Weave

How often do 8 OAL picks turn out good enough to be players that drive their line? I feel like by the time you get to 8 those players are not reliable to pick at that level.

I read this with Mike Tyson's voice in my head.

It would seem that you can teach a QB enough accuracy to be reasonably effective.

Kessel’s game is gonna fall off a cliff when his time comes. I don’t know that I’d want him for any more than a season at a time.

What do you do for a living that 100 mph got let go?

He's got crazy hands. Tim Connolly hands. You might be right about him lacking in other areas though. He gets abused pretty badly here for being unmotivated and//or entitled. My gut tells me the other skills needed are more the issue than motivation. I can't put my finger on it, but he is lacking somewhere.

His points did, but he was a very effective player even with the Sabres. His legs kept him in the league longer than his hands did. I honestly have no idea what about Staal's game has kept him at 2C level, but when whatever it is goes away he won't have the legs Gionta did to survive it. That's all I'm getting at.

Yeah the haze on the ride home last night was impressive. It’s incredible how much smoke is being generated

Gionta was one of those incredible skaters that can play forever. Staal is not that guy. I think there is a very real risk of a precipitous dropoff. And its a risk I think that was well worth taking given last season, and the prive we paid to get him.

Definitely a hockey trade. I think Marcus was under appreciated around here. To my eye he was excellent at carrying the puck into the O zone. I thought his game dropped off after he got hurt though. I see this as a natural C and leader with grit coming in, exchanged for a utility player with better wheels and a good two way game. Marcus is more versatile and Eric better at his specialty.

My money is on Tage being the better player. I'm not certain Tage will have much of an NHL career, but I am putting better odds on Tage than I am on Mitts. Tage was physically outmatched at times, but looked like the kind of player that could make it happen. Casey, to me, just looked overwhelmed most of the time. Didn't Casey go through a huge stretch last season getting all secondary assists and no primaries? Or was that Nylander the season before?

This didn't age well.

It's the kind of move that we should have been making the last 5 seasons. Rings all the Jack/Ralph bells. Bigger, tougher, veteran, winner. Staal is the kind of player we should have stocked the team with coming out of the Tank.

I'm inclinded to agree with the point PA is making. I think JBott was throttled by the Pegulas. My gut feeling was that he was an implementer of Pegula decisions and not a maker of his own decisions. We are leaving a trail of beaten and crushed GM's in the wake of this Pegula led team. I'm ready to believe that the bad decision making wasn't necessarily the GM choices.

The rest of the league may very well be in the same boat, but if the internal cap means we can't make the scope of changes that this team needs to make we're still a bottom half of the league team. We NEED to spend to the cap just to get this team right again. An internal cap is another handcuff on this team regardless of whether the rest of the league has an internal cap or not.