travel_dude

You mean TBL, who traded Drouin for Sergachev? Drouin was falling out of favor with TBL and was demoted. Wanted out. Dealt to MTL for an overpay.

I don't know, there are years that things don't go as planned. We were trying to trade Brodie for Kadri, but it didn't pan out. Just came off a poor playoff run where we wasted 8 days. But a great regular season. INto a Covid season. Yikes. Next year the stupid North division. My point is that results don't prove we were good or not good enough. There are many factors going into it. Players not having good seasons. Losing a coach mid year. A 4 month break going back to playoffs. The next year a short season. You can say that every team faced the same issues, but every team is different. Ryan went from being a solid player to nothing. We picked up 2 D at TDL that managed to play very little, and they were basically 1/3 of our D corp.

I wonder if Trotz taking a year off means that we will be looking at him after Sutter's contract ends. We have the pieces that could make his style match up with Sutter's. Just thinking out loud. I don't want to have anything to do with Muller at that point.

Well, I guess you can look at Gio going and not losing Dube or Kylington. Had we traded him, one of those two goes. Possibly Mangiapane. Brodie was poor asset management. Hamonic was a poor trade, so losing him meant a lot of nothing. I'm not sure that losing Gaudreau means we lose Monahan for nothing. Either or, not both.

We waited too long with Brodie. Waited too long with Gio. We are about a year or so behind the rebuild being signaled. Missed out again, assuming there was ever any desire to do it.

Day 1 of the true off-season and we are at 35 pages already. We probably have about 3 or 4 distinct discussions, which is fine. Unfortunately, we don't know what we are doing in the negotiations of the top 2 players on the team. We haven't signed Gaudreau and Tkachuk. We don't have a clue as to what is happening there, since we don't leak to the media. All we have is a few analysts creating panic. Still close to 3 weeks before Gaudreau starts listening to other offers. Tkachuk, Mange and Kylington are under control. I would prefer that we don't hold up other conversations with players we have under control currently and are in a position to start talking trades and UFA signings should we have room to do that. The gag order with this team is just annoying right now. No real clarity.

The team was signaling that they were building for the future, not getting ready to strip it down. They had to have some belief that Gaudreau wasn't going anywhere or it makes zero sense to keep him and lose him for nothing. You also don't start trading away future pics to do this. The cards played out the way they wanted, short of going on a longer cup run. They became the team they were looking to build. Lost a key asset in Monahan along the way, meaning that they expected him to still be a #2C. Everything else played out the way they wanted. So, I have to believe that they expect to sign Gaudreau and Tkachuk. The other pieces are either trade assets or get re-signed. Build on the strengths.

I don't know that a rebuild is really an option. The owners don't want it. You say to them, hey we can have a better team in 5 years if we trade away most of the team. The downside is we are going to look like the Young Guns. The AVS did it by picking the right D at the right time and following it up with smart drafting and trades. A couple of 4th overalls didn't hurt and drafting Rantanen at 10 didn't either. Byram and Newhook in the same draft is nice. Trading Barrie for Kadri was a coup for them.

Hindsight is 20/20, but an extra year for Tkachuk and Gaudreau really would have helped. Extreme examples of shorter deals. They ended up bumping into each other. With Magpie, we have to make sure he doesn't bump into a future pending UFA. Baclund, Lindy and Toffee all expire after 2 years, so Magpie has to span that. 3 years at least. Gaudreau, you wonder if he wants anything less than 6 years. Sure he might make more over the first 5, but then he's getting older and may not be worth as much. 8 years allows us to pay him more now, and his actual salary at year 6 might allow a trade easier, should he want a trade. Tkachuk is so young, it's hard to envision a shorter term deal making sense. Just my take on it. I was a little worried about some players that went MIA during the season, but some of it was poor line planning. Keep Mange away from Toffee, but with Coleman. Find the right C and LW to play with Toffee.

Congrats to Conumdrumed, huge win. Thanks to the regular season MVP RD for putting together game day threads and giving us this thread to weigh in on.

Any rebuild would need to get rid of any player over 30. Makes no sense to keep Markstrom. By the time we are ready to compete again, he would be close to the end. Vladar and Wolf would be the guys you go with, maybe waiting one year to bring in Wolf. Maybe longer, since you don't want to put him behind crap. Make no mistake, a rebuild would be a lot of crap. But, I also look at the middle age players and younger. Lindholm, Mangiapane, Tkachuk, Dube, Kylington, Hanifin, Ras, Valimaki. Our best trade chips and the players that can span the rebuild. The first 3 are almost unreplaceable. 2 or more D would be at their prime. While we have a better group of 30+ players than we did in 2013, they will be trending down by the time we are relevant again. So, really no better off.

Hahaha, no my home was in a province that became one of the most expensive areas to live. The average wage is much lower and rents high, so the buying power is well below almost everywhere else. Getting worse every month. And they don't even have a carbon tax yet. I don't really want to pivot in a playoff thread. Somehow I got off topic. Sorry.

I don't worry about it. As fun as it is to have bragging rights, McTool and Dryhump are points whores. LOL. It's just a shame that McPoints managed to get past the Flames. Would have been fun to watch us waste 7-13 days, most likely 7.

