shrader

So did the Hanifin free fall start after that? I know each time I looked at Button rankings he had Hanifin well below the standard #3 ranking. I see that as of January that he had him at 5, so I'll claim the technical victory because I said "this year" (and this is where I'd put the winking emoticon if I wasn't on my phone)

Nevermind a player going the Europe route instead of playing in college, this kind of thing doesn't happen with any North American players. It's not really a viable option for these European leagues really. They usually have rules that limit the number of players you can import from outside of the country/region. They're not going to use one of those slots on a teenager unless he's elite.

I haven't religiously followed his rankings, but it does seem like each time there is one specific guy that he likes to bury down much further than where everyone else has him. I know he's been burying Hanifin all year.

I'd be willing to bet that you don't make it to the Sabres second pick. I remember going to the draft in Buffalo the year Lecavalier went first overall. We left long before the Sabres drafted Kalinin. It was way too boring.

You go to this "exception vs. the rule" argument far too often. That and youtube videos must be right on the first page of the LGR cliche handbook. I mention Reinhart simply because he is probably the third listing in your handbook. Anyway, if this list is generated on a yearly basis, you will so those rankings fluctuate quite a bit. To put it in your words, Reinhart would actually wind up being much more of the rule instead of the exception.

My personal favorite was a few years back during a Bruins-Canadien game where the Boston fans were chanting it... there was not a single American born player dressed for the Bruins that night.

I don't mean to call what you are doing foolish. You've put a lot of time and effort into it, that's great. I just question how much, if any conclusion can be drawn from it.

So how does your "Sam Reinhart will be fine" mantra fit with this? An attempt at ranking a draft class that has played a cumulative total of 181 NHL regular season games is beyond premature. There may be some messages that can be taken away from it, but to use it to say that one team is drafting better than another is foolish. Take a look next year when he re-runs it and the whole thing gets reshuffled and looks nothing like it does right now. What will the message be then?

Oh he definitely will. Flash back a few years to when Collin Wilson was the talk of the combine with all of the strength tests. It'll be that all over again. Their program at BU produces beasts.

Isn't this whole analysis incredibly premature?

The BC defenseman? HBO is really scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point.

And a 1 in 13 shot of being the second president of the United States.

What this is more than likely about is that Matthews doesn't want to play for Everett and was hoping to get his rights traded somewhere else.

I expect growing pains, lots of growing pains. We obviously don't know what the roster will be yet, but for the first time in a while, it should at least be interesting to watch. Like CV said, this year will be all about laying the foundation. There's finally direction here and hopefully these kids can gel quickly.

It's scary that my first thought was who would be the guy who can't do any this year. But Eichel won't be a concern. Instead of pulling himself up, he'll actually be pushing the earth down.

They really need to hide that points percentage thing somewhere in the middle. That number is about to take a nice little hit this season. The rest you can't take away from him though.

The best part of that breach of protocol is that my brother was very quickly on the phone with an attorney after hearing it.

It's an actual pail isn't it? Butchered the pig himself I'm sure.

I think we should ship a nice new net Pittsburgh, maybe throw in a pane of glass or two.

I don't know where he is, but someone better go and lock up Scott Stevens.

My dad is at a rehab place for his hip and apparently he fell down twice yesterday in the morning. The place didn't bother to call my mother so she didn't even find out until around 6PM. Somehow during the course of her visit, an X-ray tech told her that the other hip was now fractured and he had to go to the hospital to get a scan on both his hip and his head (he's on blood thinners from the hip surgery so bleeds are a major concern). Fortunately everything came back negative, but I have no idea why an X-ray tech would say something like that, scaring the crap out of everyone. That and the place claims they called my mom and left a message, yet there is no voice mail or missed call on her phone. Something seems very fishy about this place right now.

I miss Lloyd Bridges. I can't think of any role where he wasn't great. Anyway, welcome aboard for more full time duty JW. I hope the typical anti-media mentality that tends to drive most boards doesn't drive you away. There's so much that we as a community can gain from having some of the writers as posters, but it almost always falls apart.

PA had just become eligible for AARP when he was hired.

How long did it take for that to happen? I feel like it only should have been a couple weeks. There had to have been at least a few remnants left over from Nolan's first time here who weren't fond of him, even if it's the grizzled usher who still wants to rip tickets in half instead of using the hand-held scanner.

So when do we accuse Stepner of being a puppet of the Sabres? That is the standard approach around here, right?