travel_dude

What I find dubious is that the team has the final say in treatment. I mean I would hate to be told that I have to do something, but I'm also not paid $4.5m by a team for performance. They are trying to protect their investment, not just do what the player wants. Eichel would love it here, we will do whatever he wants to do and ignore medical staff.

Replied to you. I have a way to watch it, but hate watching on little screen over big arse TV.

I see that Playoff Sam Bennett TM is back.

Where are you seeing the game?

BT confirmed that Dube has to miss the WC. He had to inform Team Canada today. Tanev was actually playing with cracked ribs and torn pec muscle. BT called him a true leader for playing injured for an entire month. Monahan playing injured and two coaches ignoring it and leaving the lines as is. What bothers me is whoever is making those decisions is not being fair to the team. There was no hint that somehow we were going to be a playoff team, so we needed martyrs out there to play to the bitter end? We have meaningless games and allow a player to decide that he plays or not. Dube was a bad situation that happened; no reason to keep him out of the game, and just bad luck. But Tanev and Monahan should have been shut down ages ago. At the very least when we knew we were done and traded Rittich and Bennett.

That's the problem with saying things like that. Johnny's dad will read it and rag him out about it. And personally, I don't even think he's talking about Gaudreau; I think he's referring to Tkachuk. Would this point to the dispute about the puck flip? Maybe. Tkachuk says a lot of things and he might sound like he wants to lead this team to victory. By that alone, he didn't live up to it. You probably can think of a couple of incidents where his lazy play resulted in a EN or game losing goal. I have no issue calling out that kind of crap.

By the same token, do you think it does EDM any good to destroy one team and make the playoffs when they were closer to 500 with everyone else? EDM made the playoffs on the backs of 9 wins against Ottawa and 7-2 against WPG. Take away those two series and EDM is exactly 19-19-2. The 4 points games are more meaningful in the division and WC races. You can lose two games to Tampa and it doesn't kill your season, whereas we had two losses to MTL that eliminated us form the playoffs. It's actually even closer, just a win and OTL to pass them.

If he is correct, then trade those players away. The simple thing is we did not score enough goals to win close games. If we scored 2 or less, then we lost the majority of the games. In April alone, we had 5 games we scored 2 or less and lost every single one of them. In March we had 8 games with 2 or less goals for, and we won one. So, if he's pissed that Tkachuk or Gaudreau were just trying to score goals, then he's missing the part of the equation that you win zero game by scoring zero goals. They may need to play more complete games, but we are not talking about guys that were trying to win the scoring title.

Who is Lucic talking about? You can probably guess, but I don't see any particular player looking for cookies as opposed to trying to win a game by scoring. I guess that he still thinks we have a culture problem. Maybe he should also take some responsibility for missed assignments and blown plays in critical games? I mean, I can agree that some players try to cheat out of the D-zone and don't do everything to keep the puck out of the net, but I wonder about him sometimes.

Tanev was a top player all year long. According to news today, he was playing with cracked ribs since March 29th, playing in a lot of pain. Yet, we played him till the bitter end, ignoring the fact we were eliminated quite some time ago. My opinion about the Gio-Ras pairing was they were in over their heads. The real answer is that we either shift the top pairing to two other guys (like Hanifin-Tanev) or we get the fit with Ras. A lot to expect him to be the #2D on this team this soon. The other thing for me is that he's too much of a version of Gio. Where Brodie was able to make up for any Gio deficiencies, and those aspects made for a top pair, Ras was more like Gio. Lesser skater than Brodie, more of a hard nosed play the body player. Wins board battles with strength over positioning and stick work. I think a skater like Valimaki or Kylington is the better fit with Gio. Obviously, that assumes they are capable of playing RD.

RD, take the comments from them in perspective. They can be biased. The posted article was about a month ago. Do I agree with some of the assertions? Yes, but not a blanket agreement. My feeling is that we need to be moving that next one into the top 2 role to take over. More limited PP and PK time. Less overall minutes. Mentoring over top pairing. The problem with that is he eats up the 2nd most cap of any player on the team. We can't afford to improve the defense with that $6.75m being spent. Lucic creates as much of a problem cap-wise, so it's not Gio that is causing the problem. One of the reasons why he is talked about so much is that he is a player you have to complete a roster, not being a cornerstone. A re-tool means you have to move on from some players with a longer term plan.

Posted to listen at your leisure.... https://www.sportsnet.ca/960/big-show/brad-treliving-flames-season-offseason-decisions/

Gaudreau's comments about wanting to remain a Flame long term.... Sorry about the link. It's a link to the audio, For those that prefer just to read the highlights.... If Tree and the owners are happy with the way I’ve played here the past six, seven years, it’s something we can figure out this upcoming summer. I would love to do that. I love the city of Calgary and I love playing here. I don’t think I’ve ever not once said I don’t haven’t wanted be here. The guys in the locker room are great in there. I’ve always enjoyed my time here. If that’s something that comes up this summer, that’s something I’d be very willing to do and try to get done.

Prior to trading Frolik, it was a tossup as to which was fittest. I think after last summer/fall/winter off-season, Gio's fitness was not talked about at all. Fair to say that nobody would really be that good due to all the closures and weird rules in various places. For me, the decline is more by eye test than anything else. There used to be the argument of Gio made Brodie better vs Brodie made Gio better. I would say the evidence supports the latter. Don't get me wrong, he's a smart player and gives his all. Our defense was not a murderer's row this year in our zone, which is what we should be striving for. The playoffs support that and our inability to defend our zone was obvious this season. Trading him is more to make room for a top D, since I don't think it's logical to assume that he has a bounce back season.

