Randall Flagg

Not to say anything for or against Tippett, who I don't have any opinions about, but every time I've seen Edmonton they've looked pathetic save for two guys who are scoring like they're Lemieux and Jagr in their primes. The rest of their roster looks as bad on the ice as they do on paper. When Connor and Leon slow down a bit it'll be interesting to see how the team goes. Even with McDrai, he deserves coach of the year if that roster gets anywhere near the playoffs

Someday they will ice a roster capable of more than low-eighties or high-seventies point totals. And then they will finish at that level. it will even have...gasp...some of the "suspects" that are getting the stink eye from fans now, that don't rub some fans the right way.... For now, they're producing where a team that's skating Bogosian on the 4th line, Lazar on the 3rd, and Rodrigues at 2C, would be expected to. It's as simple as that. And it was more than available to see in the tea leaves before the season began, without any "this darned core just can't win" dark clouds necessary

I mean, they've allowed it the last ~2.25 years

A mistake on their part! And yes I know Rielly is ridiculous there

A rare sweetlou trade in which I'd want more coming back our way.

Brown for Hopkins and a 3rd

I had the wrong season, I meant to say 2014-15. But yeah, we're getting old!

I only have a flip phone. Should I be insulted by this

*quietly deletes all Tyson Barrie posts from this summer*

I'm almost positive that Draisaitl's production drops significantly without McDavid. A few seasons in his career you could compare his without-McDavid production's to Zemgus Girgensons', so that's a weird player to pick when your main point is playing away from Eichel. What do his actual stats look like away from Eichel? Because in limited time, his PLAY away from Eichel is pretty good, he fit in with ROR when ROR was here quite nicely, and in a small sample size with Mitts last season was dangerous.

He very clearly struggled more with consistency than anything else early on, which was forgivable since he's demonstrably been a player that needs a regular niche to do well, like Larry and Zemgus. The minutes have helped him play back to where he was last year, and it helps the team. It'll help the team a lot more from the 3rd line than from 2C when Mojo gets back

Thought experiment: Let's replace Jack Eichel with Patrice Bergeron, a borderline-elite offensive talent with arguably the best two-way game of any forward since Datsyuk/Zetterberg's prime. We'll take last season as an example, and then do this season too. There's no perfect way to quantitatively analyze the effect of a player on a new team of course, but it's better than doing nothing and throwing out claims to see what sticks. If you take Patrice Bergeron's 5v5 production last season and map it into the number of minutes Jack played, he would have produced 52 points, or contributed to 52 goals, for us. This is in contrast to 47 for Eichel. If you then measure the goals scored on Boston with him on the ice and map them the same way to Jack's ice time here, you get 48 goals against. Jack's was 63. That is a net difference in 20 goals. Keep in mind that this is assuming that Patrice Bergeron a.) stays healthy enough to play a full season, which hasn't happened for a few years b.) suffers ZERO offensive depletion due to moving from Marchand & Pastrnak as wingers to Skinner/Sheary and Pominville/Reinhart as wingers as Eichel had last year c.) suffers ZERO in the defensive zone from team defense and goaltending drop off between Boston and Buffalo, and Rask/Halak vs Ullmark/Hutton. So if this wildly perfect scenario (which would obviously not play out this perfectly in real life) happened, we'd have a net team improvement of 20 goals. We'd still be more than two dozen goals below breaking even as a team, at a team goal differential of -25 even AFTER this switch. This is if EVERYTHING went perfectly with the switch, including our wingers suddenly being Pasta AND Marchand level, our team defense around Patrice suddenly matching that of Cassidy's Bruins, our goalies suddenly playing to the level of Rask/Halak. And getting rid of Jack certainly doesn't guarantee you putting the best two way player of his generation in his place. Why on earth would it? This is the best case two-way scenario possible in the entire world. And even if you somehow got that, EVEN IF it guaranteed that you get the same line-level results from Bergeron as he puts out in Boston, which you almost certainly wouldn't, since he plays with two legit superstar top 5 wingers in the entire league, TWO, EVEN IF all of that still happened, the team is still more than two dozen goals from breaking even, much less going above that to fight for a mere playoff birth. This is why I post so fervently against blowing ***** up just to blow it up, and to make lateral moves for the sake of lateral moves. If we do the same mapping for this year, the Sabres would have allowed the same number of goals with Bergeron on the ice as they have with Eichel, and Bergeron has fewer 5v5 goals contributed to than Eichel in fewer minutes played. This analysis is obviously not perfect, but the Sabres wouldn't be capable of trading Eichel for the best two way player on the planet and they so clearly have problems that are a lot easier to fix than acquiring said player, problems that wouldn't go away with this swap.