The isea of trading Dube is if he can bring in a top D. Not by himself, but as part of the deal. Or that we could get a bigger okayer, not a slower one.

Top 3 smells a little. Stinky oily smell coming from the pool. It's a tough gig to try to win a pool and still have some self respect.

He would have to have permission given to the other teams to interview him. It may still happen, but not as of now. It would seem that we are mostly recycling coaches. A couple replaced by young guys. A few high end ones left.

I was working on 16 vs 20 or 21, which is 4 or 5. But that means we have sold Tkachuk for just draft picks? If we get about $5M back in roster player(s) in the trade, then we are even. Essentially you are doing a rebuild and retool if Tkachuk goes for picks, Backlund for picks, Dube for picks, Monahan buyout. Kadri and Forsberg get you closer to a playoff team, but I'm not sure there is enough experience left. Jarnkrok is no Backlund. Anyway, if Gaudreau doesn't sign we have bigger problems. Forsberg doesn't make Tkachuk a 40 goal guy again.

We have one year of cap troubles to deal with. Some future issues no doubt, but cap will be going up then. Forsberg and Kadri just means that we have spent 16M instead of 20 or 21M. If you traded Tkachuk, you best be getting something to add to that lineup you posted. It looks a lot less than what we ended with.

Moving gets to be a big deal later in life. Made the switch about 12 years ago, for career reasons. 22 years at same job, needed a change. As much as I loved living there in the past, council is overrun by wokeness. Cave in to every special interest group. Solve society problems by listening to one small group. Everyone suffers. Close to one of the most expensive areas to rent in. In Canada. Turn downtown into a bike lane. Move homeless to municipal parks since they were tied of people sleeping in the city green areas. Unemployed don't want to work because they miss out on the perks of not working. Food costs through the roof, and I am just comparing it to Alberta. Rant rant. I shant be going back to live there.

I am not really cheering fo the AVS as much as cheering againt the Bolts. Must be frustrating fo the AVS to lose a close one. The difference really being just one goal. A ton of pressure and Vas managed almost all of it. Kuemper wasn't trash, but was the 2nd best out there. In close games it comes down to not scoring and being scored against. Petty simplistic. TBH, I just wanted an end to the season with the Bolts dethroned. Dumping on the goalie isn't just. He wasn;t the reason just a reason. Ah, 30 degrees. Get that once in a blue moon for a stretch of a couple of weeks in NS. EDM? Well, I guess it happens. Not as cool at night normally as Calgary, except, eh um, right now. But, as they say, if you can't be with the one you love, love the one your with. Blech.

If COL had a halfway decent goalie, this would have been over last night. Kuemper on the Ruuta goal, yikes. As it stands, this is one of the closer series I have seen.

I don't agree. There is almost an unwritten rule you don't sign while the cup is still being played for. But that's just minor. BT drags this out a lot longer than most GM's. If we had zero cap issues and a different GM, he would have offered every cent he could afford just to get it done and move on. He doesn't and he also doesn't work like that. H doesn't hve a blank cheque. He has to try to get the entire roster in under the wire and has to move a little bit each time, not big jumps. Look at Nashville, completely different. They went in with their top offer and are miles apart. They may lose the player because they set the top dollar. He's a funny thing to consider. We could trade Gaudreau to Nashville and probably get another asset out of it. Gaudreau for Jeannot + Forsberg (maybe). Rights dealt of course. Both players have to be open to signing in the new team. It sounds like a crazy trade, but both teams come out of it smelling like roses. Nashville loses an asset in a trade instead of losing a guy for nothing. They get a top player, we get a top scoring player. ANd Jeannot gets us the tough player we really want. Pipe dream.

Weekes needs to get better sources. Was not even close on this one. I would imagine that Huska might get some interest in the next year.

The fans in the rinks complain about everything. MTL is probably the worst. I have no real issue with the linesmen. That is such a difficult job. They are really good at seeing what's there. They get overturned by chintzy challenges that most of the time are really close. I have seen good reffing and really bad reffing this playoff season. I think this series is a lot more even. Other series were a joke. Sure, they are reading the tone of the game, but sometimes it's not even close. That is what it is. The bigger issues seem to be TO making poor choices. Whether it's hits to head, suspensions or overturning calls, they need to clean it up. Figure out what kicking means. Set the standards for what is goalie interference. High stick is so much harder, just go with the refs. They at least have an angle.

You got it Pontiac. Though, I think that offer is low from NJ. Not only do they get the player they want, but don't have to outbid in FA. I will put it in context. If it was an offer sheet (not possible in this case), NJ signing him to $10.5M for just 5 years would cost them 4x1st rounders. In any case, it's a waiting game. The alternative to a sign and trade is to sign him here with NMC in the first number of years and a L-NTC in the other ones. He has control over being traded to begin with, should he decide he wants to go East. After that he limits it to just the teams he wants to go to. I do still believe that he signs here. They are talking. It's ongoing. Nobody has walked away from the table. Just don't know if they are close or have big sticking points on either side. Gross is going to delay as long as he can and still do what's in his client's best interest. Forcing a trade of his rights are not in the best interests. Getting the best terms and money is.