travel_dude

Do we really need to make a trade before? We traded Bennett, who was the default unprotected player. We don't really have a NHL player we need to protect by exposing Backlund.

Seems to me that a trade is more beneficial for asset management. I know it gets rid of the contract easily, but I don't think it's wise. I mean, hey, Backlund is still producing at a rate similar or better than his best years. And that's carrying Lucic and others. And playing a mostly shutdown role. He's had more different wingers than Monahan.

If he can't even figure out Calgary, why would his EDM list make any more sense.

Who is to say at this point what we missed out on. We picked a player rated in the top 30, so it wasn;t a reach. Perhaps give the player a chance to see how he is? Were you excited that we drafted Monahan or Bennett?

That makes no sense. Why would we protect a prospect like Gawdin over a known NHL player in Backlund?

It's important not to use a 56 game season against 6 teams to be the way to build your team. Playing Ottawa 9 times should not determine how you construct your team or evaluate the players. But it does give you some indication of the types of teams you might struggle against. The only problem is that you typically don't give an opponent 4 games in a row to adjust. At the same time, this more illustrates how a playoff team scouts your team. So, I do think there is both an indication of certain players struggling overall as well as struggle caused by teams adjusting strategies. There are about 16 teams that would not typically be able to adjust like this in a regular season. Even in the same conference, the amount of adjustment is limited, as they would need to scout for a few games in advance. Long story short, the team needs to be fixed. It may not be obvious to us who should go, as we don't attend practices or are part of the dressing room. We only see results and can't always say whether this is the results of a specific player.

Zary now has 20 points in 11 WHL games. 4g and 16a. Not bad, though he is an older player.

Wolf with another shutout.

I'm not going to call him out for failing to trade Gaudreau and Monahan and Gio (if that was his plan) this summer. You don't just trade for the sake of trading. Those are re-tool trades and have to be done 100% properly. The NTC's kicked in for two of those three. Where I have an issue is that he failed to make trades to free up cap and sign anyone that could make a difference. We were not just a goalie and shutdown D away from being a contender. He recognized that we lacked a top 6C, but raped the lines to get it. That was never going to make us better, just give us another C to work with. That's sounds backwards, but I don't think it was the right choice. Not without immediately replacing a top 6 RW. Expecting your best 2-way C to now carry a slower big guy, and not having that perfect complement RW was insane. We would have been better off filling a line with players that complement Backlund. Free agency was a fail; Leivo, Simon, Nordstrom, Nesterov, Domingue, Sparks, Rinaldo, Stone.... Just more of the same. That's almost $6m spent on 4th liners that could perhaps provide some injury depth. Not how you get better. I would have preferred keeping Janko over Simon. Lots of value deals for depth defense over a has-been KHL player and a player you buy out and re-sign twice. And TDL was disappointing. Shopping Bennett and Rittich was fine, but we should have had better pieces to shop than Ritchie and Leivo. We didn't bring in anything prior to April when we still had a chance to make the playoffs. We desperately needed a RD, yet Montour was available for a late 3rd. I don't care if he was a pending UFA. It's a rental you can re-sign. Just a poor example off the top of my head.

Thanks. I wasn't sure about that. From an asset management perspective, exposing Gio has little risk. No team is selecting a 38 year old D-man for their future. Engelland was a Vegas guy, and was the poster child. Ryan is much more likely, even if he is a lesser known talent.

So, I was reading a story on FN, and it appears that Gawdin, Phillips, and Kirkland don't meet the exposure requirements. Does that mean that Seattle can't select them because they are not eligible? If so, then the idea that Phillips is being hidden in the AHL seems to have no merit. With Bennett gone, there isn't a lot to choose from: Parsons (RFA), Kylington (RFA), and Ryan (UFA - assuming he's either re-signed or selected as a UFA).

https://www.sportsnet.ca/960/boomer-morning/darryl-sutter-recent-play-flames-playoff-race/ Perspective. Fairly open in his comments, but nothing groundbreaking. One thing he mentioned was conditioning. Was talking about conditioning happening during practice, but he basically said that players need to train for 100 games a year, and if they aren't at the 100 game level, it's too late. Mentions Backlund, Gio and Tanev at leading the work at practices, but I believe it was about getting players to buy into the pace at practice. Mentions that you just need to look at players 82 game pace for scoring and you see which are struggling the most. Mentions that Monahan is busting his tail. Gaudreau has played well since the line switch except for the Ottawa game. His post game comments are more to the point. Shows what he saw before he thinks twice about it. As A coach, I think he just recognizes that we don't have enough scoring to take over games. We have to score more than 1 or 2, so those low scoring games rely too much on being perfect.

If we lose all three to MTL, then we only have a possible 1 loss + 1 MTL OTL before we are done. We win all three, then MTL has to win about 50% of their remaining games and we win the majority. That doesn't even consider VAN, who is an unknown right now. Beating TOR isn't a big feat. It was beating an inconsistent team like the Flames. But they have the opportunity to pass MTL with games in hand and sets against OTT and CGY. There is no benefit to sitting players right now. They have 5 months before next season starts. It would need to be a major surgery to sit someone now.

