travel_dude

Zaddy has been trending up with his pay, but has stayed close to $4M the last 5 years. Something like 4.5 x 5 would fit into our long term cap fairly easily. And he always seems so positive about the team. Not like he wants to head back to Russia anytime soon. Keep him fed, let him go destroy the occasional forward, let him off the chain now and again....

I didn't realize they had any connection. He was an odd add, since it's not like he was being pursued by many teams. It would be like BT signing friends of players though. He had a decent relationship with BT. That's why we should look to BT to overpay for him. Nah, I'm not talking Nylander anymore. I think that ship has sailed and would probably have sunk in the Bow River. May be some trade possible.

The 2 guys signed are solid. Of the remaining pending UFA's I would rank as follows: Hanifin Tanev Kylington Zadorov Oesterle If Tanev comes back, which he seems like he would, he's signing lower cost. Kylington would be stupid to let walk. One season played, and while I see them holding off for now, he isn't close to his ceiling. Zadorov seems to be a young-ish big defender that we need. Not quite the same level as Tanev, but it hasn't been his game to date. I don't think re-signing is difficult to get done as the players seem to be fine with the team. Hanifin is not going to sign here unless we overpay, so I;m not going there. $7M is not reasonable, unless he absolutely shows as being our top D and we keep him to the end. No trade would be a bit of a waste in that case. The $7M would be tough to swallow next season.

The speculation was Backlund will be named the C, if they re-sign him. Without that, I don't know how you can. Most of the players asked have said Backlund.

Are we back to re-signing Hanifin at any cost? Oh well.

I wonder what's going to happen with Rooney. He never managed to stick last year, though to his defense, he played almost exclusively with Lucic and a bigger RW. Not exactly a great fit. This lineup would also imply that Coronato is not making the team. Not sure how I feel about the D pairs. Weegar-Andersson may be better.

Well, it makes sense that a guy who was scoring at a p/gp pace would be looked at to compete for a top 6 spot. Take the opportunity and kill it.

What I read was that Tanev was supposed to start with Kylington, but subbed out due to his personal request. I hope it's not lengthy, but it may just be dealing with something last minute. I didn't get the sense it would be for much more than a day. Who knows though, right?

I think it's a bit early to sentence him to the 4th line or bust. I was referring to him being used this year. Ryan Reaves was less productive at that age and managed a long career. Generous to call him middle 6 but that sometimes what he was. I find it somewhat difficult to project a player with so little NA experience. The Euro numbers don't translate very well and hard to tell the icetime and competition. They signed him for some reason and Burke wasn't here. When you play mostly with smaller AHL players, the skill doesn't always show up right away. I'm not going to project him to score 30 in the AHL but I don't think that would that big of a stretch. 13g in 60 AHL games and 4g in 9 playoff games. With top 6 minutes, it's not that difficult if he is any good.

He has his purpose, but I don't think it's anything other than a call up option when we lose a bigger player. 4th line max that is. He should be one of the best there if he was going to threaten for a 13/14 spot on the Flames. There are better options.

Based on starting Kylington-Tanev together, you almost get the sense that is a pairing they want to get back to. It may not be the best idea but it was successful when they last used it. What it does do is put Hanifin with either Andersson or Zadorov. To me, Zadorov-Weegar makes zero sense. Just because I see Zadorov as a likely 3rd pairing player you give less minutes to. Haven't seen Hanifin-Zadorov, which takes a skater and a (could be) stay at home defender and pairs them. That implies you shift Zadorov to shutdown and let him defend the net, which Hanifin is weker at. Weegar and Andersson are our two top pairing guys that should play the most minutes IMHO. I think the even minutes will be mostly evenly divided up, so special teams will likely be the big difference. Tanev, Hanifin and Zadorov more on the PK and Weegar, Andersson and Kylington more on the PP. Weegar and Andersson playing on the PK as well. I think you may have sized up the second forward group pretty well. The first group intrigues me because I don't know how you fit in Coronato and Pelletier with them. Are they combining Coronato and Pelletier as the 4th line option, with Zary? Dunno. Too early to speculate, but it's interesting to see the early groupings, Think we wasted too much time last year on players with zero chance of getting jobs. Honzek is here to assess not get a job. There are maybe one or two fringe players that could steal a spot. Pettersen or Pospisil. Some others that may be options for other reasons; Klapka for size, Stromgren for speed. Think they may just be better call up options than pushing down current players like Pelletier or Ruzicka or Duehr.

