dudacek

What does this even mean?

Would you agree with me that under the expansion rules, the Kraken would really have to ***** things up, not to be better than the Sabres?

Again, expansion is designed to give the Kraken an average team: the 11th best asset on every roster. It stands to reason they should be an average team if they do an average job of picking. And an average team should be better than the Sabres. Why are people making this a thing? It’s supposed to be like this.

I understand Donskoi and Compher’s contracts are considered a bit of a burden to the Avs, but they aren’t exactly Jeff Skinners. Leaving those two, along with Landeskog, unprotected was eyebrow raising to me. They protected Logan O’Connor…?

Be ready for the huge backlash Friday when the Sabres don’t take Power. Part will be from Sabres fans, but most of it will be from outside fans who are being conditioned right now by the talking heads to think Power is the guy. I expect a lot of “LOL, the Sabres gonna Sabre” Might be wishful thinking on my part, but I think Eklund is the best player available and I have a good feeling he’s ours.

So The Leafs arrange it so they effectively lose Hallander or their 5D in the draft. McCann is basically Kerfoot’s replacement if he goes. Nice move by Dubas.

Checking the available lists this morning, the only goalie that moved the needle for me was Vanicek and he apparently only plays well against the Sabres.

You would have traded 33 for him?

In other news, kids in wealthy US suburbs are way healthier than kids in Chad.

Hmm… The player who played every minute of those 8,000 on the worst ***** team in the league against the best opponents in the toughest situations was going to have the worst numbers in the league based on shot attempts? Isn’t that kinda like being smug about how that the kid taking care three younger siblings in a household with two unemployed addicts for parents isn’t getting grades as good as your private school kid with the personal tutor? It’s posts like this that gave analytics a bad name.

I would not have traded pick 33 for Adin Hill. Too high a price. He went for pick 39, I think? Allen will be protected and I believe Khudobin will be as well, since Bishop and Price waived. Don’t think the Sabres want to add those latter two contracts at that age and Bishop’s health. Holtby has a $4 million cap hit and is flat out terrible. He’s been bad for a while. Canuck fans are wondering if they can offer the Kraken something to take that contract off their hands. Wild fans were divided and who to leave unprotected but some were hoping to use one as bait to stop the Wild from picking a defenceman instead. (Or maybe Talbot is part of the Wild’s Eichel offer.) 😜

He’s actually from Anahim Lake, an 11-hour drive from Vancouver, basically as close to Vancouver as Buffalo is to South Carolina. It’s rural ranch and timber country in the remote Chilcotin Plateau about 5 hours driving away from the nearest town of any size, and home to only about 1,500 people, a majority of them First Nations. Price’s mom (who I met once) was (maybe still is) the chief. The highway in just re-opened after being closed by wildfires. In some ways, Price is actually more of an edge-of-the-world longshot in terms of where he grew up than Dylan Cozens. (Not trying to be pedantic, so I hope you don’t take it that way. Call me Pierre, but I just find Price’s background and how big and empty my province is interesting.)

A show of appreciation in the absence of real enthusiasm.

Not going to go all Dominik Kahun on this until I see the hand get fully played out. Adin Hill was the only goalie to move and he netted more than I would have been comfortable paying. Maybe, as @Archie Lee said, the market is such that most teams are kinda hoping their backup gets picked in order to save them from losing a skater? There might be one, but at the moment I’m not aware of top-notch keeper who is being exposed that makes sense for the Sabres given the amount of free agents out there. Fingers crossed they are quietly close on Linus.

If this happens, Adams deserves a polite round of applause.

Horvat>Reinhart>Buchnevich. I mean they are on a tier I guess, but the centre factor… Price is a BC boy…

I agree with your memory. I have only read statements of opinion that say “the Rangers aren’t going to put Lafreniere on the table” and none of those from people I believe have any inside information into what the Rangers actually may or may not do.

I don’t think I was questioning the positive. There are things Skinner still does well and that is one of them and it is an asset. The comparison I was making was more about how this one positive quality tends to get trotted out every time every time Skinner gets criticized, to the point where it starts to sound like it should forgive the other flaws in his game, when it’s really just one of several qualities that come into play. I was trying to point out how significant that skill really is when you actually quantify it. Look at it this way, there are people here who largely dismiss Victor Olofsson because he “only scores on the power play”. That one thing Skinner does well indirectly led to about 8 goals over the past two years. The one thing Olofsson does well directly led to 20.

3 pm is the freeze, 5 p.m. the protected list deadline, if memory serves.

Patrick Krebs Tuch and Fleury is among the better reasonable packages we might see for Eichel.

The bold is absolutely fair, and, like I have said in the past, I like Borgen. That said, the most likely outcome is that he’s another Will Carrier - a useful player. I just think posters are guilty of forgetting that the expansion draft is designed to give the Kraken useful players. You only get to protect 10. It’s not 1992 any more.

What if Will Borgen is a 24-year-old Matt Irwin? Irwin’s resume at 24 was pretty similar.

I suspect that at least 2/3rds of the teams in the league will be losing better assets than Borgen in the expansion draft.

Plus you have to sign him. It would be no different than protecting Ullmark.

He’s also one of the best ES scorers over the past decade too. Not so much over the past two years though. Fortunately his ability to draw penalties hasn’t declined as much - 26th in the league over the past two years. His ability to draw penalties has created roughly 8 goals for the Sabres over the past two seasons, or roughly 4 more than Colin Miller or 6 more than Jimmy Vesey.