Taro T

In fairness to Power, Dahlin never had to drag Jokiharju up and down the ice that year. 😉 There has to be some sort of correction factor they can apply for that. (Power would look much better playing with Montour, Bogosian, &/or Scandella and McCabe too. Don't believe Dahlin got stuck with Ristolainen too often that year. (Hoping that's not simply a memory fog kicking in.))

The 2 go hand in hand though. Really believe (well hope more accurately) that the reason none of the AC's got canned this spring/summer is management believes when coaching the PK and also team D the coaches were coaching with the proverbial 1 hand tied behind their backs due to the goaltending that was behind them. The PK was passive and that doesn't work anymore. It leaves too much time and space for the PP to find holes in the box/diamond. If you pressure HARD it takes away time and space and forces bad passes / blocked shots (and weaker shots too, nobody is getting a full on slap shot off if they're under pressure) which results in turnovers and zone clears. But, if the PP manages to get two quick passes off, they will have a high danger opportunity because your PKers are not out of position. Your goalie has to bail them out. If you don't trust your goaltending to beat the odd man opportunity from the house; you CAN'T run that attacking PK. You will get burned. You need to go with a passive PK and hope that you can slow the PP down and get them sort of mesmerized looking for a pass through rather than simply letting it rip from up high or go with the Sabres PK kryptonite, working the puck below the goal line and wait for the D to become impatient and come down low leaving room for a F and a D to both be in the slot with at best 1 defender trying to cover both which this year was pretty much an automatic goal. You can end up with similar issues at 5v5 if you don't trust the goalie to make a save should your pressure come too late or you simply get beat. You will necessarily not be as aggressive trying to force the turnover that will let you get out of the zone. Combine that with Granato's willingness to let a F cheat out of the zone when it looks like the D or his linemate will gain possession and your defense doesn't work in front of goaltending you don't trust. They trust Levi. Should he be backed up by Comrie or UPL hopefully coming into this season fully healthy and with an additional year of understanding how Bales wants them to play will result in the team trusting whichever one is the backup and they won't go back to the same old habits they kept returning too far too often after the Ryan Miller game. (They may have shown they could play team D on brief occassions before that, but that was the 1st game that they played well over 30 minutes doing so.) Personally was frustrated by their inability to do so for more than about 3 games at any stretch even down the stretch. Expect they will be playing team D better this year, but it still remains to be seen by just how much. Because they are not going to go full shutdown mode; this is a fun team to watch and a fun team to play for. Guys will still be allowed to get creative without fear of repercussion but they are going to be expected to understand when it's worth taking the risk and when it isn't. (And will drop this now before going any further onto a tangent.)

Especially when Samuelsson ISN'T a true 2 (though he could be someday) but he looks like one when paired with Dahlin; having Clifton play with Power could very well have him looking like a legit 4 (especially when you look at his strengths/weaknesses and compare them to OPs). And then you can come up with a 3rd pairing using 2 of Johnson/Jokiharju/Lyubushkin. They all should be quite solid if not downright good in a 3rd pairing role when not forced to drag a 7, 8, or 10 around the ice with him. And that presumes Adams is done working on the D which may or may not be the case. As long as Clifton plays like a legit 4 when playing next to the kid, does it really matter if he's a 4, 5, or a 6? He's definitely (IMHO) an every day NHL D-man so he's at least a 6.

Based on how he has played at every other level and the fact that he was asked to be the better player on his pairing 90% of the time absolutely don't expect him to suffer a sophomore slump as there isn't much they can add to his plate that he hasn't already been asked to do. Whether he takes a small step forward or a big step forward is the big question and expect it will come down to how much muscle he puts on over the summer. And really expect the things you both are looking for to be added to his game will come down to how much strength he adds in the off-season. Am absolutely convinced that he didn't believe his shot was hard enough to beat an NHL goalie unless in very close and he couldn't disguise it well enough to try it anyhow against an NHL goalie. Add some zip to the shot (and perhaps alter his release a little to make sure it isn't telegraphed except when trying for a slap shot (no friggin' way in the world to disguise that)) and he'll shoot more and start getting involved in more scoring plays too. Add some muscle to give him the confidence that he's not a skinny kid going up against a man (and maybe even help him lower his center of gravity to help there as well) and expect we'll see him play more physical. Doubt we'll ever confuse him for Ramsey or McKee, but he can definitely step that up to another level or 3.

And, as you are well aware, correlation is NOT ncessarily causation.

As soon as he said he considered the player to be a Hab and a Blue along with being a SC champion in the 80's suspected it was Lalor. But didn't remember ANYONE talking about him being a Buffalo boy. So, checked him on HockeyDB and figure he must be the guy @dudacek was talking about because he played for all those other teams that were mentioned as well.

Pretty sure the reason nobody got his name is he was born in Ft. Erie.