On the PP, Draisaitl stays in the exact same position for the majority of his shifts. He scores from that area a ton. Ovi does nearly the same thing. Both are predictable. Both score. This isn't a comparison to MC, just that if you are a sniper first, you need to be good at it.

We don't always keep our best, #1 prospect. Sometimes they move on to better things. Still has a chance to come back from the ECHL. Maybe gets a contract out of it in the AHL.

Well, here is a list of players without waiver protection we have to send down that probably won't have a real shot at making the team: Pettersen Jones Pospisil Bishop Hunt Rooney Poolman DiSimone Dansk On forward, we only have 12, and only Pelletier and Coronato are exempt. On D, we have 8 and Gilbert is the 8th. As of now, we really only have extras on D, and that's being generous. We could opt to keep up one F if we run 8D. I don't see the logic there, since we have 7 full time D anyway. 13F with Zary or Stromgren, or perhaps one of the older Flames prospects (MEP or Pospisil or Nikolayev). 7D 3G Not ideal running 3 goalies, but Wolf in the AHL means playing to AHL level then coming up and playing to NHL level. Meanwhile you say you are good enough but we won't pay you full time.

So, here's the thing. Vladar had a very good season when coaching and D and scoring and chemistry didn't suck. Then he had a poor season not during his win streak. Overall, it was a failed season by most metrics. I can understand the concept of trading him. I can get the idea that a lesser pick for the trade is not as acceptable. But I don't get the idea that we waive him. A 3rd to 5th is somehow worse than losing him for nothing? Same cap results. Doesn't fly with me. Especially considering that a single Markstrom injury and we are Wolf/Dansk in response. Yikes. Yes, a trade is the same result. Running 3 goalies perhaps shakes out more info about what we have and possibly at least a 3rd to 2nd for a Vladar trade because of timing. Backup goalies tend to get claimed if they have NHL experience and aren't total scrubs. Sounds like I am arguing two sides of it, but really just pointing out that waiving Vladar would be bad.

What? Two players on a line and you make this silly comment?

I think Morin is a copy of Poirier, just a couple years behind him. I would expect him to work on his defensive game to go with the offence. Kuz is at the same development level as Poirier, but Kuz is finally able to show his offensive side a bit more. He reminds me a bit of Zadorov, in that he loves to hit to disrupt plays. Honestly I didn't see much of this game, but that's what I remember of him.

Kerins was forced into the ECHL last season and only got back in time for playoffs.

He was out with Stromgren for a shift or two. I'm assuming that wasn't just by chance. I think it was Stromgren that scored, but missed it.

I would say that a lot of teams followed this last year. It's getting harder to justify it. Maybe that's why PTO's of decent players are being extended. Used to be fringers and past primers. Anyway, I think it will be hard to justify Vladar over Wolf. Maybe camp doesn't show it, but I'm not sure how you run 3 goalies in that case. Probably should unless we deal one of the vets. CC doesn't seem to have any deals lined up. The waiving of Valimaki was annoying because they kept other guys up that could have been waived as easily. Whether he was useless or not, we kept a guy who Sutter suggested was more mature. No better, just less noisy. Pelletier sent down, but others kept up. That wasn't a surprise with that coach. The GM had no control, just whatever Sutter wanted. I agree about waiving players but it has to be reasonable. A replacement level that "beats" a higher level prospect doesn't mean we should waive the prospect. Not directly. The numbers game may make that necessary, but wasting a prospect for a short term gain is just dumb.

Depends who is on the 2nd line doesn't it. The third line may be something like Coleman-Backlund-Coronato. Is that a bad thing? Neither guy is a real sniper. The addition to Coronato's defensive game could add dividends. Anyway, we will see what he does in camp. Pelletier wasn't good enough last season. Ruzicka wasn't either. The vets didn't need to do anything. I wouldn't say our roster last season start was the best we had available.

I wasn't saying that the reason you bring up Coronato directly is because we need cheap help. I'm suggesting this is the best thing for a player like him. He's not going to get 10 minutes tolling the 4th line. He will get play with the best players that suit him and can bring the best out in him. He's a shooter. We have a lot of passers. We have shooters that can't score. He does need to feed players too, but that is making decisions on who is in the best position to shoot. He won't get that in the AHL because the talent pool is more shallow.