tom webster

And I made allowances for European players and of course you have to factor in patience and other contractual concerns. In your example, my belief is he’s the same player. He goes back to Europe, Buffalo loses his rights and if he wants to, he comes back and lights up the NHL. Nothing that happened earlier changes that shot and his drive to become a more complete player doesn’t change. Some guys want it, done just think they do. If they are mentally weak enough to let one guys opinion derail their career, they likely don’t have a career.

The one absolute I will find with every player, they all got older. My contention is that this notion that players need to go through this development process to make them good hockey players is anecdotal. There is no way to prove either side unless you know how to create an alternate universe but I believe that if a player is good enough, both mentally and physically, then it doesn’t matter how he was groomed, he will eventually reach that level. Of course there are exceptions and players coming over from Europe may need to get acclimated to different rink sizes and such, but my belief is a guy is either good or he’s not and no amount of development will change that.

No argument here

You are at least ten years behind. The revenue streams made possible by new technology seems endless at this point.

They are not killing off the golden goose. Thry just replaced it with a platinum one. They just don’t need people in the stands anymore. Sure, they would like more but they have gone away from thinking that they need fannies in the seats buying concessions and stuff. The business model is completely different. The NBA was the last league to start to see the shift but they are now in lock step. Baseball attendance has been down for at least the last five years.

That’s if you put any stock in the AHL developing guys that end up being top 4 forwards. It’s possible that I may once again have to have neck fusion surgery. If I do, I’m going to spend my rehab going through every teams top four forwards and document how many played more then a half of a year in the AHL. Anyone want to predict how many? 124 forwards. How many spent more the 40 games in the minors!

Their goaltending is average to decidedly well below average and their special teams stink. If they hadn’t been bad for so long we’d all be kind of encouraged by this.

Yeah. If you consider one game way behind. 14-15 to 13-16!

For what it’s worth, and I only know you through here, you’ll do fine. You already passed three of the four criteria I set when I interviewed someone. 1) you have proven you can learn 2) you can make an intelligent argument for what you believe to be true 3) you seem to be able to admit you were wrong 4) ??

I forgot you are still dealing with that student thing.

I’d be willing to wager on that. I’ll take before the trade freeze before Christmas, you got everything else. $100 tip to some random waiter/waitress that looks like they need.

What decade you living in where you expect a fourth liner to chip in 15-20 goals? For the record, I see Asplund as a third liner but you are projecting fourth line status with high third line, low second line numbers.

As I said, this is coming with people wagering on which player gets the first shot and whether the first goal will be a backhand or a forehand

Attendance in all major sports is dropping for a whole assortment of reasons. That’s why most new stadia are being built with less actual seats and more bars, restaurants and common areas. Blind loyalty is no longer a motivator to buy tickets. Easy access to secondary market tickets is just another reason season ticket sales will continue to plummet.

You have to multiply number of scouts attending game and age of said player and then divide by plus minus ranking and if number is greater then 10, it’s an E4.

Colorado

Yes

We will just have leave it at not agreeing on the cause while agreeing on the results.

We both know you aren’t dumb. Frazier doesn’t seem to have issues calling the defense from the sidelines. They changed more then his physical presence last three games, I’d argue where he is has had the least impact.

I know you are smarter then that. Upstairs, downstairs, uptempo, down tempo. A lot of it is just window dressing. Play calling is more of a process then anything else and evolves over time but it all comes down to players. This town has run offensive coordinators out of town who have ended up in the Super Bowl and who are now the talk of the league. When plays work, they are geniuses. The rest of the time they are either too conservative or too aggressive. Another thing, a large part of the use of the uptempo has to do with the fact that they have only two legitimate NFL receivers at the moment and Knox is both the best receiving TE and best blocking TE. I’d like one of the numbers guys calculate QB ratings for passes of more then ten yards downfield thrown to McKenzie, Roberts or Foster.

I will be disappointed if he doesn’t develop into a high end third liner

Isn’t that similar to what we used to say about Darcy? The idea isn’t to “win” trades, it’s to build a winning roster. I don’t think he survives the year unless they turn this around. That pressure people are talking about is real and it’s not pressure from the fan base that keeps him up at night.

This brings up an interesting question. At one point do we throw in the towel and not want JBOT in charge of any trades? When does the internal pressure to go something change to an internal memo not to trade any future picks or prospects?

After Dec 15th it’s something like $700K cash this year and “only” $4.25M next year. Definitely a cash floor or below cap spending team.

Is the Kings strategy, you can have Toffoli but you have to take Kovalchuk and convince him to come?