Does it actually? Or is it just more noticable because there's less actual hockey talk to relegate it back to the level of background noise? Expect it stays pretty consistent but there is a real seasonality (another insight from the No Schlitz Sherlock department 😉) to the level of hockey talk and new subjects within that category that we get to talk about.

Would never work. You'd never be able to get the plutonium.

No we aren't. The replies merged.

Marcus Foligno was mentioned but not Nick? That seems to be an oversight. Todd Marchant too.

What about Timmy Kennedy?

Nah. Already know (or am reasonably certain) he's never been in my kitchen.

What if we have no f'n idea who he is? Do we need to open the thread in that case?

They aren't. 11 made a new thread. The posts in the new thread aren't the original posts from the old thread.

It appears the thread was deleted. When a thread is deleted, nobody under the rank of moderator has the "permission" to view any of the posts in the topic. That is what seems to be going on. Really doubt anybody had a problem with any "innocuous" posts.

The same goaltending they ended the year with. The same goaltending they entered the league year with. That is how they are running back the same goaltending. You do realize that, but figured would respond anyhow.

The other awful part of needing 2 more points last year to get to the playoffs. That plan of seeing how things work out without making any goalie upgrade beyond Levi wouldn't have been horrible (just bad) had they been in the playoffs last year. (That, and Okposo could've retired with a clear conscience.) But for the fans' psyches they really need to make the playoffs this year. And running back the same goaltending makes that less likely. (Not unlikely; just less likely.)

Oooooo-kaaay. What does ANY of that have to do with how healthy the team may or may not be this season?

Yeah, the Aisles are the "obvious" choice to expect to fall out of the playoffs this coming year. They have to be so on their game at all times because they simply aren't going to outscore anybody. Low to mid-90's seems to be what they should get over the course of the season and that shouldn't be good enough. Figure one other team will also drop out. On paper, as they continue to age, if Vasilevskiy slips at all like he did down the stretch TB would seem to be a logical guess to be the other one to falter; but until he actually falters for a full year, hard to expect he will. If Shesterkin doesn't stay healthy, could see the Rags slipping too; but if he's healthy expect they're a lock for top 3 in their division.

And, though said above personally prefer Comrie as the backup over UPL, expect that Granato, Bales, and Adams would run the other way. (Though down the stretch, the guy that was dressing as the backup nearly every game was Comrie even though he got almost no starts.)

Personally expect the healthiness was due to a few reasons besides luck which if correct would mean they should stay relatively healthy again this year. Those include: 1. strategic play - e.g. they don't go as out of their way to block shots as other teams do and a significant portion of their injuries came from blocking shots: Lyubushkin, Samuelsson, and Tuch at a minimum missed time with blocked shot injuries; 2. Improved training and recovery methods - those should be sustainable; 3. Youth - except for extremely unlucky events (Quinn's achilles injury) young guys tend to have way fewer soft tissue injuries than older guys do because their tendons and ligaments etc are more supple than they'll be when they're hitting 30 and this team will once again be one of the youngest in the league. Also, have not looked at the overall injury #'s from last year, but don't believe they were significantly healthier than other teams in goal and on D but they absolutely were crazily healthy at F last year. While (even taking Quinn out of the conversation) don't expect they'll stay that healthy again up front; they very easily could stay as healthy or healthier in net and on D.

Experience was a part of it. Staying healthy was another part of it. '73-'74 was doomed by injuries, mediocre goaltending, and inexperience. 2 of those were improved the next season.

He DID have a backup plan last year and the year before. THAT's not the issue. The issue IS he was unable to execute his plan A (or apparently plans B or C either) either year. Guessing plan A didn't happen this year either but there's still a lot of runway left this summer for it to possibly come to fruition. The "backup" plan this year is to run with Levi and one of Comire or UPL (personally would prefer the #2 to be Comrie rather than UPL should it come to that, hopefully it doesn't) as the backup with the other getting claimed trying to get through waivers making Tokarski the emergency plan goalie. Adams has a fallback in place at all 3 levels (F, D, and G) at present. The team is good enough that it should make the playoffs even without any other moves (even with Quinn out for up to 1/2 the season) but there isn't much room for error. It remains to be seen if any of Adams higher ranked plans get executed before puck drop October 12 in MSG. Could envision this team as currently constructed getting to 110 points; but 100 is more likely. And 100 doesn't leave much cushion for injuries nor sophomore slumps. Would really like to see some more moves to get the Expected Points up to the 106-110 range. Won't mean they'll get there, but should make it more likely they do.

Actually, for whatever reason, it probably ISN'T "done" (as in signed by both sides). The team is required to submit all signed contracts to the league office by 5PM the day after a contract has been signed by the player. Fully expect the contract to get done and have no idea why Dahlin hasn't signed a new contract yet. Could be they want to wait until they've got Power's deal done as well and want to have a big "splash" by announcing both at the same time; could be they're still working out some very minon point; could be ... Am not concerned over it not being finalized yet; but just saying would be surprised if it has been finalized because the league has no reason to hide the contract if it has been filed with them.