travel_dude

Whoever gets the call to be the backup, I do hope they rid the organization of the current goalie coach. I personally feel that the things that made Rittich a good goalie were coached out of him. Never saw him play the puck up the boards until after he'd been here for some extended time. The mounting losses here shook his confidence. He was a road warrior.

If season ticket sales drive revenue, there will always be impact from the fans. What I am simply saying is make the decision early enough. You wait till the summer to start looking or announce he's your guy, there is less time to sell it to the fans.

True, but the sooner you pull the trigger the better. You let it fester and the fan polls start showing up in the news. In EDM, the media made the decision to get rid of Eberle. Get ahead of it, one way or the other.

For about half a season I would have agreed, but he's been playing with at least one skilled passer since then. Backlund, Frolik, JH, Janko.... I just get left with the sense, after watching games, that he doesn't want to pass or his passing is not great. I just seems to me that he believes he can gain the zone by going through players. Not to say he won;t become the next Backlund, but Backlund spent time in the AHL and 4th line.

Rittich has had a tough go of it since after he came to Calgary. Hopefully, it's not as a result of working with the goalie coach here. Last two starts in Stockton: 6 GA today. 5 GA last game. We had a backup. Not sure what we have anymore.

Little chance, I suppose. Okposo made sense to them when they signed him. Trading Kane signaled another re-tool. ROR will stay. Pominville only has another year. Bennett fits the age group for them. He replaces some of what Kane brought. Maybe send Brouwer and Bennett to make the dollars work? I think Buffalo has a good chance at getting Dahlin, so they may not need Brodie.

The big thing is that Brodie would never want to go to Buffalo. M-NTC, 8 team list. Why would anyone? Unless you like chicken wings. If you are trading with Buffalo, it needs to be a player who can be moved without issue. How about Bennett for Okposo? No restrictions there.

There's the crux of the problem with Bennett. He came in as another Doug Gilmour. That kind of player takes years to develop. Unless you are huge or can push around guys over 200 pounds, you better be able to adjust your game. Sure Bennett is good without the puck, but he also needs to focus on doing things with the puck. Not just trying to walk through the defense by yourself.

Brodie was better when played with Gio. The Engelland-Brodie combo was put together because of the Gio injury, but at the time he was playing his best hockey. Engelland provided the defensive stability that Brodie needed to be able to wheel. Yes, the coaching has been a big detriment to Brodie, but part of that was losing his top pair spot to Hammy, just because he is a LHS. A coaching change will help Brodie, but Hammer is not the right guy to play with. Maybe Gio-Hammer, Brodie-Hammy, if you keep him on LD. You do that, and one of them needs to play back.

Try comparing what BT has done versus other GM's, including UFA and TDL. I'll list a few teams: MTL EDM WASH VGK (TDL) BOS (TDL) OTT That's a short list of teams that have made dumb decisions. Because you have a McDavid or Ovi, I guess you are immune from being fired. BT has made mistakes, but the team isn't ruined by them. For every bad UFA signing, he's made good re-signings. For every bad draft pick. he's made two good ones. I get the part about him not making trades we want, but we may not have the player a team wants. Would you like to see him pay multiple draft picks for Tatar? Pay big time for Kane? Mortgage the future for Turris or Duchene? Saying that, we shall see what he does about GG. If he doesn't fire him, then there is a problem.

He blew the trade. You can't get anything better than that, you don't know how to make a trade.

Kylngton back in CGY due to Stone's wife giving birth.

Didn't you say something about trading Gio while his value is still high? Just kidding.

How about a trade with ARI that sends Brodie/Bennett for OEL and Domi? That would be reasonable for both teams. OK, so maybe a steal for us. The positive for them is that they get a C/LW with all kinds of potential plus a decent D-man at a significant savings in actual dollars paid. What about OEL and Panik for Brodie/Bennett?

The difference, IMHO, is that we don't give any faith in the prospects. How good did SHinkaruk look in the few games he got. Pretty good. Poirier, maybe not. Kulak, Janko, Andersson all looked ready at camp. Dube was a standout. Other teams give opportunity, not just come in and play 4th line, 7 minutes, with grinders. For every DET model that works, there are many farm teams that just can;t develop players. I think there has to be a better awareness of when a player is ripe, and a better use of them once they get the call. Bumping up Brouwer to the top line is not the answer. We give vets more rope than they sometimes deserve, but a rookie mistake gets you popcorn.

