone may say it was brilliant for the use tempo or combining metaphors and letters. The writer may just have had a hangover.

To me, not in a rebuild state is that we haven't got to the point that most teams were at when they did one. If you look at our last one (perhaps really the only one), we were trading Iggy and losing Kipper. We had players trending down very rapidly and the state of of defense was shoddy. We are nowhere near that. Yes, we should have traded Iggy much sooner, much like trading Gio before we lost him for nothing. To me, retool is the proper narrative we should be using. And I agree with that. Major or minor is really the difference in opinions. As I have said, trading Backlund and Tanev and Hanifin is a good thing to consider. Two of them are due raises or long term deals or captaincy or short term similar rate deals. None are poised to be better. Backlund had a career year and we sucked anyway. I disagree about roster construction vs coaching strategy. It was a poor construction for a Sutter team. It may be poor for a FLA type team but we never played that style. We have to turn over the 4th line players we had (two at least). Dube and Mange are similar players, and both were not used properly. Toffoli is ideally a 2nd line player, not the first wave. A shutdown line with a former 30 goal scorer is stupid. Inconsistent 2nd line RW and playing Kadri with Hubie was dumb. So, out of this mess of lines and players, how do you determine who fits? The only way I can see is to keep one of duplicate players and trade the other. Use more than a poor pro scout to find the right players coming in. Heck, at this point I would trade Hanifin for Willie Nylander and Backlund for Vince Dunne. You are going to need floaters that can score.

Can't use the R word hehe. Really, we are not in a rebuild state. Our oldest players are the goalie, Backlund and Tanev. We are 2 years out before the vets get to that age. Even so, the vets can still be productive at that age. I really think that you need to trade the mentioned vets as part of a get younger campaign. Hanifin or Dube or Mange might have to go for the high value in getting a good player back.

KC or Houston. Likely KC though since Bettman wants to grow the game. Maybe Coachella Valley would be good choice. I can't see COL being the one to swap if it's Houston though. Top teams won't swap conferences.

So, I have to ask. Is Love the type of coach that would get more offense out of our NHL team or is he more of a Sutter type that relies on shot volume and play like it's a less skilled team? I don't watch the AHL games, so I can't tell you if it's like watching the Flames or just not having enough high end skill. The reason why I am asking is that there is a chance that he could become our new head coach, should the new GM go that route.

I think the only thing stopping Lindholm from signing today is the unknown about what the GM is going to build. You tell him that you are going to bring in scoring and have a coach build lines based on skill not bump and grind, he will be fine with it. Obviously, he was ticked that Sutter couldn't bear to have a line with the top 3 players on at the same time. And he's wondering if a coach is going to turn a decent middle 6 player like Jarnkrok into another Rieder with bad water.

I don't know he said young. Definitely looking for offense. Done with the 2-1 games and one goal leads/losses. Personally, I would prefer that we bring in a good GM who has good sense of the type of coach (and knows about them) and bring in Love as an A/coach. I know that may not be something Love would accept, but it would be the best way to integrate farm players. You can love or hate the last GM, but he was told to build a contender. That means you pay top dollar for UFA's and make trades that don't dip into your current roster. The Neal signing was probably the worst mistake signing that I can think of, but it was based on recommendations of who to target. Trading him for Lucic was saving the owners a bunch of cash and we didn't pay him to stay home. The unfortunate thing is that it's going to be difficult for any new GM to be able to evaluate the players without having seen them play. He would have to lean on the people that wanted specific players in the first place. Or wait until part of the season is played. Or review game tapes and talk to players about other players. That would be based on how they played under Sutter or with players no longer here.

The 5 game format sucks. They really dominated on the shot clock in the fist OT. Something like 19-3. Even had a PP. Daccord stopped 62 in total to Wolf's 51. Crazy.

I was trying to figure out how EDM ended up with the sad D-corp they played in the playoffs. Did a bunch of them catch something from drinking water and get pushed out of the lineup? Deharnais and Broburg? That's after Kulak and Ceci are considered top 4? Want a lousy goalie, just wait for TOR to not extend one. Or trade a bad one for a worse one. Anyway, a new GM and new coach will do wonders if we don't go dumpster diving. I like Brunette, but I think we wold need to remake the roster. Maybe not a bad idea, it was hard to get by having the 4th line we suffered through this year. It would be nice if a PTO was less born after we won the cup.

