travel_dude

It's a tough call. Having him develop in college isn't the worst thing in the world. I do think that USHL is no worse than playing on a CHL team.

Have to be really lucky to find that stud goalie in the 1st round. Lots available, but few ever get to that level. Knight is not close. He's been good in ECAC and tourneys but hasn't yet translated to NHL.

Not sure why. Fake city with warm temps. Fastest growing city other than Phoenix. But, I guess $$ are king because they pay whatever. Outbid other teams in FA. Somehow manage to get other teams to believe their players are better trade returns. That Stone trade still looks bad.

The recent history is a team that can game the cap has a better chance at winning the cup. Storing players in LTIR. Fooling a team like VAN to give up a 1st for a player they can afford (Miller). Or taking Schmidt because they signed Pietrangelo. The dumb GM's allow this to continue.

I was referring to JJ pumping him up as a target of the Flames. Was supposed to be better than Wolf, at an earlier age. Now his stats seem more pedestrian than last year's .941 and 1.57 GAA. By no means am I saying he is crap. If we had a 2nd 1st rounder last year and was available, it might have been a good option. Same was true of Wallstedt. Goalies are voodoo, so I'm not sure you pick one with your only 1st rounder. Cossa could be another Koskinen and Wallstedt a Rittich. Or a King Henrik. Or a Pogge.

Sergeev names player of the week again. Not sure what is going on with Markstrom. Kept out of both games last week with some kind of tweak? His numbers have cratered recently, so I hope he can get in the win column. Only good game was against CHI.

Perhaps the offense has used up all the goals they have. Last time they looked "human" was when they lost to Ottawa in December. The best we can hope for is that Bennett take stupid penalties and Knight is in nets. Saying that, the Fancy Cats played the last B2B games at sea level. Let's hopre they haven't had much time to adjust to playing at 3200 feet.

GOALTENDER - ARSENII SERGEEV (TRI-CITY STORM) For the third time this season, Sergeev came home with the USHL Goaltender of the Week award this season after picking up a Friday night shutout, his fifth of the season and sweeping the weekend, becoming the first 20-win goalie in the league this season. The Calgary Flames prospect (2021, Round 7, #205 Overall) is currently on a six-game winning streak that continued last weekend after whitewashing the Force on Friday night, 3-0, before following it up with another win, 4-1 over the Lancers. Sergeev, a native of Yaroslavl, Russia, leads the league this season with five shutouts, 20 wins, 1.52 goals against average and 0.934 save percentage. With his third Goaltender of the Week award this season, the University of Connecticut commit became the first three-time winner of the season.

What happened to Cossa?

I'm interested when people consider the rebuild was abandoned. After the Vancouver playoff win, we sold Hudler the next year. Was it 15/16 when we traded for Dougie? That strikes me more of building than post rebuild. Year of Brouwer or Hamonic?

He suggests that the defense is totally on Playfair. Which I find odd, since Playfair was a good defensive coach from what I remember. Seems like Holland based all of his decisions on last year, playing just Canadian teams. Swept Ottawa so they must have the right foundations. Barrie lead the NHL in points by a D, so he must be good. Swept by Winnipeg, so the only thing missing was Greybeards. Nuge was a PP stud so he must be extended full term. Smith was not the problem last year, so give him a 2 year deal. Losing the playoffs came down to Bear not being the right fit. I look at the Oilers depth and I just don't see any improvement. The forwards only added to top 6 and Foegele was expected to be at least a 3rd line play driver. Scevior was laughed at, but explained away as AHL depth; he is playing as a regular. The D is where they spent the a lot of the $30m in available cap. Re-up Barrie. Sign Ceci. Trade a young prospect/fringe NHL D for Keith. Spent $5.5m on Hyman and $5.125m on Nuge. $2.2m on Smith.

