Randall Flagg

How did our defense get much improved? I don't think Dahlin's 17 minutes are going to be transformative in the respect. Sorry I'm being bitter. I literally have 12 tabs open from last July, August, and September, and my own optimistic takes are disgusting me ? There was a thread where we voted on our improvement from the previous year. The options did not even contain regression, there were only scaled factors of how much better we were now.

I'm really only talking forwards for the moment - I get the excitement about Casey. I love Casey and that he's playing this year. I'm supremely unconvinced that the net talent group of our forwards is better, until Casey is in the process of competing for the Calder and the kids meaningfully filled in finally.

Right, but then I look at the lineup and don't see anything that makes me feel better than the exact same players we lament after the fact made us feel before we watched them play hockey. Read the threads on Beaulieu, Nolan, Griffith, Pouliot additions last year, along with speculation that Fasching, Bailey and Baptiste will create the true competition THIS TIME around, not like last time. It's impossible to read this list without gagging in hindsight, but the literal exact same things were said. It's the same damn conversation with the same amount of evidence, and until I see it flesh out that way I'm just not biting. FTR, I don't mean to dismiss Berglund as a depth player here, but the vacuum from ROR/Kane's departure sucks him up out of the depth conversation for me, unfortunately.

Their team save percentage was .913, no? Flower's 33, not 38, and has only posted below that once since 09-10. He might not be as good but it's also unlikely their backup role produces as poorly as it did. That team percentage on a whole is one thousandth better than league average. The forward production is a valid point, I wonder if Glass is ready. I could also see Tuch rocketing forward with an increased role. I'm pretty much with you though overall. I think they're in a weak conference and am slightly more confident in you that they'll make the playoffs but would hold off on betting anything more than that. True, but in my experience, stars are stars. They figure it out. I said the same thing about Barzal and playing NHL hockey in general like 9 months ago.

The unknown factor is the worst part for me, when I'm looking at guys like Nick Baptiste and Larsson still on the top of the list of potential filler players to grab roles that have been horribly played by fourth lines for the past seven years.

In the immediate term, Kane and ROR are replaced by Sheary and Berglund. My stance for the past year or so is that our last-place depth scoring was a more pressing need than our bottom 10 top 6 scoring, and that hopefully Eichel/Reinhart development + Mittelstadt insertion + defensemen like Dahlin and maybe another addition getting them the puck could pull the top 6 portion above league average. I figured that real depth forward additions (you could have easily sold me on low picks for Sobotka and Berglund), ideally 2 signed veterans (like we've pushed for since the tank ended and haven't gotten) could help out the bottom and still give a spot or two for kids to win fairly, and finally not have a 4th line get caved for the first time since the tank. We downgraded two of those top 6 pieces, added another kid to the group of kids, and added a guy who may end up being a "Pouliot addition" - welcome in September, declared universal garbage we never should have signed by December, as what literally happened here with Benoit, in Sobotka. I like Pilut better than Antipin but have no proof that he'll fix things until he does it, and until then it's the same type of addition. Things I welcome, but caution against relying on with kids who aren't A level prospects. We have the same amount of uncertainty and need for kids to step up that we've had the past three seasons in our bottom six, and until they finally do, I'm not going to assume it'll happen like I have each of the past three offseasons. If they do, it'll be obvious in the standings early on, and I'll be reinvigorated for the hockey season. If they don't, I don't see how our forward group is any better than last year on pretty much any level as a net whole. This pessimism shouldn't necessarily be conflated with my long-term outlook more than my immediate assessment of Botterill's work. September 2014 was the last projected tank roster we had, so I agree with you there, and I don't think that second part is impossible, but as I just outlined I'm certainly not convinced that's the case.

Hoping our team surprises me. I haven't been less interested or hopeful in a projected lineup since September 2014.

Barzal is also evidence that the "yeah, but he'll never be able to do that in the NHL" crowd is becoming more and more incorrect as time goes on, when it comes to prospects dipsy-doodling in the CHL.

I agree that guys performing above average will come down, but there are also guys that will get better, like any NHL team. Their save percentage as a whole team was basically bang on league average, as was their shooting percentage, and their underlying metrics suggest no overall team-wide regression is coming. Unlike, say, Ottawa suggested just before this past season, or Colorado suggests for next year. I'm almost positive that any good team has players vastly outperforming career paces any given year, but they have a bedrock underneath that lets them compete the following year when players x and y come back to earth, to some degree, and I think that's the case with Vegas - and I agree with your point, Liger, I see a playoff team that won't make the finals, may win a series, but might not even do that. It's probably not a popular opinion, but I think he was better than Tavares last year and will be better for the Islanders going forward than Tavares was.