MLB plays 160 games. With the BOA, I felt the extra games watered down the excitement. I remember watching about 3-4 games this year where it felt we were playing a team we rarely see. Do you really want to see 9-10 games against Ottawa? Same amount against VAN? I had my fill. The other thing about this format was that every single games was a 4 point game. That's a 40 point swing if a team wins all games in a set.

I've heard that one from a Buffalo blogger. What I don't like about it is that we give up the one top prospect we have at C. What it comes down to is either Zary or Pelletier going the other way, and I have reservations for either. Pelletier probably has a slightly higher ceiling, but I wonder about having a top 6 of Gaudreau, Mangiapane, Dube and Pelletier. Sounds fast, but very small. Since we are losing Tkachuk, we have to figure out who the top 6 would be with Eichel. Gaudreau-Eichel-Dube Mangiapane-Monahan-Lindholm or Gaudreau-Eichel-Lindholm Mangiapane-Monahan-Dube Whatever the case, we need to shed some salary and possibly upgrade the D and RW. If Gio is only 3rd pairing capable, we need to move that out and pick up a top 4 D. Can't be paying both Monahan and Backlund $11m for a 2 and 3C. If we were to add Backlund to the Eichel trade, would we be able to get Risto, or would that cost Monahan? My two UFA adds would be Hyman or RNH, depending on what needs we have. I wouldn't sign RHN as a LW because we don't need a C. I suspect he will be on the market for less than $6m, since I don't think EDM wants to pay him more than about $5m tops. OUT Tkachuk (-$7m) Backlund (-$5.3m) Gio (- $4m - salary retained) Ryan (-$2m) IN Eichel (+$10m) Risto (+$5.4m) Ryan (+$1.25m) RNH or Hyman (+$5m) I haven't done the cap calcs, but without Riittich and Bennett, and Stone's buyout done, we should have had some space. No meaningful raises to RFA's.

There's nothing wrong with holding players to a standard. But I think you have to be careful airing out your laundry in the media. Sutter was asked about Gaudreau's milestone game and he talked about it needing to be better than the previous one. Innocent comment that splashed all over the wire. No issue with what he said, but why say that to the media. Regarding Toffoli's comments, I don't think any player would have a problem with that style. But I don't think we saw a lot of that. We saw a lot of negatives about certain players after a loss. At least the public side of it was that way. If he was talking with Valimaki or Dube after a game and focused on positives after a loss, I don't think they would be that thin skinned to be annoyed. If the approach is you made this dumb play and need to stop doing it, but you will sit as a result, then that will never work. You take away any form of creativity and make them fit in a box. At the same time, you are ignoring the same mistakes from your "core" players that can do no wrong.

I will add that a scheduling quirk had STL playing Arizona for 7 games in a row. Talk about worst possible result. What possible rivalry would there be with those two team? IMHO, the only real rivalries are the provincial or state ones, which usually are taken car of by division matchups. FLA vs TBL NYR vs NYI PHI vs PITTS LA vs SJS and ANA CGY vs EDM and VAN TOR vs OTT and MTL A few others And of course CGY vs OTT (said no one ever)

It was a one-off, so no chance in it happening next season. While I enjoyed watching us play MTL and TOR more than twice in a year, 9 or 10 is overkill. Playing within your own division is more of a coach and scouts dream than anything else. Doesn't really show how your team is positioned in the conference at all. Allows a division with a weak sister to beat up on that team over and over. VAN is more of an example than Ottawa. EDM beat up on Ottawa when they had goalie issues, but the last 3 or 4 games were closer. Whomever was fortunate to play Buffalo got an almost automatic 9 wins. Buffalo was a bad team, but had they played more teams would possibly not been last overall. As far as building a team, you do it based on the long term, not a single possible season. If we built this year's team based on a one year outlook, then that was a big mistake. Also, you can't just build for regular season or playoffs alone.

If not for a huge slide by MTL and WPG, we were otherwise not close to the playoff cut line. Every other division had a cutoff of 63 or higher. 3rd place in the North had 63. The season was screwed up because of VAN. We should have been playing a healthy team, but their games messed up everyone. So, we don't even know how we would have done against them in a normal schedule. I'm glad this is the last time we have to play series like these. Useless. Proved nothing. What we did learn is we can beat good teams and lose to bad teams. Certainly not a contender.

Maybe karma will work this time. These meaningless games have killed us a lot. we lose to Ottawa and all 4 games to VAN and we end up 4th, picking 5th with really good lotto odds.

The limited viewing of him at WJC showed the skills but was not playing with the right guys most of the time. He seems to be the guy that makes a line better, not stand out alone.

For sure. Not as skilled a skater as Gaudreau or as tough as Tkachuk, but the kid is nothing but compete. If he ever bulks up, he will be tough to stop. As it is, he's pretty elusive today. I catch myself wondering if Pelletier is in this same mold. Compete level, dog on a bone. Same height, Mange has about 15 pounds on him, but that could change quite quickly.

That is why we are in for a showdown. BT has a different mindset.

Ryan Leslie says that Phillips indeed will make his NHL debut today. At least Sutter may have a whipping boy if he takes a penalty or is on the ice for a goal against.