He should be in the AHL next season. That is a good thing. He's not small, but not big by pro standards. The downside is we rarely ever give those guys a shot in their projected position. Sutter seems to look at camp results as being the overall indicator for the season. To be fair, there hasn't been a lot of opportunity for Ruzie or Pelletier or Phillips in the top 9. I don't know that playing with Lewis or Pitlick on the 4th line makes sense for any of them. Ruzie is best at C. Pelts is a play driver in the top 6. Phillips is a top 6 finisher. You really can't utilize them well as 4th line wingers.

Oh no, a LHS that plays on the right side? How could we ever use that? (sarcasm off)

Awesome. Love when the guys ignored by scouting show that they are top players in their own rights.

Yeah, Pelletier isn't scoring a lot on COVID. I doubt you call a LW our top C. Wolfie with two recent losses in regulation. Cratered his GAA in them games. Exciting to see what Beck does, but 12 games in 2 years leaves you wondering if he ever gets on track.

The missed out on deals bother me the most. Kadri was inevitable, since he was trying to crater a trade. The missed Minny trade was some unreported technicality, so I'm not even sure it was Minny. It was very late in the game, so could have been a busy fax. The Sone was one that miffed me; unwilling to take a chance on signing him, so exclide the better prospect. Eichel miss was bizarre. Sounded like they strung BT along and went public to extort more. Think they lost big time on that trade. I do agree that the ideas to make a trade are there but not the will. He went picks for Hammy. He traded Hammy for future good to great players. This were the last ones that really moved the needle. Most impact deals are done in summer by BT. That is fine, but you also don't have to wait to the TDL to swing a deal. Teams were and are making players available. The recent return to mediocre shoul signal that the team needs help. All the good things done are being undone. The bottom 6, with a few exceptions, is underwhelming. Backlund is struggling and it's either him or the lack of fit with others. No top 6 centers past the top line. The Backlund bump is gone and Monahan is changing his game to fir not scoring. Mostly because he's not getting opportunity other than PP time. Didn't we learn from Bennett? You can have skill playing just with grit?

Read a quote from Kassian where he said that in October/November they were the best team in the league. Blames a bit of the recent slide on COVID etc, but still can't figure it out. Not the first time I have heard how great they were to start. Did they think they were playing that great, even though giving up more shots than any team? Did they even bother to look into the team they beat to understand what reasons they had such a great record? One of the easiest schedules in the legue. Teams played them on a B2B set, so they got a lot of backups with little experience. Gifted PP time like it was candy. Unable to score 5v5 or from anyone not on the top line. The problems run deep, but scoring is only a small part of it. If McD or Drai don't score, they can't win. Well, that implies that the goalie or defense they are facing is good. Diving deeper, if the top two players are being outscored 5v5, and the fact they are tops in scoring, should maybe point to playing without the puck. Goaltending is a problem, but just from the way they are driving the bus over them. Put the goalie in a position to make a mistake. Screen the goalie. Don't block a shot. Leave rebounds lying around. Criticize the goalies. Only Smith can save them, but he is probably not wanting to play while the team sucks. Was on a bonus plan last year, but now is a 35+ contract with little to prove. Big talk about Bouchard being a stud D. Yeah, he can score like Nurse and Barrie. But he has poor defensive instincts like many new pros. Kenny won't trade the 1st for defensive help and balked at Chychrun being even worth a 1st. Doesn't want to fire the coach, which I actually agree with. A new coach would take the rest of the season to say the same things Tippy is right now. Can't win a game every night if you have to score 5 or more. This is the ship that Kenny built. He blew his wad this summer and managed to kill the cap next year with Nurse. Bought out Neal and wasted the money. Didn't bother looking at NHL goalies, just went the same direction. I guess not trading the 1st is brilliant, since it's presently a lotto pick. Nobody wants his garbage and even Barrie is exposed as a guy that can barely do anything 5v5; 1 goal and 7 assists. Muli year deal.at $4.5m

I think you read something into what I said that wasn't there. Not angry with him at all. He builds during the summer which is fine. But it doesn't always work out for those players. What I also find is that he fails to gauge where the team is at TDL. His goal and the owners goal is to make and win in the playoffs. The TDL moves (lack of them) seems to belie this. A lot of team make poor adds, but good ones make smart adds. It isn't just about rentals. It's about seeing who is available then. The contenders are going to look for the pending UFA's. My comments about Gaudreau and Tkachuk are pretty obvious, and ones that he will avoid at all costs.