Since I probably come off as a "Trump supporter" in this thread, and since a rather broad question was asked to that group earlier, I'll happily declare that he was dreadful and disappointing today. To answer the direct collusion question, if the Mueller probe shows Trump colluded w/ Russia, then he should be impeached and prosecuted, however that process works. I'm not a republican though, nor do I know what the deep state is, so I'm answering this as a perceived Trump supporter.

There was definitely a thread about Bobby Hull a little while back. The Knights as a team had pretty sustainable underlying numbers, so I don't think there's too much advanced-and not-advanced evidence out there that they're going to fall back hard,. Karlsson won't shoot 23% again but the rest of their team outside of him and maybe Haula were at sustainable percentages, and any given team can have a couple players shooting above average any given year.

Because it didn't affect his on-ice effort. There are times that I absolutely hate physics, it's part of anything that anyone does. He pushed through as we all do when times are tough. Even at the time of the quote, I couldn't imagine a less-controversial thing getting as much play as that did.

I don't think PA is right, but I also don't think his take is unreasonable.

"knowing that many others could be just as useless" is probably a statistical thing they can figure out, doing a regression analysis. I would advise caution against one outlier making you sour on the stat without seeing that analysis ? The thing about this particular one, is that it does provide you with consolidated data to answer a question that, without a doubt, gets asked. If you're looking at UFAs from Europe, in several different leagues, you'd want to know how players coming from that league have fared over here in the past. you'd much rather have had someone do the legwork and figure it out based on literally every example of a player coming over (midseason in this analysis) and average it out (and have the deviation stats handy as well) than just you, yourself, the internet, and ten websites for ten leagues, tabs open for every season, fruitlessly scanning yourself. I don't think anyone is putting their mortgage on this one, but it's much better that the model is there than if it wasn't. It's information readily available versus painstaking analysis away.

Not liking a result isn't grounds for criticizing a model ? Its weaknesses are fully outlined in the post, and there are more, but Mittelstadt's production certainly wasn't anything to write home about (for perfectly explainable reasons) and that's all the model uses.

It sounds like her friend claimed it was engineered by McCoy, whereas she told police she thought it might have been McCoy, no?

When was his current contract expiring?

I can't do dat one, but that's fine. I haven't even looked to see if there's a home game during my break. Have fun everyone!

Not to beat a dead horse, but people didn't much like it being mentioned by posters that Jack's stick was too long during his first two seasons. Here's Jack on the subject: "I tend to use a longer one... For me I've made my stick a little bit shorter, the few years that I've played in the NHL, just because the game happens so quickly, people are always getting sticks on you, and sticks on the puck, so to have it a little tighter to your body is, I think, a little more beneficial." *Whistles as I drop this quote and keep walking*

I saw an interesting view on hf, that Botterill may have gotten frustrated at not getting pieces he really wanted for Kane, and combined with how this core had done for him so far just tossed the idea of rebuilding what he was given on the fly, like anyone would suggest there was a chance to do when he came in, with pieces like Kane and ROR playing and playing well for us. And if he came to that conclusion, getting a 1st, 2nd, and a decent prospect for ROR fits in nicely - the return doesn't matter as much for now because he committed to that path which handily for him buys some more time and lets him truly build a team he envisions.

Thanks Hoss, now I don't have to read through it. I think he fits right into a gap in between our prospect tiers, between Casey and Dahlin and guys like Nylander/Guhle/Asplund/Olofsson. Not to insinuate that Casey and Dahlin should be considered equal.

Hopefully it wasn't posted (especially by me, that'd be embarrassing) but here's a thread from the St. Louis boards about Tage from before he was traded, it has 8 pages of discussion. I haven't read a single post yet, but I will at some point. https://hfboards.mandatory.com/threads/tage-thompsons-ceiling.2478183/

Let's try to make some Coyotes lines: Keller - Stepan - Panik Perlini - Galchenyuk - Fischer Grabner - Dvorak - Strome Crouse - Richardson - Hinostroza OEL - Hjalmarsson Chychrun - Demers Connauton - Goligoski Raanta Kuemper

There are other reasons to support a Pacioretty addition, even if I hate the guy. I just wouldn't ignore the elephant in the room if I had stood on that soap box a week ago. Otherwise an internet poster might be mad at me. While possible, Vogl didn't TALK about that. He TALKED about specific things that he claims he did know and used them as justification. Vogl irks me, I think you nailed it there. I'm pissed at him for something he hasn't done ? Sorry John.

How? Hinostroza did that in just over half a season on a non-playoff team, so if you concur about O'Regan, well, Hinostroza has already destroyed the supposed conclusion for O'Regan as a valuable comparison piece. At least you'd have to move onto a guy like Brian Flynn or somebody that has a few seasons of NHL games under their belt to illustrate your indifference toward the player, no? Talk about semantics, I know haha. Anywho, the Yotes definitely have the most bizarre composition of any roster in the NHL IMO