darksabre

People around here will ***** a brick but I think, despite his injury plagued career, most GMs would see him as a good value add for the third pairing. Get him on a 2 x 2 deal and get him under 20 minutes a night and you're not going to worry too much about his injuries.

I'm just gonna say it: I wouldn't be shocked to see Bogo back next year on a cheap deal if his recovery takes.

GMs who do weird things with goalies are something that shouldn't even exist in the modern NHL, but here we are. They don't even have anyone in their system who can step up if both their current goalies end up being tire fires this year. No wonder McDavid is sad. He's already thinking about all the extra goals he's going to have to score to try to overcome a terrible case of goalie purgatory.

You have to consider tandems because none of the four are NHL #1s. They're all platoon guys, and I like our platoon's chances a lot better. Koskinen is a debacle in the making and Smith is just about done. The Oilers might be playing goalies from Craigslist by the end of the year...

I like Mike Smith, but our two goalies are better than their two goalies. That deal they signed Koskinen to is bananas.

Sure. A guy like Thornton should maybe have gone somewhere else at some point but he has kept his faith in the SJ owners and GMs since he was traded there and he may never win a cup because of it. Stamkos may be in a similar boat if he stays in Tampa for the rest of his career. Maybe McDavid is looking at those guys and wondering if "toughing it out" is really worth it? Does Edmonton even deserve the same leniency that San Jose, Tampa, and Washington got/is getting from its stars?

That would certainly be the logical end to a debate where one party isn't providing any support for its argument...

It appears to make sense to everyone except you.

That's not my problem.

Yeah, I think that's right. It doesn't give the team any more room to spend over the cap in the summer, but it gives them relief as soon as the season officially starts.

Read the rest of the sentence. 30,000 people by themselves in cars = 30,000 cars. Yeesh.

Obviously making room for Mitch Marner when the season starts.

The Sabres didn't really need to announce this right now. So that's interesting maybe...?

I'm not saying 30k people, I'm saying 30k vehicles based on the number of people. That said, Eleven's point about the difference being a net + means that the total of people is likely much higher, and therefore the number of cars as well. 40k cars looks reasonable.

Interesting. That puts them under the cap and then he's gone in the summer. That gives us 8 rostered defensemen and Pilut and Jokiharju on deck.

Good point. That makes 40,000+ cars coming into downtown every day much more plausible if say 67,000 people come into the city limits for work every day and 20,000 leave it. Play with that balance however you like.

I guess I just don't see why anyone would want to trade for a player of so little value holding out for a bad contract with a bad team. How good of a deal is Puljujarvi going to be in a trade?

So 90% of Buffalo's commuting is done by car. Let's assume 85% of Buffalo's commuter jobs are in the downtown area since that's easily the most job dense part of the city, and then let's assume that (based on the data) 85% of those 90% of commuters are driving alone in a car, you're looking at about 30,000 people going straight into the downtown part of the city every day by themselves in a car. Does +30,000 look better to you?

I don't get it. Why would anyone trade for a player opting out his NHL contract?

Sometimes I wonder (okay, I don't wonder, I assume) if young players don't fully understand the reality of pro sports insomuch as they put their faith in the "adults in the room" to get things right and then after a few years in the league the crushing reality sets in that these "wise elders" don't actually have any idea what they're doing and your faith in them was totally misplaced. McDavid might be looking at guys like Thornton and Stamkos and is wondering "what's really going on here?". And he would be right to do so.

Player tracking is going to be a really powerful tool in time. It's going to allow us to do one of the things I've always wanted to do: study the flow of play. The way players influence one another, and the way individual players start, contribute to, and finish scoring events, is going to be huge for player and group evaluation. Does this grouping of players generate higher quality sequences of hockey? What happens when we plug player x into group b? We probably wont really get anything useful from player tracking for like...a decade.

I honestly think the Sabres are in better shape. It will require this season to let it materialize, but I can't see how Edmonton is better than us next year (if there's hockey).

This all seems like a stunt by the reporter to drive clicks. If you want players to give honest answers, don't give them a hard time for not giving you the boilerplate non-answers you clearly expected to hear. Connor McDavid is frustrated that he's the only good player on his team and keeps getting hurt? That he's still rehabbing and it probably ruined his summer? Shocking. August is the worst.

I gotta beat Harrington to it!

I'm very here for all this pro-Pommers stuff, if only because so many people hate the idea.