If it was a simple thing, they would have fixed it. I don't think we have people capable of fixing it because they don't see the problems, or are so invested in the community that they can't possibly change things. We saw a Norrris season from Gio playing with a player that wasn't credited for it. And more than 50% of those points happened with Gaudreau on the ice. That's simplistic of course, but the best thing Gio has done is that one season and his community involvement. He's never done squat in the playoffs, and the one year we went past the first round, he wasn't even there for the end of the season or playoffs. Yet, he's the captain and we would be loathe to trade or expose him in the draft. Backlund was one of the best two-way players we had, yet the playoffs he was on the ice for game losing goals. Or tying goals that we lose in OT. My point is they need to figure out who best fits. Who is helping and who isn't. Building on strengths and weaknesses. But we add parts that don't fit. And we don't look at who we are trying to fit them to. Individually, we have some high level players that we can't find the right chemistry to use. Coaching this year has made that even more difficult. Steadfast refusal to look at the players and find the right lines. It took until we were out of the mix to even consider Monahan away from Gaudreau. Gio away from Ras.

I get the flack he gets for playoff performance, as well as having a down year. He doesn't drive play himself like MacKinnon. He doesn't score like Draisaitl. The depth is the problem. Having a playmaker is great if you have multiple options for the passing. MacKinnon has played on a better top 6 than Monahan.

Some players do well once they leave. Opportunity sometimes, and other times it's just we held them back. It could be one, both or none of those reasons. And it could also be a short term bump. Neal did well scoring close to 20 last year, but as you can expect it was opportunity. He was never that good, just dropped his blade in the way of another guy scoring a PP goal. Chaisson was another guy that was okay, but really is not a 20 goal scorer in EDM. Hamonic, Smith, Stone, Forbort, Gustafsson, Dougie were a waste of assets. Only one of them actually turned into a decent return on investment. Until the Flames do a better job of identifying talent to use with whatever the fuure core is, the cycle wiil continue. Sutter can coach that team, but I wouldn;t trust him to build it.

Dube was about the closest to a fit that I could recall. And that happened last in August. I don't think we ever had the right LW for him in that situation. Lucic was just a brute that could help hold the puck. Not exactly a great N/S guy, other than a train going north to south. Maybe it was a missed opportunity, but I wonder if there would have been something with Dube-Bennett-Lindholm. Or Mangiapane on LW. Speed on the wings. I guess his current play leads me to believe that he would never be successful playing with Tkachuk or Gaudreau.

I think the real reason he was brought was to turn the team into a winner. What is the point of doing an ssessment if the end result is a tear down that will never happen? It won't. We have players that are getting in the way of winning. But we can't get past that in the middle of a season. It persisted last year and was exposed in the playoffs with poor coaching. I have no doubt we would have had a better showing against Dallas with Sutter. Not a contender, but a better showing. That leads me to believe some tough decisions need to be made. Pointing to Gaudreau (not you specifically) and saying he needs to go is too easy. We lack a true #1C, but trading Monahan away because he wasn't the best in the playoffs may not be the answer. Gio struggled without Brodie, but is it the end of an era or the need to manage the end better by dropping him to 14 minutes a night. Backlund was good in a shutdown role with certain players, but we aren't using that. Is this year's Backlund the real thing or from usage. We talked about running two goalies yet we overplayed like every year before this. End result, injured and less than great. Ruin Rittich in the process. No real 4th line, no real shutdown line, 1st and 2nd lines have spare parts. Tkachuk struggling. Defense looking worse this year more than others. Sutter may do an assessment, but I'm not sure he has those answers.

I would be as worried of what JR would do the same way I worried about Burkie being the POHO here. Does it help or hurt to have a hockey guys telling the GM what he should do. JR scares me. For the good things he's done, he has others that are WTF.

Nature vs nuture. I just don't see the fit with Tkachuk; two guys that are gritty and go to the net. Who's getting the puck to the net with them both fishing for the puck. Honestly, if the fit was there on this team it would have happened. He wanted to be Doug Gilmour; feisty player. The shot didn't show up. So many plays left you scratching your hed, wondering where his head was at. He's the kind of player that fits a small amount of situations. We didn't have the right fit ever.

I think you are getting too caught up in a word to describe top players. And I was only talking about centres not wingers. I would describe Monahan in the same group as MacKinnon. Call them potatoes.

I think he started really strong. One goal set him off and he fell back to his habit of getting down on himself. Strong 1st half of the game. Poor showing after that, but the Leafs made it tough on him.

I think it's hard to define where they struggles originate. Pressing them is not the reason. It may be a symptom of their play. TBH, I see a team incapable some nights of completing a pass. That's not another tea pressing them, that's a total inability to play a NHL game. I would describe some of them play as being Peewee at best. Then there are game where things click. Passes crisp. Smart decisions made. For me, this has been a frustrating year. So few games that they have it together. When they do, they are dangerous. If you use 5 years as a timeframe, there are some constants. Gio, Backlund, Gaudreau, Monahan, Tkachuk, Bennett, Stone. A year less than 5; Brodie, Janko maybe a few others. A few of those may need to go to remake the team. I can't even tell you what the team is. What their model is. What they are trying to do.

Would he though? FLA has two players that fit him like a glove so far. Huberdeau is not Gaudreau. I don't see any line we have that plays similar to the line he's on in FLA.

Fights occur for many reasons and are not just a result of a non-call. Teams do it to change momentum. They do it for a legal hit. Staged fights because of punishment to a player that laid a dirty hit are going to happen regardless. Khaira was mishandled and should have been a mandatory 7 days for loss of consciousness.