If he stands pat at the TDL, i will have lost any remaining faith in his ability to make a difference. He hasn't been able to make an impact trade any TDL. If we are making a run, he has to do it. If we are going to re-rool, he has to do it. Singing Gaudreau is just what he should and has to do. Paying too much for Tkachuk will be a firing offense.

I'm really talking about a team that has a history of not coming out of break well. We played well when we had 5 games in 7 nights or B2B. Start of the season we came out bad. Took some time to get the flow. Maybe teams like Ottawa take it better because they are young whippersnappers. Or maybe we get too used to home life and can't get the kid's schooling issues out of our heads. I can't for the life of me figure out why our mistakes end up in the net every freakin' time. Hanifin trips, it's in the net. Backlund blows the exit, it's in the net. Ritchie tips it to a SEN and it's in the net. Matty passes to nobody, it's in the net. I thought we were past that where our goalies could make a save when we needed one. Vladar was gold, until the chances mounted up and he couldn't hold the fort.

FFS, they track everything else. I read a stat that suggested that dark red pads were easier for the shooter to score on. We had Mike Smith, king of the red pads. Or was that Elliott?

Think you may be reading too much into this game. We completly outplayed them the last time. This was a pisspoor effort with mistakes made like this was game 1 of the season. Lucic summed it up for this game. Can't be letting in the first shot, not blaming anyone in particular. The turnovers can't happen. The why is much harder to digest. But I think the COVID impact is unique to our team in the way it happened. Every player but 2 got it or tested positive, so there was no remaining team to carry on. Most teams had 5 or 6 and counted on the rest of the team to carry on. We cancelled, then the NHL cancelled 50% fan games for some stupid reason. So, while most teams were able to carry on with less regular players and less cancelled games, we had zero players. We come out of the block slow after stopages. Oilers game was bad. SEA and CHI were lucky to play such a bad team. We have had no flow to games being played. Regardless, the goalies need to be better if the team is struggling. The D was bad, but blame the breakout on two goals. A stupid pass by Tkachuk caued a bad decision by Ras. But Markstrom needs to stop that. Essentially it was a weak 5 hole.

Gaudreau-Lindholm-Tkachuk Mangiapane-Backlund-Coleman Lucic-Monahan-Dube Lewis-Richardson-Ritchie Ruzicka-Pitlick Hanifin-Andersson Kylington-Tanev Zadorov-Gudbranson Stone Honestly, this is about the best thy can manage with Ruzie on the sidelines. It's a shame that the 4th line is all RHS and Mangiapane has to bump Backlund up. But, Mange is not scoring much right now. He's getting chances, but there is little 2nd effort by anyone else or rebounds for him to jump on. Perhaps Backlund's penchant for hitting the goalie's crest will generate more 2nd chances.

Next up FLA. Oh, good. Really, they need to learn how to play when they get the matchups. How can line matching result in Backlund looking like the worst C out there? He has dropped so far. Matty doesn't get the blame for the Formenton breakaway goal; it was a blind pass up the middle. Ras gets burned, but also Marky looked shaky, since it was a missed shot. Much like the Svech goal in Carolina. He has to be better than that, adding in the 1st shot goal. Gaudreau and Looch were the best out there. In fact, the 4th line looked good. Coleman engaged but playing with lesser lights. Lindholm is invisible; think Matty is getting the touch too often and he has one move - pass to Gaudreau.

If there is any financial implication, the Sharks would be on the hook. I think the NHL is seeing if they need to suspend further, but the grievance is separate. Let's assume for a minute that the termination is valid. Kane is suspended for the remainder of the season. If he signed before that was announced, the new team would be out cap $$. Supposedly, he's not singing until he is cleared of any suspension. Which is weird, since he should not be allowed to sign until the grievance is settled. I don't think it's cut and dried about it being a valid termination.