Taro T

Personally, absolutely nothing. Trade the pick, Martin, Carbonneau would be this kid's personal preference atm. But, seeing PS gets that Spidersense tingling.

Penn State you say? How much of a reach would he be at 9?

Refresh our memories. Why did Bylsma wait 7 years for another NHL HC job after getting canned by the Sabres? And, why did he get canned after only 1 season back as THE man in the show?

No. Not tearing him down. Simply adding context. He IS the most successful GM the BJs have had. The entirely of the team successes they earned during his tenure corresponded directly to the years that Zito was working for Kekalainen. Even stated in the original post about this that it is a correlation and not necessarily causation. He was the GM for roughly 11 years. The team was reasonably successful (and compared to the rest of their existance, extremely successful) in the 1st 7 years that he was the GM. They were not successful in the nearly 4 full seasons after that (and only in this last season with him removed from the picture have they shown the possibility that they MAY once again be relatively successful). And am 100% hoping HE is as good as we need him to be. Expecting in one way or another that he'll be here for the next 4 or so years (and if the team is successful in that stretch (PLEEEEEAAAAASE) for significantly longer than that) so we need him to be good. He's been aggressive, even after Zito left, and he did something NOBODY expected in landing Gaudreau and doing it without having to outbid everyone by a significant margin. There are things to like about him. He'd had coursework prior to going to college and because of that managed to graduate in only 2 years. He's been a GM on both sides of the pond; he started out very briefly as an agent; and has held several roles within the hockey departments of some pretty good teams prior to becoming the BJ GM. There also is the fact that his successes as GM correlate extremely well with the time Zito was working for him.

The Rat leads the Cats back to the swamps of South FLA.

Who do you think hired the coach who's team nearly pulled off a miracle this past season and ...?

Wtf knows? These are the same idiots that are putting game 3 on a Monday leaving Saturday and Sunday hockey free. If the series goes to 6 games they'll finally have a Saturday night game in this Final. They are pretty much utter and total bozos.

Get 'im @Weave's #. He'll show 'im all the good fishin' spots. (Not the best ones; gotta keep careful watch on those, but he'll share the good ones.) 😉

Yes. And they were in 4th place in their division in a WC spot (by points; they were 9th overall in point %age and made the expanded playoffs that season) when the league stopped playing after 70 or so games. And they won their 1st round series, so the "officially" qualified for the playoffs that year too. So, wth Zito and without Bobrovsky and Panarin they still made the playoffs. Wtihout Zito, they've pretty much been the Sabres.

Just realized one thing about Kekalainen's record in C-Bus. Yes, his teams made the playoffs in 5 of his 1st 7 full seasons as the GM. (From 2013-2020) In August of 2013 he'd hired Bill Zito into their front office. In September 2020, Zito left to become the GM of the Swamp Cats. C-Bus has not made the playoffs since Zito left, including 3 years that Jarmo was still there. And the high water mark of those final 3 years was 81 points. Correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, but ... This may not be the droid we are looking for. 😞

May he RIP.

iF DeBoer would go for this (and that is beyond a HUGE IF), expect Ruff would be open to it as he welcomed Andrew Brunette onto his Devils coaching staff while Brunette was between HCing gigs.

Which Rockies? The Hardy Astrom backstopped boys in all primary colors led by Grapes or the nearly MLB team of the same name (and roughly the same caliber of play)?

He was just trying to let his owner know that he'd left half the meal (and thought he could share it with the one of them that was on the job) and more importantly he'd left a lousy tip. Service dogs are nothing if not conscientious to fellow servers. 😉

Really, 8 characters is too long? Guess them Massholes prefer stubbies. Too bad. You could've swapped out one or more of the B's w/ an 8. (Kind of looks like a B and then they REALLY be confused.)

Wonder if you could get BGDGGBGB? They'd probably consider that even more profane.

Betcha if you wanted LFG12 they'd've been fine with it. 😉 And THAT actually WOULD BE profane.

Would be very interested in the "opponent weighted" analytics on whether he's better on the right or left side. The team's 2-4 D when all are healthy (at least prior to Bernard-Docker getting brought in and used primarily with Power) have pretty much all been lefties putting Dahlin on the right side. When he's paired with a righty, he's likely facing the other team's 3rd and 4th lines. A Norris caliber D-man SHOULD eat those guys up for breakfast. If he isn't getting easier matchups when on the left side, well, as Emily Lutella used to say "nevermind."

Is it because the cans with the can weren't impressive enough to have anybody (except possibly @shrader) look at the gif long enough to start reading the can?

Yeah, pretty much. The differentiator seems to be did the attacking player start out in the crease before contact was made by the D-man? If the D-man makes contact w/ the attacker and doesn't clearly propel him away from the goalie; the goalie seems to become fair game. If the attacker is already inside the crease, it's the opposite. Even if the D-man pushes the attacker squarely into his goalie, the goal is almost always coming back for GI. Walman has to realize he's up against Bennett who is going to take any opportunity that he'll give him to mess with Skinner. And the amazing thing about that one is it pretty much resulted in the only other Swamp Cat that would have been guaranteed to have landed on Skinner were he in Bennett's spot on the 1st goal ending up being the scorer of the 2nd goal.

Not that it's here nor there, but the game in Buffalo is actually the 2nd game of the series. The 1st game is 2 days before in Cleveland. Then the series final 2 games are in Canada.

Because he's in the media center of the hockey universe and Tuch plays for a team that is simply bad, not absolute bottom of the league bad, and nobody bothers thinking about anybody on that team when it comes time for end of the season awards. The voters remember Matthews name because he's talked about quite a bit. When's the last time any of them gave any thought to Alex Tuch? Most likely is was the last time the Loafs played in Buffalo. And he was forgotten as quickly as TO left the rink. How was Ovechkin voted into the end of season All Star team as both a LW and a RW one year?

Since Brandon and Berchtold got shown the door, they've been pretty tight lipped at 1BD and SHKIIIP. And with players & staff (at those that haven't been canned by teams not afraid to can people in the front office/hockey departments) and staff still under contract until the end of this month, there aren't a lot of sources besides player agents to be dropping names. It isn't likely a rival GM is going to be too aggressive saying they're interested in a particular player when he's under contract to another team unless a deal is imminent; tampering provisions and all.

STILL to this day believe the actual reason the Pegulas wanted O'Reilly gone wasn't because of his sads at losing his love for hockey. It was because they were embarrassed that just about the very 1st thing their 3 big prize of that off-season when the instruction went from tank to try to win (to go with Eichel & Lehner) was drive his truck into a Timmy Ho's. Rich folks can take most anything you throw at them (:eyeroll:) but they really hate getting embarrassed. And they had several GOOD pieces there. But they really needed to get rid of a horrible HC and they did (with one nearly as horrible, d'oh!) and they were about to add Dahlin to supplement the core they already had in place. But instead of adding to the core, they replaced a piece that was in his prime at the time for one that finally is in his prime. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Nah, may be old, but ain't anywhere's near PA old. 😉