While Jack deserves to be lambasted for that game, and his defensive play as a whole, he doesn't play worse defense than many best-offensive-forwards on teams that win playoff series. He doesn't even play worse defense than the two best defensemen on the Sharks. The main answer to why, despite coach after coach, we are still a mediocre hockey team, is emphatically not Jack Eichel's defensive zone abilities and efforts.

Oh come on. Tage would forfeit all earnings this season to be able to play AHL hockey rather than be sidelined for a significant length of time with a bad injury. Shoulders can be problems for years and he knows this. There's no doubt the poor kid is depressed right now.

Is that good production for his age in the WHL? Either way I wouldn't be surprised if he's pulling a 2013-14 Sam Reinhart - focusing less on playing WHL hockey and more on getting ready for NHL hockey.

I think his running will eventually slow down, but he's shown enough as a pocket passer to think that it won't spell the end for his career like it has for other running QBs.

Unrelated, but what a find John Brown was. I can't wait until we get our stud WR1 to make Brown one of the best #2s in the world. What was up with Devin fumbling twice?? Ford vs. Von Miller is going to be scary. I'm going to this weekend's game, it's the first one I've been to since 2014. I believe it's the 5th one I've ever been to Milano and Edmunds were absolutely electric yesterday, more of that please. Denver's defense is seriously good and they're going to keep the game close. Their running backs will more than likely give us problems too. This game is very important and it won't be easy. They have a bad record but they've done it by taking good teams into the final seconds and having their hearts ripped out a lot. Sutton is one of the best WRs we've faced this season, maybe the best. Honestly, OBJ sucks this year - Sutton is the best WR we've come across this season. I hope Tre is ready.

And let's all not forget that Lamar has 17 starts in his entire career, whereas Vick had about 70 starts before getting arrested to pile up moments. Lamar will be seen as a better running and throwing QB than Vick when all is said and done IMO

I can't even find a video of it because it was a random play in the middle of a game that only went 12 yards, but Jackson had a run against the Pats that was more impressive than anything i've ever seen from any other QB. It obviously wasn't as "good of a play" as the epic OT run Vick had, because it had less significance. But it was the best QB run I've ever seen in my life, and I don't think any other QB in history could have made it the 12 yards that Lamar did without getting tackled way before

i've seen every notable Vick run, there are like series of 15 minute long videos on youtube of all of them and I actually watched the videos very recently. There was nothing in there like some of the runs Lamar has pulled off. I'm not shitting on Vick by any means, he was incredible. But Lamar is incredible in a different way, and it's more impressive to me. He can be surrounded by 6 guys and Houdini past them like nobody else in the league can, Vick didn't have Lamar's level of escapability even if he has better speed

It's honestly infuriating

I agree that Vick was faster. I don't think he was better. Spiller was faster than Freddie too. I've never seen Vick do the video game run Lamar had a couple weeks ago

I don't know that I believe this. How many games of Lamar have you been able to see? I'm seriously not comfortable saying there are running backs in the NFL right now definitely better than he is at running

He's also quite possibly better at running. Like is there a running back that runs better than Lamar Jackson lol

In addition to what rakish said, his arm was hanging really ominously.