Weave

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.

It didn't come out of my garden but we got a big paper bag full of a variety of hot peppers dirt cheap. Nothing too wild. Jalapenos are about the hottest thing in the bag. Majority of them appear to be hot Hungarian peppers. This evening I chopped the whole bag up into pepper rings and made them into pickles. Got a bunch of jars of pickled hot pepper rings cooling down on the counter now.

Tomato plants go feral quite readily. I've had them sprout up when I didn't clean out the garden of dropped veggies well enough and turned the whole mess over. I'd bet that what you originally planted was a hybrid of some sort and what came back was one of the parent plants that produced the hybrid you started with. Alot of those hybrids are pretty unstable and you don't get what you started with in a second generation plant.

Sam lacked NHL caliber center skill sets but does well along the wall and shooting the puck, and did from early on. Mitts skill sets are center ice skill sets, not wing skill sets. It's the opposite of Sam, really. I agree that winger is likely an easier position to play than center, but I also think Mitts doesn't have the needed skills to be proficient at it. Sam always did.

I don't think Mitts game would translate well at wing. He doesn't have tenacity to do the board work. He's not terribly shifty on his skates to find openings. He's not a sniper of any sort. And I don't see him doing any better with what he's got with half the ice closed off to him. He needs to figure out how to make those hands work at this level and use them to get the puck to the sides. IMO it is center or bust for that kid.

Had today off so I spent some time on the water. Took the kayak out this morning. Had a good morning. Caught a bunch of smallmouth bass in the 2-4lb range, a few crappies and perch. And got in some good exercise in the process.

Holy cow, chz. Get well.

A-freaking-men

We’ve been sacrificing for some future season for about a decade. The unknown is why you build a team for now, not for an unknown future.

I hate that I love this team so much. Another season in the abyss.

OSP strikes again.

YDIW You are supposed to jump onto this forum, full of excitement like a 4yr old at 5am on Christmas morning for your find, not read any posts to see if it is already being discussed, and start a new thread to have two places to discuss it. Right, GA?

Don’t like that trend.

Which center's game is best suited to playing with Skinner? And which center is best suited to shadow the other teams #1 line and add some grit? Those are the two I want.

I missed this. And I don't know that I have the time anyway.