My concern about the farm is that players that stay there longer than 2 seasons are likely never going to be NHL players. Nature or nurture? Very few players from the current farm team have been able to make the jump. Janko, Hathaway, Kulak and possibly Andersson. None were on the opening day roster except Hathaway for one game before going down. Poirier and Shinkaruk looked poised to become NHL players three years ago. Maybe neither were great to start with, but they looked NHL ready back then. I don't even want to talk about goalies. Where am I going with this? We don't do a good job of fitting in players that show promise early enough. Instead, we look to players like Bart, Versteeg, Glass, Grossmann, Vey, Bollig, Jones, etc.

Maybe the coach is an idiot.

Your grades are fair. What it fails to show is how they stand up by themselves. Gio without Hammy and Hammy without Gio. Hammer with someone other than Brodie. Brodie on RD. Kulak without Stone. Andersson without Stone. Quality of competition also plays a part. Strangely enough, Brodie played as many minute (or more) as the top pair, and played against the best lines almost as much. The other thing that fails to show up is the unit they play with. How often did the top pair play with the shutdown unit. Or the top line play with the 2nd or 3rd pair. So, here' where I have problems quantifying. Brodie was a top RD or played LD with Engelland/Wideman/other under another system. He was great to good to passable. What happened to him. Personal issues aside, he looks lost. It's like he has a blind spot in the middle of his vision. He has the puck more but can;t decide what to do with it other than skate.

We did not have the talent to roll 4 lines, regardless of how Gully thought that was the way to win. Bennett spent about half the season with spare parts. Got moved to LW with Janko and that helped a bit, but Hathaway was not the answer. I do blames BT for Brouwer, because I'm not sure what problem he was supposed to solve. Did we need a slow RHS to play on the 4th line and special teams? I also blame BT for leaving too much in the hands of the coach. Bart should have been buried long ago. Anyone can see he's not NHL D material. Didn't need to sign Stone. Ras was as close to NHL ready at the time. That's when you bring him up. The TDL moves were mostly minor tweaks and low risk tryouts. I like Shore. Stewart is a lazier version of Brouwer at a small cost. The only chance of improving the team would have been to trade Brodie and Bennett for futures and maybe a maligned roster player. At the time, that didn;t make sense because we still were in it. Barely, but still in it. Bottom line for me is keep BT. Let him fix some of the problems he created or hasn't fixed yet. Have someone with great hockey knowledge advise him of what we are missing and where changes need to be made. Reading these boards, there are hundreds of opinions. Some make sense. Some make sense when combined with others. Some are liable to cause more damage. He needs to get it right. It isn;t a management thing. It's a hockey management thing.

Doesn't matter where we were. 8 losses out of 9 and we are dead n the water. 2 of 18 points. 2x losses to SJS, 1 loss to ANA and 1 loss to LA. Wins in those 4, plus 1 against the Yotes, and we have 90, ANA has 89, SJS has 94 and we have 90. Makes for a different finish doesn't it. Regardless of the rest of the season, March was the dagger. Technically, the first game after TDL, we started down the road to oblivion. 15 games played. 3 wins. 1 OTL. 30 points possible. 7 points gained.

I think we are sitting at 2.5% chance of 1st overall right now. If you look at the month of March, I would classify it as 50% team, 50% coach fails. Part of that team failure is key injuries. Forget Match and we are a playoff team. Even with all the struggles with the team though the year. The PP failed us in March. Goatending failed us in March. Everyone was aware of Smith's injury and yet he was left to start when he looked very rusty. Goal scoring dried up. Strangely enough, the coach was well aware of Monahan's injuries. Nothing different was done. How could BT have predicted this?

So, if NY wins the lotto he should be fired, but if they don't win the lotto he shouldn't be fired? That makes no sense.

How is a lotto win by another team a fireable offence? He brought in a top D-man onto a strong defensive team. We were 19th in goals against, but 26th in goals for. Most penalties (toss up with ANA) in the league. We are bottom 5 in home wins. You can blame the signings, trades, FA signings, etc. on the GM, but I think the blame for a lotto picks falls elsewhere.

There were brief times where he played without Brodie and looked better (PK with Gio). Many will probably say that Brodie does not mesh well with Hammer. I would be one of them. My opinion is that T-Spoon should be brought up to play with Andersson and Kulak play with Hammer. There is no good reason to play Stone, especially when we are losing every game. There is a good reason to play Spoon. You see if he is NHL or not, once and for all. If not Spoon, then Kylington. There is no harm. Little chance of the Heat making the playoffs unless they go on a run. They lost their goalie duo, their top defender and their top scorer. They play less games than the Central division, so they have less games to make up the points percentage.

Spot on. There is no point in playing Smith in CGY. We know what he is and should save his body for next season. Give him at most one more start. Gillies needs the games here. He was a deer-in-headlights for every game he started, until he locked it down. Need him to play the 1st periods like he plays the 2nd and 3rds.