shrader

It’s good to see you posting again

So who’s the bad uncle? I was going to say PA, but he’s more like the board’s great grand father.

Speaking of Sobotka, I thought there had been some chatter at the time of the trade that he might be the type to do something like this if he wasn’t happy with his playing time.

It’s really not very difficult to account for. If he decides to return, you paper transaction a few of the non-waiver eligible guys to Rochester until you figure out the real moves you want to make.

He’ll retire Kovalchuk style.

I thought I had seen waivers mentioned specifically. These things never seem to stop changing.

The condition in the trade would kick in though and we'd be sending a higher draft pick to Pittsburgh, so it's definitely not free. As for Pilut, we shouldn't ignore the possibility that he falls back down to earth a bit with a little more time. He wouldn't be the first or last young call up to do that. Either way, we're dealing with a nice little luxury here if we do ever get to the point of everyone being healthy. Gone are the days of the Falks and Feduns of the world getting a significant number of games played.

Ahhh, thought it went to a son.

Well there is the Duncan Keith contract.

I thought Kroenke owner those teams. Anyway, it’s a fact of life for NHL players that a deal signed today is always going to be bigger than one signed a few years back. You sign a long term one and there’s a very good chance a teammate will top you later in that deal. It’s going to happen with Jack too.

I assumed you were linking to LGR’s profile. Too bad, missed a chance there.

We’ve seen that kind of play way too many times. I’m not so sure the league cares about the actions of the hittee.

I picked up a sampler pack of their cans on the way home, perfect for a hockey night. The place had Simpsons stuff all over the place, a functioning Super Nintendo, and also a N64. I could very well become their Norm Peterson.

They said Fischer hasn’t come back yet, right? At this point, I expect a short suspension. Boarding pretty much comes down to “violently” sending the so called defenseless player into the boards. I think that one will qualify and you k ow how the NHL is with requiring injury for suspension.

Our new office is a block away from a brewery. I have no idea how I'm going to hold onto this job.

Insert Mike Grier ninja emoji here. We had a bunch of otters take up residence in our neighborhood retention ponds during the summer. It was really cool while it lasted. Apparently they moved on to your dad's walls.

I can already hear them digging up all their pitchforks up in Hartford.

I'm always curious to see what people consider to be a monopoly. When it comes to sports, beyond just the different levels of hockey, I've also considered the other sports as competition as well. So within the sports world, the Leafs are also competing with the Blue Jays, Raptors, and Argos (let's ignore ownership overlap for now and just consider this as an example). So to me, saying the Leafs (or any other team) has an NHL monopoly feels like saying Snickers has a monopoly on chocolate covered peanut candy bars. That may well be the fact, but it's a small piece of the much larger candy bar market.

Let's not leave Buffalo out of the equation as well. We've got enough posters here from southern Ontario to speak for that. And before we throw the term monopoly around, we do need to remember the various other levels of hockey that exist around the area, especially the AHL and junior teams. There's far more hockey available than most tend to think about when this topic comes up. I had it to some extent in the Boston area, with all of the college programs in the area. It's nice for the fans to have those multiple price points available. It's not an argument for or against adding a team, but I wanted to mention it. It's not the NHL or bust in some of these larger markets.

Chicago's throwing in the pick, right? Also, Chicago goes over the 40 contract limit with that deal, so they'll probably have to send us their top two prospects to balance it out.

Do they typically get much of a crowd for a wednesday night game?

The new emojis suck, so insert confused face here. For the record, I agree with the first part of your serious answer, at least with those 3 topping 20 anyway.

First round picks don't really go for rentals all that often anymore anyway. It has to be a fairly high end player to grab that return, and even then, you may still very well be looking at a deal where it's conditioned on re-signing. When it comes to the Sabres picks, I feel like the only one that could be in play would be their own. The San Jose and St Louis picks are still tied up in their conditions, so it's tough to trade something that isn't yet concrete.

I really don't know what to make of that market since it's so much bigger than anything else. I know how close all of it is, but I've never really thought of that as 3 teams in the same area, especially since the Devils will probably pull from the rest of their state (stealing from the Philly fan pool a bit). I don't know the Toronto surrounding area all that much. Do they have anything even remotely similar in terms of a surrounding area to pull from? It again gets complicated by Buffalo, especially in this day in age where they are going to be far more protective of their market than they would in the 60s-70s (not to say that they weren't protective then). Thanks for this history lesson. For some reason I thought the Islanders were from the WHA, but looking back, they were just there to keep the WHA out. And the Mets? Total brain fart there.

But those gains do come at the cost to the already existing team. So right off the bat there's one team who would never sign off on the deal. Now if you're another large market watching that, you're probably not signing off either, in case the same thing comes knocking on your door somewhere down the road. I'd imagine that Buffalo wouldn't like it either, since it would eat away at some of their support in southern Ontario. I also don't think you'd get that big boost in merchandise sales. They would sell tickets, but very few are going to jump ship away from the team they've followed their whole life. That may happen over time with success (and that's a big if), but it would take a very long time. The league would much rather get that increase in fans from day 1 and hope that their product can draw in more. I don't fault them for believing in their product. The biggest part of it though, is that their main source of money comes from the commercial dollars, sponsors. If you put a team in an already existing market, you're just dividing that area's pool between two clubs. Put a team in a new city, you now have an entirely new source of dollars. This situation in the NFL should be interesting to watch. I wouldn't be surprised if the long term plan there is to see who is successful and then eventually move the red-headed step child to a new market.