shrader

And the positions are going to have different responsibilities from team to team. Chicago clearly has a different definition of what a scouting director is.

College kids that go the full 4 years and then walk, that’s a very short list. I’m not so sure we can even count on one hand the number of first round picks that have gone that route. The 5tb round guy that does that? It’s not Casey Mittelstadt.

It’s unfortunate that the two get paired together on this one. Completely independent of anything else, the thought of not wanting to give long term to Eichel is completely baffling to me. What goes beyond a red flag? That’s exactly what this thought is.

I’d love to know how that would work. You’d have the guys under NHL contracts But don’t have anywhere to play. Would they expand rosters and at least let them practice with the big club regularly?

They may have done well fighting it, but getting a massive influx of people from all over the globe, that’s going to be a major challenge to their system.

My very early read on Adams is that we are never going to find fault in his words. This may be the first one in a while where we focus completely on his actions. In that respect, it’s very refreshing to listen to him.

Budget cuts with the Sabres couldn't possibly help with the costs for a new stadium. At an absolute minimum that's a half a billion dollar project. And I'm guessing I'm low on that figure.

Teams don't have to burn the first year of the contract for these guys who sign at the end of the year, but so many times it happens. A lot of things are done to get these kids to sign. It's not exclusively a Botterill or MIttelstadt thing. This scenario where a guy needed to go to the AHL but they couldn't due to that handshake, I'm willing to bet it has played out several times around the league.

Making that type of agreement and then bailing on it will not reflect well in future negotiations. You could potentially be souring future talks with every single client of that agent. That reputation of not honoring your agreements can ripple downstream significantly. So really, if they wanted to badly get him to the AHL in this scenario where the player disagrees, it would take a lot of careful conversations.

That's all well and good when if you're talking about 2 businesses. If things are in the shape that (I'm pretty sure it was him) Taro laid out, it's a lot more complicated one you have 7 businesses and 6 are struggling. Sure, you'd love to keep everything separate, but that's not always practical. But yes, I'm completely on board with the thought that the oil is a long term game. The others are as well.

That last part is what really gets me. We still don't have the slightest clue when any of that will be. A couple bad bounces and the whole restart gets delayed or canceled. At one point I would have shot down this thought as ridiculous, but at this stage I think it's fairly reasonable.

I doubt there was anything even remotely sinister like that during the whole process. At most, they asked at some point and he said no, end of story.

They are not allowed to put that kind of clause in the ELC contracts. It had to be one of those handshake agreements and they honored it. The only way he was ever going to be sent down was if he agreed to it. I've been saying this for a long time now. It's the only possible explanation for him being kept around so long.

And only one business is able to pay for itself. Of course, that could change too if for some reason they aren't able to start their games on schedule.

People always talked about wanting that president of hockey ops guy. Maybe that's where he was minus the title. He's just as experienced at this point as the Joe Sakic's of the world who were thrown into that position not too long after retirement. Titles are mostly BS anyway.

That's the one of the most obvious things in all of this and a big reason why we need to wait for the dust to settle a bit. Right off the bat, clearly they need to hire a coaching staff for Rochester. When they start refilling these roles, we'll get a better idea of the kind of people they're looking at.

I’d have fired him the very second he signed Eichel to a bridge deal.

Well he’s batting .500 on that one

I’m not so sure popular is the right word. The most vocal? Definitely. If you want popularity, my vote forever lies with @Wilbur

This assumes that there was time remaining on those other contracts. Do we know about any of them other than Botterill? Also, are these other positions even contract based or have any guarantee whatsoever? I’ve never heard a single word about the employment status of any scouts.

People really need to move past this crap. At this point, they’ve been married for 27 years and have three kids. That doesn’t exactly mesh well with the “current girlfriend” implication you’re throwing out there. You guys don’t like him, fine, but there’s no reason to get all personal like this. Stick to the hockey.

The whole process seems pretty standard to me. Get the press conference out of the way before you announce the rest. They give Adams his moment and they don't have to answer all the questions right away. Dodging the questions? Sure, but I'd do exactly the same.

The lottery can change that quite a bit though. A few bad bounces there and they fall back a bit. Until something different happens, for me they fall firmly into the "they'll find a way to screw it up" camp. Buffalo's there as well, but they already have their stud player and he's locked up long term. No one's there yet in Ottawa. edit: And on another note, I really wasn't paying one bit of attention to the standings for a while. I didn't realize just how far San Jose fell.

They could just as easily re-hire Taylor pretty quickly. If he wants to be here, he will be.

They can pick apart Buffalo but no one else in the league. I wouldn't call that the gold standard. I really don't expect anything positive to happen there as long as Melnyk is the owner. I fully expect him to complete that forensic analysis of Matt Cooke's skate before he gets his head out of his ass. That said, if they do free themselves from him, then all bets are off.