travel_dude

There's your first NHL goal on a Markstrom stupid play.

I guess you can call the Preds game a must win.

Sums up the season. Open net, Backlund backhand misses the net.

I read that as he has no value. I wasn't sure who was aweful to trade or wgat that really means.

Sames lines as last game except Mange on with Huberdeau. #Flames tonight vs. Nashville: Dube-Lindholm-Toffoli Huberdeau-Backlund-Mangiapane Ritchie-Kadri-Coleman Lucic-Lewis-Duehr Weegar-Andersson Hanifin-Tanev Zadorov-Stecher Markstrom

Fat lady warming up. Oh, that's George Canyon.

Winnipeg not falling apart at this point. Up 3-1 after 2. A win and anything less than a win by us and we are out. A win and they need one point to eliminate us in their remaining 2 games. A loss by us and NAS has a chance of catching WPG. Very slim. So, the Flames will know the results of the game before they start. They haven't shown killer instinct at this point, so I wonder if they mail it in. EDIT - Oops had the wrong start time for the Flames. We won't actually know the final result until puck drop or slightly after.

Yeah, Hanifin (young D) with 38 points and Backlund with 64 have no value. That's why players of that ilk sign big UFA contracts. Backlund's no Bergeron, but he has value. I'm in no hurry to trade Toffoli or Lindholm. If they can perform under a Sutter game, they would be scoring a lot more under a different one. The degree of trades depends on the type of coach we end up with. No change and we might as well trade Mangiapane, Hanifin, Backlund, Tanev, Vladar and Ruzicka.

Of all the players to trade, Lindholm is at the bottom of that list. I get that the draft presents an opportunity to get picks for roster players, but I doubt we get enough value then. If we want to trade Backlund, then waiting to just before FA makes more sense to me. Same for Hanifin. And anyone else we deem doesn't fit the "new" direction. If there is trouble signing Lindholm, you don't want to trade him just because you haven't signed him by June. That's not a lot of time. I suspect he may want to see what changes are coming before he signs long term. Gte rid of Sutter and he may be so happy, he signs right away. LOL

Sorry, I gave up on the coach back when he played Lucic with Hubey and Kadri. Not only was he using a 4th line guy with out two top paid (soon to be anyway) players, but he was forcing Hubey to RW to make it happen. Did those guys gets points? Yup. Was it Lucic or the guys finally starting to turn the corner. Maybe just luck. In Sutter's mind, it proved you can play anyone anywhere and not worry about a guy that played all of his career on LW. We are coming off a freakin' loss. Our last 3, lose one win one lose one. Outside of the playoffs with 2 left. Never beat NAS this season. What NAS player has zero goals? Afanasyov, Statstney, Asplund. And Janko there to boot. What could go wrong.

Not exactly a surprise, but only one lineup change, and it's not somebody sitting: #Flames tonight vs. Nashville: Dube-Lindholm-Toffoli Huberdeau-Backlund-Mangiapane Ritchie-Kadri-Coleman Lucic-Lewis-Duehr Weegar-Andersson Hanifin-Tanev Zadorov-Stecher Markstrom

I think Sutter still thinks there is a chance. We play to win out. Won't know for sure until after our last game.

Don't get too bent out of shape about it. It's like ex-Oilers. Most of those players have been steady for us. Markstrom not so much. Playoffs were a failure from the 2nd round into this year. Not many stretches of games where he looked like the Vezna goalie we had. Could be age I suppose. Tanev - my biggest (and only real) complaint is he has always been an injury risk. We had a healthy year from him and he was only injured at a critical time in the playoffs. This season we lost him and lost a bunch of games. Stecher - better than Stone in some ways, good puck mover. I would be inclined to keep him if we have the space. BSD was a flash in the pan. I would have preferred trading for a goalie younger and more even. Not sure if we ever could have gotten Gibson, but that would have been a better choice. Cost more, but longer term stability.

IIRC, he made comments like he only really knew about Chicago and NYC. Which is understandable. He was a poor kid in Russia. Whether he believed that he would become more rich in USA, the point stands that decisions are often made on bias.

Coach doesn't care one bit. He is only concerned with getting in. Rightly so, but there was time earlier in the season when you benefit the team and the players. I don't buy that we have the best possible roster. Perhaps some of it is loyalty to his guys. Give them the last season to have sometihing to remember.

There is this assumption that we had no clue. And yes, we have Russians in the organizations. One on the current roster. We do have a coach that doesn't believe in non-vets being given a spot. Gotta earn it, with whatever line I throw you on in camp. No need if you are over 30, since you earned it 10 years ago.

VAN signing the Kuz. What was the reason he considered VAN? Nothing to do with scouting. He was a top free agent available for the first time and not committed to the KHL. He was a teammate of Podkolzin. And the Nucks were able to guarantee a NHL roster spot. Could we last summer?

Should soon be able to send down the AHL players and Voronato. In game 82, if there is even a slim, next to nothing chance of us getting in, we won't see the kids. WPG has one remaining and NAS has 2 after we play game 82. Conceivably it's a meaningful game. Yeah, right.

Oh, a lot of teams seem to know how to scout them. Yeah, I was bummed when the Nucks were in the Kuz sweeps from the beginning. Not like we could use a sniper for this team.

Last time a Canadian team with Russian(s) won a cup? Look, I am all for unscouted gems, but if we aren't scouting them, how do we find the gems? We can't all travel to Russia and talk with parents and coaches.

Oh, I get you. He has 3 playoff games in the MHL this year, after playing in the VHL and KHL. What did this kid's parents and coaches say about him? The reason why I talked about Russians coming over is that we don't have the big draw that some US teams have. Panarin only ever heard about maybe one or two cities in NA. Come to Canada and play in a play almost as cold as Siberia. Sounds good. Not saying the kid isn't worth a pick or that he would never come here, just that we haven't had much luck getting them signed. I would have thought that Rafikov would come over, since we needed D. Maybe the rep we have is stck foreign players in the AHL.

The chances of passing WPG are remote now, even though we are only 1 point behind them. They have three games to get 3 points that would eliminate us and NAS. NAS only needs a win over us to overtake us in the standings and two games to get past us. On the other side of the coin (drafting side). We are close to being passed by 2 teams, both NAS and Buffalo. Buffalo has 4 games in 5 nights, two sets of B2B's. Best case scenario for us is BUG gets 5/6 points to pass us and we get zero points. That puts us at 13th overall.

You crack me up. Am I missing something though? Where did he have a point per game in the MHL? Still waiting for tha last Russian we drafted (while in Russia) to come over.

You too buddy. I forgot to get chocolate. Darn.

WPG has the luxury of playing 500 hockey for the rest of the season. 3 OTL's and they get in. A W and OTL gets them in. I actually prefer that NAS gets in over WPG. Not likely to happen, but I don't think WPG has earned it. And we have played like we don't belong. Just being honest.