We have too many LHS used on LW. For me, the least value LHS we have is Coleman. He takes too many penalties for the type of team we are. He's using his stick when a guy like Zadorov is taking the head off a smaller player. Yes, I get that he plays with Backlund, but Dube is really the guy that was gettng the good looks. Coleman was garbage picking and mostly missing the net with his shot when he was on the rush. Also, I think Coleman is a completer piece, not a guy you need to play top 6 minutes. Thinling out loud, we have Dube, Coronato, Pelletier, Duehr, Ruzicka, and possibly Phillips to use im the bottom 6. None of those fits a Coleman game. And I just don't see running back the same top 9 as last season. Maybe we have the pieves, but they haven't found much magic yet. Sutter, I know. I hate the idea of only using bigger, slower players because it's the west. Hanifin and Backlund out. A defensive D in. Stecher maybe our 7th D. A decent sized C back to play 3C or 4C. The other spot is Ruzie or Pelletier, depending on which spots fit them best. I think Ruzie struggled at times on the dot, but his numbers were better than Lewis. Maybe Pelletier up the middle and Ruzie/Coronato up the wings. The other line gets Dube, the new C and Duehr perhaps.

Singh graduated from calling field hockey, IIRC. He's got a decent tempo, but gets a little highstrung. He doesn't always clue into what the reason for a stoppage is. Suggests it's a penalty when it's a high stick or something else. Not that all of the others on SN are that much better. Ball is decent. Douche from EDM is wound like a top. Anyway it's good to not have to listen to the love in. Could this possibly be Connor McD's best game ever? Silky smooth Draisaitl. Shooting mentality. McD is winding up and will not be enied.

We have one of the better rosters to bring in youth to "learn" and grow. Pelletier should have been on the roster by October, along with perhaps Phillips. We could have carried Valimaki instead of not waiving Lewis and Ritchie. We would have had options for a 3rd line or a youth 4th line. You only play Lucic when you need the nuke option. Pelletier-Ruzicka-Phillips(Duehr) Instead we get shredded with the 4th line out there. I laughed when SN talked about he Oilers shortening the bench last night to try for the tie. If it was us, we would have rolled 4 with Lucic.

LOL. I'm not sure, but I think he implied that their PP was gold so they only needed a couple of EV goals. To me that is saying you expect to get 3-5 PP's per game and know you will score 2+. That's the opposite of a game plan. You try to win EV and whatever PP goals you get just puts you over the top. They didn't get a PP goal so they didn't have a chance. I think Jay is a decent coach, but that's like saying you are a good player playing with Connor. The coaching mistakes were amplified by the sometimes poor performance of certain players. Anyway, suck it Oilers until next season.

What would keeping in Skinner have changed in the last two losses? I don't know if Campbell would have been any better starting any of the games. They didn't lose the series because of the goalie. He didn't steal the last two games for them, but they sure waited long enough to start scoring goals. 17 shots to 8 and they had a one goal lead? Sounded like Sutter score effect. Vegas came back and was efficient. EDM using the same two players to score and they weren't getting it done as a pair. A 5 minute PP in game 5 and they only get one goal? This after already losing Pietrangelo to suspension, so Vegas was not exactly stacked.

I found it interesting that the analysts seemed to think EDM was so close and just needed to run it back next year. That seems like they have no clue about the cap. I agree that they have two players that are elite when they play together. You can't touch them because they were very much like our top line last year. They know where a player is and will be. That implies one very good line there. Nurse is a killer to the team. Ekholm and Bouch are the pair that made a difference, but Bouch has a few years of steady growth ahead needed. Skinner is a study in a rookie goalie and how you can't just rely on them through a good stretch and all of the playoffs. Overall, neither him nor Campbell were enough on their own to make a cup contender. Played well then played like crap. You might build on their recent performance, but they are as likely to take a step back next year. Cap hell for them. Yamamoto is not even worth it, Kane didn't have a good 2nd half, and Nuge is a huge price to pay for whatever he is considered to be. 2C or 3C or 2LW. Not sure. I think Hyman is their hardest working F. Draisaitl looks lazy unless he is driving the net or one timing it. They need are-tool to go anywhere.

Have to agree. Seem to be playing for a low scoring result instead of giving Wolf 3 goal leads.

The way SEA seems to never go away would lead you tp believe the Pacific is the strongest. What happened to the mighty Jets and the venerable AVS. No team in the west seems to have completely figured out goaltending. So, it's not looking like best goalie wins the cup.

Makar soon will be here. Hall wore a Flames jersey as a kid. If half of the home town kids decided to come to CGY, there would be a roster of 50 or so.

Ya know I don't pretend to know what the refs are looking at. 2 feet away they miss stuff. They call phantom stuff and let go others. I don't like the call on the ice sometimes, since he's looking at the line from above or behind the goalie. TO has to prove it's not a goal, which is as tough as proving it was. So, as the rules suggested it was overturned because the cams showed no goal. Had to be more than a belief.

Gudas is one of those guys you hate to play against nd love to have with you. He's gonna cost you to sign. But the type is right. The age isn't helping.