shrader

I've heard that comment now. I don't buy it completely though. There's no way they didn't know about it right there on the ice immediately. We always see them looking up at the scoreboard to catch replays during stoppages. Now unless they didn't show it again in the arena, there's no way that entire Florida team isn't on the bench staring up at the scoreboard after what they thought was a dirty hit.

The penalty? If his leg/foot made contact with Barkov at any point, it was already after the trip with the stick. I can see how Florida might have viewed it that way initially, but even one single view of the replay, which I'm sure they saw several times at that point, would clear that up.

My thoughts exactly. He didn't offer up an ounce of resistance, knowing that it would gain them a powerplay. I have absolutely no problem with it, but not every player would do that exact same thing (Bogosian is the first to come to mind). Skinner was a willing participant in exactly what went on there, he made the choice to not respond. Miller did not choose to have his head caved in.

Skinner is a diver, so everything he did there with Yandle fits his game perfectly. There really was nothing to see there. It was a guy who draws penalties drawing a penalty, just as you're suggesting.

I say that almost every day.

We saw pretty much the same exact thing a week or two ago against Philly. We may have one of those teams that doesn't get up for matchups against last place teams. They wound up winning it, but they didn't exactly look too great for a while against the Kings either.

I know we don't like to make light of an injury, but that one really should have been the Caruba collision of the game (if it wasn't). Dude ran into a brick wall.

I'd avoid weed for a little while. It may be one of those Minority Report future crimes you're being charged with.

That and it’s pretty tough to fight when someone is beat hugging your head from behind while pinning you against the boards. It was a very awkward/lazy attempt from Yandle in the wind.

Are we officially at the point in this league where players retaliate for textbook tripping penalties?

Does he have any history because they do more frequently test players in the system. If I'm reading the policy correctly, having other players in the system on his team would also impact this. They draw their random testings from the pool of all players who aren't already subject to "ongoing reasonable cause testing". So the more players you have on the team in the system, the higher chance you have to be randomly selected.

The playoffs are a sprint and the regular season is a marathon. What it takes to win one is very different than what it takes to win the other. We tend to focus on the Cup itself for obvious reasons, but personally, winning the President's Trophy is one hell of an accomplishment too. I have a hard time labeling one as the best vs. the other since the rules are so drastically different, but I can say for sure that I definitely enjoyed the ride that was the regular season in 06-07.

The NHL is much more of a niche sport than any of the others. I'm definitely not going to compare them (or any other sport for that matter) to the NFL. Their setup is so insanely easy to market and they exist on a completely different plane. Sadly bounceyball is the most comparable since their team numbers and games played are pretty much the same. I really don't have a clue what they do for their playoffs though and hopefully I can keep it that way.?

The can of worms is calling one team better than another even though they played completely different schedules. Like I said in what you quoted, a one point difference between Tampa and Winnipeg really doesn't mean all that much because of that. I'm not willing to say Nashville and the Jets were the two best teams in the league, making that the idea final matchup due to that. Allowing the crossover makes for artificial 1-4, 2-3 matchups where we don't really have any idea if those are actually the 1st and 4th best teams. If I really wanted to create an ideal situation, I'd completely break off the the east and the west pre-interleague play MLB-style. But that completely violates the money motivation, so it will never happen.

I'd put the thing on my desk at work if I ever got one. Ugly trophies are far better than the typical office stuff. The leagues are ruled by the almighty tv dollar. Time zones are a bitch. They're going to do everything they can to avoid that cross country audience fracturing matchup and cater to the east coast as much as possible. Any realignment done by this league, the primary motivation will never be about leveling the playing field. It will always be about $$$.

I don't think we're at the days anymore where a team is going to build around a 27 year old center, especially one that isn't a first liner. That's a complementary piece, not a building block.

Has there been anything out there suggesting that he was helping with the young swedes? He's not a guy I've paid much attention to and I don't read anywhere near as many of the stories as others around here do, so I have no idea how much truth there might be to that. The whole thing right now is at a place where so much gets thrown out there now that the last 6 months or so of his life become a blurred mess.

I hope you still display that trophy proudly.

I still need to see it backed up by something other than his words. The source for every link I've read is his quote above. One story did have a picture of the notice posted on his locker. I don't know if he's shown those before, but that was a good one to get out there. Look, I don't doubt that the league could target someone like this, I also wouldn't be surprised by a player stretching the truth to help his cause. I need to see more than just a quote from one person before I lean one way or the other. I wonder if either side is allowed to disclose publicly who is tested and when. If there's a grievance process, it may be completely private.

But is Tampa's 113 points really any worse than the Jets' 114, or even Nashville's 117? It goes right back to the imbalanced schedules thing. Allowing for crossover across conferences like that opens up a huge can of worms. Do you really want to do that to account for what is going to be a fairly rare scenario.

So what does that make you?

They may have done it before, but look how long that lasted. There was far too much imbalance to make 1-16 work and that system was quickly abandoned. And yes, of course there wasn't full balance with the 1-8 format, but it's much closer to balanced within the conferences. That's the whole purpose of conferences/division. They determine the playoffs within clusters that are as similar as possible. More clusters means more ability to balance the schedule within them. So yeah, two groups of 1-8 obviously allowed for more balance than one group of 1-16. I'm with you on being happy with the division system as well. What you just called for is essentially what they have now, but with the wild card added in. The only thing I wish they'd change would be the record based cross over they allow now. If the two wild cards are from different divisions, they should say in division no matter what their records are. Only allow cross over if both wild cards come from the same division. Sadly the wild card is necessary because it's fairly likely that the 5th team in one division will be better than the 4th in the other. I like keeping everything within the division for the first two rounds because it will spark a lot of rivalries over the long term as you get similar playoff matchups frequency. That's right back to the 80s-90s thing you mentioned. We can throw out alignment options constantly around here but they'll all come back to the same problem. There is no perfect situation. Any system that people will suggest, there will be that crazy set of outcomes that breaks it down.

You can only do 1-16 if you create a completely balanced schedule leaguewide. That is never going to happen due to the travel constraints.

I don't know the recapture rules, but the money nose dives quite a bit after next season: https://www.capfriendly.com/players/patrik-berglund

His rapid ascent up the points leaderboard has been fun to watch. Hopefully he can sustain something remotely close to his current pace. And the scary part? He's probably the second best player on the team in a couple years. As for the "if it's not broken..." thoughts in here, yeah, they pretty much have to keep that line rolling. But at the same time, two of the lines are doing absolutely nothing for this team. They're going to need to find a way to get at least some level of production from those lines. That's the kind of thing that will make them a threat to actually win a round or two in the playoffs.